I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: MAGOS HERRERA AND BROOKLYN RIDER-Tiny Desk Concert #849 (May 15, 2019).

Brooklyn Rider was on a Tiny Desk nearly a decade ago.  My main take away was how poorly it was lit.  I enjoyed them for their multicultural take on classical music.  For this Tiny Desk, they team up with Mexican singer Magos Herrera (whom I’ve never heard of).

When the intrepid string quartet known as Brooklyn Rider first visited the Tiny Desk nine years ago, no one knew what the musicians might play. They’re as likely to trot out an Asian folk tune as they are a string quartet by Beethoven, or one of their own compositions.

For this visit though, we knew exactly what was on tap. The band, fronted by the smoky-voiced Magos Herrera and backed by percussionist Mathias Kunzli, performed three songs from the album Dreamers, a collection steeped in Latin American traditions.

The versatile Mexican singer, who has never sounded more expressive, notes that these songs emerge from struggle.

She says, “Although there is a lot of light and usually I don’t sing that early, my heart is warm and expanding.”

The first song, Gilberto Gil’s bossa nova-inspired “Eu vim da Bahia” is “a tribute to his home state. He released it in 1965 as Brazil’s military dictatorship took charge.”  I love that between the heart-felt words, there is a gorgeous instrumental passage from the quartet (Johnny Gandelsman and Colin Jacobsen: violins; Nicholas Cords: viola; Michael Nicolas: cello).

She says the songs transcend dark times with the values of their words.  Gil wrote the tune a year before the dictatorship was installed in Brazil

The atmospheric, flamenco-tinged “La Aurora de Nueva York,” composed by Vicente Amigo, has lyrics from a poem written by Federico García Lorca, the Spanish poet who wrote it while he was in residence in New York in the 1920s.  She says “A Poet in New York is my favorite book” and this poem is the most iconic poem from the book.  Her voice is smoky and impassioned.  There’s some wonderful pizzicato from the quartet.  There’s some lovely solo moments from the violins and some spectacular percussion sounds from Mathias Kunzli.

García Lorca, who fell to assassins during the Spanish Civil War in 1936.

The final track “Balderrama,” by the Argentine folk legend Gustavo Leguizamón, ruminates on a café which served as a safe haven for artists to talk about their work.

One of the members of Brooklyn Rider says that when they talked about this project, they wondered which songs to do.  Which would best represent beauty in the face of difficult circumstances–an antidote to cynicism.  What is most precious and beautiful to a culture.

This song and all of them certainly do that.

[READ: May 16, 2019] “The Presentation on Egypt”

I have enjoyed everything I’ve read by Bordas.  And I really enjoyed this one.  A story would have to be good if the apparent main character has your name and–before committing suicide–has to pull the plug on a brain-dead man with your son’s name.  [That was painful to read].

The story opens with Paul telling the wife of the brain-dead man that he is completely brain-dead.  Unlike on TV, he wasn’t going to magically snap out of it.  When the wife finally agreed to pull the plug and the main died, Paul went home, had a cigarette, and hanged himself.

Paul had a wife and a daughter (if either one had my wife or daughter’s name, I would have had to give Bordas a call).  Paul hanged himself in the laundry room, perhaps knowing that his daughter would never go in there.

Danielle was nine and knew everything about everything.  She was watching a show about sharks and making up things as the narrator spoke : “Sharks use the bones of the humans they eat to build houses.”  Danielle had a presentation on Egypt that day.  She wanted to wear her sweatshirt with the pyramids on it, but it was in the laundry room.   Her mom suggested she go into the laundry room to get the sweatshirt herself.

I loved this:

Anna almost suggested that, if Danielle knew so much about places like Egypt and the Gulf of Mexico, she could probably locate the laundry room and retrieve her pyramid sweatshirt from the dryer herself, but something she would later think of as higher-order maternal instinct locked the words at the base of her throat and made her stick out her tongue instead.  Danielle told her how childish that was.

Anna went into the laundry room herself and found Paul.  She didn’t scream–she instantaneously decided to keep this hidden from her daughter.

Danielle went to school, but in the middle of the day (before her presentation) she was called home because her father was sick.  There’s some nice moments at school–like when she hides her father’s lighter from her teacher and when her “boyfriend” comes to her defense.  The boyfriend was Cesar.  Most people were intimidated by her, but Cesar wasn’t so he became her boyfriend.

After a brief look at Danielle’s stomach issues (amusing and scary at the same time) and the explanation that her father had had a heart attack, the story jumps decades ahead.

Danielle moved out young, but not to go to college.  She moved home after every break up.  But this last one (with her boss at the hotel where she was a clerk) was a big one and Danielle crashed hard on Anna’s couch.

With all of that background, the bulk of the story is actually set at this time–Danielle is basically grown up and Anna is willing to care for her (and still holding on to the lie of Paul’s suicide).  Anna constantly monitors Danielle’s language for suicidal thoughts, but over the years Danielle has become a hypochondriac about her heart instead.

Danielle eventually calls Cesar–they are still friends even though he is married–and they talk about her breakup.  There’s an amusing part in which Danielle says that people’s jobs become their lives–her ex was always talking in hotel metaphors.  She asks if Cesar talks in carpentry metaphors like “That guy only knows to cut along the grain” or “You have to wait for the sawdust to settle.”

He scoffs at this.  Then she says, “Didn’t Jesus rock the carpentry metaphors?”

He responds, “Maybe he rocks them in the in the book, I haven’t read the whole thing, but I’m telling you, if that’s the case, the writers made him do it.  Jesus himself never thought in carpentry metaphors.

The story doesn’t end exactly.  I mean, it does, but not in a grand conclusion, just in a continuation of life. And that’s fine.  It’s the gettig there that is the most enjoyable part.

I definitely want to read more form Bordas.