musicians

Meredith Monk: Inner Voice

admin — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Dutch Filmmaker Babeth VanLoo’s compelling tribute to sixty-seven-year-old choreographer-musician-teacher-composer-artist Meredith Monk does many things. In addition to introducing us to this enigmatic Jane of many trades, it showcases the artist’s creative processes and worldview. Along the way, it looks at the ways Buddhism has infused Monk’s work. “Silence is her source,” VanLoo explains.

The engrossing eighty-two-minute film includes footage of Monk performing, writing, and living in both upstate New York and New Mexico. The 2002 death of her life-partner, Mika, is mentioned, but this is not a film about grieving. Instead, the life force that propels Monk—she has been awarded numerous honorary degrees as well as a MacArthur “Genius” award—is both celebrated and explored.

Monk’s thought processes—and the questions that keep her up at night—are shared. "How do you practice fear?" she wonders. “So much of what we do is fear based. We’re afraid of the fear, of walking through it.” That realization led Monk to begin writing a piece of music that eventually became "Scared Song." Like everything she does, the final product was developed collaboratively. Her process is fascinating, since the massive ego of most composers is wholly absent in Monk. Instead, her colleagues describe her welcoming attitude, and site her willingness to accommodate suggestions and contributions by the musicians and actors she performs with.

Philip Bither, Senior Curator at Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center, calls her “one of the seminal people of our time. She resists categorization and has created great work in five, six areas of art. That’s really rare. We tend to categorize people as actors, singers, dancers.” Similarly, choreographer Phoebe Neville marvels at Monk’s ability to avoid what she calls “the trap of success. She has always maintained her integrity and has been able to say ‘no,’” Neville says. This, she continues, has fired Monk‘s creativity for forty-plus years, and has helped her avoid burnout and exhaustion.

In the end, it’s a question of balance—and Monk is the poster woman for this value. Whether working alone or with others, she acknowledges the need to take periodic timeouts. This has allowed her to continually recharge, think, and observe. “As a soloist,” Monk says, “I can be very precise and rigorous, but at the same time I am open and fluid to what is happening in the moment. That’s why I like to work without words. It throws the mind into a very different state.”

Indeed, listening to Monk’s vocalizations—her range is enormous—is virtually guaranteed to take listeners on a journey. Since the words are essentially nonsense—made up of sounds that have no literal meaning—you can infuse the music with significance or can simply let your mind wander and experience what you’re hearing. It’s a sensual, exciting, and unusual encounter—and VanLoo captures it brilliantly.

While the film could have used a bit more background about Monk’s early life—it does mention that a childhood eye infirmity led her to listen closely to music and notes that both her mother and maternal grandfather were successful performers—and might have included footage of Monk discussing the ways aging has impacted her efforts, it is nonetheless lovely. In the end, this short introduction to Monk’s life’s work—and the way she integrates spirituality into her artistic process—is inspiring. Van Loo’s love of Monk shines through, but the fact that she avoids fawning makes Meredith Monk: Inner Voice an insightful look at one of the most innovative and fearless artists of our time.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, July 23rd 2010

The Songs of Blind Folk: African American Musicians and the Cultures of Blindness

admin — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 01:00:00 +0000

By Terry Rowden

University of Michigan Press

Terry Rowden’s book is that rarest of gems, a work of critical theory that should appeal to a broad audience and that contributes simultaneously, in an original and exciting way, to the fields of Disability Studies, Ethnomusicology, and African American Studies. While more casual music fans might be tempted to turn immediately to chapters on Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder, the initial chapters on the cultural politics of blindness and race in the nineteenth century represent a seldom viewed perspective on the nexus of racial and physical difference—and they are no less accessible nor original in their insights than the later chapters on more recognizable figures.

Rowden focuses first on the figure of “Blind Tom Bethune” as a product of nineteenth-century American preoccupation with “freakish attraction.” Bethune was marketed—enslaved, essentially, even after Emancipation, by his managers as a kind of idiot savant, but his popularity and reappropriation by African American folk musicians and poets in the late nineteenth century helped to transform him from a freakish sentimental figure to a more affirmative expression of African American creativity.

The book then traces a lineage of blind blues musicians: those for whom race, age, obscurity, and blindness become part of a musical aesthetic. A chapter on “The Souls of Blind Folk” shows a tradition in gospel and spiritual music that, unlike much of the composition by African American musicians, openly acknowledges the artists’ blindness, which becomes emblematic of the musician’s spiritual condition.

Rowden’s work on Charles and Wonder climax his study. He examines the “Rhetoric of Genius” surrounding Charles and some of his contemporaries, the prodigiously “gifted” artist who is legitimated for mainstream American audiences first by virtue of his physical attractiveness and second by his invention of the sunglasses as an iconic representation of the sightless performer. Wonder is presented as a musician who seemed to achieve “transcendence” over his blindness. He helped dispel the folkloric notion that blindness “was somehow a punishment for some kind of original sin.” His precocious rise to fame Rowden attributes first to excellent musical education and second to his being “cute”—both “little” and “a wonder”—and so unthreatening to the public. By sharp contrast to his forebears, Wonder grew up with what Rowden memorably calls “the cyborgean prosthestics of privilege”—an unprecedented access to technology and financial and personal support. Nonetheless, his career was eclipsed by the advent of MTV and BET and the “image-oriented” musical world of the 1980s and beyond.

The Songs of Blind Folk is both sensitive and provocative, a work of historical scholarship and applied critical theory, an accessible and original addition to ongoing discourses in a variety of disciplines.

Written by: Rick Taylor, December 13th 2009

The Music Teacher

admin — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:21:00 +0000

By Barbara Hall

Algonquin Books

The Music Teacher is a story of failure. It is the story of what could have been, but wasn’t—because of neglect, because of abuse, or for the simple reason that not everyone succeeds. Most people fail.

Protagonist Pearl Swain is one of these failures. Swain was a gifted violinist, but her father hated (and feared) her passion for music so strongly that he burned her violin in a backyard fire. Now Swain is a violin teacher rather than a professional musician, an occupation which she views as a failure. Her marriage is also a failure, having recently ended with her professor husband impregnating another woman and leaving her.

Now, Swain’s life revolves completely around the music store where she gives her lessons, and the staff there, with whom she socializes and debates favorite music and artists a la High Fidelity. Her romantic prospects are limited to the men at the shop. Her life as a music teacher changes when an orphan named Hallie comes in for lessons. Swain identifies with Hallie, who is gifted but lacks the support system necessary for success. While Swain is enamored of the girl’s talent, she discovers that Hallie’s personal problems are far more dangerous than she suspected. But is it already too late? Is Swain already involved enough in Hallie’s life to be harmed?

Hallie acts as the catalyst for many of Pearl’s realizations, about the process through which talent becomes achievement, about parents and family, about her own childhood, and her marriage. Although bitter, Swain is ultimately likeable. The book stands out because of its exploration of failure and its unique juxtapositional setting. (Swain lives in a trailer park in Los Angeles, the city of stardom.)

Unfortunately, neither the writing nor the story is remarkable enough to stay in a reader’s head for long, unless he or she is particularly interested in the career of a professional musician.

Written by: Elizabeth F.A. Meaney, July 21st 2009

Girls and Weather

admin — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 12:41:00 +0000

By The Rumble Strips

Fallout Records

Rumble strips are those bumpy edges along the highway that essentially—hopefully—keep you from driving into a ditch. Did you ever start to doze off on an interstate freeway or make a turn too sharp off an exit ramp? Then you’ve probably rolled over a rumble strip. Not really similar due to their lack of grating and bumpy transitions, The Rumble Strips are a UK band with a lot of heart. Earnest Brit-pop with a large horn presence, Girls and Weather is their debut release with a lot of room for growth.

Most of the album showcases fresh work, though the track “Motorcycle” was first released in 2005 as the band was just getting its bearings after switching the lineup. With a consistent roster since, comprised of childhood pals, the fellas of The Rumble Strips chose to re-release “Motorcycle,” which is a little too sugary sweet for me in its lamenting that a bicycle is not a motorcycle. In fact, much of the album, including their single “Girls and Boys In Love,” is similar bubbly pop. The single “Alarm Clock” goes so far as to include lyrics “beep, beep, beep,” but no one ever said pop music doesn’t rely on predictable formulas, right?

The band just wrapped their first major North American tour, but check their website for future dates. This disc has been out for a little over a year, but you aren’t behind. Just go grab a copy and act like you knew all along.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, November 16th 2008