I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: DAYMÉ AROCENA-Tiny Desk Concert #531 (May 13, 2016).

Daymé Arocena is a Cuban singer with a powerful voice and a great sense of fun.

“Madres” opens the set. This may be the first song I’ve ever heard that uses a rain stick (or box in this case) as a prominent source of percussion.  After a minute and a half of beautiful a capella singing (in Spanish, I believe) the six-string bass comes in with a very unusual syncopated riff.  And then comes the staccato piano–it has a very jazz feel.  After a minute of this, the song settles into a groove and gets really catchy. The music is very jazzy (the piano especially) with some really complex bass lines.

And it’s amazing to watch Daymé smile big as she sings (and shakes her maracas).  It’s even more amazing to read that she is only 24!

She ends the song by singing a thank you to everyone for being here today, and then thanks President Obama for going to Cuba (this was around March 25, 2016).  Then she is so cute introducing the second song, “Crystal,” written for a boy “the kind of boys you get in your life who give you nothing.”  It opens with jazzy pianos and her powerful voice (singing in English this time). There’s some wild bass soloing in the middle of the song.  The end of the song features her scatting and improvising and making some fascinating vocals sounds.  It’s really fun.

She says that in the 1970s it was obligatory for Cubans to study Russian.  She is only 24 so she never did, but she wrote this groovy song “El Ruso” about that time.  This story is very jazzy with a catchy riff and more cool scatting.  The blurb talks about how since the U.S. has opened up communication with Cuba, that we may be getting more Cuban music here. And that’s no bad thing.

[READ: March 10, 2016] The Divine

This is an ugly story.

It was inspired by the AP photo of 12-year-old Thai warriors smoking cigarettes (see bottom of the post). These twins, Johnny and Luther Htoo, held 800 people hostage in 2000.  They led a group called “God’s Army” and fought the Burmese army.  It was said that the twins  had magical powers.

And that is the basis for this story.

It opens with a very ugly American, Jason.  He is a soldier who describes the joy he received in shooting animals from his helicopter: zebras, parrots, etc. Until he wound up shooting a dragon.  A dragon, man!

We see this soldier trying to convince his coworker Mark (in some kind of science lab) to return to Quanlom–it’s a ton of money for only two weeks’ work.  The ostensible job was to explode volcanoes to try to get the minerals out of the mountains.

But Mark has just gotten married and is looking to relocate to a better position in Dallas.  But then he finds out that rather than Dallas he’s being moved to Eden whose sole claim to fame is a huge detention center.  And so Mark starts Googling Quanlom.  And then he decides to take the money.

His pregnant wife is none too happy about him leaving for two weeks (he doesn’t tell her the truth behind his job).

Jason and Mark arrive and all goes pretty well.  They have planted the explosives and are just waiting for the helicopter to come and blow it up.  Then Mark sees a little boy sitting by the volcano.  Jason tells him to ignore the boy–he’s either dead already or will be soon.  But Mark can’t and he gets a few of the guys to go down and investigate.

Mark insists that they take the boy (who is alive) back to the village.  Jason is furious and refuses to go with him.

Then Mark is ambushed.  He wakes up soon after to see the twins threatening him  The one boy is known as The Divine for he has magical powers.  And he demonstrates this by breaking Mark’s finger from a distance.

In a nutshell they want Mark to take them back to the mountain to dismantle the explosives.  They believe that Mark is not (technically) at fault.  And it is soon revealed that Jason was the man who was there the last time indiscriminately shooting at everything.

The Divine plans to use Mark to get back at Jason. And The Divine’s powers are quite strong.  Who will survive this all out war?

The art in this book is quite magnificent (by the Hanukas).  It is breathtaking and vile and quite psychedelic all at the same time.  And despite the extreme violence (and some real ugliness) the story is quite engaging.  It did win me over by the end, but in those first few pages I really hated this story–Jason is the worst!