Ithaca Scottish Festival 2009

Saturday J and I went to the second annual Ithaca Scottish Festival. Immediately on arriving we ran into a prof that I know from Cornell, Wayne, who was at the festival representing the Black Sheep Handspinners Guild. Wayne gave us a very interesting demonstration of spinning yarn using an old spinning wheel and explained how the spinning of yarn was done back in the old days. I’ve known Wayne for many years from my work at Cornell but I had no idea that he was into all this handspinning stuff. He seems to know quite a lot about it and about the whole history of yarn-making in general. We got to hear a bit of the pipe band competition. We saw some of the athletic competitions, including the caber-tossing which was pretty impressive. We also saw a demonstration of sheepshearing by a charming fellow who managed to stay cheerful and smiling all the while that he was struggling to hold this reluctant sheep down and shear it (the sheep obviously didn’t like this process) while explaining the process to the crowd gathered around.

We had been expecting a big rainstorm, and when it finally hit we sought shelter under a little tent with a few other folks. Local singer Pamela Goddard was also there under the tent, and to our surprise and delight she did an apparently impromptu performance of several beautiful old English, Irish, and Scottish folksongs. On some of the songs she accompanied herself on the mountain dulcimer. She sang beautifully, performing with grace and aplomb as if she were singing in front of a huge audience, but in fact there were only about 6 of us there listening to her there as the rain poured down all around us.

Cuba night

Last night J and I went to the “Cuba Night” fundraiser event downtown at the Unitarian Church. Its purpose was to raise some money to assist with an upcoming trip to deliver some humanitarian aid to Cuba. This upcoming trip is organized by Pastors for Peace, and will begin later this month.

There was Cuban food (which was pretty good), and an official from Pastors for Peace gave a speech about the problem of the Cuba economic embargo and the importance of resisting this unfair embargo and trying to provide humanitarian assistance to Cuba. This was followed by a great performance of Cuban drumming by a small ensemble of local percussionists including Hiram Jimenez and Jonathan Kline. In his introduction to one of the percussion numbers, Jimenez pointed out the great similarity between Cuban rhythms and Yoruba rhythms from Nigeria, due to the fact that many Yoruba people from Nigeria came to Cuba over the past several centuries (brought there as slaves by the Spanish). And I did notice that much of the drumming that these guys were doing sounded a lot like some recordings of Yoruba drumming from Africa that I’ve heard.

The drumming was followed by a very interesting performance/demonstration of salsa rueda by the Pa’lante rueda group from Cornell. After that the rueda caller, Nikolay, invited everybody to come up and have a beginning lesson in rueda, which I participated in. The wheel consisted of a lot of absolute beginners who had never danced before, as well as a few experts like the Pa’lante people, and a few fair-to-middling dancers like myself. It was somewhat chaotic at times but everybody in the wheel seemed to be having fun nevertheless. Then there was open dancing for a while, to recorded Latin music, and then Nikolay called another rueda circle, but this one for more advanced rueda dancers. J and I danced in that rueda wheel and I had a lot of fun with it. It was interesting for me to dance with the Pa’lante people, who I don’t normally get to dance with. They are extremely good.

I think that organizations like Pastors for Peace, and all other groups that are trying to resist the economic embargo on Cuba and provide humanitarian aid, are doing really good work. The American embargo on Cuba is inhumane and unjust. The USA maintains normal diplomatic and economic relations with many countries that have FAR worse and more oppressive governments than Cuba does. That the USA has singled out Cuba for this harsh treatment, from all the other nations on earth, makes absolutely no sense.

DFW quote

I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. — David Foster Wallace

And I say, Yes! I love the way Wallace expressed this crucially important message so succinctly and clearly. It has taken me a long, long time to finally understand the central and fundamental importance of what he is talking about here.

Some poems by Jack Gilbert

I came across this strange little video on YouTube that simply displays the text of some poems by Jack Gilbert. Gilbert has long been one of my favorite poets and a strong source of inspiration (both in my writing and in my life in general) for me. When I played this video I found it to be a peculiarly and unexpectedly appealing way of experiencing Gilbert’s poems.

It just so happened that I had the CD One Cello X 16: Natoma by Zoe Keating playing on my computer at the time that I stumbled across this Gilbert poetry video and played it for the first time, so that Keating’s music happened by chance to be the background soundtrack for these poems. And it turns out that Keating’s intimate and intense music suits this poetry perfectly.

Niyaz

I tuned in to the Sonic Planet radio show on WICB recently (DJ’ed by my multi-talented friend Franck). As soon as I turned on the radio my attention was immediately arrested by some extraordinarily intense and beautiful music. It sounded very modern, and also very old and traditional. I’d never heard anything quite like it. I was just electrified by this song. By the time it ended I was firmly resolved that I MUST find out the band that played it and get a copy of the recording. Franck announced that it was by an Iranian band called Niyaz. I had never heard of them before but I immediately became a fan of this group and looked up their website and a few youtube videos of their music, such as this one:

An interesting feature of this video is the fellow playing a peculiar stringed instrument I have never seen before. It looks and sounds kind of like an electric kemanche, only bigger. Whatever it is I like it.

Niyaz does traditional Sufi devotional songs but uses very modern musical and production techniques. The resulting songs have a unique timeless quality, a conflation of the ancient and the contemporary that sounds, strangely enough, perfectly natural. I think their singer Azam Ali has an incredible voice. Here’s hoping that they play a gig in upstate NY someday…

Some poems published

I just got my contributor’s copies of Poetry East. I have three poems in this issue. It’s a beautiful issue and I’m pleased with the way they presented my poems. I’ve always liked and respected Poetry East. It’s a journal that seems to have an independent spirit, and always has an interesting and lively variety of poetry in it. They tend to avoid the currently-trendy stuff and they publish mostly a lot of unknown poets such as myself (the only other poets in this current issue whose work I’ve seen before are Alberto Rios and Maura Stanton) but they can always be counted on to produce something really good and well worth reading. So to me it’s quite an honor to have my poems published in this journal.

Bellydance encounters at Ithaca Festival

Well the Ithaca Festival is over. Julie and I had a lot of fun. On Saturday afternoon there were two back-to-back bellydance performances that Julie and I went to in the Ithaca Commons. The first was a joint performance by June Seaney’s two troupes, Chandani and Ishtar’s Daughters. Julie and I got there a bit early and found good seats near the front. While we were sitting there waiting for the performance to start, a fellow sitting to my left turned to me and said, “I don’t know about this. Some of these belly dancers look kind of old!” I was a little bit taken aback by this crass comment, but I just replied, “Well in bellydancing there are no age restrictions. You find all ages bellydancing, from teenagers to women in their 80s.” He said “Well I think that they all ought to be beautiful, and they all ought to be under 30.” I said nothing in response to this, to my mind, incredibly stupid comment. After a few minutes I noticed that he left. Apparently the dancers were not hot enough for him. Perhaps what he really wanted was something more like a strip show than a dance performance. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but a strip show is a strip show and dancing is dancing.

Right after June and her dancers got done there was another bellydance performance at the opposite end of the Commons, by the troupe Mirage. Julie and I have kind of a long history with Mirage, since she used to dance with them a few years ago and I used to do some drumming with them (which is how Julie and I first met). While we were watching the Mirage dancers perform I noticed three guys standing next to me who looked like Arabs, they were talking among themselves in what sounded like it could be Arabic. Not only that, but they were singing along with all of the Arabic songs! One of the Mirage dance pieces was performed to a recording of a song by the great Egyptian pop singer Hakim. I turned to one of these Arab guys and said to him, “This song is by Hakim, is that right?” He said “Yes, Hakim.” Later after the song and the dance had finished, this guy conferred with his two friends in Arabic and then turned to me and said, “How you know Hakim?” I explained that I’ve heard Hakim’s CDs and that that I like his music very much. I added that I play Arabic music, on the nai. He said, “Oh, nai. That is good.”

Memorial Day weekend, couple of small gigs

Saturday evening I had a small gig at a church talent-show fundraiser event. The whole talent show contained quite an incredible variety of different acts, and all were delightful. I contributed a brief performance on the Native American flute, playing the piece “Whippoorwill” by the great R. Carlos Nakai. A strange thing happened when I started to play this. The tune started out sounding strangely higher in pitch than usual, although the intervals seemed kind of okay. I was bewildered but kept stubbornly playing it for a little while because I had no idea what the problem was. I think I played the first four measures like this, with the flute sounding very strange and the only thing I could think was a great big WTF?? (though fortunately I did not actually blurt this out!). Finally I couldn’t ignore the problem anymore and I stopped playing and looked the flute up and down as if it were some totally alien thing I had never seen before. Embarrassed, I apologized to the audience for the “flute malfunction,” and told them I would have to start the piece over. I positioned my fingers very carefully on the flute and blew the beginning note a couple of times to test the sound. It sounded good, so I went ahead and played the whole piece. I thought I played it pretty well and I had no further problems with it. I think what must have happened at the beginning is that I must have placed my fingers incorrectly somehow, and I may have placed one finger over something that I thought in my haste was a finger-hole but which is not actually a finger-hole. This particular flute has a little triangular-shaped depression on the top of it near the finger holes, an ornament that I think is supposed to suggest the shape of an arrow-head or something. I think in my nervousness at the beginning I may have placed my finger over this little ornament by mistake, instead of a finger-hole, and all my fingers were actually placed off by one hole! It’s the only thing I can think of that may have caused this odd problem. But when I started over and was more careful about my finger placement it sounded fine. Several people came up to me afterward and complimented me on the piece and remarked on how beautiful and evocative it was. So all turned out well after all.

Sunday was commencement at Cornell, and CMEMME had a gig playing at the commencement festivities for the Cornell Dept. of Near Eastern Studies. It was a smaller-than-usual CMEMME contingent because several of the ensemble’s members had already left for the summer break, but we had enough musicians to perform a decent set of Turkish, Greek, Armenian, and Ladino songs. I played ney and kaval. We were basically playing background music for a reception. We played for a while, then took a break for a buffet lunch, then played a few more songs. It was a relaxed, friendly, informal gig. I had a nice time.

Another interesting art sighting on the quad

Seen in front of Sibley Hall on the Cornell Arts Quad. I had passed by this metal sculpture several times on my way across the quad to and from my office, but from a distance it didn’t look like much. But when I finally got closer to it I was struck by how graceful and beautiful it is.

Jam at Mike’s

Last night I went, with my Irish flute, to a YFN music jam at Mike Ludgate’s place. I went to a couple of these jams last summer, but then when CMEMME rehearsals started up again in late August I no longer had time to attend Mike’s weekly jams. So this was the first time I’d been back to jam with the YFN folks since late August of 2008. The music jams take place in a barn that Mike has made into a very nice music practice space. It was a rather small group that showed up last night, maybe around 12 people. All the people there are very nice and I enjoyed their company. I always love to hang out with other musicians. BUT, I have to say that I felt very frustrated at my inability to keep up with the music! In my practice at home I have found most of the tunes in the YFN repertoire to be do-able, at least when I’m just goofing around on my own and playing the songs at a fairly lazy tempo, but at the jam with the other musicians I quickly realized that I have a long way to go on the Irish flute before I’ll be able to play these tunes properly, in a group setting, and at the proper tempo! So it was a humbling experience, but a clarifying one as well. It made it more clear to me how I will need to practice in order to eventually get up to speed (literally!) on these songs.

An amusing thing happened while we were playing. Mike has a calico cat that wanders freely in and out of the barn. This cat came wandering in, came over to me, looked at me for a moment, and then climbed up into my lap. After a minute it jumped back down, but then a few minutes later it came back and climbed up into my lap again, just as I was getting ready to play a tune. I had to pick him up and put him back on the floor in order to be able to play my flute. A few minutes later he came back and climbed up onto my lap again! It was so funny! I didn’t see this cat trying to climb up on anybody else’s lap. Why me?