SOUNDTRACK: DEBO BAND-“Ney Ney Weleba” (Field Recordings, May 16, 2012).
This is yet another Field Recording [Debo Band: Ethiopian Funk On A Muggy Afternoon] filmed during SXSW at the patio of Joe’s Crab Shack.
I was not familiar with Debo Band. They are led by Ethiopian-American saxophonist Danny Mekonnen and fronted by magnetic singer Bruck Tesfaye. The group infuses its dance-friendly songs with the Ethiopian pop and funk music of the 1960s and ’70s.
Compared to a dark club full of dancing fans, a muggy Austin afternoon with the sun peeking out over our isolated spot at Joe’s Crab Shack isn’t the ideal setting for a Debo Band performance. But once the group began digging into “Ney Ney Weleba” — a classic song by Alemayehu Eshete — it didn’t take long to get caught up in Debo Band’s deep, infectious groove.
This is a bizarre song to write about because there are just so many elements and so many things going on. Lead accordion, violin, horns and lyrics in Amharic. But with guitar, bass and drums and a rocking beat.
This vibrant 11-member group collects its influences like trading cards: It finds common ground in jazz, classic soul, psychedelic rock and New Orleans party bands, playing with song forms, manipulating rhythms and finding space for improvisation.
Plus, the fact that the band is signed to Sub Pop — a label more known for indie-rock and pop — represents something of a statement. Debo Band is a rock group first and foremost, and one that can bring joyful intensity to listeners who might not otherwise naturally gravitate to this music. It’s a winning cross-cultural stew of sounds that grabs you instantly, and ought to have you bobbing along and sweaty in no time.
The whole song lurches along with a really fun beat, and then there’s a trumpet solo and a very psychedelic echoing guitar solo. It ends with a rocking jam from the two saxes and then a re-visitation of the opening.
I have no idea what the song is about but I like it.
[READ: November 2008] “It All Gets Quite Tricky”
I thought I had read everything that David Foster Wallace had published in Harper’s but as I was going through back issues, I found this little thing. It’s basically correspondence between Wallace and some students.
These letters were written about in the David Foster Wallace Reader.
Anne Fadiman’s Afterword about the State Fair (which these letters reference) in the book is my favorite because she talks about using the essay in her classes. She focuses on just one section (the one about food) and asks them to really parse out its structure and content. She also says that one student got to write to DFW each semester and that he would answer their questions for him. His letters always ended with, “Tally Ho, David Wallace.”
The first question came from Alexander Borinsky: Have you ever not written something for fear the subject might read it?
He says that when he wrote the State Fair piece, he believed it was neutral and sympathetic. But when the Harper’s version came out he got hate mail, third-party hate mail sent to area newspapers. Here’s this native who’s gone all East Coast and uptown now coming back and making fun of his roots. People were upset about the references to people being fat (which was true). So after that I got more sensitive to the reactions of subjects.
He says a writer’s primary allegiance is to the reader not the subject. A reader can detect dishonesty (whether conscious from the writer or not).
On the other hand, life is short and hard and it seems like good policy to inflict the absolute minimum pain/humiliation on other people as we schlep through the day.
He says he backed out of book reviews because the book was simply bad and he did not want to waste a week and 750 words skewering someone. He’s not sure if it was “right” but he just couldn’t do it.
The second by Daniel Fromson is a similar question: How does one find a balance between mocking one’s target and mocking oneself.
He’s not sure there is a balance or that a formula exists for it.
Most of what I feel I know about the issue comes from teaching–it’s easier to see problems like this in student work than one’s own.
Critical and comic often means a degree of mocking–it sets up the narrator persona problem–the Asshole problem. Try t overcome that by really coming across as someone trying to Tell the Truth.
The problem is that it usually takes two or three rambling incoherent drafts even to start to have any idea what the root project and content of any given piece ought to be.
It’s wonderful how much thought he gives to these questions. And amusing that he signs off both of them with “Tally ho.”
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