Cafe Aman

Representation of at least two stripes.

As the Muslim Voices festival continues, it's great to see posts by David and Hussein--please check them out (and comment/Digg/StumbleUpon/etc., please, as you like; it would be fantastic to extend the conversation).

Over at Religion Dispatches, Hussein makes the excellent point that a performing arts festival dedicated to the cultural and artistic diversity of the Muslim community around the world has very little in the way of American Muslim representation. It's an interesting choice, or telling oversight. Either way, as  Hussein writes, it poses Islam as something "out there" rather than part of our own cultural fabric.

Speaking of representation: After reading David's trenchant comments about his own response to the Youssou N'Dour film "I Bring What I Love," I started poking around for some background  material on how the album "Egypt" was received in Senegal, and came up with this from May 2004, as reported by Banning Eyre and Sean Barlow of Afropop:

Afropop: How has the reaction to your new music been at home?

Youssou N'Dour: Good. It's not like the classic Youssou N'Dour, but people get the album and now they're starting to talk about it. I am very happy for the reception. People are okay with the words, they are behind every leader of brotherhood. People are proud, saying I'm right about the words, the story, the memory--I'm very happy. People often say "He's wrong!" But I'm happy that people say "you're right!" regarding what I say. They feel the music. They know this is not music for Thiosanne [Youssou's nightclub]. They know diversity--a word I've been talking about for ten years--diversity. I refuse to be going in just one direction. I have the possibility to touch different directions, and it's great for me.

Hmm. That comment does not exactly square with what the film "I Bring What I Love" sets forth as the Senegalese reaction.  It's all to the better of course if, as David puts it, "the fight only reached the level of some nasty editorials and a few pulled ads." Was Youssou minimizing a bigger blowback back home for the benefit of foreign journalists? Or did the film maker misrepresent, on some level, the Senegalese reaction and thereby making Youssou's home public seem far more reactionary than they actually are? What really happened?

Say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that you are losing.

Andre Aciman's op-ed in today's New York Times is an important contribution to the larger discussion of Obama's Cairo speech.

But what Aciman does not mention is that it was not just the Jewish community of Alexandria that was forced to flee Egypt during the super-nationalist Nasser years. (Nasser, by the by, was also an Alexandrian by birth.) Of course, there was a strong and unmistakable stink of anti-Jewish sentiment surrounding the Jewish ouster, but several ethnic groups  suffered a similar exodus during the Nasser years, including the once very large, vibrant, and very successful Greek community, of which my own family was part. (There is a good, very short and readable history of what happened to the Greeks of Alexandria here.)

Like Aciman's, my family lost everything they had. Just a few times, my father told me about being pelted with rocks as he and his brother made their way to and from school; it was, even decades later, still a very painful and vivid memory that was difficult for him to recount. They always, always thought of Alexandria as home--in fact, they were among the last in the community to make the hard decision to leave their native soil. But as Aciman notes, their Alexandria is long gone: "their memory banks have been conveniently expunged of deadweight and guilt," as he writes. The evidence of all these "foreigners, " Jewish and Christian, has been wiped away from street names to schools, houses of worship, and businesses. They are not even allowed the dignity of being ghosts.

My own father was of the same generation as Andre Aciman; despite their differences in religion and ethnicity, their stories share many similarities. When I met Aciman briefly at a book reading when Out of Egypt was first published, he immediately began speaking to me in very good Greek--an instant reminder of what it once meant to be an Alexandrian. (Or, as my father would often put it, in all seriousness: "Only barbarians speak fewer than four or five languages fluently.")

Egypt's wholescale and false reimagining of history is a shame, and Alexandria possesses a legacy that deserves to be addressed with honesty and clarity.

Taking down instruments.

Anticipating tomorrow night's Sufi concert during the Muslim Voices Festival stirs up some very fond memories for me. I've dug up a ton of old field recordings I've made over the years from one of the groups to be featured tomorrow night, the Aissawa brotherhood from Fes, Morocco.

Want a taste of that aural ecstasy? Check out an old piece I did for the now-defunct public radio program The Savvy Traveler; the show is long gone, but the programs still exist online, and the part about the transcendent Aissawa performance comes at the end. I've seen the Aissawa Tariqa several times over the years, but that first evening still holds in my mind. (Please excuse the plodding pace of the spoken narrative;  my producer at the time apparently thought the subject deserved a heavy, earnest dullness. Yikes.)

Photo: The Aissawa Tariqa and friends at home in Fes, Morocco, 2004; © Anastasia Tsioulcas

Egypt, and Cairo.

Last night, I saw the Youssou N'Dour documentary "I Bring What I Love", which has its official opening Saturday night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as part of the Muslim Voices festival. The timing for the film, and the whole festival, seems particularly ripe, especially after President Obama's speech in Cairo today.

The film gives a brief outline of the Senegalese superstar's life and career trajectory (aspiring local boy with griot roots, local star, major African talent, global force with a serious sociopolitical conscience who runs around with Bono and testifies before Congress, etc.) before turning the lens on N'Dour's long-gestating "Egypt" album, a project that married N'Dour's bronze-patinaed voice and a plush Egyptian orchestra with explicitly religious lyrics that celebrate Senegal's singular Sufi culture and tradition.

Though the filmaker, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, never quite decides if she wants to make a narrative documentary or a concert film, the movie is beautifully shot, with stunning visuals filmed in as far-flung locales as Dakar and Touba, Senegal, London, and New York--not to mention Fes, Morocco, where N'Dour and his partners, Egyptian producer Fathy Salama and Senegalese composer Kabou Gueye premiered the project in 2004. (Having been there myself for the occasion, I can testify that there was some very special magic in that locale--which is one of the most important and historic centers of Sufism, Islamic education, and a city with an extraordinary and intertwined Jewish, Christian, and Muslim legacy. That, plus the actual outdoor concert venue is very pretty and dramatically lit for such performances.)

What should have been the heart of the film, as far as I'm concerned, was the sharp distinction in critical and popular reactions to "Egypt." In Europe and the US, the album was rapturously received--N'Dour received his first Grammy Award for it--but at home, N'Dour was greeted with fierce anger from local religious conservatives who excoriated the pop star for daring to wade publicly into religious turf ("metaphysical quicksand," as one newspaper called it).

While not exactly glossing over the controversy, we never hear directly from his opponents; indeed, it's full of hazy hagiography (and I say that as even as a devoted Youssou fan.) And when N'Dour finally gets his Grammy, and the whole capital of Dakar seems to turn out in the streets to greet his triumph, we never learn why the tide of Senegalese public opinon has turned. (Does American approbation really count for so much?) Apparently, when the highly respected Senegalese religious griot singer Mustapha M'baye recorded a duet with N'Dour in praise of the prophet Muhammad, public opinion began to shift more decisively. We see the duo recording together, but the whole arc is never made fully explicit in the film.

Moreover, in absolutely wedding herself to documenting, in strict chronological fashion, the international tour for "Egypt". Accordingly, Vasarhelyi concludes her film in a weirdly abrupt way: we see N'Dour backstage at Carnegie Hall, striding towards the stage. That's it. I have a pretty fair guess of why that is--the union regulations on filming and recording at Carnegie are famously strict--but then why bother at all? It's a totally unsatisfying conclusion.

Nonetheless, "I Bring What I Love" brims with wonderful footage, especially of Youssou's live performances and of the incredible yearly pilgrimage to the Grand Mosque of Touba, the holy city founded by Cheikh Amadou Bamba, a great spiritual master. For any fan of Youssou N'Dour or African music, not to mention anyone interested in Sufism or even Islam more generally, "I Bring What I Love" is a must-see--and the controversy at the heart of the film is ever more relevant.

Banging, and hearing Voices. (And first-ever Cafe Aman ticket giveaway!)

The live group-twittering for this year's Bang on a Can marathon, held yesterday at the World Financial Center, was an unqualified success; I certainly had a lot of fun even though  I had to bail just before Hour Seven (hence, no Bangover  this AM).

Thanks to co-conspirators @ogiovetti@talkmusic @sethcolterwalls @espyem @memilybk @cryfok @elimaniscalco @dotdotdottweet, as well as to @cjpr and @bangonacan for organizing. Also, a special shout-out to @activecultures, who jumped in unwittingly (though definitely twittingly) himself.

 If you missed it--or just want to relive the groundbreaking excitement--find all our tweets at #bangoncan.

___

The other great excitement this week is preparing for the Muslim Voices festival that BAM and the Asia Society are co-organizing; over ten days [June 5-14], they're presenting an incredible array of musical performances, live theatre, film screenings, television broadcasts, lectures and other events featuring contributors like Youssou N'Dour and Reza Aslan,as well as a wide array of amazing artists who are rarely in the US.

Since the whole point of the festival is to celebrate an array of perspectives from around the globe, I thought it would be fun to corral a couple of co-conspirators into blogging, tweeting, and otherwise commenting on the events. They are David Adler, a marvelous writer on both music and global politics, and the very fine scholar Hussein Rashid, who also contributes to Religion Dispatches. They are both wonderfully thoughtful writers and cultural critics, and I'm really looking forward to some vigorous discussion, debate, and idea-sharing--and I hope that our individual readerships get involved in the discussion as well.

So check out their sites in the meantime, and be sure to check out the main festival site at www.muslimvoicesfestival.org. Here's a little something to sweeten the pot even more...

I have one pair of tickets to give away to the Saturday, June 6th screening at BAM's Howard Gilmore Opera House of the new, critically acclaimed Youssou N'Dour documentary I Bring What I Love. Youssou and his Super Etoile band will be giving a short performance at this screening--lucky you!

In order to win, you need to be the 10th new Twitter follower of @anastasiat, and you must answer this question:

Youssou N'Dour won his first Grammy Award in 2005 for a groundbreaking album that explored his Muslim heritage. What was the name of that album?

Hints & caveats: You can find the answer on the Muslim Voices festival website. This giveaway is for a pair of tickets to this screening only.

Banging.

This afternoon, I'll be tweeting & perhaps doing a bit of live (slightly)longer-form blogging from the Bang on a Can marathon. Stop by & say hello if you see me. (Disclaimer: I will not even aspire to reach the delirious heights (& length) that Darcy hit two years ago.

If you want to find me on Twitter, I'm anastasiat.

Kronos Quartet, then and now (and on pre-order).

I am just of the age that I grew up listening to the Kronos Quartet.

In high school in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I listened almost every night to something from their discography; whenever I heard that they had a new album out, I would race out of Saturday rehearsals at New England Conservatory's pre-college program to race down to Tower Records on Mass Ave. to buy it. (My dorm mates thought I was beyond weird.)

So I can't express what a profound honor and delight it was to be invited to write the liner notes for their newest recording,  Floodplain, which is currently available on pre-order on Nonesuch's website.

It's also been a particularly gratifying experience for me in that many of the artists, composers and styles that the quartet turns to on this recording also happen to have immeasurable personal resonance  for me. For example, as a young child, I'd listen to the music of Fairouz with my father, who passed away when I was 14. Hearing her "Wa Habibi" brings back a flood of memories that I can't even begin to articulate; not just aural recollections, but even what the dust on the LP jacket smelled like when he pulled one of her recordings down from the shelf. Similarly, one of the very first recordings I spun at the start of my over a decade-long gig as a DJ at WKCR was of Ustad Ram Narayan, marking the beginning of my life-long love affair with Indian classical music.

So thanks again, Kronos Quartet (and David in particular, and of course Sid also)--this opportunity really meant so much to me. Can't wait to see you--and Dave, and Osvaldo, and So Percussion, and and and--at Carnegie tonight for Terry Riley's In C .

A variety in Variety.

Gilbert brings youth to Philharmonic. Variety, April 22, 2009.

British invasion archived at museum. Variety, April 20, 2009.

French composer gets Stateside boost. Variety, April 20, 2009. 

 

Earth Day 2009, classical music, and amazing photography.

If you're a classical music nut, you most certainly know some of photographer J. Henry Fair's work, even if you don't recognize his name. (That image of Jennifer Larmore draped across an armchair in a tuxedo suit, holding a cigar as she sultrily gazes at the camera? Cecilia Bartoli kissed by a Tuscan sunset as she comes across a field of gold? A grinning Yo-Yo Ma leaning against his cello, clad in concert dress? Yeah. They're all his.)

A whole different aspect of his work, though, is his incredible Industrial Scars project, which is in turn just one facet of his environmental work. (Speaking of classical music, he's also the co-founder of the Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem, NY with Helene Grimaud.)

While you may have already spotted some of those images a while ago in a Harper's Magazine portfolio, Industrial Scars is about to hit a much, much larger audience when it's featured tomorrow morning on NBC's Today show (slated for the 8 AM hour). ETA: Daily television shows are apparently even more fluidly constructed than radio; this segment has been rescheduled for this Friday. Well, at least Earth Week is a good thing.

Congratulations, Henry!

Happy (real) Easter.

There is a *very* small and elite cadre of classical music writers who will be celebrating Easter this Sunday, and I am one of the, uh, two of us.

My musical go-tos for this weekend:

Fairouz' Good Friday Eastern Sacred Songs But before then, off tonight to hear the St. Matthew Passion at BAM (and, heretically enough, Jenny Lin and Toumani Diabate tomorrow night @ Le Poisson Rouge). See you next week.