I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: VAN-ANH VANESSA VO-Tiny Desk Concert #329 (January 4, 2014).

One of the things I love about the Tiny Desk Concerts is that they expose listeners to artists that we’d never encounter anywhere else.  As a person who loves rock, there’s no way I’d encounter this artist who plays traditional Vietnamese music.  Even though I think she;s amazing, I’d have no exposure to her otherwise.  So this is a wonderful treat–even more so to see her play in such a small space.

Van-Anh Vanessa Vo is a Vietnamese born musician living in America.  Typically the field of Vietnamese traditional music is dominated by men, but she fought to learn and here she demonstrates her skill on three very different instruments.

The first song “Three-Mountain Pass” is played on the Hang.  The Hang is like a steel drum with different sounds at all of the flattened indentations.  There’s also a tone in the middle which resonates nicely.   It is played with the fingers rather than mallets.  It’s a cool instrument to be sure.  For this song she also sings a Vietnamese song that is very breathy.

For the second song, she has taken Erik Satie’s Gnossienne No. 3 and arranged it for dan Bau, the traditional 9th century Vietnamese monocord. The instrument (“invented by beggers on the street”) has a single string, but by bending it with a kind of whammy bar made from a water buffalo horn.  Despite having one string the bar allows her to go 5 steps up and 1 and a n half octaves down.  She plays a backing track of a while playing the main melody line on the dan Bau.  Watching her play this one string and get ting so many interesting sounds out of it is very cool.

“Go Hunting” is an original composition played on the dan T’rung, a bamboo xylophone from Vietnam’s south highlands. This instrument, which looks a bit like a skeleton, is struck with double-headed mallets.  She says on the album she has a taiko drum, but there is no drum here.  But she doesn’t need it as the song begins slowly but grows faster and faster with the crowd offering some extra percussion.  She plays some amazingly fast melodies as the song reaches its climax.

[READ: March 19, 2016] Moomin Volume 8

Moomin Book 8 and every subsequent book is made entirely of strips written and drawn by Lars Jansson.  These stories originally ran in the Evening News, London 1960-1975.

The story is much more reflective of Lars now.  His art is slightly different is subtle ways, but you can see him using his sown style rather than trying to exactly mimic Tove’s.

The chapters are “Moomin Family Robinson,” “Artists in Moominvalley,” “Sniff’s Holiday Camp” and “The Inspector Nephew”

“Moomin Family Robinson.” Despite evidence to the contrary Moomin find things incredibly dull.  He says he wants to do something big.  Finally someone suggests he sells off everything and lives on an island like Robinson Crusoe.  And so they set off to try to get shipwrecked.   They get aboard a proper ship set about causing some trouble.  But they realize they have to get cast off to be come proper castaways.  And then they decide to follow Robinson Crusoe to the letter of the book. It’s when they find a man they presume to be a savage Friday that things get even more ridiculous.  This may have been my least favorite chapter so far as it was a little too self-contained and dependent on another work.

“Artists in Moominvalley.” I enjoyed the way this plot was constructed. There is a photo contest in Moominvalley so Moominpappa is going to dust out his old bellows camera (several amusing strips worth of visual jokes there) to take a photo of the valley. Of course the photo is actually a mistake–a shot of the backs of the Moomins.  And it wins!  After it is published, people come to Moominvalley to photograph these white rocks. And soon they are inundated with goofy artist-types,

There’s lots of jokes about artists and artists subjects, and temperamental attitudes.  There’s a pompous artist whom Snork Maiden tries to impress. And of course, Moomonpappa wins a contest with his art as well.

“Sniff’s Holiday Camp” is one of those chapters in which Sniff works very hard to try to get something o nothing.  When he sees how much the Moomins enjoy the beach, he asks if he can build a small house on the beachfront.  And when Pappa says yes, he tells them he meant a hundred small beach houses.  Soon enough Sniff has a holiday camp.  But he soon finds out how much work is involved and how much a pain his guests are.  He finds himself fixing leaks and making food and all kinds of inconveniences.  Finally Sniff bails on the project which means it’s up to the Moomins to help the guests.  And they do their best to try to frighten them of. It take as natural disaster to get these people to leave.

“The Inspector’s Nephew” focuses on a character we’ve never seen before.  The inspector’s nephew is visiting the inspector for a while.  When we first meet him he is doing something offscreen–sowing his wild oats.  He wears a turtle neck and a scarf and is utterly not interested in the fawning Snork Maiden (ha).  At the same time, the inspector’s superintendent is coming to do an inspection, so hijinks ensue.  Inspired by the policeman’s power, the nephew decides he will now be a cop. And he is very, very strict (arresting someone for littering in her backyard).

So the inspector and Moomin try to create something to keep him busy.  It seemed pretty obvious until he happens upon some real criminals, which proves to be quite funny indeed.

It was good to take a break from Moominvalley for a bit, but I’m glad to be back.  It looks like the tenth volume has recently been published and that there may be a total of 18 when all is said and done.