I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: May 10, 2018] tUnE-yArDs

When I first saw tUnE-yArDs on a Tiny Desk I was really impressed by Merrill Garbus’ set up.  I loved that she looped things so much–she may have been my first real exposure to that much looping.

I also loved that she played a kind of modified ukulele.  And I really liked her voice which was so unexpected for someone who looked like she does.  When I first heard them I assumed she was African American.

I loved the album w h o k i l l, but hadn’t really heard that much from them since.  There’s a new song that WXPN has been playing “Look at Your Hands” which I liked, but I didn’t hear anything else from the album.

So based on the Tiny Desk, tUnE-yArDs had been very high on my list of bands to see.  But that was many years earlier.  I still had high expectations and I found myself not exactly disappointed but like something of an outsider at the show.  Because while I didn’t know that much of her new music, the rest of the crowd knew everything and danced accordingly.

I had hoped to get tickets to see her club show at Boot & Saddle.  I don’t know how different that small show was but this show was simultaneously large and small.

I had heard that there were previously saxophones, background vocalists and percussionists on stage with her.  For this show there was only Hamir Atwal on drums and her musical partner Nate Brenner.

The stage set up was sparse: a big white backdrop and Garbus on a raised platform.  The drums on her right, the bass on her left.

Garbus still loops with abandon.  Indeed, Shara Nova made a comment about Garbus’ feet.  The key to Garbus looping (and there was plenty), is that she does a lot of the work with her feet.  However, there was a monitor in front of her feet so you couldn’t watch what she was doing up there.  That kinda stunk.

But she had a ton of energy.  She played a small drum pad a modified ukulele and those loop pedals.  She danced around on her platform and occasionally, briefly came down to the audience and danced a bit before heading back to her station.

Garbus and crew recreated three songs from the new album.  And everyone around me sang along.

I thought that Nate Brenner’s bass was too loud in the mix, but when he played a high riff it sounded great.

I loved hearing “Look At Your Hands” live where the dynamic was seven more dramatic than on record.

She played only one song from Nicki Nack, the catchy and pointed (like nearly every other songs) “Water Fountain.”

And then it was on to the songs from Who Kill that I was really excited to hear: “Es-So ” and “Powa.”

I had heard a lot about her new album which explores the nature of her relationship to African culture.  I’d always wondered about her voice and her intonations, just how African it sounds.  So in a recent interview in GQ she says:

When I was in college I studied Kiswahili, translating plays from Swahili into English and taking lots of African Studies classes and African American literature classes. I went to Kenya and was just so disgusted by the role of white people in colonial history—and, most importantly, present day postcolonial dynamics—that I just shut down. For years I felt like, “There’s no way I can make the music that I want to, which is all influenced by black music.” Bird-Brains, the first tUnE-yArDs album, was almost called White Guilt. So from the beginning of tUnE-yArDs, I have been grappling really awkwardly with that. The song “Jamaican,” a lot of it was me talking to myself: What’s going on here? Do you have a right [to make this]? Why is this music coming out of me? What will people think?

She grapples with serious issues of white guilt and colonization  (like the song “Colonizer”).  These songs are powerful and thoughtful.  And yet for the most part they are incredibly dancey.

In that interview she said:

I want people to dance. Really. That seems so simplistic an answer, but I really value the ceremony of bringing people together into a specific space and not thinking so much. [laughs] Ironically. I know there’s a lot to think about with this music, but when essentials of music take over… seeing people be literally on the same wavelength? It’s super powerful. I felt like making people dance was the right thing.

The audience enjoyed the show tremendously and there was ample dancing.  and I enjoyed hearing her make the music, but  I never quite felt on the same wavelength as everyone else.  Her appropriations of African culture (even how she danced) made me unconformable.  I knew what she was trying to address, but the music was more in my head than in my body.,

Knowing that she has bona-fides in the area makes things better, but can’t change the way I felt about the show.

Having said that, the encore of “Bizness” was totally killer.

This is a setlist from a few shows earlier, but I think it’s pretty spot on.

1. Honesty*
2. Look at Your Hands*
3. ABC 123*
4. Water Fountain
5. Es-So
6. Powa
7. Colonizer*
8. Coast to Coast*
9. Gangsta
10. Heart Attack*
11. Encore
12. Hammer*
13. Bizness