Golem Italian Style/Hey Ya! (Hi Ya Ho Ya Hi Ya!)
Just a few words on the way to packing for SXSW...
My gig with "The Golem" on Sunday afternoon at the Bergamo Jazz Festival came off like a dream--an absolutely sold-out Teatro di Piazza della Liberta, 500 souls sat spellbound in the packed theatre absorbed in my little kinosthetic whirl of music and images from a forgotten world, transported through time and space via interplay of guitarissimo with the flickering shadows, thrown on the walls of the cranial cave ( i wuz doin' time in the universal mind)...and gave me the warmest reception at the end--I love playing in Italy!-- special thanks to Mario Guidi the Bergamo Jazz Festival director and his assitant Giampero Stramaccia, my pal the fantastic Uri Caine who curated, and also Barbara Crotti and Angelo Signorelli, director of the Bergamo Film Meeting who co-hosted the event and who provided an exquisite crystal-clear print tinted according to a secret original Italian colour film process developed in the 20's, with super-titles in Italian running underneath the screen on a separate scrim--bellissimo! The acoustics in the theater were also superb, and the conjunction of these several favorable conditions really fired me up and inspired some of my best playing and improvisation to the film ever...such lovely fans as well who came forward at the end to chat...I must also mention that I caught some great music by Branford Marsalis' group, Steve Bernstein's Sex Mob, William Parker's free improv band, soaked up some of the beautiful medieval vibe of old Bergamo, and enjoyed my first real arancini since the last time I played Sicilia, found some in a cool pizzeria nearby the Hotel Mercure where they put us up--arancini being the golden-brown, deep-fried, crumb-crusted rice balls the size of an orange (hence their name) filled with a hot ragout center of tomato sauce, peas, and shredded beef--YUM!...I could eat this delicious little fast-food Italiano treat just about every day, washed down with a Chinotto (I adore Italian food accompanied by this tart, bracing Italian soft-drink with a strong herbal and fruit flavour-- looks like coca-cola, but is decidedly unsweet--kind of the Marmite of sodas... now it also comes in a can under the name of Chino which I'd never seen actually before this trip-- I've always loved the little ice cold bottles courtesy of San Pellegrino, who manufacture the stuff--Chino in the can seems to have more carbonation than the bottled variety....definitely chinosthetic!)...
Anyway this Golem performance followed on the heels of my Oklahoma performance with the film last week in Claremore for Prof. Hugh Foley, in the splendid New Deal deco-ish lines of the Will Rogers Auditorium of Rogers State University, with a great bust of America's beloved wry and plain-speaking sag in the lobby and that too was a joy...
I should mention that while staying with Hugh in his imposing stone house in Stillwater he played me some recordings he's made of amazing, transcendental Creek Indian religious line-singing--a style akin to American shape-singing-- that runs back hundreds of years, music he recorded in the field at several rural Indian Christian churches, mesmeric incantatory vocal choir music that Hugh calls "Muskogee Hymns": hypnotic Native American a capella devotional music rarely if ever heard by most folks anywhere in the world, actually believed lost by many ethno-musicologists but found fully preserved and still ringing out, you could say flourishing ("singing strong in the choir") in several of these tiny rustic Oklahoma tabernacles--albeit practiced by a very small number of adepts-- and now archived and codified for posterity by my man Hugh (Hugh's wife Geri is a full Creek Indian btw, and they attend services at many of these rural churches together regularly)...it's music that to these ears sounds on a cursory listen like a cross between the mass basso profundo of the Tibetan Buddhist monks as recorded by David Lewiston (subject of an earlier blog), and Gregorian Chant--the first referents that came to my mind when I sat transfixed by Hugh's tape...
Somehow word of Hugh's research and discoveries reached the educated ears of Prof. Willie Ruff, the pre-eminent scholar/ jazz musician par excellence (cat plays a mean French horn) who teaches a well-known longstanding Afro-American Music course at Yale (I took his class when I was an under-grad there, Willie brought in the great Tony Williams to speak, and showed a film he made of Tony drumming in the African veldt--incredible stuff)--and the upshot is that Hugh has been invited to lecture at Yale on April 19th and 20th, and will be traveling there with about 20 Creek Indian church members to perform these Muskogee Hymns for the first time in public outside the confines of their Oklahoma country churches...absolutely not to be missed if you are a lover of great American music and find yourself anywhere in the area--this is living, breathing, spiritually uplifting music--Amazing Grace, indeed...
Have to split now and finish packing (heat) for a jaunt down to Austin with Gods and Monsters, where the estimable Jerry Harrison will join up my already inter-stellar crew of overundersidewaysdowndeep drivers Ernie Brooks, Billy Ficca, and Jason Candler for the expanded Gods and Monsters in full effect (wish Joe Hendel could be there too)... plus we're taking our new sound-stirrer-woofer/tweeter-tweaker Kris Anton with us --see ya at the Central Presbyterian church on 8th Street this Saturday (St. Paddy's Day--my Dad's birthday too, hi Dad!) where I will perform solo with "The Golem" at 11am--followed at 12:15am with the Whole Sick Crew (coulda said the Whole Slick Crew--or J. Crew, for that matter-- what with our Yale/Harvard connection)...but I prefer the former moniker...
Find it, amigos!
xxLove
Gary
My gig with "The Golem" on Sunday afternoon at the Bergamo Jazz Festival came off like a dream--an absolutely sold-out Teatro di Piazza della Liberta, 500 souls sat spellbound in the packed theatre absorbed in my little kinosthetic whirl of music and images from a forgotten world, transported through time and space via interplay of guitarissimo with the flickering shadows, thrown on the walls of the cranial cave ( i wuz doin' time in the universal mind)...and gave me the warmest reception at the end--I love playing in Italy!-- special thanks to Mario Guidi the Bergamo Jazz Festival director and his assitant Giampero Stramaccia, my pal the fantastic Uri Caine who curated, and also Barbara Crotti and Angelo Signorelli, director of the Bergamo Film Meeting who co-hosted the event and who provided an exquisite crystal-clear print tinted according to a secret original Italian colour film process developed in the 20's, with super-titles in Italian running underneath the screen on a separate scrim--bellissimo! The acoustics in the theater were also superb, and the conjunction of these several favorable conditions really fired me up and inspired some of my best playing and improvisation to the film ever...such lovely fans as well who came forward at the end to chat...I must also mention that I caught some great music by Branford Marsalis' group, Steve Bernstein's Sex Mob, William Parker's free improv band, soaked up some of the beautiful medieval vibe of old Bergamo, and enjoyed my first real arancini since the last time I played Sicilia, found some in a cool pizzeria nearby the Hotel Mercure where they put us up--arancini being the golden-brown, deep-fried, crumb-crusted rice balls the size of an orange (hence their name) filled with a hot ragout center of tomato sauce, peas, and shredded beef--YUM!...I could eat this delicious little fast-food Italiano treat just about every day, washed down with a Chinotto (I adore Italian food accompanied by this tart, bracing Italian soft-drink with a strong herbal and fruit flavour-- looks like coca-cola, but is decidedly unsweet--kind of the Marmite of sodas... now it also comes in a can under the name of Chino which I'd never seen actually before this trip-- I've always loved the little ice cold bottles courtesy of San Pellegrino, who manufacture the stuff--Chino in the can seems to have more carbonation than the bottled variety....definitely chinosthetic!)...
Anyway this Golem performance followed on the heels of my Oklahoma performance with the film last week in Claremore for Prof. Hugh Foley, in the splendid New Deal deco-ish lines of the Will Rogers Auditorium of Rogers State University, with a great bust of America's beloved wry and plain-speaking sag in the lobby and that too was a joy...
I should mention that while staying with Hugh in his imposing stone house in Stillwater he played me some recordings he's made of amazing, transcendental Creek Indian religious line-singing--a style akin to American shape-singing-- that runs back hundreds of years, music he recorded in the field at several rural Indian Christian churches, mesmeric incantatory vocal choir music that Hugh calls "Muskogee Hymns": hypnotic Native American a capella devotional music rarely if ever heard by most folks anywhere in the world, actually believed lost by many ethno-musicologists but found fully preserved and still ringing out, you could say flourishing ("singing strong in the choir") in several of these tiny rustic Oklahoma tabernacles--albeit practiced by a very small number of adepts-- and now archived and codified for posterity by my man Hugh (Hugh's wife Geri is a full Creek Indian btw, and they attend services at many of these rural churches together regularly)...it's music that to these ears sounds on a cursory listen like a cross between the mass basso profundo of the Tibetan Buddhist monks as recorded by David Lewiston (subject of an earlier blog), and Gregorian Chant--the first referents that came to my mind when I sat transfixed by Hugh's tape...
Somehow word of Hugh's research and discoveries reached the educated ears of Prof. Willie Ruff, the pre-eminent scholar/ jazz musician par excellence (cat plays a mean French horn) who teaches a well-known longstanding Afro-American Music course at Yale (I took his class when I was an under-grad there, Willie brought in the great Tony Williams to speak, and showed a film he made of Tony drumming in the African veldt--incredible stuff)--and the upshot is that Hugh has been invited to lecture at Yale on April 19th and 20th, and will be traveling there with about 20 Creek Indian church members to perform these Muskogee Hymns for the first time in public outside the confines of their Oklahoma country churches...absolutely not to be missed if you are a lover of great American music and find yourself anywhere in the area--this is living, breathing, spiritually uplifting music--Amazing Grace, indeed...
Have to split now and finish packing (heat) for a jaunt down to Austin with Gods and Monsters, where the estimable Jerry Harrison will join up my already inter-stellar crew of overundersidewaysdowndeep drivers Ernie Brooks, Billy Ficca, and Jason Candler for the expanded Gods and Monsters in full effect (wish Joe Hendel could be there too)... plus we're taking our new sound-stirrer-woofer/tweeter-tweaker Kris Anton with us --see ya at the Central Presbyterian church on 8th Street this Saturday (St. Paddy's Day--my Dad's birthday too, hi Dad!) where I will perform solo with "The Golem" at 11am--followed at 12:15am with the Whole Sick Crew (coulda said the Whole Slick Crew--or J. Crew, for that matter-- what with our Yale/Harvard connection)...but I prefer the former moniker...
Find it, amigos!
xxLove
Gary
posted by Gary Lucas at 6:58 PM
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