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Archive for the ‘Hye-young Pyun’ Category

Hye-young Pyun–“Pieces” (Harper’s, February 2018)

Posted in Daler Mehndi, Death, Fish, Futility, Hye-young Pyun, Malkit Singh, Marriage Trouble, Red Baraat, Regrets, Sora Kim-Russell, Translation, Yuck! on March 10, 2018| Leave a Comment »

 SOUNDTRACK: RED BARAAT-Chaal Baby (2010).

Red Baraat is one of the few bands to play two Tiny Desk Concerts. I’ve also had the fun experience of seeing them live.

The band was founded by dhol player Sunny Jain as a way to bring Bangrha music to Brooklyn.  The band speaks to many disciplines and plays a wonderful mash up of styles.  So while the foundation is bangrha music, there’s elements of funk, go-go, Afro-Cuban, Brazilian, and jazz–all designed as one big party.

This debut album features the dhol, soprano and tenor sax, trumpets, trombones, sousaphone and drums and percussion.

To my ear the sousaphone is the grounding instrument–often standing out as the bass while the rest of the brass is playing melody or soloing.  And yes, sometimes the sousaphone gets a solo or two as well.

I love the vocal interjections–whether nonsense or actual words I can’t tell, but they are often fast and fun–good punctuation to the melody.  And the band knows melody.  The main riff of “Tunak Tunak Tun” is a blast.  And the vocal phrases are there to humanize the party.  I didn’t realize that this was a cover of Bhangra pop singer Daler Mehndi’s song of the same name, but that explains the catchiness.

In fact there are several covers on the album.  “Hey Jamalo” (a reworking of Malkit Singh’s popular “Hey Jamalo Tootak Tootak Tootiyan”) opens with a rousing introduction with a solo from dhol.  I rather wish there was more obvious dhol playing (which is so much fun to watch live) but it blends in pretty perfectly with the rest of the music and fits perfectly with the percussion solo in the middle of this song.

They play three Bollywood soundtrack hits “Dum Maro Dum,” “Samaro Mantra,” and “Mehndi Laga Ke Rakhna.” “Dum Maro Dum” has some cool percussion sounds an a real jazz feel–I love the way they stretch out the notes in the middle.

The word Baraat (Hindi: बरात) (Urdu: برات‬‎) means a groom’s wedding procession in North India, West India and Pakistan.  Unsurprisingly, they play two covers of traditional Indian wedding songs “Punjabi Wedding Song (Balle Balle),” which has some fun stop and start melodies and a real marching band kind of vibe and “Aaj Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai” which opens with some dramatic percussion before settling into some very pretty processional music.

But it’s not all raucous party music.  “Arcana” slows things down with a cool riff or two and nice accompaniment.

However, other songs like “Drum and Brass,” escape easy categorization with a clarinet reminiscent of Eastern Europe combined with percussion and melodies from Western Asia.

The title song “Chaal Baby” has some great chanting and dramatic horns moments which I saw described as “the Dirty Dozen Brass Band gone Bollywood” or belonging at a Punjabi football halftime show.

Speaking of marching band, there are a few moments on this album that felt kind of like a marching band to me.  “Mehndi Laga Ke Rakhna” was an example of a marching band vibe.  That kind of sound is hard to avoid (if indeed they are trying to) with that kind of instrumentation, although perhaps that is the inevitable comparison to processional music. My experience is that it works better live than on record.

But songs like the original “Baraat to Nowhere,” showcase a great original melody and some fun soloing.  Nearly every song features a solo by one or more members of the band allowing everyone to show his chops.  And back to that sousaphone–I’ve never heard anyone make sounds like that from an instrument before.  Great stuff.

“Samaro Mantra” the Bollywood song, ends the album on almost a down note.  The melody is somber, the drums are martial.  It’s kind of an odd choice for an otherwise upbeat and celebratory album.  But maybe it works as a calm down after an exiting wedding–time to go home everybody, party’s over.

Sunny Jain – dhol / drumset / percussion ; Rohin Khemani – tavil / doumbek ; Tomas Fujiwara – drumset ; Arun Luthra – soprano sax ; Mike Bomwell – tenor sax ; Sonny Singh – trumpet ; MiWi La Lupa – bass trumpet ; Smoota – trombone ; John Altieri – sousaphone

[READ: January 14, 2018] “Pieces”

I rather enjoyed Hye-Young Pyun’s previous story and was intrigued to read another one.  This one was translated by Sora Kim-Russell.

The previous one was thoughtful and disturbing and so is this one.

In this story, which is surprisingly unspecific about the characters, a man’s wife went missing a month earlier.  She slipped off off of a gorge and was presumed drowned.

He has just gotten a call from the police that a body part has been found and they would like him to identify it.  The part that was found was a right leg. (more…)

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Hye-young Pyun–“Caring for Plants” (New Yorker, July 10 & 17, 2017)

Posted in Canadian Music, Cars, Death, Excerpt, Futility, Greed, Hospitals, Hye-young Pyun, Marriage Trouble, Neil Young, New Yorker, Rheostatics, Sora Kim-Russell, The Mahones, Translation, tagged on August 23, 2017| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Calgary Folk Fest, Calgary, AB (July 1996).

1996 is an interesting year for Rheostatics Live recordings.  In addition to this Folk Festival show, there’s a show they do at their old high school.  And then there are many shows with them supporting The Tragically Hip.

This is an acoustic set from July 1996 at the Calgary Folk Festival – don’t know exact date. It features Martin Tielli, Dave Bidini and Tim Vesely. There is no drummer though Tim does play a bit on My First Rock Concert. Dave Allen plays violin on Shaved Head and RBC and Dan X of the Rhinos and played drums on RBC. It’s available here.

The introduction is a nice one: “My favorite eastern band… the Rheostatics.”  Dave jokes, playing like you’ve never seen them before.

Teh show (which is fairly short) sounds very different.  It’s all acoustic and they seems to have created special arrangements for the songs.

For the first few songs it’s just Martin, Dave and Tim.  They open with “Introducing Happiness.”  There’s a few sloppy moments near the end but otherwise it’s a very interesting version.  Tim says it’s “a song for my cats back home.”

Dave dedicates the second song (a delicate “Digital Beach”) to Graham James and his wife who drove out here “from somewhere in Saskatchewan to come and see us play and to take in the weekend and the festivities.”  He asks, “any other people from Saskatchewan?  We love that place.  We love Melville.

There’s a long intro for a mellow “Dope Fiends” that features some really great harmonies.  It’s very loose and fun with the guys shouting out lines. It feels like a real campfire version.

After the song Martin says, “It’s hard to sit down.”
Dave: “You like sitting down?”
Martin: “Not particularly.”
Dave: “Me neither”
Martin “I’m squirrely as hell.”
Dave: “We thought if we sat down for once it would be a whole new thing and catch on.  But we plan to get up later for the show-stopping finale.”

Dave plays “My First Rock Show” (one of the earliest times I’ve heard it played live).  He says, “This is a song about attending a rock festival.  This is folk festival.  The song is the first time I went to a rock festival.  It was at the CNE (Canadian National Exhibition).  As the song starts he says there’s a Janis Ian kind a feel happening.

After Dave sings the “Took away the car keys” he says, “Timmy, get on the drums there, brother.”

After the song Dave says that earlier today we saw a young fellow with a tattoo.   A Rheostatics tattoo! It’s not real, it’s magic marker.  But you gotta show it off!  You rubbed it off?  Aw!

“Clarie” goes out to James Meritetch (?)  There’s a kind a classical opening and after the solo Martin segues the song into Neil Young’s “L.A.”

And then the guests start coming.  Dave says “A friend of ours from Kingston Ontario, a noted member of the drinking band The Mahones,  Dave Allen the doctor is in the house….  well …park.  We haven’t played with Dave for four years–he was on Whale Music.  He says they didn’t expect to see hm but he showed up at the festival and “they lassooed him, as you do.”  They play great, moody acoustic “Shaved Head.”

Then Dan Michell, Dan X of The Rhinos from Guelph and Kitchener–everyone here from Ontario is on stage now.  They play an interesting folkie “Record Body Count” with a violin. There’s an electric guitar solo.  Interestingly, they end with an extra chorus. And then they are gone.

The announcer says, “The Rheostatics!” …   “A drum stick!” … “The Rheostatics!”

It’s one of their more interesting shows and quite fun.

[READ: July 6, 2017] “Caring for Plants”

This was a rather dark story translated from the Korean by Sora Kim-Russell.  At first I thought that there was no way this story could be as long as it was–it seemed almost over when it started.  But then by the end, I wanted it to go on for many pages more.

The story opens with Oghi in the hospital.  He has been there for 8 days since the car accident.  His wife died in the accident and he was badly mangled.  He cannot speak, he is in incredible pain and is clinging to life thanks to an IV drip.  His face looks like a waffle stuck to the iron–that’s how his wife would have described it.  And worst of all is that he accident was his fault.

It took six months before he could go home. His mother-in-law had been taking care of his wife’s garden (the only thing his wife loved taking care of).  Since he cannot speak, his mother-in-law is more or less doing whatever she wants in the house–going through the jewelry and taking what she wants–things he doesn’t even recognize. (more…)

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