I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: OLIVER ‘TUKU’ MTUKUDZI-Tiny Desk Concert #307 (September 30, 2017).

The blurb says that this guitarist is a legend, which makes me feel bad that I’ve never heard of him.

He seemed so casual — sitting on a bar stool behind the Tiny Desk, acoustic guitar in hand — but when you hear that husky voice, you’ll know why he’s a legend. Oliver Mtukudzi, or “Tuku” as his fans lovingly call him, plays spirited music, born from the soul of Zimbabwe. He’s been recording since the late 1970s, with about as many albums as his age: 60.

But Mtukudzi’s new record reveals a heavier heart than before: Sarawoga is his first recording since the loss of his son Sam. He and Sam — also a guitar player, as well as a saxophonist — had a special relationship touring together. But in March 2010, Sam Mtukudzi was killed in a car crash at the age of 21. Oliver Mtukudzi recently told NPR’s Tell Me More that “the only way to console myself is to carry on doing what we loved doing most. Sitting down [to] cry and mourn — I think it would have killed me.”

All three songs, “Todii,” “Huroi” and “Haidyoreke” are all gentle, with Tuku’s guitar playing mellow meandering melodies and his gravelly voice being soothing at the same time.  It’s interesting that for “Todii,” a more upbeat song he is clearly singing not in English, but the chorus (sung by the backing musicians) is “What Shall We Do.”  The backing musicians are there for percussion–congas, and maracas–and backing vocals.  And their vocals are done in a traditional way.

[READ: January 2, 2017] Volcanoes

This Science Comics book was very different from the previous two.  It was designed as a fictional story full of with factual information.

At first I found this really weird and off-putting, but by the end, I thought the story was pretty compelling and that the factual information was presented in an interesting and informative way.  And what I realized afterward was not that I didn’t like the fictional aspect but that I really didn’t like the illustrations.

For some reason, Chad chose to have the main characters with very distinctive and unusual features.  Aurora, the main character had a line of black hair down her forehead.  Her sister, Luna, has really really big eyes and their guardian, Pallas, has a block of gray hair.  I found all of these choices to be unsettling and unpleasing to look at (although it does allow us to tell them apart quite easily).  However the volcano and other nature images were really fantastic.

So what’s the story?  Well, Aurora and her siblings Luna and Sol (so much bickering) set out with their guardian (their teacher) to look for anything that they can burn.  They live in the future–The Earth has been frozen for years and years and years.  They have machines that will determine the burning time of any object.  Anything that they can burn for a long enough time, they will take or let others know it is there. They are fuel mappers for their community (which is near Sacramento, California).  On their travels they will find that other communities have often gotten there first.

They ride on little motorcycle like speeders.  On one expedition, they happen upon a library.  The basement archives will be a great source of burnables.  Aurora is dismayed (as am I) at the thought of burning all of these books, but before they do, they scan all of the books onto their devices in order to preserve the information.

Aurora discovers a title about volcanoes called Fire in the Earth, and she spends all night reading and learning everything she can about them.  She becomes completely obsessed and is convinced that volcanoes can solve their warmth problems.  Her siblings are skeptical and Pallas is utterly dismissive, having long given up on any possible changes from their present situation.  But Aurora constantly reels of facts about volcanoes and their heat and how they could power the world.  Chad does a good job of filling the story with all kinds of facts about volcanoes and yet still keeping the story interesting.  He often uses the snarky brother as a foil so Aurora has to convince him with facts (which helps us learn them too).

As the story moves along the facts are presented as a faster pace.  Since we know that the team is searching for heat to keep their community alive, the intensity of the story (and the facts about volcanoes) become more intense.  And we genuinely worry about the characters while we learn about volcanoes.

Now, it’s a little weird that this story is set in the future, because there is obviously a lot of made up stuff.  At the same time this future world is not impossible, and yet it also seems unimaginable.  So that might take something away for the believability of the rest of the book–or possibly even take something away from the volcanic facts because the fictional section s much more compelling.   But that’s nitpicky–I was engaged with the story and learned a lot about volcanoes.  And that’s what a good book does.