SOUNDTRACK: NILÜFER YANYA-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #54 (July 22, 2020).
Nilüfer Yanya is a pretty mesmerizing singer. I feel lucky to have seen her live and would like to see her again.
In the meantime, this Tiny Desk (Home) Concert will have to do.
There’s something unique about the way Yanya constructs songs. And her singing voice is really unlike anyone else’s that I’ve heard.
For this Tiny Desk (Home) Concert, she plays four songs. Three from her 2019 album and one new one. All four are different from when she played Tiny Desk last year.
In her previous Tiny Desk Concert and when I saw her live, she had a full band. But for this one, it’s just her guitar and her voice.
For “Heat Rises,” she plays spare guitar lines and quiet chords as she sings in her unique style. As the song moves along she adds high notes to the chords–fleshing things out in a subtle but effective way.
After performing “Heat Rises,” Nilüfer Yanya pauses to say a few things about herself, something we’ve been asking artists to do for these Tiny Desk (home) concerts.
“One of the things that’s been on my mind a lot is the racism and violence and injustice going on towards Black people and people of color, not only in America but here in the U.K. and all over the world. As a person of mixed heritage” — Nilüfer’s father is Turkish and her mother is of Irish and Barbadian descent — “this issue is something close to my heart.” Nilüfer urges us all to see the hurt being done. It’s the only way forward.
She then plays “Paralyzed,” a song that she says relates to the issue. She’s never played it live before. The song has a cool four note chord progression followed by a sinister feeling five note riff.
Bob Boilen writes: “I hear these words so differently now:”
I hear strained screams from Heaven singin’
“save me”
This can’t be okay
Shadow’s lyin’ here
And it’s blocking out the light
(I am paralyzed)
The above part of the song turns musically bright as she sings those dark lyrics.
“Day 7” is the new song. She sings in a similar style to the one she uses on “Baby Luv” where she sings with an accent or inflection that is impossible to place but is very compelling. This song also features a simple but unusual riff as she builds the song using all of the neck of her guitar (the chords she plays during the “go go” section are so interesting).
She ends the set with the final track from her album, “Heavyweight Champion of the Year.” This is the only song from this set that she played when I saw her. I was blown away by the song when I saw her live because the song mixed quiet and range perfectly. It’s more subtle here and demands that you listen closely to the words.
[READ: July 20, 2020] “Nobody’s Business”
I’ve wanted to read more from Jhumpa Lahiri for years–she’s yet another writer who I feel like I need more stories from. And I really liked this story a lot.
The story is written in the third person. It’s about a woman named Sang. She is living in Boston, having just dropped out of a graduate program from Harvard. Sang has two roommates, Paul and Heather.
What was so interesting about the way that it was written is that it seems to be Sang’s story. She is, after all, the person with all the action. But by the end of the story it becomes more about Paul. I thought that shift of perspective was quite engaging.
Sang is Bengali and every so often she would receive a call from a Bengali man who was courting her. These men had heard that she was pretty and smart and unmarried at thirty, so they were trying to arrange something with her. Sang was never rude to these men. She even met some of them. But Sang was very serious about her boyfriend, Farouk, who was presently in Cairo. That’s not a ruse, she is really dating him.
Heather was jealous of the attention Sang received. She had been “bitterly single” for five years.
Lahiri fully fleshes out the story of Sang’s arrival and how she made the place her own. The story is quite long (17 New Yorker pages) and there’s a lot of well-plotted detail.
Paul was an academic–studying for his PhD exam in Literature. He had been single for a long time. He may have had a crush on sang, but he would never do anything. He just made sure he was around when she was.
After a few weeks they met her boyfriend, Farouk. He was aloof and superior but not intimidating. Now that he had returned, Sang was rarely at home. When she wasn’t with him, she did things for him. She proofread his papers, made doctor appointments, priced tiles for his apartment.
Then things started to get peculiar. Sang arrived home in the middle of the night in a taxi. Farouk had picked her up earlier, but she returned alone. Paul assumed it was a fight, but that weekend, Farouk was there eating pancakes.
And yet, as Thanksgiving approached, there were loud arguments that Paul couldn’t help but overhear. Sang resented that she couldn’t sleep at his place (he can’t sleep when she’s there). And was even angrier that he couldn’t be bothered to drive her home. She began seeing Farouk less.
But just before winter break, they were back together. However, Farouk wouldn’t come into the apartment–he’d just honk his car horn and Sang would go running.
Sang went to London to visit her sister for winter break. During that time, a woman named Deidre called for Sang. Paul said she wasn’t there and Deidre asked if Sang was Farouk’s cousin. When Paul said no, Deidre cried and muttered “I love him” before hanging up.
Deirdre called again the next day. When Paul told her that Sang and Farouk had been together for three years, Deirdre told him that she and Farouk had been seeing each other for a year and a half.
When Sang returned, Paul didn’t mention the phone call. He left Sang a note that a Deirdre had called but she didn’t know a Deirdre and there was no forwarding number. Sang ignored the message. Deirdre called a few days later. She told Sang that she was a friend of Farouk’s. But Sang knew he didn’t have any friends. So she started asking Paul for more details about his calls with Deirdre,
Paul was embarrassed at not saying anything more so he revealed as little as possible. This just seemed to make Sang mad.
The next day Sang told Paul that Deirdre was a friend of Farouk’s–an old friend who was trying to get in touch with him again since he had moved. Paul sad she didn’t need to tell him this, but she insisted and it soon became evident that she assumed he was lying to her because liked her. She called him pathetic.
Now it was Paul’s turn to be angry. He wanted to set things straight so he called Deirdre and insisted that she tell the truth. She said she would call him later that night. So Paul made sure that Sang was home and insisted that Sang listen on the other line when Deirdre called.
There’s so many great details as the story is setup and the ending is pretty dynamic too.
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