Roots and Transports
There is an immense amount of amazing music coming from all around the world, much of which is barely accessible.
This post is a little later than usual, mainly because I had an impromptu root canal late yesterday. I have just two words for this – NOT FUN. This was a new procedure for me, and I can now imagine a little more vividly what it might feel like to be abducted and operated on by aliens. What helped me through the experience, surprisingly, was the cheesy 1970s and 80s pop muzak being piped into the dentist’s office. Mentally desperate for somewhere else to go while the aliens put all manner of unpleasant devices in my mouth, I latched onto song fragments that served as a kind of time portal to my youth. Via Michael Jackson, I revisited the Winter Princess dance of my junior year in high school, feeling afresh the excitement and embarrassment of the evening, when I saw that my date had chosen to wear high top sneakers with his tux. Then I was transported to a summer night at the New Jersey shore, dancing in the sand to the B 52s and having the time of my life at an all girl beach party under the stars. Such is the power of music that it can transport us to any place or time, even under extraordinary or difficult circumstances.
Under much more pleasant conditions, I was transported to several countries and cultures in Africa on Friday night, courtesy of the violinist Regina Carter, who was playing at the Herbst Theatre as part of the SF Jazz Festival. Her newest recording, called Reverse Thread, is the culmination of research she was able to do thanks to a “Genius Grant” from the MacArthur Foundation. Quoting from her website:
When Carter made the decision to record an album primarily of African folk tunes, she created a great challenge for herself: how do you take beautiful traditional music and infuse it with a contemporary feel while remaining true to its past — and then, not compromise its beauty?…”There is an immense amount of amazing music coming from all around the world, much of which is barely accessible,” emphasized Regina. “Reverse Thread gave me the opportunity to explore and celebrate a tiny portion of music that moved me.”
The audience at Friday’s concert was definitely moved by her music as well.
As we come to the end of our SFGC concert season this weekend, I recall many wonderful moments of musical transport throughout the year – Abbie Betinis’s From Behind the Caravan: Songs of Hafez, and Tavener’s Two Hadiths of the Prophet Mohammed from our October concerts; the Chorus’s exquisite rendering of Britten’s Ceremony of Carols at holiday time; and the arrangement of Django Reinhardt’s Nuages performed with members of the Hot Club of San Francisco at our March gala.
There’s one more opportunity to be transported by SFGC before the current performance season ends. Our closing concerts are this Friday and Saturday evening at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Let the music take you.
