A Journal of My Mid-Life Crisis

14 March 1999 - Spicy Music (An Early Update Before Traveling)

While I'm keeping the date on this as the 14th, I am really writing it on the 12th. Let's just say that it is dangerous for people like me to subscribe to the web specials mailings the airlines do. I had hoped to go to Alaska this week, but work more or less imploded, between the rush to meet "on line in '99" and a replan due to Congressional budget cuts making the next part of the system unexecutable. So when I saw a low price to a city I'd never been to, I figured a weekend in Nashville is at least something. I'm off in the morning and back Monday night, in time to get ready to go to Colorado on Wednesday.

Nashville is an odd place for me to go, given my antipathy towards country music. What I am really hoping to do is the year-round volksmarch event there and to drive to South Union, Kentucky where there is a Shaker museum. The Shakers are one of my minor obsessions. Their belief in celibacy obviously doomed them, but they managed to turn their religious passion into such incredible art. Their furniture and general craftsmanship is, of course, still admired, but it's their music that is my particular interest. I saw a recreation of a Shaker funeral when I was at Pleasant Hill, Kentucky (near Lexington) and it was beautiful.

Music is most of what I want to write about this week, but while I am mentioning funerals, I'm interested in which celebrity deaths get attention. DiMaggio generated more interest than Kubrick, it seems. And Harry Blackmun hardly got a mention. I did hear an NPR story about his funeral and it was interesting that his ashes were carried in a blue VW bug he had driven for years. I suppose a lot more people can name baseball players and movie directors than can name Supreme Court justices, but it shows where our national priorities are.

Yehudi Menuhin's death got more coverage today than I'd expected. One thing I find interesting is the violin as a Jewish instrument. There was Menuhin, of course. But also Jascha Heifitz and Isaac Stern. The traditional "yiddl mitn fiddle" transformed well into classical violin for some reason.

Anyway, about music in general. I finished two tapes I am going to send to John. I wrote a few pages for him about the pieces I chose, but I don't think I was very successful in explaining why I like them. At the very least, he will conclude I am remarkably eclectic. The performers include The Gipsy Kings, Tom Ze, Milton Nascimento, Cesaria Evora, Zap Mama, Ali Farka Toure with Ry Cooder (doing "Diaraby" which is the theme music for "The World" on NPR so I hear it every day), Afro Celt Sound System, The Tannahill Weavers, The Old Blind Dogs (of Dinner at Payless fame, but included largely because their show in Edinburgh had me humming their tunes for three days afterwards and because "Trip to Pakistan" is surely the only pipe reel ever inspired by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan), The John Renbourn Group, The Voice of the Turtle, Pierre Bensusan, Ken Nordine, Eric Bogle, Christine Lavin, The Chenille Sisters (both with and without James Dapigny's Chicago Jazz Band), Cats and Jammers, Combustible Edison, The Bobs, and Wayne Toups and Zydecajun. There are also cuts from a few cast albums - a bit of Sondheim (of course), but also some Flanders and Swann ("Madeira M'Dear") which went very well with Sheldon Harnick's "Boston Beguine" from New Faces of 1952. (By the way, that was sung by Alice Ghostley. Other people who were new to Broadway in that 1952 show include Eartha Kitt, Robert Clary and Paul Lynde!) And there's a bit from the soundtrack of "A Man and a Woman" and a few Shaker hymns.

In thinking over the selections, I found a few themes. There are a few things there for the sake of clever lyrics. (The Broadway stuff I mentioned above is largely in that vein, as is the Christine Lavin song "Music to Operate By" which I figured was a matter of professional interest for John.) Then there is music that hits me kinesthetically as much as it does in the auditory mode. I cannot listen to Tom Ze and sit quietly; I have to get up and dance. I think a large part of why I'm so receptive to world beat is having been exposed to the Yemenite and Arabic styles that are such a large part of Israeli dancing. Finally, there is music that has a rich emotional imagery. The best example of this is the piece by Pierre Bensusan I included. (Bensusan is an Algerian born French guitarist who is my favorite musician, for those of you have never heard of him, which is almost everybody.) It's called "Agadiramadan" and is from his album Spices. And it is spicy music, indeed, evocative of desert heat and snake charmers and dusty crowded marketplaces, the aural equivalent of that North African seasoning mixture called ras al hanut that can have up to 60 ingredients. This is an entirely inadquate description of the effect it has on me, but that's why it's music, not prose.

By the way, I also committed another CD binge. This time I replaced two of my Pierre Bensusan LPs with CDs, as well as buying four new CDs. The new stuff is Ritual by Le Mystere des Voix Bulgare (I know, everyone else bought this 5 years ago when it first came out in the U.S.), a new album by a group called Paris Combo who do cabaret sort of stuff and who I happened to hear on the radio the same day I let myself go to H.E.A.R. music in Santa Monica, and two recordings of Tuvan throat singing. Huun-Huur-Tu is the more traditional, while Back Tuva Future is a very odd mix with a Tuvan singer named Kongar-Ol Ondar mixed with Nashville-based composer David Hoffner on keyboards and various synthesizers and Richard Feynman (yes, that Feynman, the late physicist) on drums. It is incredibly weird and intriguing music; the throat singing is a technique that produces multiple notes at once and reminds me somewhat of didgeridoo drones. Rich in imagery, indeed. And since Hoffner is from Nashville, perhaps there is spicier music there than the Opry.