Worldly Wednesday

Worldly Wednesday: “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” Vân-Anh Vanessa Vo

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Vo is a Vietnamese musician who specialized in traditional music.  The instrument she is playing is called the đàn bầu.  The đàn bầu is a single-stringed instrument whose pitch you change by pulling it with the bar on the end, which is made of buffalo horn.  Vo is an incredibly cool person for a whole variety of reasons, not least of which is that it is a seriously big deal to play traditional music as a woman – it’s (now almost) entirely dominated by men.  After she emigrated to the U.S., she collaborated with a number of groups, most notably Kronos Quartet (one of the major interpreters of Steve Reich’s music), and won an Emmy for her music in the documentary film, “Bolinao 52.”  Vo is a a big fan of blending eastern and western music, and this interpretation of the Johnny Cash song is touched with genius.  A hearty thanks to a friend and colleague who sent this to me.

Worldly Wednesday: “Farewell to Stromness,” Peter Maxwell Davies

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This has already been a tough week for me and a lot of people I know, so I thought I would share a piece that has helped me recenter myself when things get a bit much.  Davies wrote this for a play, “The Yellowcake Review,” which was a work of protest against a possible plan to build a uranium mine in Stromness, in the Orkney Islands of Scotland.

Stromness

Stromness

 

“I will not walk backward in life.”

– J.R.R. Tolkein

Worldly Wednesday: “Stimela,” Hugh Masekela

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This is such a sucker-punch of a song.  You don’t even need to understand the words (which are below, never fear, faithful readers) to know it’s about something fairly wretched involving a train.  This song portrays the life of black African migrant workers working in South African mineral mines. Some melancholy songs are more mellow than sad.  Not this one, not by a long shot.  This is sad, resigned, longing, resentful, and angry, all at the same time.  By the time harmony spreads out at 2:31, you’ve already committed yourself to listening to the whole thing, maybe even again a second time, even though it’s a tough haul.

Masekela wrote this song in 1974, about halfway through the lifespan of the apartheid regime in South Africa.

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There is a train that comes from Namibia and Malawi
there is a train that comes from Zambia and Zimbabwe,
There is a train that comes from Angola and Mozambique,
From Lesotho, from Botswana, from Zwaziland,
From all the hinterland of Southern and Central Africa.
This train carries young and old, African men
Who are conscripted to come and work on contract
In the golden mineral mines of Johannesburg
And its surrounding metropolis, sixteen hours or more a day
For almost no pay.
Deep, deep, deep down in the belly of the earth
When they are digging and drilling that shiny mighty evasive stone,
Or when they dish that mish mesh mush food
into their iron plates with the iron shovel.
Or when they sit in their stinking, funky, filthy,
Flea-ridden barracks and hostels.
They think about the loved ones they may never see again. Because they might have already been forcibly removed
From where they last left them
Or wantonly murdered in the dead of night
By roving and marauding gangs of no particular origin,
We are told. They think about their lands, their herds
That were taken away from them
With a gun, bomb, teargas and the cannon.
And when they hear that Choo-Choo train
They always curse, curse the coal train,
The coal train that brought them to Johannesburg.

Worldly Wednesday: “Csiki, Csiki,” BraAgas

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Clearly my soul is wandering around the planet without permission because, while I started the week being homesick for New England, now I find myself longing to be back in Prague.  Fortunately, the wonderful female group BraAgas has me covered.  This saucy little minx of a song is from their 2009 album, “Tapas,” which won the Anděl Award, the Czech version of a Grammy.  In addition to world music, BraAgas is also proficient in medieval music – one of their members plays the shawm, which, I mean, if there is a more direct way to my heart, I haven’t found it yet.

Lyrics (which I’m pretty sure are in Romani) below.

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Adjatok egy szalmaszálat,
Égessem el a világot!
Adjatok egy szalmaszálat,
Hadd fújjam fel ezt a házat!
Lábam termett a táncra,
Szemem a kacsintásra.
Ha táncolok, szikrát szórok,
A világra fittyet hányok!

Aj Csiki-Csiki, aj ke te merav,
Aj Csiki-Csiki, aj ke te merav,
Aj Csiki-Csiki, aj ke te merav,
Me zhanav me ka zhivav

Vesz ő nékem selyemruhát,
Gyöngyöt, láncot, piros szoknyát,
Reám költi a vagyonát,
Lopja-lopja édesanyját,
Bolondítom, hevítem,
Kiáltozza a nevem,
Csiki-Csiki, így hív engem.
Megöllek én, szép szerelmem!

Aj Csiki-Csiki, aj ke te merav,
Aj Csiki-Csiki, aj ke te merav,
Aj Csiki-Csiki, aj ke te merav,
Me zhanav me ka zhivav

Lábam termett a táncra,
Szemem a kacsintásra.
Ha táncolok, szikrát szórok,
A világra fittyet hányok!
Bolondítom, hevítem,
Kiáltozza a nevem,
Csiki-Csiki, így hív engem,
Megöllek én szép szerelmem!

Aj Chiki-Chiki, aj ke te merav,
Aj Chiki-Chiki-Chiki, aj ke te merav,
Aj Chiki-Chiki, aj ke te merav,
Me zhanav me ka zhivav

Give me a piece of straw to set the world on fire
give me a piece of straw to blow up this house

My feet were made for dancing
my eyes were made for winking
when i dance I spread sparkles all around
and don’t give a damn about the world

Ai,Tchiki-Tchiki, i should die
Ai,Tchiki-Tchiki, i should die
Ai,Tchiki-Tchiki, i should die
I know I’m going to live

Ai,Tchiki-Tchiki, he dies for me
Ai,Tchiki-Tchiki, this is how he calls me
Ai,Tchiki-Tchiki, this is how he calls me,
With me, he go where I want

He will buy me a dress of silk, necklace of pearls, red skirt,
he’ll spend his fortune on me
he will steal his mother again and again
and I make him crazy, I set him on fire

He only shouts my name
tchiki tchiki – that’s what he calls me
I will kill you my beautiful love !

Worldly Wednesday: “Sounds Like Gun (Kepei),” Bobby

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This awesome song, by an artist named Bobby, is from Sierra Leone, where hails another incredible human being: 15-year-old Kelvin Doe.  Kelvin is an inventor, a total autodidact, whose mental agility and curiosity are jaw-dropping.  Thanks to the work of a man named David Sengeh, a PhD student at MIT, kids like Kelvin in Sierra Leone, Kenya, and South Africa are getting mentored to develop their skills – all with an eye towards helping young minds around the world find solutions to their country’s problems.  People, Tune-Up fans – people are our biggest resource.

Kelvin’s story is here.  It’s ten minutes.  It’s worth it.  And if you want to know more about Sengeh’s campaign, go here.

 

REMIX WEEK! Worldly Wednesday: “Voodoo Child,” Jimi Hendrix meets Angelique Kidjo

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OX1uKE2jho

When I’m getting my head in the game for a big meeting, when I need to suit up, when I need to kick the tires and light the fires, I turn to this song.  Hendrix’s version is very sexy – that naked, shimmering guitar riff, the thumb of the bass drum, the crash of the chord at the entrance.  It has real swagger.  But after I heard Kidjo’s version, it sounds…vaguely pompous.  Like there wasn’t any doubt that the protagonist could make an island out of the pieces of the mountain.  Like he could always just do that.  Kidjo sings it like this comes from experience, from hard work, practice, and struggle.  That’s why this version gives me that extra boost – it’s a song of strength learned from difficulty.  It’s a “oh, you don’t even know what I can do” kind of song.  A “you think this is difficult?” song.  It’s a very human sort of voodoo.

 

Hendrix’s original version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvmKlZGTTU4

Worldly Wednesday: “Dark Moon, High Tide,” Afro-Celt Sound System

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I realize this morning, with great excitement, that soon it will be spring.  Spring means warmth.  Warmth means warmer water temperatures.  Warmer water temperatures means your plucky heroine can get back out on the water in her trusty Peinert racing shell and row her little heart out.  This was the song that ran through my head when I first learned to row, and the song that is going through my head these days as I think about getting back out on the water again.  C’monnnn spring.

Worldly Wednesday: “Taro,” Alt-J

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There are certain things in the world I don’t understand: whether Velveeta is a food or spackling material, why millipedes have to exist, why I always seem to end the day with $20 less in my wallet than I began with but have nothing to show for the loss, and so on.

I also don’t understand Western complacency towards global inequality.  Every person that is born, anywhere in the world, might be the person that cures cancer, AIDS, writes a new theory of international relations, transforms the United Nations, figures out how to slow or reverse global warming – any one of us humans might solve any of these terrifying, global problems.  That we limit the population of people who have adequate eucation, not to mention food and water and roads and clothes and voting rights and safe passage and electricity, to even attempt to solve any of these problems shoots us all in the foot.  Maybe my cold meds are getting to me, but every now and again it hits me that the biggest resource we waste is each other.  This is what this song by the British band Alt-J makes me think of.

Alt-J wrote the song about Robert Capa, the Hungarian photojournalist and war photographer, and Gerta Pohorylle, otherwise known as Gerta Taro, who was his companion and professional partner.  Taro was one of the first female photojournalists to work on the front lines of war, and died during a road accident while covering the Battle of Brunete during the Spanish Civil War.  Capa died during the first Indochina War after he left his Jeep and stepped on a landmine.

One of Capa's most famous photographs

One of Capa’s most famous photographs – “Death of a Loyalist Soldier,” 1936.

 

One of Taro's most famous photographs. A woman in Barcelona, Spain, training for the Republican militia, 1936.

One of Taro’s most famous photographs. A woman in Barcelona, Spain, training for the Republican militia, 1936.

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Indochina, Capa jumps Jeep, two feet creep up the road
To photo, to record meat lumps and war
They advance as does his chance, very yellow white flash
A violent wrench grips mass, rips light, tears limbs like rags
Burst so high finally Capa lands
Mine is a watery pit painless with immense distance
From medic from colleague, friend, enemy, foe
Him five yards from his leg, from you, Taro
Do not spray into eyes, I have sprayed you into my eyes
3:10 pm, Capa pends death, quivers, last rattles, last chokes
All colors and cares glaze to gray, shriveled and stricken to dots
Left hand grasps what the body grasps not, le photographe est mort
Three, point, one, four, one, five, alive no longer my amour, faded for home May of ’54
Doors open like arms my love, painless with a great closeness
To Capa, to Capa, Capa dark after nothing, re-united with his leg
And with you, Taro
Do not spray into eyes, I have sprayed you into my eyes
Hey Taro

Worldly Wednesday: “Wonderlust King,” Gogol Bordello

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This is my all-time favorite Gogol Bordello song.  There are others they wrote with lyrics that are more apropos to the current crisis, but I just can’t get enough of the energy of this one.  It sounds so fantastically, bravely defiant.

Gogol Bordello was formed in 1999 in New York City by Eugene Hütz.  “Gogol” references Ukrainian writer Nikolai Gogol who purportedly “smuggled” Ukrainian culture into Russia in the mid 19th century.

U.S. military troops are relatively close to Ukraine, and the U.S. government has pledged money and technical support.  Russia is using equipment placed in Crimea to block the cell phones of Ukrainian politicians.  Meanwhile, over at The Atlantic, there is a great piece that posits whether conflicts like this are going to be more common in a post-“war on terror” world.

Finally: hello to my readers in Georgia!  Welcome to my blog!  მოკითხვა ჩემს მკითხველს საქართველოში! მოგესალმებით ჩემს ბლოგზე!

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Back in the day, as we learned,
A man was not considered to be
Considered to be fully grown
Has he not gone beyond the hills
Has he not crossed the seven seas
Yeah, seven seas at least!

Now all them jokers kept around
Just like the scarecrows in hometown
Yeah, scarecrows in hometown
From screen to screen they’re travelin’
But I’m a wonderlust king

I stay on the run
Let me out
Let me be gone
In the world’s beat up road sign
I saw new history of time…
New history of time!!!

Through Siberian woods
Breaking up their neck
Chinese moving in, building discotheques
Trans-Siberian sex toys and whatnot
Yeah, and why not?
Well at least it’s something different
From what they got in every other airport

Я не еврей, но кое-что похоже
Соврать не даст ни Юра, ни Сережа!
Simple because I’m not a total gadjo
Да я шут, я трюкач, ну так что же?

I traveled the world
Looking for understanding
Of the times that we live in
Hunting and gathering first hand information
Challenging definitions of sin

I traveled the world
Looking for lovers
Of the ultimate beauty
But never settled in
I am a Wonderlust King!

I stay on the run
Let me out
Let me be gone
In the world’s beat up road sign
I saw new history of time…
New history of time!!!

And presidents
And billionaires
And generals
They’ll never know
They’ll never know
What I have owned!
What I have owned…
I am a Wonderlust King!

Worldly Wednesday: “Decent Days and Nights,” The Futureheads

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfJMqUN0FCE

Oh man this song is such a trip.  The Futureheads are a great punk-oriented group from Sunderland, England, and so far, this is my favorite song of everything they’ve put out.  I am a complete sucker for weird changes in time signatures, and the lyrics are interesting and funny.  It’s a happy, lively song for the middle of the week, and the driving rhythm has earned it a top spot in my running playlist.