SOUNDTRACK: BEDOUINE-Tiny Desk Concert #737 (April 30, 2018).
Bedouine has a lovely clear voice. She’s a genuine folk throwback treasure, without being retro. Her songs are remarkably simple and yet they are rich and almost enchanting. There is something about the way she sings that makes you want to listen, to lean in and hear what she has to say.
Her guitar playing is also very pretty. Again, a reasonably simple finger-picking style. but it is simultaneously precise and warm.
I saw her live recently and she held an entire club rapt despite being an opening act for two much louder bands. So who is Bedouine?
Azniv Korkejian is Bedouine, a singer and acoustic guitarist who echoes sounds from the 1960’s North American folk songwriters, but with vocal inflections that feel closer to Leonard Cohen than to Joni Mitchell or Joan Baez. This is as spare as music can be – songs stripped to their essence and just gorgeous.
Azniv Korkejian was born in Aleppo Syria. Her parents were Armenian and she spent her childhood in Saudi Arabia. But a green card lottery win found her family moving to Boston and Houston. Eventually she made her way to Los Angeles with important time spent in Austin, Texas and Savannah, Ga. The name she chose, Bedouine, reflects the traveler, the wanderer in her.
She plays three songs, just her and her guitar. The songs don’t diverge that much from each other. She even jokes that the second song is a different song than the first one, she promises.
“One of These Days” is a pretty song that seems so optimistic because you can feel the smile in her voice as she sings. But as with much of what she plays, there is a kind of melancholy to it.
“Solitary Daughter” opens with the same chord (and picking) but soon shifts textures. I love her delivery on this song in which she lets her voice drop a register and adds a kind of Laura Marling spoken word style to part of it.
The middle third is just stunning
I don’t need the walls
to bury my grave
I don’t need your company
to feel saved
I don’t need the sunlight
My curtains don’t draw
I don’t need objects
to keep or to pawn
I don’t want your pity
Concern or your scorn
I’m calm by my lonesome
I feel right at home
And when the wind blows
I get to dancing
My fun is the rhythm of air
When it’s prancing
“Nice and Quiet” is an intimate love song, but one tinged with sadness. It has such a charming and sweet melody, which really sums up her music pretty well.
[READ: March 5, 2018] The Prince and the Dressmaker
Jen Wang is back with an outstanding book. I absolutely love her drawing style. The look of her dressmaker, Frances, is just adorable. I love her clothes, I especially love her face, which is cartoony but not caricature-y. The prince’s nose is huge but not overtly comical and adds a distinctive element to the story.
But what makes this book stand out even more than the art is the story.
The Prince is holding a ball. When the scene pans back we see horse-drawn carriages. In other words, the time is sort of nebulously olde. The women are dressed fancy, with petticoats. There is much stress around town because all the young women wish to go to the ball.
A woman storms into a couture shop with a mud-covered dress. Her daughter decided to play in the dress and it is ruined. Can then makes something for her in time? Frances is available and the owner gives her the job. (more…)
