SOUNDTRACK: SOFIA REI-GlobalFEST Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #133/140 (January 11, 2021).
GlobalFEST is an annual event, held in New York City, in which bands from all over the world have an opportunity to showcase their music to an American audience. I’ve never been, and it sounds a little exhausting, but it also sounds really fun.
The Tiny Desk is teaming up with globalFEST this year for a thrilling virtual music festival: Tiny Desk Meets globalFEST. The online fest includes four nights of concerts featuring 16 bands from all over the world.
Given the pandemic’s challenges and the hardening of international borders, NPR Music and globalFEST is moving from the nightclub to your screen of choice and sharing this festival with the world. Each night, we’ll present four artists in intimate settings (often behind desks donning globes), and it’s all hosted by African superstar Angélique Kidjo, who performed at the inaugural edition of globalFEST in 2004.
The third band on the first night is Sofia Rei. Rei is
an award-winning Argentine vocalist and songwriter [who] blends South American folk traditions with experimental pop and electronic music. That mix of tradition and modernity extends to her surroundings, which features traditional iconography, exuberant plants and looping pedals.
Rei plays three songs. “Un Mismo Cielo” (The Same Sky) opens with her looping her voice. Big electronic drums are added and then JC Maillard is messing around with their electronics to create interesting sounds and textures. After a quiet introduction, Jorge Glem adds lovely cuatro and Leo Genovese plays a trippy electronic flute-sounding keyboard solo. I enjoy watching Maillard playing the electronic melodies on the keys and then the quick switch to bass guitar for a funky riff.
“Negro Sobre Blanco” (Black On White) is about putting things into perspective. Rei picks up the charango as the drums echo in. The charango plays a delightful echoing melody. Ana Carmela Rodriguez Contramaestre sings backing vocals and platys percussion. The middle jam with some wild electronics then Maillard picks up guitar a plays kind of spaghetti western melody. Then the song returns to the original melody with an even fuller sound.
Saving the best for last, Jorge Glem takes an amazing solo on the cuatro. His hands move so fast and he simultaneously plays high chords along with percussive strumming. At the end of the solo he does so fascinating strumming with his fingernails to make a trippy psychedelic sound. It’s phenomenal.
The set ends with “Escarabajo Digital” (Digital Beetle), a fun dancing song. The juxtaposition of the fast cuatro with the grooving bassline is fantastic.
I enjoyed this set a lot and want to hear more from her (and Glem who has several of his own albums out).
[READ: January 11, 2021] Okay, Okay, Okay
This story is set around Adamastor University in South Africa. The focus is on Simon, a former teacher (now an administrator) and his family. Also his assistant Viwe (and his family). There’s also Vida, a sound technician for live theater. She is unrelated to them but she gets pulled into their drama.
The story initially seems to be about how Simon (the “Head of Effective Communication”) is desperately hoping to get promoted into a more plum position. He is currently in a very good position financially, although his former colleagues feel like he threw his soul away when he became an admin. But the story grows bigger–tackling University policies as well as racism and sexism in South Africa.
But the book opens on Vida. Vida is a sound engineer. She is familiar with University politics because she has been to a few of Professor Bruno Viljoen’s academic parties. Viljoen is head of the drama department and invited Vida along because she has done sound work for them.
The one thing I didn’t care for in this book was some of the younger characters occasional throwing in text speak (WTF, LOL). While those are certainly things people of that age might say (although Vida is in her 40s), it was jarring to see text speak in a character’s thought process:
A dinner party full of academics: WTF, she’d had more fun driving her car around with nowhere to go.
Why not write it out? It just seemed odd.
Aside from that, Vida is a wonderful character–no nonsense, takes no crap from anyone. She loves sound and is great at her job. She also has two dogs and two cats and she is crazy about them. There’s at least five times when she speaks her mind and it’s terrific.
Cecily is Simon’s daughter. She is currently taking a class with Boris. He is, everyone agrees, a silver fox. Even younger girls swoon for him. But Cecily has known him since she was little and she’s not impressed.
As this class opens, Boris is encouraging them to dig into their past to present a monologue.
Half the people in this class probably have slave ancestry. That blood flows in your veins. You are slaves.
Immediately a student raises her hand:
I just want to say that it gives me offense when you, a settler, say that I, whose ancestors are buried here, am a slave. “Slave” implies that a person is not a person–not a mother, a lover, a human being.
After class Bruno asks Cecily what that was all about. She says that students are very sensitive these days so just mind what he says. He then offers to set her up with his nephew–a rather handsome fellow who looks like “a Puerto Rican Ken doll.”
In another class, Lori (a professor for thirty year) is reprimanded by her students for not putting her notes online: “That’s not my learning style. You need to accommodate different learning styles.”
Lori was the faculty advisor to Miriam, Simon’s now-deceased wife. Her paper was titled Olive Schreiner and the Creative Dilemma. I’d never heard of Olive Schreiner, but the book compared her to a South African George Eliot, a great writer who had a giant book to wrote but who, unlike Eliot, died before she could finish it.
Although Miriam is dead, her presence is very strong in this book. Miriam’s life is shown in small snippets–flashbacks to what she was like when she met Simon and when she had Cecily. Her heart often fluttered and made her feel unstable. She had had lots of tests but they all came back fine and she was deemed a bit of a hypochondriac. Her husband and some of his medical friends all seemed to ignore her problems. She died one day in the kitchen in Cecily’s arms.
Another woman, Rhoda (whose actual role I’m unclear about) talks to Lori about Miriam’s paper topic. She says that there may be some research using Miriam’s notes and Miriam’s life about the underdiagnosis of heart conditions among women,
In the medical mind, a woman’s heart is never broken, I mean, in the sense that women’s symptoms are often pooh-poohed when they are presented.
Simon had taken on the new job for much more money to build this big house for all of them. But now with Miriam dead and Cecily in college, it was too much house. The only person left was their adopted son Loyiso. Loyiso has a fascinating back story and is also pretty instrumental later on.
Another member of the University community is Roland. Roland is an older man, essentially retired, but who helped out wherever he could. The University frowned on his assistance because he was not a formal teacher (and therefore did not exist, so could not be reprimanded). But he was very kind and was good friends with Simon and Miriam.
Kort was the vice-chancellor of the school, one of the highest ranking member of the board. Simon was his right hand man. Simon imagined this would lead to a better job, but the school board was pretty clear that they didn’t need any more old white men in positions of power. Nevertheless, Simon would have made an excellent higher up, because he actually read the long boring reports and he genuinely cared about the University.
Viwe Nonjinge is Simon’s assistant. He is smart and always in a good mood–they mutually respect each other. Viwe’s big struggle right now is that he had gotten his girlfriend pregnant and needed a lot of money to provide for them.
Viwe’s younger sister Siphokazi had been accepted to the University to study economics. Her friend Ayanda was also going. Viwe was proud of both of them. But, and this is something I don’t quite get, both of them had gotten an “assisted pass” from the University and “if you graduated with one you couldn’t enrol for a postgraduate degree and if you were an undergraduate you lost your right to stay in the residences.” This presented a terrible problem for them as they had nowhere to live and couldn’t admit it to their parents.
The University had a few other policies that I don’t quite understand as I don’t believe we have anything like them here. They also have the Centre for Vulnerable Students (CVS). This was a place where students went for help–academic, financial, personal. Roland loved to volunteer there, he wanted to help people . Butu the CVS was always understaffed.
Lately Simon’s job had been defending the University. The student in Bruno’s class had complained about the slave comment and now Simon had to cover the school’s butt. Similarly, Lori has been asked to apologize to the student who complained about learning styles. Simon’s job was to make the professors feel less terrible about conceding to the students. They still resent Simon for it.
There’s a lot of threads to follow but they come together pretty easily and in some ways very amusingly.
Cecily is sent to assist Vida on a camus production. Cecily is terrible and Vida is harsh with her. But before Vida can say much, Simon walks in with Kort and they try to take over the stage for a microphone check. Vida will have none of this. She doesn’t care who they are, they don’t interrupt her sound check. In an interesting full circle, it was this attitude that got her fired from a potentially high paying gig. She was great at her job, but she rubbed people the wrong way. Because of this she was almost broke and therefore had to take more underpaying and unsatisfying jobs from the University.
While Vida is fuming, Cecily explains that Simon is her father. She’s mad at him for something or other which makes Vida sympathetic. Vida offers to drive her home. When they get there, Cecily asks if she can stay with Via for a a few hours since the house is empty.
Bruno’s nephew Daniel had asked out Cecily for that evening. Bruno is currently dating a younger woman, Freya, who finds Daniel far more interesting than bruno. On the night that Cecily is supposed to get together with Daniel, Freya shows up and basically holds him as a sexual hostage. Cecily find out and is devastated. She winds up crashing with Vida, who is happy to have the company.
In another connection, Siphokazi went to the CVS office to complain about her living situation. Since she couldn’t live on campus, she and Ayanda had started living with some questionable guys. I found this plotline a little unbelievable. That these girls could not be so naive. But maybe they are. The men are terrible to them–take their things and apparently have (or try to) have sex with them. Siphokazi has had enough. But when she tries to get help from the University, budget cuts have closed all sources of assistance. Siphokazi feels she has run out of options. With very dramatic results. I was genuinely shocked by what happend.
When students find out what happened with Siphokazi, they grow outraged. Ayanda complains that the University essentially raped her and Siphokazi. When other students get word of her anger, they start to add their own demands until a full-blown violent protest begins. (It was very disconcerting to read this while insurrectionists were trying to destroy the Capitol building).
The protestors block of roads, set tires on fire and ultimately barricade senior members in a room where they issue demands.
Things get pretty tense and rather scary.
Meanwhile, simon is under attack from the University because he once used the example “The students are revolting” to show how a word could have two meanings. But that quote was taken out of context and put on the front page. While all of the unrest at the school was going on, this was very bad for them indeed. They basically say he needs to issue a retraction or take early retirement.
With him gone, Kort would be the only white male face in this team.
In another University task force, Lori is criticized for her behavior as well.
They tell her
This might be a good moment to switch to thinking about how we might sensitize ourselves more to the way students are feeling. Are we, for example, greeting them respectfully, recognizing them as fellow knowledge workers?
Lori says she’s been teaching for thirty years and cant remember all of their blasted names
They interrupt her
A phrase like “Their blasted names” needs to be interrogated; also, your belief that you are more important than them, that your intellectual processes and your timetable are more important than theirs. In the workshops I’ve had, students say they feel that some lecturers act as if they know more than them, as if they are authorities in their subjects.
She replies: “I am and I do. That’s what makes this a University.” Then she quits.
When Simon gets home, he tries to unwind but very soon, a mob, complete with media, has comes to his door. He’s pretty freaked out until Cecily and Vida come in to save him (Cecily knows a back entrance obviously).
Vida offers to host Simon for a few days until the media storm dies down.
There’s still so much more going on, it’s hard to believe how much was packed into this story. Lots of humor, but genuinely frightening and sad moments too.
There’s some other great characters too, like Larissa, Vida’s crazy neighbor who constantly calls Vida a whore and throws Bible quotes at her. Vida’s animals are characters unto themselves, and of course Vida’s experiences with various people working in theatres goes quite a long way for comic relief.
There’s even a later scene where a very early seemingly throwaway scene ties back to show that Roland and Vida had actually encountered each other a few years earlier.
And of course when Vida does get another job, this time doing sound for Jesus Christ Superstar. The whole short chapter about this was terrific.
I really enjoyed this book a lot and it continues my streak of great South African books.
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