It’s true that Austin (pop. 782,967) is different in at least one way from the rest of Texas: It’s the lone blue outpost in an overwhelmingly red state. But in every way that counts, the state capital is pure Lone Star. Austinites, like all Texans, two-step to Willie, accessorize in cowboy boots, and know how to spell “y’all” (never “ya’ll”). Tacos filled with scrambled eggs are customary for breakfast, and salt-encrusted margaritas suffice for electrolyte drinks. I migrated here from Dallas a decade ago and then, like a lot of UT grads, figured out a way to stick around. Mid-March is the time I’m especially glad I did: Temps hover in the 70s, and the South By Southwest Festival brings 1,900 bands to town.
American banjo virtuoso Bèla Fleck is known for bringing his instrument across genres. Today you can watch him bring it across the Atlantic and back to its beginnings in his new DVD.
Fleck and Sascha Paladino's documentary, Throw Down Your Heart, chronicles the making of Fleck's latest CD as he travels Africa in an attempt to bring the banjo back to its African roots. The film focuses on music, but there's a taste of African landscape and culture too. Fleck's adventure takes him to Uganda, Tanzania, Gambia, and Mali, with stops ranging from tiny rural villages to large cities.
Whether searching for the roots of your favorite instrument or a glimpse of an endangered gorilla, you can explore the continent, too. Check out our favorite African adventures here.—Greer Schott
Former Talking Heads front man David Byrne has traveled all over North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia—and that’s just in the past six months. His preferred mode of transport: a Montague folding bike with full-size wheels and good suspension (he once got sore wrists from riding on cobblestones—bad news for a guitar player). Byrne’s newly released Bicycle Diaries (Viking, $26) chronicles these urban rides. Here are the eight best (in his opinion).—Ryan Bradley
The Byrne Bikeability Chart
CLASSIC: URBAN CENTERS DOING IT RIGHT
New York
“I’ve been riding a bicycle as my principal means of transportation in New York since the early 1980s. I feel energized and liberated as the air and street life whiz by. There’s a great route along the Staten Island boardwalk that lines the beaches (the Greenway Bike Path). There are no cars, and the beaches are surprisingly clean.”
San Francisco
“The local cycling organization has issued a wonderful map that shows, by deepness of the red shading, the steepness of the streets in a particular area... A deep red street is a major hill to be avoided unless you’re a masochist.”
Tour de FranceEnds (July 26): Amid scandal, no doubt. But will it involve Lance? Read our daily udpates.
The Cove (July 31): All the buzz at Sundance, this enviro-doc will make a serious splash. (Stay tuned for our interview with the director going up later this week.)
Your Turn: Do you know of something cool going on this month? Post a comment below.
South by Southwest (SXSW) starts this Friday. This is the second Friday the 13th in an already pretty unlucky year. One thing about music, though: it thrives in tumultuous times, and the annual gathering of bands in Austin, TX, (followed by record scouts, media, and other assorted industry types) could make this year's SXSW the anti-Davos. Rather than depressing, it likely going to be a joyous occasion. No! It WILL be a joyous occasion, because some great, fairly unknown bands are playing...and they are going to kill it. Even if you don't have a coveted all-access badge you can listen to them and download them on the festival's website. Awesome new music for free. Take that, recession.
For the past week-and-a-half, an astonishing gathering has been taking place in Washington D.C., a town so used to astonishing gatherings that this one has managed to fly a bit under the radar. The Arabesque Festival is halfway through its three week run, and already it's historic: People are saying that the event, which features music, art, films from 22 countries, is the largest gathering of Arab artists ever. It's like the Islamic Woodstock. And it's happening right now. In our nation's capital. How cool is that?
This morning, NPR gave a great report highlighting some of the musicians: Salma El Assal, the Aretha Franklin of Sudan, and Marcel Kalifa, the Bob Dylan of Lebanon. You can listen here. Other groups to check out: Nawal from Comoros, Spice Islands off Africa's east coast, and
Hoba Hoba Spirit, one of the biggest acts ever to come out of Morocco. If you're reading this and are in the DC area, go online to kennedy-center.org to get tickets. And, if you're aren't, you can still watch most of the performances online, on the Kennedy Center's site. I, for one, plan on holing up this weekend and immersing myself in sounds arabesque.
As far as orchestras go, the Brooklyn Philharmonic is in a category by itself. Over the last several years, the freelancer-composed ensemble has displayed an uncanny ability to sate even the most adventurous of musical palettes. Now, it seems that music director Michael Christie has taken another bold step in a largely untrodden realm of musical collaborations. Last night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Christie led the first installment of Shuffle Mode, a series that showcases classically trained musicians from diverse backgrounds performing alongside the BP.
The lively, two-hour inaugural performance deftly muted the line between instrumental rock, chamber pop, and orchestral grandeur, and seamlessly incorporated the musicians’ mélange of tastes and origins. Montreal-based band Bell Orchestre traded off with Brooklyn’s Clogs, which was led by Aussie multi-instrumentalist Padma Newsome. The night’s set list covered everything from original work to renditions penned by the masters, including a stirring piece by the Hungarian composer Bartók. To top it off, everyone’s favorite purveyor of modern Americana, Sufjan Stevens, stopped by for a one-song guest performance. Eclectic? We’d say so.
On Sunday night, A.R. Rahman became the first Indian ever to win two Academy Awards—one for best original song (“Jai Ho”) and another for best background score—both for the gargantuan-little-engine-from-the-developing-world-that-could, Slumdog Millionaire. It was a good night for Bollywood, a good night for India, and a very good night for Rahman, who further solidified his place in the rarified canon of Indian music maestros. His talents, like his country, are manifold and multilayered. He’s a composer, a singer, and an ace on the keys and the guitar. He toured with some of the greatest stars of classical Hindustani music before he hit puberty, and then went on to receive a degree in Western classical music from Oxford. He really hit is stride, though, when he started scoring for Bollywood films (he is from Tamil Nadu, on the east coast of India, and had already gained a major foothold scoring for Malayalam films). There is no genre he will not touch, it seems, and his music, like the subcontinent, is dazzling in its density and styles. What follows is an overview of a ridiculously impressive, precocious career—the guy is only 44—from the “Mozart of Madras.”
Roja Jaaneman Rahman’s first film score for a major Bollywood production was hailed as “One of the 10 Best Soundtracks of All Time” by Time magazine’s film critic Richard Corliss. Not bad for a first film.
Theme from Bombay A politically charged film from Tamil Nadu about the events leading up to the Bombay riots, Rahman’s score received awards and accolades and was reused in the Nicolas Cage film “Lord of War”—a thoroughly forgettable appropriation, but important in that it introduced Rahman to the West.
Lagaan, Radha Kaise Na Jale
A great film that garnered an academy award nomination, Lagaan revolves around a cricket match between British Officers stationed in the subcontinent during the Raj, and Indian villagers. Rahman blends traditional music with classical film scores. It’s East meets West and pure Rahman.
Slumdog Millionaire
Rahman spent two months planning the score of this movie, and just two weeks recording it. Here’s a very good Q&A in which he talks about the movie, how he met Danny Boyle (the director) and singer M.I.A. worshipping his work.
Finally, iTunes has wisely compiled a “Best Of” collection, which you can find here.
Text by Mary Anne Potts; Photographs courtesy of Rahav Segev / Brooklyn Academy of Music
Beirut can find its way around a map. The indie rock band known for its gypsy-inspired tunes has explored the music of Eastern Europe (Balkan beats in Gulag Orkestra) and Paris (French pop of The Flying Club Cup). Their latest project brings their signature sound a new continent.
On a double EP officially released yesterday, March of the Zapotec/Holland begins with songs from frontman Zach Condon's travels in Oaxaca, Mexico, where he linked up with a 19-piece Mexican funeral band in Teotitlan del Valle. The remote town was the Zapotec capital during the 11th and 12th centuries. Condon resurrected the second half of the album—infectious electronic pop released under the name Realpeople—from songs he wrote as teen in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Keep in mind that Condon, who plays the piano, trumpet, coronet, ukulele, and sings, just turned 23 last Friday.
We saw Beirut perform a sold-out show last week at the Howard Gilman Opera House the Brooklyn Academy of Music. They were joined in the second half by the 32-member Vassar Orkestar. The huge sound, overflowing with layers of strings and horns, left everyone in earshot lost in euphoria. (Preview the music: "La Llorona" from March and"My Night With a Prostitute From Marseille" from Holland.)
ADVENTURE caught up with Condon to learn about how his work is fueled by his penchant for travel (lucky guy).
While in Oaxaca, did you make time to look around? What sites did you like the most? I spent a lot of time wondering around the zocalo, the center square. Its just like the plaza in Santa Fe where I grew up except....lively. I remember being slightly shocked that the locals use it more than the tourists do, and that made me happy, or maybe sad, for Santa Fe. We had a guide in Teotitlan del Valle, the weaver village where we recorded, who would take us around the little village markets and ruins nearby, if we could get ourselves out of bed early enough. Monte Alban left a huge impression on me. Something so sadly peaceful about ruins.
How did you immerse yourself in Zapotec culture? What impressed you so much to do an album inspired by their music? I was originally going to do the soundtrack of a film based in Mexico by a young, new director named Cary Fukunaga. He was on site near Oaxaca and started sending me these field recordings of the local, church-sponsored brass bands, and I guess I fell in love with the choppy, mournful tunes they were playing. And the kind of martial seriousness to them. I decided to just buy a ticket and go down there with my own scores to see if I could get my music filtered through their lens. The name of the album comes from our wake up call in the village: Everyday around noon the school would blast this hilarious march tune loudly up the hills to call the children back from lunch break...the March of the Zapotec.
Do you think of yourself as a music tourist? Not exactly. Sometimes I set out on a mission like this to record a very specific sound or to play a show with a very specific group I've been talking to. But most of the time I'm traveling for the sake of traveling, and often I'm pleasantly surprised by the music. I think it's the discussion of authenticity that gets to people. It's not authentic. It's pop music done with a wide variety of sounds that I love.
Have you established any "rituals" for how you get to know a new place? No, I usually end up hitting the ground running. I guess I'm a really bad planner.
What's next for you? We heard a rumor of Africa? I do love what I heard in Morocco and the music from the Tuareg. But I can't see myself doing that. Maybe doo-wop?
What's your motivation to go to all these places? Is cultural curiosity? Or avoiding the boredom of being stuck at home? I can't really put my finger on it. I'm a restless guy, and I liked to be shocked into place at least once a year.
The Realpeople pop tracks on the new album are surprising and fantastic. Do you think we'll hear more electronic music from you in the future? Probably not. Those songs are actually my past. I started doing synth ditties as a fifteen-year-old, as it was the only equipment I had at the time. I thought people might be curious to see a very different side of my musical personality. I'll always love electronic music though.
Today is the first wednesday in February, Black History Month. Which is a great excuse to highlight one African American artist each week shortest month of year. There's an awful lot I could cover, so I'm going to have to choose wisely. For the first: Nina Simone.
I pick Simone because she bridges so many styles and, in the end, defies definition through any one genre. She sang jazz. She sang blues. She sang funk and country and Broadway and even played an Isreali folk song. She covered Bessie Smith and the Beatles and Hall and Oates. If you had to chose a single artist to listen to while stuck on a desert island, you could do a lot worse than Nina Simone.
And now, six years after her death in 2003 at the age of 70, she's more influential and relevant than ever. "You may dig on the Rolling Stones, but they could never ever rock like Nina Simone," Mos Def raps on "Black on Both Sides." Don't believe Mos? Listen to "Funkier Than A Mosquito's Tweeter" off It Is Finished, a live album made in 1974 that is one of her best. Then listen to Nikka Costa cover the same song on her 2001 album, Can'tneverdidnothin. Or check Simone singing "See Lion Woman," then listen to Feist sing her own cover of the song on last year's The Reminder.
Simone was fiercley individualistic. She hated record companies and their contracts. She despied pandering to the pop charts. She was outspoken about racism in America (she wrote a showtune for, as she put it, "a show that hasn't been written yet" called "Mississippi Goddam") and rightly so—at her first classical piano recital her parents were forced to move to the back of the hall to make way for the white folks. Little Eunice Waymon (Nina Simone is her stage name), just ten years old, refused to play until they were seated back where they belonged, in the front row.
Here are a few of my favorite tracks...Feeling Good
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