Every once in a while, that “quality of life” thing everyone talks about when asked WHY they live in the Twin Cities smacks you in the head like a two-by-four—only without all the blood and pain. The experience is quite pleasant, actually, more like being smooched on the forehead than smacked. I had one of those days on Saturday, a day that affirmed for me why the Twin Cities is such a great place to live, work, and raise a family. Sounds boring on the face of it, I know, but days like Saturday don’t happen all that often, so one has to savor them.
First, as you all know, the weather was perfect all day long. Low-80s, clear skies, not too much humidity—a true gem. I began the day with a cup of Dunn Brothers coffee and a Mello-Glaze donut for breakfast (two fine local products) and read the paper, as I do every Saturday. I know: You’re thinking, how can it get any better than that? The man is living the dream. But wait—there’s more.
While many Minnesotans were out on a lake Saturday afternoon, or participating in Aquatennial activities somewhere, I was sitting in the Dakota Jazz Club’s air-conditioned splendor listening to my son, Hugh, play in a jazz ensemble, the culmination of a summer jazz workshop presided over by local bandleader Doug Little (Seven Steps to Havana, Charanga Tropicale) and drummer Kevin Washington. Every July, Little conducts workshops for teenagers interested in jazz, and the perk at the end is that the students get a gig at the Dakota. Dakota owner Lowell Pickett generously opens his doors to the event, even though, as Little says, “he probably loses money on the deal,” because the crowd is mostly families drinking lemonade and eating french fries. The Dakota does it to support jazz education in the Twin Cities, and Little does it because he likes working with talented youngsters and wants to share his passion and knowledge with them. This is just one small piece of the Twin Cities musical puzzle, but it’s people like Little and Washington (along with hundreds of other musician/teachers out there) who are responsible for seeding our community with so many great musicians. If you think the Twin Cities music scene is a key “quality of life” component in these parts, it’s people like this you need to thank.
Here's a clip of the jazz combo Vaguely Aware (so-called because they are all teenagers who had to wake up before noon to participate in the workshop). That's my boy back there on bass.
After the Dakota gig was over, we decided to stop by Ted Cook’s 19th Hole in south Minneapolis to pick up some of the best BBQ ribs in town; ribs so good you can actually take civic pride in them. Ted’s place is just a counter and a cash register, but the stuff in those brown paper bags he hands you is the real deal—smoky hot goodness right down to the bone.
After picking up our ‘cue, we decided to head over the Lake Harriet Bandshell to hear the Minneapolis Pops Orchestra play. When we arrived, a picnic table magically opened up the second we arrived, a sure sign karma is working in your favor, at least for a while. There was slight breeze on the lake, nudging sailboats across the water and allowing a few gulls to float around on the wind currents. People were walking their dogs, rollerblading, and toting tubs of ice cream around. It was simply a perfect summer evening, just the sort of pleasant, relaxing scene city planners envision when they build things like the bandshell and start scooping ice cream to the locals.
To hear the orchestra, we found a patch of ground and set up camp. The Minneapolis Pops Orchestra isn’t exactly the Minnesota Orchestra, but it’s a competent, spirited group. They opened with some Dvorak, then introduced a young cello soloist, seventeen-year-old Max Lundgren, who was invited to play an early Haydn concerto—the C Major, I believe—with the orchestra. The Lundgrens are family friends of ours (our sons have been taking cello lessons from the same teacher for years) and we were there to support Max, who had been at the Dakota just a few hours earlier supporting our son. Not that Max needed any help. At seventeen, Max played exuberantly and brilliantly for a crowd that had simply come out to hear some nice music. What they got instead was a glimpse at the future of the cello and classical music, which—if up-and-coming musicians like Max Lundgren are any indication—is in extraordinarily fine hands, as anyone who was there can attest.
As the orchestra loped through its program and the sun was setting behind us, casting a mellow orange glow over the lake, a young dad was lying on his back, hoisting his one-year-old daughter in the air. Every time he lifted her, she squealed with delight, and I couldn’t help thinking that this little girl was extremely lucky to live in a place like the Twin Cities—a place where institutions like the Dakota, the Lake Harriet Bandshell, and the Minneapolis Pops Orchestra support and encourage the talents of our youth, and every once in a while offer them a magical opportunity to shine, giving them moments they’ll likely remember the rest of their lives.
Put all that together with some damn fine barbecue, and you have a day that comes pretty close to perfection, in a place that would be hard to improve.
Last night at Orchestra Hall, Minnesota Orchestra’s Sommerfest program highlighted Finnish fare. Osmo Vänskä, the favorite Finn of our Minnesota music scene, conducted a triptych of works by a three-generation lineage of his countrymen: The granddaddy, Jean Sibelius, his student Einojuhani Rautavaara, and Rautavaara’s protégée Kalevi Aho.
Rautavaara’s Cantus Arcticus, Concerto for Birds and Orchestra, Opus 61, opened the concert. Yes—for birds. Rautavaara recorded their songs in 1972 in the arctic marshlands nearby Finland’s northernmost university, the University of Oulu, which commissioned the work.
The first movement, “The Bog,” sets the scene, with gorgeously scored woodwinds coiling and uncoiling melodies. I could see a whole convention of winged beauties, congresses of various species from faraway places, gathering, communing and bickering. The shimmering of trilling flutes and clarinets merges into the recorded birdsong so effortlessly, and the orchestra’s imitations of their squawks, squeaks, and whistles was so spot-on that I found myself pondering the question, “Where does nature end and music begin?”
The sounds of real birds (on tape) open the second movement, “Melancholy,” with an unmistakable melody and rhythm to their songs. The orchestra takes more of a supporting role to the taped soloists here, anchoring the mood of the whole with hushed, slow-moving accompaniment.
Finally, “Swans Migrating” provides the drama of the landscape, aptly depicting the collection and departure of the great birds—the communication, the effort, and the movement are reflected in both real swan song and its counterfeit partner, the trombones.
Cantus Arcticus is a feat of coordination, as the orchestra is divided into sub-groups and there’s a human being in charge of running the tape, which sometimes is heard alone and sometimes needs to be fully synchronized with the orchestra. Osmo gets my bouquet for this one, but it was a captivating performance all around. My favorite comment of the night, overheard during intermission, was: “The bog part was very boggish, and I thought the migration went very well.”
Aho’s Symphony no. 9 for Trombone and Orchestra (Sinfonia Concertante no. 2), is for all intents and purposes a concerto for trombone, though the trombone functions for the majority of the work as a soloist within the texture and action of the music rather than showily sitting on top of it. The piece is a philosophical collision of new versus old, where new music flings itself forward with reckless nihilistic abandon, while Baroque dances persist gallantly. The debate thickens through the three-movement work, until the old music appears sort of sickly and gothic, constantly pummeled by the telegraphic pulse of the xylophone. But it persists to the end, leaving the argument unresolved.
Vänskä, in his remarks to the audience before the concert, said the score tells the percussionist to “kill the old music.” Sure enough, the timpani beat the harpsichord into submission with a few hard thwacks like a flyswatter to a butterfly. (Properly prepped, the audience giggled in appreciation, getting the joke.)
But it’s the trombone that truly tests the old order, even as the soloist—in last night’s case, the orchestra’s own Doug Wright—argues both sides, alternating between the modern trombone and its ancestor, the sackbut. While the sackbut sounded less native to him, his trombone was putty, easily stretched to the limits of high and low registers. The third movement’s cadenza offered Wright the opportunity to stun with showmanship—a grand oration with such extended techniques as multiphonics, flutter-tonguing and singing while playing, it is as bizarre and unaccountable as Heath Ledger’s Joker. Wright pulled sounds out of his horn ranging from a groaning hull of a great sinking ship to the throaty honking of an asthmatic goose. Between Batman and the trombone, it may be awhile before my dreams return to normal.
The audience shouted its appreciation before the last crashing note stopped reverberating—it is always gratifying to hear this sort of visceral response to new music.
Finally, after intermission, was Sibelius’ Symphony no. 5 in E-flat major, Opus 82, written and revised during World War I. A late Romantic-era composer, Sibelius was such an important contributor to Finland’s cultural identity that he was, and is still, regarded as a national hero, much like Verdi to Italians.
Sibelius, not surprisingly, seems to pour out of maestro Vänskä’s pores. He has a clear passion on the podium, and this symphony offered the evening’s best spotlight on the orchestra. What I have heard change since Vänskä took the helm has been his impact on the exactitude and enormity of playing. There is greater precision to the ensemble, but what thrills me most is the extended dynamic range, especially the barely audible pianissimos. The sound is tiny, but not thin. It’s rich and clear like beef broth. On the other end of the spectrum, the full-bodied fortissimos make the air in Orchestra Hall crackle with explosive energy, to the point that the guy a row ahead of me actually plugged his ears. The first movement allows all of these to come to the fore with snapping rhythmic motives, lugubrious melodies and a sweet, fleet scherzo. The whole symphony brims with complex energy created from simple rhythmic and melodic building blocks, and its resolution moves from a sense of expansiveness to explosive conclusion.
I fell in love with Neil Diamond the way most twentysomething ladies do these days, in college at the Delta Chi keggers. The mostly East Coast–bred boys knew Neil had a way with the ladies. Hand a girl a beer, play “Forever in Bluejeans,” and watch them melt. It worked, on me at least, because I’ve seen Diamond in concert a few times since, and while the man is getting old, the show never does.
Which made me wonder last night in the Xcel, as Diamond played his second sold-out show (he played two sold-out shows at the Target Center in 2005), performing to a mix of twenty- to forty-something couples, groups of ladies out for a night, and even a few dudes traveling in packs, chugging beer, and yelling things like, “My mom LOVES you man!”—what keeps these crowds coming back for a show that never really changes?
Diamond’s always been an entertainer, letting his sequin shirts, catchy sing-along songs, and smarmy smiles cover the fact that he’s never really broken much musical ground during his forty-plus-year career, instead quietly turning out hit after hit. His songs and his sound have stayed the same for most of those decades, yet the crowd still got to its feet and cheered as a pre-show announcement let us know that Diamond would be the sole performer that night, and he would be performing without an intermission.
This is going to be a short show, I thought. And as he made his way out to the stage, opening with a few new, slower songs off his recent number one album, Home Before Dark, it was apparent he had lost a step or two since that Target Center show three years ago. His voice cracked a few more times, it took him a little longer to sashay his way across the stage, and he could muster, at most, two upbeat songs in a row, taking a little longer to catch his breath before breaking into longer slow sets. He’s traded in his sequins for a black shirt with a muted sheen, and his guitar lays on his sixty-seven-year-old belly as he lovingly extends his hands out to the crowd. But as the twenty-ish dude behind me said to his girlfriend when Diamond started singing the opening lines of “You Don’t Send Me Flowers,” to a backup singer: “Dude is still a fucking player.”
Which, of course, is why the crowds keep coming back. Neil knows how to tease a crowd, how to keep them interested and anticipating. He didn’t come out of the gates with his old favorites, he made us sit through the new stuff, reminding us how much we are loved and appreciated with blown kisses and smarmy smiles. “I’m so glad you’re here tonight,” he crooned after the third unfamiliar song, “Because it’s terribly lonely up here without you.” The crowd swooned, and he continued. “We’re here to make love tonight, in a manner of speaking.” Oh,dear. “We’re going to make beautiful noises before we go, and leave our hearts on the stage—for you.” He broke into “Love on the Rocks,” and the crowd was his. The theme carried on for the rest of the night as he made us wait through five down-tempo songs before proclaiming “It’s time to dance,” and breaking into “Cherry, Cherry,” followed by “Thank the Lord for the Nighttime,” while the crowd rocked along with every strum of the guitar. When Neil moved, we moved. When Neil cocked his hip, we swooned. He slowed things down again for more new material, (including the great “Pretty Amazing Grace,” the only piece of new material to get a full standing ovation), for a full set before rewarding us with “Solitary Man” and “Forever in Bluejeans.” The back-and-forth continued for two hours and twenty songs, before he abruptly left the stage after a low-key solo performance of “Hell Yeah” off 2005’s 12 Songs.
It was the ultimate tease. But we knew Neil wouldn’t send us out into the hot summer night without hearing a few of the favorites he forgot—without satisfying our need to dance one more time. He, after all, loves us too much. And he didn’t make us wait long, as the band struck up “Cracklin’ Rose,” and we stayed on our feet through “America” and his traditional closer “Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show.” And once again, Diamond didn’t disappoint.
No matter how long you’ve been watching dance in the Twin Cities, no matter how many performances you’ve seen, you’re always missing something—some stellar dancer, some sweet or quirky little gem, some genre or subgenre you didn’t even know existed. Take Eclectic Edge Ensemble. The all-woman jazz company has apparently been around since 2001, although I’d only heard of them last year and had never watched them in action before last night. Eclectic Edge is overflowing with skilled dancers I’ve mostly never seen before (with the notable exception of jack-of-all-trades Jennifer Mack, who shows up in all kinds of work lately), the company performs work by choreographers I’ve never reviewed, and the company’s genre—straight jazz—is one I’d thought largely dead in Minneapolis since the disbanding of Danny Buraczewski’s Jazzdance.
So what have I been missing? On the showing of the first half of the program (which contains six works, four by EEE Artistic Director Karis Sloss), I’ve been missing some lightweight, mostly well-constructed little dance snippets that a critic could either savage or let go lightly by, depending on her mood. On the savage side, I can’t detect a reason for most of these pieces to exist, other than the sheer pleasure taken in them by choreographer and cast—which is plenty to justify amateur art activity, but not enough to buttress art at a professional level. Dancers simply enter, dance around a bit in neat little formations, and then go off. They might be conveying a mood or acting out the lyrics to their music, but I don’t see higher level dance thinking, just the matching of steps to notes. And I wouldn’t call that matching flawless: instead, the dance is sometimes unmusical, sometimes awkward, sometimes too hard for the dancers. The steps themselves are a hodgepodge of borrowings: a classical ballet attitude is followed by an air-clawing jazz step that surely was last at home in the Broadway musical Cats. Guest choreographer Judith E. James Ries, once a member of Jazzdance, has more outright skill than Sloss, but her “Roller Coasting” is no more original. It’s the kind of peppy, outdated jazz that one ought to call “high-energy!” Okay, it’s decidedly high-energy, but what else? Only Katrina Schleisman’s weird, hunched-up, broken-doll dance “Sixlets” has glimmers of novelty; but Schleisman seems to be a less experienced choreographer, and she doesn’t know how to develop her initial ideas.
On the other hand. . . if you drop your high art expectations, stop wondering why this is onstage, and just watch as you might a screensaver, it’s all pleasant enough. Bodies move around, legs fly out, the occasional performer does something extraordinary. This is clearly the right approach to take to this work, which doesn’t reward or, really, profit from my kind of criticism. Moreover, back to that sheer pleasure of choreographer and cast I mentioned above—it can be enough, if you’re in a good mood, to just watch these dancers enjoying themselves. Sloss’s “Challenge” is just a faux-salsa collage, but when the dancers (particularly Christa Anderson-Hill) get into it, swiveling their hips, hitching up their skirts, and swinging their hair, “Challenge” becomes something else entirely.
If you can unfocus your critical vision slightly to enjoy the first half of the show, no such unfocusing is needed for the second half. “A Woman’s Choice,” Sloss’s multi-part exploration of contemporary women’s lives, takes a vaudeville tone from its circus beginning, and continues (mostly) in a surreal and funny vein. Women waiting for dates to call make a little phone-opening fountain as if they were a corps de ballet. Women balancing complex modern lives toss their brooms, briefcases, and inert baby dolls over their shoulders. Women trying to be sexy get tangled in the chairs they mean to straddle. The vaudeville mood suits Sloss’s choreographic repertoire, the broad strokes of the satire giving her an outline to color in with sassy steps and movement jokes; the dancers pour their performing enthusiasm into their campy characters. Altogether, it’s a hit.
A Woman’s Choice only falters in its serious, sincere sections—notably the solo that I imagine is meant to ground the whole piece. Abstraction and pure emotion aren’t for every artist. In fact, let’s face it—they’re not for most artists. The artwork that is about “just me being me!” is, in any genre, an invitation for sap and stupidity. Most artists are better off narrowing their views—which, paradoxically, often opens their resonance and their imaginations. With the vaudevillian absurdity of A Woman’s Choice (and, to a lesser degree, “Sixlets”), Eclectic Edge has found original ground. Let’s hope they keep exploring it.
This video speaks for itself, but extra bonus points go to anyone who can identify the former St. Paul city councilperson dancing in it. (And yes, that's the great Bela Fleck on the banjo).
On Saturday night of the festival, the temperature was dropping, the wind was howling, and the rain was coming down. There weren't too many ways to stay warm, but these folks found one.
The annual Tarp Run at the Winnipeg Folk Festival is a tradition, and a strange one at that. Take a look:
On a rainy Saturday at the Winnipeg Folk Festival, one type of music made a bit more sense than the others:
Sunday at the Winnipeg Folk Festival was as gorgeous a day as Saturday was ugly. Mid-seventies, blue skies, Canadian air—the sort of weather that no doubt convinced the founders thirty-five years ago that it was a good idea to camp and play music for four days in a row in the middle of July in Manitoba.
The crowd on Sunday was the largest ever—the official count was 12,462 people—and festival planners are saying that despite the inclement weather, this year’s folk-fest set a new attendance record of 45,325. On Sunday, it was clear that everyone who had chosen to wait Saturday’s storm out was trying to make up for lost time, which meant that virtually every stage was packed all day long.
At the Big Bluestem stage, the annual Sacred Sunday Morning show got things off to a reverent start with performances by Jim Byrnes and The Sojourners, the Warrior Gospel Band, and New Orleans jazz/gospel singer John Boutte. At the same time, in the Folk School tent, our own Spider John Koerner was preaching his own form of religion in a class on the history of folk music.
Throughout this perfect day, music and laughter drifted through the pines (yes, there are pine trees in Birds Hill Park). At the Blue Stem Stage, after the Sacred Sunday Morning show, a touching tribute to songwriter/singer Willie P. Bennett was held. He wasn’t well known in America, but Bennett was an icon in the Canadian folk scene, and the heartfelt reminiscences offered by those who loved him was all the more poignant because Bennett wasn’t particularly old when he died, in February, of a heart attack at the age of 56.
The last few hours of daytime music featured a flurry of concerts, particularly by guitar-and-voice specialists such as Canadian songwriter J.P. Hoe, Tennessee legend Charlie Louvin, Canadian songwriter Ann Walton, Georgia-based song-man Jim White, and Ontario-based indie-rocker Danny Michel, who wowed them at the secluded Shady Grove stage with songs off his latest album, Feather, Fur, and Fin.
As the sun went down and the wind subsided, the stage was set for a perfect closing evening of concerts on the mainstage. Jakob Dylan and the Golden Mountain Rebels were supposed to play, but they canceled a couple of weeks before the festival. That left a mainstage lineup of Canadian indie-rocker Kathleen Edwards, blues/rock icon Joan Armatrading, and a performance by rock legend Ray Davies, front-man for The Kinks, but without a band behind him.
Joan Armatrading and Ray Davies were both odd fits for the festival, and onstage both seemed to wonder a little why they were invited at all. Though if either of them had spent anytime wandering around at the festival, they would have seen that the range and eclecticism of the festival’s music is extraordinary, and the only sort of band that would be truly out of place might be something from the subterranean world of death metal. (Though judging from their t-shirts and hats, festivalgoers themselves have seen a concert or two by Korn, Marilyn Manson, Mushroomhead, Slayer, and Slipknot.)
Joan Armatrading approached her set with an “I’m here, so what the hell, I’ll give them a show” attitude—and that she did. Not many women play blues guitar, but when Armatrading is up there showing off her chops, spitting out wails and moans from her black-and-white Telecaster, it makes you wonder why. The woman is simply a force to be reckoned with, and she blew through a polished, consummately professional set drawing on songs from every aspect of her career. By the end she seemed to be having a good time, though, and she found the time to play two encore songs by simply dispensing with the formality of leaving the stage and coming back. “This is usually the point where I leave the stage, you all go crazy, and I come back and play an encore,” she said. “Why don’t we just skip that part and get on with it.” Not one for ceremony, that Joan. She's great, though:
The headliner of the evening, Ray Davies, of Kinks fame, killed the buzz a little by coming onstage, playing half a song, then disappearing while his roadies fixed some technical problems. When he came back, it took him a while to get in the groove and get the audience back, but by the end he had people singing to such old hits as “Sunny Day,” “The Tax Man,” and “Lola.” Still, after the scorching set by Armatrading, Davies’ set was a little anti-climactic.
One can’t say that for the traditional festival-ending sing-along. Every year, the crown sings three songs together to end the festival. This year’s selections were The Mary Ellen Carter, by Stan Rogers, the traditional tune Wild Mountain Thyme, and to end it all, Amazing Grace. As the half-moon shone over the mainstage and the stars were starting to show themselves, it’s hard not to get a few spine tingles when more than 10,000 people are singing their hearts out, grateful for at least one perfect evening to end a not-so-perfect festival—all of which seemed perfect after all.
If Macy’s Day of Music is a marathon, I heard a 10k of it today. It’s the eighth year of this extravaganza on Peavey Plaza, where Minnesota Orchestra hosts a two-day festival of just about every type of music you can imagine. This is how I experienced the first six hours:
1:00 Walking onto Peavey Plaza, I was greeted by smiling volunteers in aqua T-shirts and handed a schedule. I had missed the first half of the e-Piano Competition finals, but after a healthy pause listening to the Mouldy Figs, I slipped in to stake a seat for the second half.
This international competition is unusual, in that while the contestants travel to compete, the international jury does not. Their performances are translated via Midi to the Internet, where not only the judges but thousands of people worldwide can listen. While the International e-Piano Competition has been around awhile, this is the first year of the junior competition, open to pianists seventeen and under.
I was surprised by the healthy size of the crowd, which was totally responsive to the kids playing their guts out on stage with the Minnesota Orchestra. I saw the fourth and fifth of the five finalists—Jan Lisiecki, a thirteen-year-old from Canada, and Frank Düpree, sixteen, from Germany. Jan, who has an adorable big scruff of golden hair, took the bench and I couldn’t help but think cute! But as soon as his fingers hit the keyboard for the first movement of Chopin’s Concerto no. 2 in F Minor, Opus 21, adorable turned into admirable pretty dang fast. Likewise, Düpree’s big, snapping arpeggios opening the iconic Tchaikovsky Concerto no. 1 were utterly impressive. Regardless of how mature these kids are offstage, their playing belies their age. What a rush they must be experiencing, competing at this level with Minnesota Orchestra as their back up band. (Düpree and Nansong Huang, a fourteen-year-old from China who played Rachmaninoff’s Concerto no. 3, tied for first place and will play later tonight with Minnesota Orchestra.)
3:20 Outside, it’s hot. And sticky. The kind of day I was losing faith in last April. And somehow, the band I’ve stumbled on, Axis Mundi, totally suits the weather. There are influences of Latin, Middle Eastern, Afro-Cuban, and Haitian music, played by a very versatile bunch. I would totally seek out this band again. I’m trying to imagine hearing them inside, and it sounds a little disappointing as an idea. But then again, maybe some hot, humid music in the dead of winter would be just the thing. The siren call of happy hour broke through the music, so I heeded and got myself round one, feeling pretty smug I held out this long.
4:00 I found a great spot in semi-shade for the next act. I wouldn’t miss the Charles Lazarus Group, and not just because Chuck, in three weeks, will morph from boyfriend-in-law to brother-in-law. Chuck plays in the trumpet section of Minnesota Orchestra, and his original music is always individual, interesting and satisfyingly virtuosic. The group has its own sound whether playing a New Orleans funeral march or lounge exotica or channeling Duke or the Buena Vista Social Club—it’s jazz, but all funked up.
It is so hot, and though the wind is trying to compensate for the brick oven effect of the tiles that form Peavey Plaza, the crowd is all cozied up in a sticky cluster on the shady Nicollet Mall side to listen. The thing that is amazing me most of all is that the keyboardist, Peter Schimpke, can wear black pants on a day like today.
It was a little funny listening to normal-size Chuck play while looking at the giant Chuck emblazoned on the side of Orchestra Hall. But you know it’s good when I’d rather sit here and enjoy the music than go for round two of happy hour.
5:10 For a change of scenery, I head over to the WCCO Stage to take in some salsa. Charanga Tropical, a nine-piece band featuring a flutist as lead, is entertaining, as are the gaggle of glamorous dancers that showed up in full salsa regalia (spike heels and all).
Those in the band who play standing dance —even the trio of violinists have moves like backup singers. I find it nearly impossible not to stand still listening to salsa, and tonight is no exception. However, after a bit, the hunger pangs finally get me dancing back across the street to the Kramarczak’s stand for a brat.
6:02 I’m feeling a bit wilty, but revived with the vitamin G (grease). Davina and the Vagabonds are up on the south stage. She’s amazing! I’m loving this. It’s jazzy and bluesy, and Davina Sowers sings like a gravelly trumpet, and has an occasionally spastic vibrato a la Elvis, but a voice that actually does sound like her write-up says – a little Bonnie Raitt, a little Ella Fitzgerald. She’s so infectious that my husband whisked me away from my laptop for a swingy whirl. Several other couples take the floor close to the stage, and are a blast to watch.
6:25 Still dancing. Back in a sec.
6:35 I don’t think I’m going to score a seat for the 8 p.m. orchestra concert. Since it’s free, people go in early to stake out a spot, but I just can’t go inside yet.
7:05 Once again I’m on the back side of the next band, featuring the twenty-four-year-old Haley Bonar. Her music is sweet, poppy, and folksy. From this position I can’t make out the lyrics, but the front side of this stage is absolutely packed with people. So I opt to stay put and enjoy some strawberry ice cream, which is melting quickly. The big, dark clouds billowing over Brits held off through the rest of her performance, but the storm reports we’re watching on my husband’s Blackberry help make the decision to give up our table before Honeydogs start outside. After six hours of urban musical fun in the sun, I vow to train for the full marathon next year.
Saturday, July 12, 2008, will doubtless go down in history as one of the most miserable, wretched, godforsaken days in Winnipeg Folk Festival History. On Friday there were a few intermittent showers, but it rained constantly on Saturday, and the wind howled out of the north at anywhere from 20 to 50 m.p.h., making a walk to the beer garden feel like a stroll across an oil-rig platform in the North Sea. Even worse, the temperature continually dropped during the day from the low 60s into the 40s by nightfall.
Brutal. You know it’s bad when you stay in the Biffie for an extra few minutes because it’s the only shelter from the wind you can find. In fact, the weather was deemed so dangerous and oppressive for the performers that Saturday’s mainstage performance was moved to the smaller Green Ash Stage, which happens to have its back to the wind. Even then, some of the equipment got soaked by rain and was unusable. Saturday’s mainstage show featured heavyweights Nancy Griffith, David Grisman’s Bluegrass Experience, ___ and would normally have drawn in the neighborhood of five thousand people. Only a few hundred diehards endured long enough to see the evening show, though, which turned into a low-tech, makeshift affair where everyone, including the performers, had to lower their expectations.
Seriously, the only outfit that made complete sense on Saturday was a full rain slicker with plenty of layers underneath. I in my three-dollar poncho could only envy those who had the foresight to pack such serious raingear. During Nancy Griffith’s set in the evening, there was a guy sitting next to me who was encased in yellow rubber. I complimented him on his foresight, and he said it was nothing. “I went home and came back,” he said. The guy lives in Winnipeg.
Paradoxically, however, Saturday was also the most enjoyable day of the festival so far for those who were willing to endure it. The crowds were smaller at every stage, the seats were better, and most of the performers—even if they were playing to only a few dozen people—played their hearts out.
You have to admire a guy like Charles Walker, for example. Here’s an R&B legend in his sixties who has played to huge crowds for going on half a century, and played the festival mainstage on Friday night. But there he was, on the tiny Bur Oak stage with his band, digging down deep and singing his heart to maybe a hundred white people, in Canada, during a torrential rainstorm. Walker ends every gig with the words “Remember people, do everything with soul,” and he’s a true living example of that motto. If you’ve never heard Walker in action, check him out here:
In fact, at about 3:00 p.m. on Saturday, you could practically trace the history of blues and R&B from Spider John Koerner’s traditional fingerpicking blues on the festival’s Little Stage, to Little Freddie King on the Snowberry Stage, to Charles Walker and his brand of party-friendly funk.
Weatherwise, things were just getting worse when the Pascale Picard Band took over the Snowberry Stage at 4:30 p.m. Not many people saw their show, but this indie-pop band from Quebec gets my vote for Best New Indie Band that ought to get more airplay in the U.S.
Picard is a petite, quirky young woman who acts shy onstage, says she’s not a great “entertainer,” but who throws herself into a song as if she were jumping off a cliff. In the middle of many of her songs, a passionate, angry, almost hysterical person comes out, wailing lyrics that are as thoughtful as they are original and poetic. It’s “pop” music with a considerable edge, and she’s got a tight, skillful band behind her. It also doesn’t hurt that she can sing a song bluntly titled “I Hate You,” and make it seem cute. Here’s Pascale Picard in action:
As I mentioned before, Saturday’s mainstage show was moved to the smaller Green Ash stage, where Nancy Griffith delivered a casual but polished set, even though it was the first time in two months since she played guitar onstage due to a wrist fracture. David Grisman’s Bluegrass Experience soldiered through several technical problems to at least play. Check out their version of the “Car Talk” theme song, which David Grisman himself just happens to have written:
As the temperature dropped and the wind picked up, the indie-rock band Calexico convinced the few huddled never-say-diers remaining why they are considered one of the best bands in the southwest (they’re based in Tucson). I had to call it quits myself at that point—my apologies to Balkan Beat Box and Suen Kuty & Egypt 80 for not having a stronger constitution or better raingear.
One of the most interesting developments in folk music over the past ten or fifteen years has been the cross-pollination of folk music from different cultures as a result of increased globalism, the internet, and the efforts of individual musicians who make it a point to incorporate influences from other cultures into their art.
This trend is more evident than ever at this year’s Winnipeg Folk Festival, where the definition of “folk” music is being stretched about as far as it can go. On the opening night of the festival, for example, Dobet Gnahoré from the Ivory Coast sang her infectious form of African pop, followed by Michael Franti and Spearhead, a group out of San Francisco that blends reggae, hip-hop, funk, blues, and half a dozen other musical idioms. Groups with such names as Tres Chicas, Calexico, Les Chauffeurs à pieds, Shtreiml, Balkan Beat Box, DJ Rekha, Seun Kuti and Egyptian 80 are a big part of this year’s festival.
On the other side of the cultural coin are American artists who travel around the world and bring their cultural discoveries back with them. Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn are two such musicians. On Friday, they conducted a workshop with Shtreiml and blues crossover guitarist/dobro player Harry Manx. The group played folk songs from Turkey, Tanzania, Israel, and several other countries. Check out this video of Bela Fleck playing a middle-Eastern tune with oud player Ismail Hakki Fencioglu.
Abigail Washburn is another artist to watch in this regard. She lived in China for several years, speaks fluent Mandarin, and even writes songs in Mandarin. On the mainstage Friday, she and her group, the Sparrow Quartet, played a “Chinese” tune actually written by Washburn.
Here’s the two of them playing together on the song, “Nobody’s Fault but My Own.”
There’s no doubt that Washburn and Fleck are two artists who are paving the way for a new kind of global folk music, one that welcomes and embraces influences from around the world.
In order for an outdoor festival to work, precautions must be taken to deal with all kinds of weather, and all kinds of weather is precisely what hit the Winnipeg Folk Festival yesterday. Thunderstorms rumbled across the site in the morning, collapsing tents and turning footpaths into puddles of squishy goo. Gray, ominous clouds hung overhead all day long, pelting festivalgoers with intermittent rain showers. And the wind, the dreadful wind, it never let up.
When the sun poked through early in the evening, it seemed as if the evening concerts were going to be spared, but no, the festival gods were just taunting us, amusing themselves at our expense. With a clear sky overhead, the temperature dropped and the wind picked up, blowing at a steady 25 to 40 m.p.h., making it look like everyone in the mainstage audience was sitting on the deck of one of those fishing trawlers on The Deadliest Catch in the middle of a North Sea typhoon. Technically speaking, the temperature was in the low sixties, but huddled in a lawn chair in the middle of an open field with nothing to break the wind except a row of Biffies, it felt like—oh, thirty below. Cold enough, at any rate, for Old Man Winter’s icy digits to come back and haunt you.
I am told that in the past, a deluge like yesterday’s would have turned the mainstage into an ickier, messier version of the La Brea tar pits. Festivalgoers would have set up their lawn chairs and tarps, only to sink into the mud and never be seen again. Better drainage apparently saved us all from certain death, and for that I am grateful—I think. Today, the weather forecast is for colder temperatures, higher winds, and rain pretty much all day long. If had I died yesterday, I would have been spared the agonies that today will inevitably bring, so I’m not certain it was in my best interests to survive. But I did, and today I must face the consequences.
This is not what I signed up for. When preparing for this trip, I was told by a number of veteran festivalgoers that oppressive heat would be the demon we would fight. Bring plenty of sunscreen and extra-large water bottles, they said, otherwise you are going to be buzzard food. Wear a hat and quality sunglasses that will protect you from deadly UV rays, they said, because if you don’t, your eyeballs will dry up and roll out of your skull like a couple of BBs. The blistering Manitoba sun will be your foe, they said, so prepare accordingly. A couple pairs of shorts and a few t-shirts ought to do it, I thought.
The way festival planners deal with such conditions is simple. All the stages are sheltered by white,
visor-like overhangs, protecting the performers from the elements—and all the people in the audience are on their own. The prevailing ethos is that the show will go on no matter what, and somewhere on the grounds they sell the Kool-Aid that convinces people this is a good and worthy goal, and that as long as the music is playing you shouldn’t care how low your core body temperature drops. I must find that Kool-Aid stand today, or I fear that my festival-going experience is going to be tainted.
Music festivals aren’t just about the music, they’re about the people. Odd people, weird people, fascinating people—people you can’t find anywhere else on earth, because they’re here, doing their level best to add character and life to an event that would otherwise focus entirely on musicians and insects.
My first encounter with a local was at the ice cream stand, where the vendor—a youngish man whose face was already a little sunburned—noticed my media badge with the word “Minneapolis” on it, and immediately asked me whether I worked for KARE 11 or WCCO? Those are two stations that he watches regularly, he informed me, which obviously meant that we had a friend in common: Don Shelby. According to him, Winnipegans used to get their news from Detroit, but somewhere along the way the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce decided that the news coming out of Detroit was too violent. So they switched to news from the Twin Cities, where reports of death and destruction are tempered somewhat by ‘CCO’s “Good Question” segments and Julie Nelson’s smile.
Among the kiddies, the most popular person around is easily The Bubble Guy. The Bubble Guy’s job is to walk around making giant bubble clouds, and wherever he goes there is a pack of little kids following behind him, leaping and diving, trying to swat the bubbles out of the air before they tragically hit the ground. He might as well be throwing candy corn and Fruit Loops in the air. I assume that somewhere there is an equally large pack of mothers looking for their wayward, bubble-crazed children, but I haven’t seen it yet. Which leaves one other possibility: that the Bubble Guy has actually fathered all those children, making him the biggest stud in Winnipeg.
There are plenty of other colorful folk around here. In fact, I think I’m going to do an entire report on tattoos, which the warmth of summer has shown are carved into all sorts of clever places on people’s bodies. I mean, how does one tattoo an elbow, or the knuckle of your big toe?
It’s all just part of the grand mystery of humanity. I’m just lucky that many of humanity’s greatest mysteries appear to be visiting Winnipeg this weekend. When I meet them, you’ll be the first to know.
As many Minnesotans may already know, the 450-mile drive to Winnipeg does not feature many signs with the word “scenic” on them. It’s a flat, straight haul across the prairie, and the best thing about it is that 85 m.p.h. on cruise control seems just about right.
At the Canadian border, the guard didn’t flinch when I told her we were headed to the Winnipeg Folk Festival; she just gave me a sad, bored look that said, “Yeah, you and 10,000 other idiots.” I suspect she knew that this weekend’s forecast calls for rain, and lots of it. The apples and bananas in our possession seemed to concern her more than our choice of Canadian amusement, though. But in the end she elected to wave us through rather than deal with us any longer than she had to.
A lot of people wonder where, exactly, the Winnipeg Folk Festival takes place. This is understandable, because the festival site is ten miles north of Winnipeg, a geographical area that most Americans imagine as a big slab of nothing, just north of nowhere, half-way to oblivion. In reality, Birds Hill Park, where the festival is held, is a lovely, bucolic plot of land with plenty of trees and rolling hills, and enough camping space to accommodate more than 5,000 campers. In other words, it’s a perfect setting for thousands of neo-hippies, ex-hippies, proto-hippies, and people who just happen to have large hips to gather and enjoy some of the best outdoor music the northern hemisphere has to offer. The site has seven separate stages, and each of them is scheduled to the hilt all day long. Even if the festival lasted a month you still wouldn’t be able to see all the acts, so you have to plan carefully and accept the fact that you’re going to miss 90 percent of the music no matter what. Also, there are a lot of “no” signs around reminding you of all the things you’re not supposed to bring inside, but there seems to be sort of a communal agreement that the ban on certain illegal substances is more of a suggestion than a rule.
There was no music during the day on Thursday (July 10); the festival kicked off with an evening concert on the mainstage featuring Texas singer/violinist Carrie Rodriguez, a bluegrass band called the Infamous Stringdusters, African pop sensation Dobet Gnahore, Winnipeg’s own indie-rock wonder The Weakerthans, and San Francisco funk/reggae/hip hop band, Michael Franti and Spearhead. Things were fairly mellow until the Weakerthans took the stage, after which anything remotely “folky” went out the door and it turned into a rock concert under the stars. The Weakerthans closed with one of their best-known songs, an ode to their beloved home town called “I Hate Winnipeg.” After that, Michael Franti and Spearhead, one of the few bands ever to be invited back to the festival two years in a row, had most of the crowd up out of their chairs and dancing until midnight.
Time will tell, but it may already have been the best evening of the festival. Today’s forecast calls for scattered thunderstorms all day long, and tomorrow the forecast calls for nothing but rain and the sort of high winds that blow stages down and ruin summer festivals. The show supposedly goes on rain or shine, and it looks like the concert gods are going to put that pledge to the test.
Gotta go find my rain poncho—I’ll let you know what happens.
Folks, you’re in for a rare treat during the next few days. The Powers at mspmag.com have mistakenly given me—an old school, where’s-the-whiteout, damn-the-Web writer with questionable judgment and knack for sleeping in—the keys to the Internet kingdom (we’re talking passwords, access codes, recording devices, wireless gizmos, the works) to head north and cover the Winnipeg Folk Festival. And I mean COVER it. There will be words, pictures, video, emoticon, hieroglyphs, smoke signals, and anything else they’ll let me throw up on this infernal invention, the Internet.
Now you must understand: The normal, everyday content you see on mspmag.com has been vetted by teams of editors who toil through the night checking facts and polishing copy to a glossy sheen, serving it up to you free of errors and as accurate as an actuarial table in Einstein’s basement. Had any of them seen the previous sentence, they would have immediately checked to see if Einstein really had a basement and, if he did, whether actuarial tables were actually stored there. Upon discovering that the whole sentence was a complete fabrication, if not an outright lie, they would have deleted it in the belief that they were saving you, the precious “visitor,” from having to read such nonsense.
No such censorship will contaminate my postings in the coming days. If you check in between now and Sunday, you will be reading the raw, uncooked viscera of my thoughts, posted with almost no regard for grammatical sense, factual accuracy, or burdensome questions of “service” to the reader. This is a folk festival we’re covering, after all, so things must, by definition, be significantly more half-assed than usual.
Why the Winnipeg Folk Festival?
That’s a fair question, so I’m not going to answer it. Suffice it to say that this is the festival’s thirty-fifth anniversary, and anytime an event logs an anniversary divisible by five, we media types feel compelled to cover it. I don’t know why—it’s just one of those immutable laws of journalism that no one has the courage to mute, not even me.
I’m almost packed and will be hitting the road shortly for the seven-hour, 400-mile journey to Winnipeg. Unfortunately, my fifteen-year-old son, who just got his learner’s permit last week, will be driving part of the way, so I cannot guarantee that I will get to Winnipeg or that I will even live to be able to inform you that I am now, in fact, dead.
If we do make it, though, rest assured that I am fully prepared to spend four days outdoors listening to folk music of every kind in whatever conditions Mother Nature decides to hurl at me. Among the most important equipment I’ve secured are:
—A 1970s flashback detector to anticipate moments of extreme nostalgia
—Banjo tolerance pills (two bottles, just in case)
—An earnestness mood ring, to warn me when I start feeling like I should do something more sincere and meaningful with my life
—A Remington TX2000 mosquito tracer gun specially designed to take down a species of insect known as the Canadian Vampire
—Special booties that not only reduce my carbon footprint, they leave no footprints at all.
—A nasal-bypass surgery kit (the home edition) for Saturday and Sunday when the collective body odor can reach toxic levels
—A Canadian/American dictionary to ensure successful communication with the locals
—Plenty of foods packaged in waste-free containers that I’ll throw away when I get home
Wish me luck. Lots of great musicians are playing at this year’s festival: Bela Fleck, Robert Randolph & the Family Band, David Grisman Bluegrass Experience, Ray Davies (of The Kinks!), Nancy Griffith, Joan Armatrading, Justin Townes Earle, Kathleen Edwards, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Danny Gotham, Outlaw Social, and plenty more. We’ll also be checking in with Minnesotans Spider John Koerner and Peter Ostroushko, both festival veterans who may be able to share some historical perspective on the madness in Manitoba.
The Winnipeg Folk Festival runs July 10–13. I’ll be updating you on my adventures every day, so check back to see what has happened in the past few hours. I promise I’ll burden you with as little information as possible as often as possible.
There was a time in the late eighties and early nineties when it seemed every Hollywood studio had a comedy in the production pipeline in which a luckless schmo either swapped bodies with or was reincarnated as a woman, a child, or (in the best case scenario) a rich old guy.
The drama got dialed up a titch as our protagonist discovered that the body swap was an impediment to rekindling a romance with a former love (Chances Are) or igniting one with someone new (Switch). At heart though these were comedies played veeeeery broadly, frothier than a venti cappuccino—their charm directly commensurate to the chemistry and charisma of the stars.
Then four years ago Sexy Beast director Jonathan Glazer made Birth—a reincarnated-soulmate-story for the arthouse crowd. A dark comedy disguised as a psychological thriller, Birth cast Nicole Kidman as a widow who is at first amused and eventually hot for a ten-year-old boy who claims he’s her dead husband.
Birth examined reincarnation skeptically and yet more seriously than any of its predecessors. It was the first film of this type to acknowledge that if your dearly departed were to return as someone under the legal age of consent you’d be processing more than boatloads of grief and a few awkward encounters—you’d be having a freakin’ nervous breakdown.
Glazer shot Kidman’s world in still, chilly monochromatic gloom and set her moods to a writhing orchestral score. He gave her a pixie cut that channeled Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby and surrounded her with crusty Upper East-siders who thought reincarnation was ridiculous but great dinner party chatter. The film hit all the right notes (droll, suspenseful, creepy, even, uh, romantic) without turning reincarnation into a gimmick.
Bill True, I’m afraid, hasn’t been so lucky. In his script Incarnation, the local screenwriter tells the story of a grieving husband who has been on a cross-country mission to find the seven-year-old girl who he believes is the reincarnation of his late Indian wife. When he thinks he’s found that girl, he instead falls in love with her mother and is pursued by an FBI agent who is convinced he’s a child molester. If True gets his supernatural romantic thriller greenlighted, I hope he’s paired with a visual stylist as savvy as Glazer and with actors as gifted as Kidman. He’s gonna need it.
True previewed his Incarnation screenplay at the Ritz Theater last night as the latest installment in The Screenwriter’s Workshop ScriptNight series. Staged reading is one way of describing ScriptNight, but that conjures up a rather tweedy image for what’s really a fun night of barebones theater. The actors recruited to read Incarnation were a coterie of recognizable local talent (Aditi Kapil, Ansa Akyea, and Prairie Home Companion’s Sue Scott) and two weathered film/TV vets from LA, Chris Mulkey and John Ashton.
Film director Dean Lincoln Hyers, who hatched Incarnation’s story with True and also directed last night’s reading, warned the audience that what we were about to hear was a script (the fifth draft, True tells me)—not a movie. And that bears repeating here. Depending on the casting choices, the budget, and the behind-the-camera talent, True’s screenplay could become ten very different movies. The problem is, right now it feels like all ten of them.
True is clearly aiming Incarnation for the commercial multiplex market and that demands a certain adherence to genre conventions (the car chase, for instance, though True adds a horse). We also shouldn’t be surprised by the playbook of familiar character types—the lonely cop obsessed with catching his prey but haunted by his own loss, the single urban mom beaten down by alcohol/drugs/poverty/a bad man and reluctant to love again, and the sweet seer-like little girl who is the key to it all.
No one of these elements in themselves suggests a broken script. It’s that the screenplay piles on so many of them and none convincingly enough. Our widower protagonist collects evidence against the single mom’s drug dealer ex and pretends to be a lawyer to help her win back custody of the girl. There’s a silly flashback to his visit to a Hindu temple where he receives a prophetic message that helps him narrow his hunt for his wife. And there are lots of scenes of riding, communing with, and talking about horses that just seem so hokey I can’t imagine any filmmaker actually pulling it off.
Two characters, the dead wife (who we visit in flashbacks) and the FBI agent on our widower’s trail seem particularly thin, indistinguishable outside of the broad outlines of their character types. The single mom doesn’t fair well either but she has the advantage of more screen time.
Really, though, won’t this ultimately be about performance, tone, and the discipline to tell one story, just one, really well? It seemed to me a very thin line that kept a film like Birth from being ridiculous. Let’s see what’s in store for Incarnation.
Wow. I haven’t danced that long in years. If the first thing that comes to mind when you think of George Michael is Wham!, then please stop reading this. You’re not in the club. Like the other nearly 8,000 people in attendance at the X last night, I waited a very long time for this concert. Seeing George makes seeing my favorite '80s/'90s pop stars list complete.
In all of the post-concert love feast, I think most of us chose to forget that even though the ticket clearly stated **No Opening Act** Show Begins at 8 p.m. Prompt, George didn’t take the stage until 8:40. Our usher had a staff memo with her instructions for the evening, which clearly stated that George Michael was not expected to take the stage until approximately 8:45. Huh.
Anyway, back to the love. Our face value $175 tickets were worth it. Just two sections over from the stage (section 119), our front-row perches proved to be an ideal spot to dance our asses off. I haven’t sweat that hard dancing since, oh, perhaps the Pacific Club circa 1990. George got us on our feet within minutes with “Fast Love”, and with the exception of a song or two, we never sat down.
The staging was fabulous. The design kept all eyes on the man of the hour (or in this case, nearly two). The band was spread out among four tiers of theater-style scaffolding (think Fosse-inspired Paula Abdul “Cold Hearted” video), so the stage was George’s oyster. The video wall behind him proved to be a dynamic addition of light shows, clips of GM videos, disco-inspired graphics, and images of pop-culture icons, particularly during “Spinning the Wheel”. (Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier, Sinatra, John Lennon, Elvis, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and, go figure, an image of President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.)
The crowd seemed more heterosexual than I imagined it would be, which made me wonder whether the modern-day metrosexual might have its roots in the “Father Figure”-era. Everyone sang along, gay or straight. And speaking of singing: In my book, George Michael’s pipes can hold their own alongside the great Elvis Presley. Add the perfect GM dance moves and swinging hips, and hey, it’s not a stretch to compare. George is one guy whom I would never criticize for covering a song. Last night, we were treated to “Roxanne” against a video of real women in Amsterdam’s Red Light District. The song took on a more melancholy feel than the Police original, so much so that it didn’t feel like a cover—it felt more like an editorial.
George Michael as a performer morphed easily before our eyes from dance mix diva (“Spinning the Wheel”) to night club crooner (“Kissing a Fool”) to pop culture icon (“Too Funky” and “Outside”)—complete with a policeman’s uniform.
My personal highlight? When my newfound pal, usher Dawn, let me slip by her, and I rushed to the main floor for a front-row view of George during the final song of the night, “Freedom ’90”. My face hurt from my ear-to-ear grin. George thanked us all “for our support over twenty-five years” and our “warm welcome.” He called it a “humbling experience” and promised to give us the “night of our lives.”
He did.
Bonus: click on the links above to watch George Michael videos.
Read Jayne Haugen Olson’s Style Parlor blog on July 9 for more photos and more details on who was in the audience and what they were wearing.
Photos courtesy of Jayne Haugen Olson and Carol Garrigos.
Word has it that Yuri Arajs, a fixture of the Twin Cities art scene in recent years, is moving on. Arajs was the curator of the now-defunct Outsiders and Others gallery, a bastion of support for nonmainstream artists of all kinds. He was an enthusiastic booster of local artists, especially those who might not get attention otherwise. A show of his work at Rogue Buddha Gallery in Northeast Minneapolis is a fitting farewell.
Arajs's work has tended toward minimal, abstract landscapes. His current show, Reclaimed Memories, introduces found photographs and objects into this aesthetic to produce some fascinating image and effects. Arajs based the pieces in the show on the narrative within each photograph. "The photo had a story to tell me," he says. "I listened to it and what came back was my own version of a memory that is not mine. But I have now reclaimed these memories as my own and this is what they look like."
The images in the show are all old black-and-white photographs, and are populated by solitary figures and small groups, sailing ships, old homesteads, and children. The paper, the frames, even postal marks with a year and place, add context. But the pieces are more than interesting artifacts. Arajs's imprint is true to the promise of the show's title in that he uses these objects and images to create intriguing compositions that add to the mystery embedded in the lost worlds of the photographs. A man sits on a slanted fence rail in a dark suit, his expression impassive, an image that’s paired with a chicken wishbone and a small anchor. Two men stand against a backdrop of a mountain of timber juxtaposed with iron dust and cobalt acrylic, "No. 2" in red at the center. Arajs transforms simple scenes into vivid, layered, uncertain landscapes to explore–a little like memory itself.
Trust me, white people wrote about black people before we wrote about Barack Obama. It just seems like more of a “thing” now. Which is weird, because we’re supposedly in the “post-race” era, where you can’t even see color unless you’re Republican or something. But evidently, us journalists simply can’t help ourselves.
Last week, in Slate, Jonah Weiner wrote one of those hopelessly academic but helplessly interesting pop culture histories, this time on the “Afronaut.” It was about how black rappers like Kanye and Lil’ Wayne are part of a black cultural tradition of using outer space as a metaphor for psychological escapism and racial pride. Then this morning, my white boss sent me a think-piece review of the hip-hop movie The Wackness in the New York Observer. The writer, one J. Gabriel Boylan, used the review to analyze a sort of burgeoning generational consensus on the “golden age of hip-hop.” (For what it’s worth—the correct answer is 1996-1998.)
Now, I don’t even really know if these two writers are white, but they sound white, probably because I’ve been reading white journalists write essays like these for as long (longer?) than I’ve been listening to hip- hop.
So I realize I’m screwed. Because I saw RZA as Bobby Digital last night at First Avenue, and now I have to write about it.
Tiger style.
Sorry, that was pretty Wu-inside. Oops, did it again. But writing about the founding member of the Wu Tang Clan with any sort of clarity is daunting on two fronts:
(1) Even though I’ve been listening to the Wu since high school, a solid grasp of Wu antiquity takes a commitment level greater than, say, your first week with a new copy of Grand Theft Auto IV. With all the albums, solo-projects, side-projects, mix tapes, videos, direct-to-video movies, cartoons, and websites (RZA just launched wuchess.com last week), not to mention the dank tangle of cultural references the Wu makes on each project…we’re talking years of dedication necessary for a comprehensive digestion. An example from last night: while they were warming up, Stone Mecca, RZA’s opening and backing band, asked the crowd if they all were true Wu Tang fans. Everybody cheered. Then he asked if they were familiar with Afro Samurai, a manga cartoon that RZA scored in 1999. A substantially smaller portion of the crowd cheered. I was among the majority.
(2) Sometimes RZA simply doesn’t make sense. And if you attempt to make sense out of something that doesn’t make sense, the exercise will make you look foolish, no matter your skin color.
So last night, RZA was Bobby Digital, his superhero alter-ego. I’m tempted to write an essay about hip-hop’s obsession with comic-book superheroes and the metaphor of the alter ego. The Wu has always been obsessed with super heroes: on the group's first record, they rapped about Spider Man; Ghostface Killah’s alter ego is Tony Starks and he released an album entitled Iron Man (he even had a cameo in the movie); and RZA’s rhymes are littered with references to The Hulk, Mr. Fantastic, even Scooby Doo. I’m tempted, but an essay like this would require substantial research, and the only other extraneous-to-the-Wu cultural references that I can immediately tap to support my argument are a couple of Snoop Dogg tracks and a few episodes of The Wire.
Besides, alter ego or not, RZA looked very similar to how he appeared when I last saw him, at the August 2006 Wu Tang show at First Ave. Superhero or not, he wasn’t wearing spandex. He was wearing a white golf visor, and a brand new Yankees jersey, and he was holding a bottle of “crystal clear Belvedere” (the tour’s sponsor) in one hand and a mic in the other. I missed him at the Wu show this last winter when, evidently, he was feuding with the group over their reception of his beats for 8 Diagrams. RZA isn’t the best rapper in the clique, but seeing Wu without RZA is a much more disappointing deal than seeing The New Pornographers without Dan Bejar. So it was good to see him back on stage.
For the record, 8 is a good album—in their show this last December, Raekwon and Method Man didn’t rap one song off it, and in the press, they griped about RZA as if he was collaborating with the Spin Doctors or something. They were insinuating that he had gone hippie, but the beats on 8 Diagrams are just as spooky, just as minimal and urbane in that Ghost Dog-style, as Prince Rakeem’s best efforts. Digi Snacks, RZA’s new Bobby Digital album, actually seems less RZA than 8 Diagrams did, actually. Maybe it’s because of the beats, maybe it’s because Inspectah Deck is the only other Wu member on the album. And last night, to Rae’s probable chagrin, he was backed by a sort of hippie outfit; Stone Mecca is a twelve-piece jam soul band, complete with dreadlocks, bongos, and Janis Joplin wailing.
Like Noel Gallagher, I’ve never been a huge fan of hip hop with guitars. Although Jay-Z proved it could be done over the weekend in Glastonbury, England, re-creating RZA beats with guitars, bass, and keyboards seemed like a particularly daunting task. And they did have a rough start, and at a couple of points, RZA, acting as bandleader a la James Brown, stopped the proceedings to tweak the mix levels of his band and his DJ before re-starting.
Ultimately, B-O-B-B-Y was able to synergize all that live band energy to his own and make it work. He played both old and new Bobby Digital stuff, both slow jamz and slammers, he name checked ODB (of course), and he sampled a couple of Wu Tang hits (“Nothing to F**k Wit,” “C.R.E.A.M.”). Maybe, unlike Brian Lambert, this crowd--again, that peculiar 70% Caucasian/30% black Minneapolis Wu Tang crowd--needs a hero.
Discuss amongst yourselves. I don’t want to sound like a geeky white boy anymore.
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