SOUNDTRACK: NENNY–Tiny Desk Meets AFROPUNK: #202/196 (May 1, 2021).
Tiny Desk Meets AFROPUNK was the opening event of AFROPUNK’s “Black Spring” festival. The virtual celebration, hosted by Jorge “Gitoo” Wright, highlighted outstanding talent in Afro-Latin and Afro-Caribbean music across the globe. Our showcase featured four artists who honored their homes and celebrated the art their heritage has inspired.
With warm maroon box braids nearly sweeping the floor and glitter adorning her eyes, NENNY’s presence demands full attention before she even opens her mouth. Dressed in a flowy, all-white outfit accented with a pastel checker pattern and surrounded by a matching four-piece band, the 18-year-old Portuguese singer-songwriter and rapper appears otherworldly, almost heavenly, as she harmonizes with electric guitar and jumps across the room, dancing with her entire body. NENNY first appeared on heads’ radar in 2019 with her single “Sushi.” She’s continued to impress with several more singles and the release of her debut project, 2020’s Aura.
I love that her band is all dressed with the same fabric–pants on the guitarist, shirt on the bass player and sash on the drummer. They play three songs. I have no idea what she’s rapping about, but the flow in Portuguese is pretty great.
Jonatas gets some really great guitar sounds in the solo of “Bússola” and I love the deep bass that Peterson gets.
When she talks you can tell just how young she is. She’s full of energy!
“Wave” opens with sampled acoustic guitar as Nenny sings this ballad. I like that she switches from rapping to singing and her singing voice is really good.
Keyboardist Gui Salgueiro starts “Tequila” with an acoustic guitar sample and Ariel plays some cool percussive sounds while a spoken word (in English) interview plays. When the song kicks in she’s rapping in Portuguese again and the electric guitar plays leads while the acoustic is still looping.
She really does seem to float around the room in this high energy Concert.
[READ: June 1, 2021] “Walkabout”
The June 11 issue of the new Yorker had several essays under the heading “Summer Movies.” Each one is a short piece in which the author (many of whom I probably didn’t know in 2007 but do know now) reflects on, well, summer movies.
It’s interesting to me that Roger Agnell wrote about Quest for Fire, a small French Canadian production (with full nudity) and Jeffrey Eugenides writes about Walkabout a small Australian movie (with full nudity).
[This movie is permanently lodged in my own consciousness because I was living in Boston when it came out and it screened at the Brattle Theater for seemingly ever. I often thought about seeing it, but never did].
Eugenides says that he saw it at his family’s yacht club (!). His father and brother were sailing so he and his mother went to this movie that they knew nothing about.
He summarizes the little I know about it. A father drives his children–a teenage daughter and young son–into the outback. He then sets the car and himself on fire.
The two kids are pretty much doomed. But they meet an Aboriginal man who is on a test of his manhood, known as Walkabout. He teaches them how to hunt and find water. Soon the Aboriginal man and the girl are cavorting naked, but later, when he performs a mating dance and she doesn’t respond, well, things go downhill.
Two suicides. A lengthy montage of Edenic, but fully frontal nudity. And all without my mother putting her hand over my eyes. [He was 12].
But mostly he took away the message of the film: civilization was evil, technology deracinating, and the only solution was a return to nature.
They essay ends in an amusing way when on the way home, his mother, who is sick of their old car ‘s oil light going on says “I’ll tell you one thing, I’m about ready to set this car on fire”
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