SOUNDTRACK: NUBYA GARCIA-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #81 (September 16, 2020).
Nubya Garcis is a jazz saxophonist and this Tiny Desk (Home) Concert is unlike any other thus far.
Look to the left of Nubya Garcia’s Tiny Desk (home) concert and you’ll see a hanging plant swaying right above the keys. It never stops moving during the next 23 minutes, and it’s for a bizarre reason. Garcia’s (home) concert took place on a boat — a first in Tiny Desk history.
Garcia and her band are at Soup Studio, a recording facility built on a decommissioned floating lighthouse moored on the River Thames. It’s also where Garcia recorded her excellent new album, SOURCE. This set features three songs from the record; the title track starts it off with a reggae, dub vibe.
“Source” opens with some great low end from Daniel Casmir’s double bass. The main melody comes from Joe Armon-Jones’s simple keyboard hits. Sam Jones makes the drums almost a lead instrument as well, as he plays a lot of cymbals and interesting fills.
There are two backing singers for these songs. Richie Seivwright and Cassie Kinoshi add some ahhs and oohs as needed. They’re not intrusive and add a human element to Garcia’s otehriwse otherworldly saxophone soloing.
At around eight minutes, the singers do a lot of woohing and scatting which I find less interesting than the rest of the band does.
After nearly 12 minutes, everything slows down and Casmir does a bass solo as the introduction to “Pace.” Armon-Jones plays piano with his right hand keyboards with his left to lay down a complex musical tapestry which Garcia weaves her saxophone all over. Armon-Jones also gets a quiet piano solo, then the song takes off again, crashing to a wild conclusion with frenetic drumming and piano.
“Boundless Beings” opens with a slow saxophone introduction and the bass matching the notes. This song is only two minutes, and I assume that’s because time runs out on her video or her session.
[READ: September 15, 2020] “Whose Little Girl Are You?”
I had read Fox’s Desperate Characters after three authors that I like all championed it. S. knows of Paula Fox as a children’s author. I had no idea she had the kind of crazy childhood that this memoir lets on. Indeed, this is an excerpt from her memoir Borrowed Finery. And, while I’ve no doubt this is all true. It is as exciting (and horrifying) as fiction.
When Paula was born her parents deposited her at an orphanage. Paula’s mother Elise was a panicked nineteen-year-old and wanted to get rid of her as quickly as possible. Her father Paul brought her to a Manhattan foundling house. She was taken in by the Reverend Elwood Corning who raised her and whom she called Uncle Elwood.
Her maternal grandmother came to New York from Cuba and learned of her whereabouts. She intended to take her back home to Cuba with her, but her grandmother worked as a companion to a rich old cousin and could not possibly look after a baby, so Paula stayed with Uncle Elwood.
When she was about five, her father came to see her. He had a large box which he dropped with a thud. He looked at her and said “‘There you are,'”\ as if I’d been missing for such along time that he’d almost given up searching for me.” The box contained a whole host of books. The next morning when Paula woke up he was not there anymore.
Later that year Uncle Elwood drove her to Provincetown where her parents were living. The main memory she took from that visit (because all she ever did was visit her parents) was that she had found a large steamer trunk and was exploring it when her mother walked in and yelled, “What are you doing?” And then, “Don’t cry! Don’t you dare cry!”
A year later they were living in New York City and Paula visited them for a few hours. When her mother came into the room she stared at Paula, her eyes like embers. Then she flung her glass and its contents at the girl. Water and ice fell all lover her.
The next time, she went to see them they were staying in a hotel in New York. They had room service for dinner and Paula ordered lamb chops. It felt special. When the meal came Paula said “There’s no milk.” Her father stood, grabbed the tray of food and dropped it down the airshaft saying “Okay, Pal, since it wasn’t to your pleasure.” She had no dinner that night.
Her parents were often leaving Paula with strangers. One time she went to Grand Central Station on a train by herself and was met not by her father but by a couple–actors who knew her father–with Great Danes. They expected her father to turn up any moment. Two days later he showed up.
Another time she visited them in Los Angeles. Her father’s sister Aunt Jessie took her. Jessie stayed for a few days and on the day that she left, Paula’s parents went out for the evening leaving Paula by herself. She wandered around and eventually wandered out the front door which locked behind her.
A neighbor found her and brought her to his house where his wife made dinner for her. The next day she walked home and opened the door shouting “Daddy!” Her father jumped out of bed–the woman next to him was not her mother–and whisked her out of the bedroom quickly. He sat on a chair and began to spank her. The maid stopped him–Paula years later realized how brave it was for her to speak out. A Few days later he dropped her off in the care of an older woman. Years later he told her it was his motehr’s reaction to Paula that made him send her away–either she goes or I go.
A few years later in Malibu, she visited on weekends. The house had a deck that jutted into the ocean. One day, her father gabbed her hands and dropped her into the Pacific . She freaked out fearing that she was drowning, but her father laughed because it was so shallow.
One night she told her father that she had a toothache. He mother had entered the room and said I’ll fix it for you. She put Paula in the rumble seat of the car and drove madly through the winding roads. Paula was shaken like a rattle. They drove for twenty minutes (it felt like forever). Finally they returned home and her mother looked at her and said “Do you still have a toothache?”
When Paula was eight (all of that happened before she was eight!), her Spanish grandmother came for her. She had lighter duties in Cuba and brought Paula home with her. Paula lived there, in Hormiguero for many years, going to school there–having a crash introduction to Spanish. She had nothing but freedom there but soon grew very bored and lonely.
When she was ten in 1933, her family fled to he country for New York because the President of Cuba, Gerargo Machado, had been overthrown.
Good lord, how did she ever get through it without going crazy. And what on earth are her children’s stories like?
SOUNDTRACK: THAO NGUYEN-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #56 (July 28, 2020).
I have enjoyed a lot of music from Thao Nguyen and her band Thao and the Get Down Stay Down. She plays an idiosyncratic type of indie rock that’s catchy but also quirky. Although I haven’t heard much from her lately.
I Just Read About That... 