She's a singer. She's a dancer. She's a choreographer. She's a writer. She's an educator.
But above all, Djenane Saint Juste is a cultural ambassador for her native land, Haiti.
Her abundant gifts for storytelling, and for melding that with music, are manifest in The Mermaid and the Whale. Available at Red Balloon Bookshop and Saint Juste's website, Afoutayi, the Mermaid package includes a children's book and a CD, to be enjoyed together, or not.
"[Children] can listen to my mom singing as they're reading, or they can just lay down and imagine the book, a picture in their heads," she said. "The song was very traditional, while the story was new and unique but attached to the song."
That attachment springs from the Haitian folklore that continually has been infused into story and song. Inspired by the song "Lasirèn ak Labalèn," which has been performed in Haiti for generations, the plot follows a man searching for riches but finding something more rewarding.
The responses have been similarly rewarding for Saint Juste. At one school, she said, "The children were listening to my mom singing [in Creole], and when I explained the translation, they were so excited. The teacher said they talked about it for a week."
The goal is to edify as well as entertain, to engage her audience to delve into an often-misunderstood country. She wants the world to know that Haiti is about much more than poverty, natural disasters and Voodoo (Vodou, in her native language) — and what better place to start than with children?
"I really want the kids to have a different perspective," Saint Juste said. "We have issues, but we have a lot of beautiful things to offer the world, the language, the music, the art."
And, yes, Vodou is part and parcel of Haitian society. But the doctrine is not built so much around the clichés associated with it — witch doctors, Satan and black magic — but rather, Saint Juste pointed out, to a significant degree about the kind of connections with nature and spirit guides that play a part in her book.
"My mother is a Vodou priestess," she said, "so I grew up attending many Vodou ceremonies, traditional Vodou song and drumming. I was always on stage with her learning and teaching Haitian folk music."
Still, the stigma lingers, and Saint Juste considers it responsible for the lack of a vibrant Haitian community in Minnesota.
"A lot of [Minnesota Haitians] came from different religious sects," she said. "It's hard because they don't want to associate themselves with Vodou, the devil thing. No one wants to be associated with the devil. All those movies didn't do justice to the cultures or the religion."
That means that "there's a lot of Haitians but not a big community," she added. "It's all spread out. My company is trying to reach out, to create more of a community."
Community is at the heart of Saint Juste's work in many ways, and she comes by it naturally. Her mother, Florencia Pierre, said she knew early on — very early on — that Djenane would have a creative musical bent.
"Since I was pregnant," Pierre said, "I knew I would give birth to an artist. She was dancing in my belly when I was performing. It's a generational thing. Even before my mom was born, storytelling was part of our identity as a family. It's a beautiful tradition that we have where every night the adults gather around the fire and they educate the children with stories and keep up the legacy of the families.
"That's the way I started learning about storytelling. I grew up seeing my grandmother, my auntie, my community not only telling stories but singing. My daughter is putting those stories into writing and using the storytelling to make it available for more children to be aware of the past, the tradition, the history of our beautiful country."
Sharing that history has been curtailed by pandemic-driven measures limiting classroom interactions. As a Classical MPR Class Notes Artist, Saint Juste had relished frequent school readings and performances, and she looks forward to a future when something resembling "the old normal" returns.
But she has other vocations, in particular as a dance instructor at venues like the Cowles Center and in such disciplines as ballroom, Zumba and hip-hop. That diversity comes naturally, as Saint Juste speaks four languages and even has translated her book to them: Lasirèn ak Labalèn in Creole, La Sirène et La Baleine in French and La Sirena y La Ballena in Spanish. Pierre sings in Creole on the CD, and the book launch took place at Alliance Francaise in Minneapolis.
Here is a 2017 performance of the Creole version for the Class Notes program:
"I grew up in Haiti, so French and Creole were part of my background," Saint Juste said, "and then I traveled to Cuba for music education for five years before moving to the U.S. in 2009. I feel so connected to all these cultures."
But her homeland is at the forefront in sharing the book and its music.
"My hope," she said, "is to have this book in schools so children can have some positive information on Haiti and also learn more about a different culture.
"I hope people can be inspired by this. This is a time we need to be together."
]]>Audio note: The Mosaic United Methodist Church Choir sings "Love Divine" from an 1833 collection, as part of the American Classical Hymns project.
Peter Mercer-Taylor offered up a strong contender for Understatement of the Year:
"These are strange times to be doing choral performances."
That hasn't deterred Mercer-Taylor even a little bit from seeking out choirs across the land to contribute performances to his website, AmericanClassicalHymns.com. The goal: to amass 278 hymn tunes that can accompany and amplify — indeed, literally bring to life — his just-published book, Gems of Exquisite Beauty: How Hymnody Carried Classical Music to America ($55, Oxford University Press).
The University of Minnesota music professor's magnum opus explores how sacred lyrics (hymns) came to be accompanied by classical-music compositions (hymn tunes) throughout the United States from 1819 to 1860. As the book's subtitle notes, this widespread practice provided many Americans' first exposure to European classical composers. In a real sense, the kind of "discovery" our ancestors experienced two centuries ago is mirrored in these new renditions, especially with the pandemic preventing virtually any personal exposure to live performances.
"This is a surprisingly helpful and relevant repertoire in the COVID era," he said. "We're living through a stretch of history when a lot of classical-music venues are shuttered, and choirs themselves can't do all the things they'd like to do. But they can still sing these hymn tunes.
"[The original] tunes gave glimpses of classical music to an American public that didn't really have a developed classical-music culture, and [the website's recordings] stand to give glimpses of classical music today to an American public living with a drastically reduced classical-music culture."
As of this writing, 23 tunes are available at the website, with several more in the works. Mercer-Taylor classified the current crop as "a priming of the pump" and has issued an open call for more contributions. Those interested can find out more on the website or contact Mercer-Taylor directly at ach@umn.edu.
The coronavirus has slowed the rate of contributions since Mercer-Taylor began to amass them after completing the book in February. Still, during these admittedly "strange times," he said two recording formats remain, well, in play.
The "synchronous" approach is closest to the pre-COVID method: a socially distant performance with probably no more than 12 singers spread out in one room. For many choirs, that's a fraction of the usual assemblage, but the Ball State University Chamber Choir, among others, has made it work.
And that's "kind of the easy way," Mercer-Taylor noted, compared with the "asynchronous remote recording." In that process, he said, "you usually have the piano player get the hymn tune and play a four-part [rendition, with soprano, alto, tenor and bass], which is then sent to individuals. They listen on headphones and record individual performances, then send those tracks to some kind of master compiler, who creates a composite."
While pop musicians are accustomed to recording this way, it's a challenge for choral singers.
"It's laborious to [coalesce in] matters of expression, louder or softer, faster or slower," Mercer-Taylor said, "whereas when they're in the same room, there's all kinds of things a choir can do to take cues."
Still, technology allows for the likes of Paul Damico-Carper to create what Mercer-Taylor aptly calls "deeply sensitive renditions of three tunes in which he sings all four parts himself."
The final group renditions, thanks to the work of technical wizards, might end up a capella or accompanied by Tim Lovelace's original piano work. The completed recordings have their own pages — accessible via a showcase catalog at the website, complete with photos of the performers and the actual musical score.
All of which fits the words of Robert Frost:
'Men work together,' I told him from the heart,
'Whether they work together or apart.'
The collection so far has emanated from ensembles with which Mercer-Taylor had had a personal connection, via former students of his and current or former colleagues.
Among those was the Twin Cities-based Mirandola Ensemble, whose rendition of Joseph Haydn's "Belchertown" is one of Mercer-Taylor's favorites ("incredibly persuasive … beautiful, shapely").
Mirandola artistic director Nicholas Chalmers said that this hymn tune, one of four recorded by his cohorts at Minneapolis' Annunciation Catholic Church, was a perfect fit.
"It's adapted from a string quartet, and we kind of think of ourselves that way," he said. "The music is relatively straightforward, but it has a great amount of elegance and dignity."
Chalmers added that he and his mates are highly motivated to nail the hymn tunes, partly because they're a good fit but mostly because of the nature of the works.
"A lot of what we do is music that doesn't get performed anymore," he said. "We do a lot of medieval music, so this was actually far newer.
"We always like it when the performance has elements of musicology. And anytime you're unearthing music that has been lost or underperformed, that's a noble effort."
]]>What happens when a magical girl comes face to face with a cunning tiger in her quiet village? Find out in the Hmong folk tale 'Yer and the Tiger,' the latest episode of YourClassical Storytime, featuring traditional music, narration by Ka Vang and illustrations by Xee Reiter.
]]>Eighteen of the top female taiko drummers from around the globe have come together in St. Paul to create, perform and share their love of the traditional Japanese drum. And to make history.
"This has been a dream of mine for a very long time," said Tiffany Tamaribuchi, artistic director of the Sacramento Taiko Dan, a drumming group.
For thousands of years, traditional Japanese drums were played by men -- and only men. Now, female drummers from Japan, Canada and across the United States are gathering for an all-female taiko residency. It will culminate Saturday in a performance at the Ordway.
Over the years, Tamaribuchi has met and collaborated with many different female taiko drummers, but they didn't know each other.
"A lot of them had never met before, had never had the opportunity to work before," she said. "And it seemed like a terrible shame because they're all such amazing artists."
Tamaribuchi mentioned her dream of bringing them together to Jen Weir, artistic director of Taiko Arts Midwest in St. Paul. And then Weir mentioned it to folks at Ordway. Weir said they loved the idea.
"And then so it went from a pipe dream to 'Oh, I think we might be doing this in a really short amount of time,'" Weir said.
Several grant proposals and visa applications later, the dream has become a reality. Taiko Arts Midwest's rehearsal space has been humming with energy as the performers prepare to run through their big opening number. Drums of all sizes fill the room. Some of the drums are as big as cars; it's an athletic practice, involving the whole body and enthusiastic yelling.
Over the past 20 to 30 years, women have made inroads in taiko. Weir says they outnumber men in North American ensembles.
"But what hasn't changed is sort of the larger structure of who," she said. "Who is the voice of the art form? Who gets paid to tour? Who's featured and produced, and who's sponsored, and who sort of fills our narrative of the art? In these wonderful presentations about the history of our art form, both in Japan and North America, women are not mentioned or, if so, are mentioned as a footnote."
The stories of the women gathering in St. Paul do not fit inside a footnote.
Chieko Kojima wanted to play taiko back in the 1970s, but was told women weren't allowed to play, and that she should dance instead. So she danced -- for 20 years. But still the drum called to her. That's when she created Hana Hachijo, a style of drumming that incorporates traditional dance. It's a style designed specifically for women.
The majority of the women performing in St. Paul are of Asian descent, but not all are Japanese. Weir is a Korean adoptee, raised in Minot, N.D. She'd had no experience with Asian American culture until she moved to the Twin Cities, where she got her first taste of taiko. That was more than 20 years ago.
"I just utterly stumbled into it, fell in love with it, just wanted to do it because it was fun," she recalled. "And then it ended up being a core part of my life's journey."
Tiffany Tamaribuchi says she can't express what it feels like finally to have all these amazing women in the same room, playing together. She said what Weir has accomplished is simply incredible:
"I hope this lays the groundwork for a lot of wonderful collaborations and beautiful things created for the world. "
"HERbeat: Taiko Women All-Stars" perform this Saturday at the Ordway in St. Paul.
Anat Spiegel's path to Minnesota has been a long one. Born in Israel, she left there at 21 after her military service and spent 18 years living in Amsterdam, composing and making music for a living.
Just a year ago, she and her American husband (also a composer) uprooted to the Twin Cities, bringing their two young children with them.
Spiegel is still adjusting to the subzero temperatures and brutal wind chills that are a relative rarity in mainland Europe.
But she has wasted no time in plunging headlong into the vibrant Minnesota music scene. Her first U.S. premiere is happening Friday as part of the Cedar Commissions at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis.
Spiegel's My Four Mothers was one of six works commissioned by the center in its annual flagship program fostering the work of Minnesota-based composers.
It's a piece that looks back at a particularly traumatic period of her Jewish heritage, from the perspective of her family's new life in the United States.
"I was born in Israel, went to school there, went into the army there," she says. "And, of course, I was aware of the Holocaust as part of my nation's history."
It was, though, something Spiegel had never been able to fully confront and investigate before coming to America — the history was too raw, the city of Amsterdam too embroiled in the tangled strands of Holocaust history to enable objectivity.
"While living there, I never felt that I really had the tools or the wish to deal with ghosts from the past," she says. "I felt like it would alienate me from my day-to-day life in the city."
About 4,000 miles away from Europe and farther still from the Middle East, memories and impressions suddenly snapped into focus, however, and the need for a personal reckoning beckoned.
"During the process of writing my new piece I visited Amsterdam again," she says. "And that was actually the first time I ever went to the Holocaust Museum there."
My Four Mothers focuses on women who have had a formative influence on Spiegel's life and helped her clarify her understanding of what happened in the Holocaust.
French writer Charlotte Delbo, philosopher Sarah Kofman and painter Charlotte Salomon all get a movement to themselves, in a piece that lasts a total of 30 minutes.
The effect of the Holocaust on their lives — Delbo was imprisoned in Auschwitz and Salomon died in the gas chambers there, as did Kofman's rabbi father — is reflected in Spiegel's music, which uses excerpts from their writings.
The final movement of My Four Mothers is devoted to Spiegel's grandmother Dvora Grünberger-Reichstul, who survived the Holocaust but had all her immediate family killed in it.
"She died when I was 12 but was central to my family's life," Spiegel says. "The text of the last movement comes from a poem I wrote in Hebrew about her, and the other movements are in English."
Having four women as the focus of her piece is no coincidence, Spiegel adds.
"We know a lot about the male perspective of World War II, but the female version is not something I have heard a lot. The sheer darkness and intensity of their experience is overwhelming."
Spiegel is coy about attaching stylistic labels on the music that she writes. My Four Mothers has strong classical ingredients in it, she says, but also generous dashes of jazz.
It also is written for an unusual combination of performers. Spiegel features centrally, singing the main vocal and playing an Indian harmonium, a keyboard instrument with hand-operated bellows.
Joining her onstage are violinist Isabel Dammann and cellist Mikaela Marget, both of whom also have parts to sing.
"When I've played bits of the music to people, the word that came back was 'haunting,'" she says.
"I was playing a lot with tension, and how long can we hold the idea of tension without feeling very uncomfortable. It's a form of meditation on difficult topics that are hard for us to be with."
Although Spiegel emphasizes that she still feels like a "newcomer" to the Twin Cities music scene, she already is impressed by what she has found here.
"People here love music and are very open-minded," she says. "Amsterdam is quite a snobbish city when it comes to music; there is so much going on. But people here are genuinely interested, and they show up."
And it was the freedom of expression that the Cedar Commissions provided that gave Spiegel the impetus to tackle themes that she had previously found "too scary."
"Dealing with very personal themes is very new for me, and the three composers for Night 1 of the commissions worked together from the get-go," she says. "It's really helped my landing here and kept me focused on my musical practices."
Although the Holocaust is among the darkest chapters in human history, she is hopeful that My Four Mothers also has an element of positivity attached to it.
"I don't think the work is desperately depressing," she says. "The uplift comes from what these women achieved in terrible times, and in that process there is always healing, power and light."
Event Details
What: Cedar Commissions Night 1: Ilan Blanck, Freaque and Anat Spiegel
Where: Cedar Cultural Center
When: 7:30 p.m. Feb. 21
Tickets: $10; $15 for two-show pass
This is an all-ages show.
Learn more about Night 2 in our interview with composer Tensae Fayise.
]]>At first glance it looks like a banjo which has grown an extra neck, or been crossed with the harplike lyre.
The krar is, in fact, an Ethiopian instrument widely used in East Africa, and it will be heard Saturday at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis, as part of Night 2 of the Cedar Commissions. (Learn more about Night 1 in our interview with composer Anat Spiegel.)
Tensae Fayise is one of six Minnesota-based composers presenting new work this year, and the krar is the front and center of her musical universe. Her relationship with the instrument is relatively recent, although its sounds have filled the family home since her parents migrated from Ethiopia to the United States, settling initially in South Dakota.
"There were a lot of things happening in Ethiopia in the '70s and '80s, including the Red Terror and folks getting forced into the military," she says. "My parents wanted to get away from that."
Like so many immigrants before and since, Fayise's family brought their music and their culture with them.
"I grew up listening to a lot of traditional Ethiopian music and singing on tape cassette, and going to a lot of live events in Worthington, Minn., where there's a big Ethiopian community," she says.
"My mom comes from a farming family, and in rural communities in Ethiopia there's a musicality to everything. When I talk to my mom she'll sing me all these different songs that she grew up around; it's all oral tradition."
Although Fayise was born in Sioux Falls, S.D., the Ethiopian music that she heard struck inexplicable chords within her, and the call of her ancestral homeland became stronger with age.
To answer it, she made a series of trips to Ethiopia with her mother, hiking the highland trails her mother knew and reconnecting with family members in her home village.
"When I was there in 2018, I got my first krar and brought it back to Minnesota," she says.
Learning how to play it unlocked a flow of creativity unlike anything Fayise had experienced previously.
"I couldn't stop writing music. I would take the krar, play and sing something, then post it on Instagram," she says.
"The krar is a farmer's instrument. They say it was originally made out of a turtle shell with strings from the gut of an animal. To me, it's a very familiar sound, like time travel, a kind of map for understanding this journey of my family."
In forging a personal style for her music, Fayise has absorbed a myriad of influences from her American upbringing, to add to her Ethiopian heritage.
"Growing up in Worthington, my friends were listening to country music, hip-hop, jazz and soul, and I enjoyed that, too," she says.
"When I started singing and composing I would begin with more traditional sounds, then steer over to a more Western style.
"At first I would try to correct that by sticking to the traditional Ethiopian scales, but then I realized I needed the freedom to move in any direction I would like to."
The piece Fayise has written for her Cedar Commission is called Ye Terrarou Tenfash (The Breath of the Mountain), a set of six songs whose title has a specific meaning.
"For me, that breath is my mom's breath, because she's the one who walked up and down those mountains growing up," Fayise says. "She's the one who was immersed in that way of life; she's the bridge for me to go home. She left the village, but the village never left her."
Fayise will play the krar and sing in Saturday's premiere of Ye Terrarou Tenfash and is joined on stage by guitarist Joseph Damon, drummer Stephanie Watts and bassist Jordan Hamilton.
Fayise describes Ye Terrarou Tenfash as "tracing our origin story back further than the conditions that we are dealing with here in America," and says the work "belongs to a larger community working to reclaim our cultural traditions."
Appropriately, many of her friends and family from that larger community will make the trip to Minneapolis for the first performance.
"My brother is flying in with his wife from California, and I have family that's driving from Rochester and South Dakota," she says with a smile. "And a group of 18 is coming from Worthington in a van."
Fayise lives in Minneapolis and won't have far to go Saturday evening. For her, the Cedar Cultural Center was already familiar territory before receiving her commission.
"I love to go there for shows; some of my favorite global musicians are always there," she says.
Now, she adds, the center has taken an even more central position in her life, resetting the parameters of what she might do as a creative artist in the future.
"I'm already thinking of Ye Terrarou Tenfash as an album, and I'm already thinking about the album after that," she says. "Before the Cedar Commissions, did I really think of myself as a composer? Maybe not so much. But now I do."
Event details
What: Cedar Commissions Night 2: Rebecca Nichloson, Dua Saleh and Tensae Fayise
Where: Cedar Cultural Center
When: 7:30 p.m. Feb. 22
Tickets: $10; $15 two-show pass
This is an all-ages show.
Learn more about Night 1 in our interview with composer Anat Spiegel.
]]>Sprig of That is an ensemble that performs with Classical MPR's Class Notes Concerts, sharing its music with school kids around the state. The group's mix of standards and originals is as unique as its instrumentation — violin, guitar and tabla. Listen as they join Steve Staruch for this week's Regional Spotlight.
]]>Those who grow up in Christian churches sing hymns that, like magic, seamlessly integrate sacred words and lovely music by classical composers.
But the magic arrived late. The process involved was complicated and often haphazard, "sort of like the Wild West," in Peter Mercer-Taylor's words.
"Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," for instance, was not always sung to a Felix Mendelssohn composition. Instead, in the decades leading up to the Civil War, a well-intentioned but chaotic movement found arrangers across the land attempting to amalgamate hymnal texts and classical themes.
Mercer-Taylor's herculean efforts to chronicle and compile these efforts has brought the University of Minnesota music professor an NEH-Mellon Fellowship for Digital Publication. The goal: to create a website of contemporary choral and piano recordings of nearly 280 early-American hymn tunes, tied to his book Gems of Exquisite Beauty: How Hymnody Carried Classical Music to America.
Both the website (no domain name yet) and the book will emerge in October. The fellowship allows Mercer-Taylor to collect and cull performances of these obscure works.
"The purpose [of the book] is to tell the historical story," Mercer-Taylor said, "but the purpose of the website is to lay out the entire anthology, so people can sit down and thumb through it."
And listen to it. Mercer-Taylor is casting a massive net to persuade choruses to record 19th-century text/tune combinations. ("Anyone with a choir that has the slightest interest in singing some of these songs" can contact him.) They will join three already recorded by fellow University of Minnesota professor Kathy Saltzman Romey and her chamber choir, the University Chamber Singers.
"Many of these are quite stunning," she said, "beautifully crafted, easy to sing, with many interesting musical moments. I had no idea that this repertoire existed. What's fascinating is to hear them in the four-part arrangements. I'm hoping we can record a few more before next October."
The chorus contributions will augment piano performances of all of the hymns by Tim Lovelace, U of M professor of collaborative piano.
Interestingly, during the period that Mercer-Taylor is covering (1819 to 1860), these works were not just the provinces of houses of worship.
"Hymn-singing went on in many different places, not just churches," he said. "You could say that church music belonged in churches the same way that disco music belonged in discos, which also was heard in cars and other public places."
Because these tunes also were performed by musical societies and secular choirs, they served another purpose: exposing Americans to European classical music.
"In [mid-19th-century society], the way most Americans got any dose of classical music was through hymnals," he said.
Composers and arrangers across the land were "sticking tunes and texts together willy-nilly," he said. "You would find the same text tied to eight or 10 different tunes."
The arrangements generally spread by word of mouth (literally and figuratively), but beginning in 1819 some of them started to be assembled in books. That's when an obscure compilation, Arthur Clifton's An Original Collection of Psalm Tunes, came out with 21 works by major composers. Three years later, Lowell Mason's The Boston Handel and Haydn Society Collection of Church Music, sold about 50,000 copies. (The society still exists, and Mercer-Taylor will be in touch.)
"This is where a lot of Americans would have encountered hymn adaptations like this for the first time," Mercer-Taylor said. But for some reason the practice of publishing collections stopped as "denominations used the words but didn't exercise ownership over the music."
Then in 1841, Mason's Carmina Sacra sold more than 500,000 copies — or one for every 200 Americans at the time. That was followed by George Kingsley's The Templi Carmina (1853), with more than 60 tunes by major European composers, and William Bradbury's The Jubilee (1858), which reportedly garnered sales of 250,000.
Around 1855, hymnals as we know them today started to emerge, but most of the words/music pairings used today came later. That helps explain why of the 280 or so pieces that Mercer-Taylor is pulling together, "some might have the same text [set] to two or three different tunes," he said. "And many of them weren't verbatim refrains, but found the arranger taking a snippet of a composition and running, basically a variation of a theme."
Or, as Romey put it, "Composers or arrangers would collect these dramatic melodies and excerpt the melody and arrange it as a four-part harmony. I asked [Mercer-Taylor] to what intention, and he said perhaps to educate the congregation, sharing music that they might not be exposed to otherwise."
And now, thanks to Mercer-Taylor's ongoing efforts, the rest of us can be exposed to this essentially forgotten music.
More about Peter Mercer-Taylor
Peter Mercer-Taylor is a musicology professor at the University of Minnesota School of Music in the College of Liberal Arts. He is the author of The Life of Mendelssohn (Cambridge University Press, 2000) and the forthcoming Gems of Exquisite Beauty: How Hymnody Carried Classical Music to America, as well as the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Mendelssohn (2004).
His articles have appeared in a range of journals, including 19th-Century Music, Popular Music, Journal of the Society for American Music, Musical Quarterly, Music & Letters, and Journal of Musicology.
He earned his bachelor's degree from Amherst College and his masters and doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley. His scholarship has been divided between the 19th-century German classical tradition and contemporary popular music, including the work of the Bangles, Elvis Costello, Bill Staines and R.E.M.
His primary areas of expertise include Felix Mendelssohn, the history of popular American music and culture, 19th-century Romantic German music, music history 1750-1900, and American hymnology.
The grant awarded to Mercer-Taylor by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is one of 188 projects to receive part of $30.9 million for investment in cultural and educational resources.
The Folk, Fiddle & Friends Festival, hitting the Cedar Cultural Center on Jan. 16, is more than just a clever original title. It's the absolute, stone-cold truth about what Sprig of That, the OK Factor and the Orange Mighty Trio will bring to the stage.
They could have added another "f" word — "fun" — according to Sprig of That's Krissy Bergmark.
"We love to show people we're having a good time," Bergmark said, adding that the gig should appeal to "anyone looking to watch people having fun together. If it's enjoyable for musicians, it's more enjoyable for the audience."
What that audience will be seeing and hearing are three ensembles performing original takes on traditional songs, and infusing traditional flavors into original songs — all with a whole lotta genre-bending, or more precisely genre-merging.
Rooted in folk music, often imbued with classical notes and some dabbling in jazz, pop and more, this is truly eclectic — but tightly played — music. A bonus: "Because we're genre-fluid, we all do a lot of improvisation, too," Bergmark said.
Still, each of the three acts brings something different to the proceedings
Cellist Olivia Diercks and violinist Karla Colahan describe OK Factor as a "new-classical crossover duo ... [that] find great joy in defying expectations and delivering an experience outside of what audiences anticipate from a cello and violin combo." But they don't take themselves as seriously as they do their music; witness one of their album titles: "Have Yourself an OK Christmas."
Billing itself as "hybrid chamber music," the Orange Mighty Trio finds Zack Kline on violin-slash-fiddle, accompanied by Mike Vasich on piano and Nick Gaudette on bass. They're "equally comfortable on orchestral stage, at a bluegrass festival, in farmers markets, or even in a jazz club." Oh, and they have provided live soundtracks for national modern dance companies.
Sprig of That is the youngest assemblage in the mix. Formed in 2018 by three graduates of Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis., it includes violinist Isabel Dammann, acoustic guitarist Ilan Blanck and Bergmark on tabla.
They define themselves as a "folk-fusion trio that combines vibrant Americana, Western classical virtuosity, and world rhythmic textures to form a surprisingly natural acoustic blend."
Bergmark said her mates were equally at home doing traditional and original works. Or even variations on a theme.
"Someone might bring in a snippet of Vivaldi," she said. In adding their own interpretation to older songs, "the flexibility of arrangements is important. There are a lot of fiddle tunes to choose from. We really enjoy digging into that repertoire."
Crafting original pieces is a true collaboration, although it generally starts with one member's idea.
"Our mode of operation is each of us would bring in a more fully formed tune," Bergmark said. "Isabell loves coming up with melodies and Ilan loves coming up with harmonies, and I try to figure out rhythmically what can happen. The tabla ends up being really melodic. I try connecting with what's happening with the melody and also try to have the guitar interact with the rhythm."
Musicians such as these inevitably cross paths. Bergmark said Spring of That and the OK Factor have collaborated in various capacities. The Cedar Cultural Center lineup is a natural because of the different groups' not-so-different approaches to integrating genres
Each group will do its own set, and then all the players will take the stage for what Bergmark called "a megagroup set." That gives the show a natural target audience, she added.
"[It's] anybody who can appreciate the joy of live music and particularly the aspect of musicians interacting with each other."
The Folk, Fiddle & Friends Festival
Who: The Orange Mighty Trio, Sprig of That and the OK Factor
When: 7:30 p.m. Jan. 16
Where: Cedar Cultural Center, 416 Cedar Ave, Minneapolis
Seating: General admission, first come, first served; access accommodations here.
Tickets: $15 advance, $18 day of show at the Cedar box office, the Electric Fetus and on Eventbrite. More info here.
]]>The family that plays together — well in this case, it just keeps on playing and playing and playing together. As in 137 years and still positively counting.
Now including its fifth generation of a Polish-American family, the Chmielewski Funtime Band ranges in age from nonagenarian Florian to college student Kati and tours relentlessly, putting on 150-plus concerts annually across the country and on the high seas.
The repertoire is dominated by a genre that Florian calls "happy music": polka.
"We tell people we can convert any song into a polka," said band leader Patty Chmielewski, citing the Beatles' "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da." "But we'll do waltzes and older country [music] like Jim Reeves for older audiences, and if there are kids, we'll do 'The Hokey-Pokey.' And we've always gotta throw 'The Chicken Dance' in there."
The usual lineup includes Florian on accordion, daughter Patty on saxophone and her son Nick on accordion, concertina, drums and trumpet. Kati sings and plays drums when she can join the group while studying ("sometimes I'll skip classes," she said, chuckling) at the University of Minnesota-Duluth.
The band's most recent Minnesota gig was on New Year's Eve at the Cloquet VFW, where Florian performs on his own the first and third Wednesday of every month. He also pops up, accordion in tow, at assisted-living centers almost every day. Small wonder, then, that Patty calls her dad "the Energizer bunny."
"He doesn't stop," she said.
It has ever been thus. Following in the footsteps of grandfather Frank, who played fiddle beginning in 1882, and his fiddle-playing sons Nick, John and Tony (Florian's dad), the Sturgeon Lake, Minn., native launched his musical career in 1945 playing accordion at a local wedding dance. He then recruited brothers Leonard, Jerry, Chester and Donny to form the Chmielewski Brothers Orchestra.
After a stint in the Air Force, Florian moved into television, producing The Polish TV Party on Duluth's WDSM. Its successor, The Chmielewski Funtime Television Show aired in syndication for 35 years beginning in the early 1970s, garnering more viewers than All in the Family and the NFL in Minnesota markets. KQDS-TV in Duluth is updating more than 1,500 of those shows with plans (but no specific date) to air them.
Florian also launched the Chmielewski International Polkafest in 1978 in Pine City, and it's still going strong despite an inauspicious debut off-stage. Minnesota Gov. Rudy Perpich, who stood 6-foot-4, "bent over to get a torch from a 5-foot-2 fellow and it fell on his suit," Chmielewski recounted. "The flames went all the way down to his shoes. "A few days later, he asked me to meet him, and I showed up and he was smiling. He said, 'After that [incident], 11 attorneys called me, and since you're such a good friend I told 10 of them to get lost.' A couple of weeks after that, his wife called and said, 'Thank you. I hated that suit.'"
Over the years, the Funtime Band recorded 40 albums and toured the world; one of Florian's proudest moments: "teaching people in the Bahamas how to polka."
In the late 1980s, the Funtime Band won nine "Minnies" at the Minnesota Music Academy Awards over a three-year period. Florian was inducted into the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame in 1994 and the International Polka Hall of Fame in 2015. His story unfolds in the book 0 to 90: From Farm Boy to Fly Boy. From Senator to King of Polka. In 90 Quick Years.
For this man and his clan, all the world's a stage. He's equally comfortable playing before a handful of senior citizens and at bigger events like a boat ride down the Mississippi or a party for Control Data in Prior Lake.
Oh, and he had a far-from-mundane "day job" during 26 of those years: serving in the Minnesota Senate.
Florian was also a dairy farmer, and that played a part in Patty's embracing the family tradition.
"I fought this tooth and nail all along," she said. "I wanted to be a mom. People ask, 'How in the world did your dad get all y'all to play?' Well, we had a dairy farm, so when we came of age, it was 'milk cows or play an instrument.' So we didn't milk cows."
This prompted quite the transformation.
Then: "I was shy till I was 20-something years old," she said. "Being the youngest I never got a word in edge-wise."
Now: "I'm kind of that bombshell. I get everyone involved, stand on tables. I tell people that now I'm making up for lost time. Dad and I banter back and forth. I'll ask, 'What's your favorite rock group?' and Dad will say, 'Oh, it's in South Dakota. It's called Mount Rushmore.'"
Rolling out the barrel at an earlier age, the next generation didn't need the threat of cow-milking to hop on board this band's wagon.
"I recorded my first CD when I was 3," Kati said. "I spent a lot of early birthdays on the stage."
She learned early on about the loyalty of Funtime Band fans.
"People come up to the stage and say, 'I was on your TV show; I danced on it.' And at the State Fair last year, a lot of people said they came just for us."
Kati's favorite gigs, though, just might be at nursing homes.
"We always play the classics because it really brightens their day to sing along," she said. "One of my favorite things is to bring so much joy to the people who don't get out much."
Recently, though, she was surprised by encounters with much younger sorts, while working at Grandma's in Duluth's Canal Park.
"It was kinda crazy. I'm just walking by a table and the people said 'Chmielewski Funtime,' and I went, 'Wait, that's my family,'" she said. On another occasion, "A diner stopped me and said 'you might be the only person on campus with a Chmielewski T-shirt,' and he was awe-struck.
"The band has shaped me so much as a person. I find comfort being on stage. Performance is kind of my favorite thing to do. I'm gonna do it as long as I can."
That's a sure indication that for the Chmielewskis, it's 137 years down and maybe even more to go.
Upcoming Event:
Saturday, Jan. 25, 6 p.m.: Lindstrom City Hall (13292 Sylvan Ave.)
The holiday season is filled with sweets. The food is sweet. The sentiments are sweet. And the music is sweet. But maybe you like a little spice in your holiday eggnog. For the last 17 seasons Orkestar Bez Ime has wowed audiences with the full-bodied music from the Black Sea region.
The ensemble joined Steve Staruch in the Maud Moon Weyerhaeuser Studio in anticipation of their holiday concert.
"They can be on the road for up to nine months at a time, and be away from their homes and families for that entire period."
Tina Sipp is talking about the 17 members of the African Children's Choir, who appeared in Minnesota during a lengthy 2019 tour.
Under normal circumstances, the group's itinerary would seem punishing, but Sipp, the group's manager, is quick to emphasize that the ACC is anything but an ordinary choir.
It is, she says, aiming at "a profound, significant change in trajectory for real lives," lifting the choir's singers from an impoverished background to potentially better circumstances in the future.
"In East Africa, without an education it's nearly impossible to break the cycle of poverty that children can find themselves in," she says. "We aim to break that cycle."
Recruitment to the African Children's Choir is not by musical talent alone, but by a careful process of sifting to find families who are most in need of assistance.
"We go to the most impoverished areas, where we have contacts through churches or schools, and try to target children who would otherwise not receive an education," Sipp says.
A process of open auditions and meetings with a potential member's family follows, before an offer is made to join the ACC organization.
For most, if not all, of the children admitted to the choir, it is a life-changing moment, as the ACC's commitment to choir members does not finish when a tour is over.
"The children do just one tour each, and when they go back we have our own boarding school and they live in the dormitories," Sipp explains. "And from that point on their education is sponsored and financed all the way through to vocational college or university level."
The process of preparing new ACC recruits to tour involves more than simply learning new songs to sing and dances to go with them.
"Every year we select approximately 20 7- to 10-year-old children who come to our training center in Entebbe, Uganda, for six months before they go out on the road," Sipp says.
"Most of them have not been to school before and don't speak English, so in addition to rehearsing for the musical program they learn English."
The children work on tour, too — the equivalent of two terms' schooling — filling the gaps among performances with English, math, social studies and science lessons from the choir's team of qualified chaperones.
To a First World way of thinking, nine-month trips away from friends and family might seem a daunting, even traumatic prospect for a group of primary school children.
Not so, Sipp says: "We tend to look at that through Western children's eyes, but African children have a very different mindset to the U.S."
They are not so focused on the past and future, Sipp says, more on living one day at a time in the present.
"They're not attached to 'stuff' in the way Western children are, and because their lives back home can be very uncertain, they focus more intensely on what each new day brings. They tend to be more resilient than we are."
Sipp points also to the important role that host families in America play in making sure the choir's members feel welcome when on tour, and in giving them accommodation.
"You can't imagine what these host families and churches and communities do for us," she says. "They take the children swimming, to a fire station, all kinds of things.
"It's hard to get a picture or a vision for your life when you haven't seen anything beyond the 2- to 3-mile radius you live in. The tours expose our choirs to a world much broader than that, and they're also a lot of fun."
Part of the purpose of touring is, of course, to share the African Children's Choir's uniquely vibrant brand of musicality, and a taste of the African continent's rich cultural heritage.
"The children are wonderful performers and dancers," Sipp says. "What particularly captures audiences is their joy and wealth of spirit, and you can't be unaffected by that."
Touring, though, also plays a crucial role in raising the money needed to run the ACC program, and to fund the continuing education of choir members when they return to their native countries.
Sipp is justly proud of the steady stream of ACC alumni who have gone on to work in jobs and professions that seemed impossible before they joined the choir.
"We have doctors, lawyers, teachers, nurses, entrepreneurs, engineers, artists and chefs," she says. "Families are often really pleading with us to take their children on to the program."
Sipp anticipates that the choir members will follow the same path as their many predecessors when they eventually return to Uganda.
"ACC children are our children forever; they are family," she says. "The children that you see at concerts here are representative of a much larger group back home, and they're really with us for life."
Find out more about the African Children's Choir's Minnesota performances.
]]>In May 2017, Tokyo-based musician Momokusu Iwata entered the Tsugaru Shamisen World Championship, held in northern Japan's Aomori prefecture. The region is home to a traditional folk music played on the shamisen, a three-stringed instrument similar to the banjo. The genre of Tsugaru shamisen evolved in the early 20th century when blind performers incorporated improvisation, fancy fingerwork and loud playing as a signature style.
At the end of the two-day competition, judges awarded Iwata first prize. Not everyone was pleased with the 24-year-old musician's performance, however.
"I was criticized by the Tsugaru shamisen orthodoxy because of my penchant for the instrument's delicate nuances, instead of the traditional manner of strong, loud and emphasized play," Iwata says. "Finding my interpretations 'too delicate,' some old-fashioned players told me: 'Your shamisen is not Tsugaru shamisen. Your shamisen is Tokyo shamisen.'"
Iwata not only embraced this aspersion, he adopted it as the title of his next musical project: Shamisen Tokyo. Like its namesake city, the music of Shamisen Tokyo is a hybridized mix of modern styles that simultaneously remains deeply rooted in tradition.
On July 28, Iwata's Shamisen Tokyo will perform at Sundin Music Hall at Hamline University in St. Paul for the annual Harukaze ("spring breeze") concert organized by the Japan America Society of Minnesota (JASM), a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering cross-cultural exchange.
Iwata, a native of Osaka, comes from a long line of musicians and composers. He first became enchanted with the shamisen after a group of performers visited his elementary school. By good fortune, he picked up a shamisen at home that belonged to his great-grandmother — a teacher of Japanese folk songs — and started practicing.
"Traditionally, people acquired shamisen skills by watching and listening to their master's performance. There was no music score up until 50 years ago," he says. "When I took lessons from my master, there was no score, either. I learned how to express my feelings through the various timbres of the instrument."
While studying traditional shamisen repertoire and technique, Iwata also enjoyed the wide variety of genres that surrounded him at home and later at Tokyo University of the Arts: classical, jazz, rock and pop. He admired the music of the Beatles and Queen, in particular.
"My favorite guitarist is Brian May — his timbres are polished and smooth," he says. "I would like to make such sounds."
These diverse musical influences and sonic explorations can be heard on Iwata's debut album, which was released in early 2019.
"The fact that he's using a traditional instrument while bringing in rock and jazz elements is very unique," says Rio Saito, executive director of JASM. "I'm glad that we can introduce him here in Minnesota. We're also hoping the concert attracts a younger group of people."
This year's concert was nearly canceled following the death of Takuzo Ishida, former president and emeritus director of JASM, in April. Ishida played a key role in promoting Japanese arts and music through the annual Harukaze event, which he helped establish in 2014. He also served on the board of the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota and as vice president of the Bach Society.
"Takuzo was a huge music fan — he introduced us to Momokusu," Saito says. "To carry on Takuzo's legacy is very important. This year's event is a tribute to his memory." Sunday's concert will mark Iwata's first visit to Minnesota. Accompanied by his close friend and pianist Ayatoshi Oikawa, he plans to perform a mix of Japanese folk tunes, original compositions and popular music. The duo also will premiere two new works for shamisen and piano by St. Paul-based composer Asako Hirabayashi. The pieces are part of a larger chamber opera for which Hirabayashi received the 2019 Schubert Club Composer Award.
"This is the first time I have composed for Shamisen," says Hirabayashi, who also was introduced to Iwata by Ishida. "I was so inspired by Momokusu's playing. I cherish this opportunity."
Iwata is excited to share his music in a live performance setting, where audience members can experience the shamisen's full range of expressiveness, including sounds that can't be accurately captured on a recording.
"Shamisen is unique — it's both a plucked string instrument and a percussion instrument. Only at live concerts can you enjoy the whole sound from the strings as well as the body," he says.
Exploring the shamisen's timbral possibilities — and sharing these new sounds with listeners — is what Iwata enjoys most about performing.
"When I discover the timbres of shamisen, I'm thrilled," he says. "And when I feel the hearts of the audience, that's the moment I truly love."
Shamisen Tokyo performs at Hamline University's Sundin Music Hall on Sunday, July 28, at 3 p.m. Tickets are available on the Japan America Society of Minnesota website.
]]>Have you ever drummed your fingers impatiently on a laptop, mulling how to word an important email or waiting for a lazy download? If so, you have potentially been making music.
That is the main idea behind "Exploring the Music of Your Office," one of three projects in this year's Landmark to Lowertown, an annual series of events showcasing new works developed in the past year by Minnesota-based composers.
The man behind the "Music of Your Office" initiative is Jay Afrisando, an Indonesian composer and sonic artist who came to study at the University of Minnesota three years ago and is completing a doctorate in the music faculty.
The seed material for the "interactive sound installation" that Afrisando will curate 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. May 7 and 8 at the George Latimer Central Library in downtown St. Paul is The (Real) Laptop Music :)), a piece that he created in 2017.
"In that piece, the laptop itself is the instrument, in this case a percussion instrument," Afrisando says.
The work's cellular, crosscutting structure was, he adds, partly inspired by the opening section of Lars von Trier's movie The Five Obstructions, where no one shot can last longer than 12 frames of film.
A YouTube video of The (Real) Laptop Music :)) shows a pair of hyperactively busy hands clicking, drumming, swishing and pummeling the keyboard and casing of a laptop, in a counterpoint of constantly chattering rhythms.
Afrisando dedicated the piece to "everyone who uses a laptop for working every day," and has expanded the concept of interesting sounds made by apparently mundane, everyday objects into the "Music of Your Office" project.
The range of office accoutrements used by Afrisando for his installation includes not only a computer keyboard and mouse, but also "a cacophonous external hard drive, a scratchy notebook, an old mobile phone and other everyday objects."
Anyone attending the installation can "play" this unusual collection of "instruments." The sounds they generate are captured by two microphones and fed to Afrisando's laptop, where they are processed using SuperCollider software and amplified to a pair of external speakers.
Enhancing the sounds of office objects in this way can elevate them from the prosaic level of background noise to what Afrisando calls "the main acoustic environment."
By some strange alchemy, the process of amplification and applying algorithms can result in music of genuine beauty and fascination, he adds.
"It can happen, and it's fun," he says. "The acoustics captured by microphones sound unique and different to what we are used to."
Although Afrisando's compositions are ultramodern and sit on the cutting edge of new technologies, he says he is often deeply influenced by the traditional music of his native Indonesia.
"For example, in west Sumatra there is a type of music called saluang jo dendang, which is traditionally played in the evening through dawn," he explains.
"The singers are accompanied by the saluang, a wind instrument played obliquely. That influenced me to create my work Blues Pulse, and also Gunung Singgalang for solo dulcimer."
Running like a silken thread through much of Afrisando's music is a belief that humans have gradually lost the art of listening carefully, and a desire "to induce people to be more and more sensitive to the sounds surrounding us."
That is not always easy.
"In the modern world the signal-to-noise ratio has risen greatly, with industrialization and other things," Afrisando says. "For many people, myself included, it has become difficult to perceive soft sounds — natural sounds like birds and crickets."
Rediscovering the ability to listen closely to the sounds that the world is making is critical to the future of our planet, he argues.
"By listening more closely, we can become more aware of our environment. We need that environment and the organisms other than humans in it. We should pay homage to it."
What better place to start than in the world of objects many of us spend hours surrounded by as we earn our daily living?
"I chose the 'Office Music' project because downtown St. Paul is full of business premises," he says. "So it fits the area."
What unexpected stories might a hitherto neglected laptop tell you? Is your cellphone harboring long-kept secrets it is keen to whisper?
"Exploring the Music of Your Office" is Afrisando's way of trying to answer these apparently flippant questions. If there is musical poetry hiding in the 21st-century workplace, he is on the hunt to find it.
]]>"Ki-ya-goom."
Soojin Lee is trying to teach me the proper pronunciation of gayageum, the Korean musical instrument we have met to talk about.
Soojin is an expert on the zither-like gayageum, which she studied at the National University in her native city of Seoul, South Korea.
"I started playing the instrument when I was in middle school," she says. "Then I went to the specialist traditional music high school, which is fully supported by the Korean government because it wants to keep traditional music going."
Soojin eventually began teaching the gayageum at the school. She might well have remained there had her husband not been offered a job 12 years ago at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
Coming to the United States did not quash Soojin's musical curiosity. She signed up for a doctorate in music education at the University of Minnesota, before beginning a teaching post at the MacPhail Center in Minneapolis in October 2017.
By no means are all of Soojin's pupils from the local Korean community.
"I have an American who really likes K-pop," she says, "and another who taught English in Korea, and wants to learn more about Korean culture."
Soojin expanded her gayageum outreach at MacPhail to a younger demographic by hosting a summer camp.
"When I started at MacPhail, my pupils were all adults, and I wanted to see more young students taking lessons, and a group of people who are all beginners," she says.
Making classes happen isn't necessarily easy, as finding enough gayageums to teach them can be a tricky proposition. Soojin manages by lending her own instruments to pupils for group lessons, and borrowing others from her adult students.
Buying a gayageum is surprisingly easy for those who wish to take the instrument further. Manufacturers in South Korea export regularly to the United States, Soojin says, and decent instruments start at about $600.
Soojin's MacPhail summer camp also featured a class in Korean drumming, an indispensable skill for Korean traditional musicians.
"The drum usually accompanies the gayageum," Soojin explains. "It's a two-sided instrument. You beat the left side with your hand and hit the other side with a stick. It's a basic instrument in Korean folk music."
The gayageum is an instrument of ancient lineage, dating back approximately 1,500 years to the 6th century. Much of the music played on it also comes from a long way back in Korean musical history.
"There are different kinds of Korean traditional music," Soojin says. "We have 'noble class' music we call court music, and that is usually slow and meditative in nature. And then we have folk music, which is often livelier and expresses personal feelings. And we use different types of gayageum for different types of music."
Soojin has three gayageums in her collection, not least because in recent years the instrument itself has been changing.
"When Korea modernized in the 1950s and 1960s, Western musical culture came into the country," she says. "Many Koreans are passionate about learning Western classical music, because it is a symbol of social standing."
There was a downside to this outside influence, however, as the huge expansion of interest in Western music began marginalizing Korea's indigenous musical culture.
"Even in Korea it's very rare to see Korean traditional musicians," Soojin says.
But in recent years traditional musicians in Korea, and gayageum players in particular, have been fighting back.
The five-tone scale on which Korean traditional music is based has been expanded to enable the more "advanced" harmonies of Western musical styles to be incorporated.
Bigger gayageums also have been developed, more than doubling the 12 strings available on the original historical instrument.
The evolution of the gayageum in recent years has created another new phenomenon — music for the instrument written out on manuscript paper by particular composers, in contrast to the anonymously authored tunes passed down by ear through successive generations of gayageum players.
"Korean folk music used to be improvised, and before the Western influence came there was no concept of 'composition' as such," Soojin says. "Now, we have composers for traditional instruments writing their music out in staff notation."
Outside of her teaching at MacPhail, Soojin plays many concerts for the broader Minnesota community, and has noticed how the traditional melodies of her native country retain their power to touch listeners emotionally.
"I've met many Korean people who tell me it is the first time that they've watched a live performance with a gayageum, and they love it," she says.
"Korean traditional music is a symbol of their past. One time I played in a Minnesota nursing home for elderly Korean people, and several of the grandmothers cried. We had some very hard times with colonization and the Korean War, and that's what they think about when they hear this music."
]]>Listen to Ahmed Anzaldúa, Artistic Director of Border CrosSing, chat with Classical MPR host Julie Amacher, and check out photos from their time in the music class at Washburn Elementary in Bloomington.
]]>Listen to Siama Matuzungidi and Dallas Johnson from Siama's Congo Roots chat with host Julie Amacher and check out photos from their time in the music class at Zanewood Community School in Brooklyn Park.
]]>In its eighth year, the Cedar Commissions is continuing strong as a leading program for emerging Twin Cities musicians. This year will feature a work by composer Yigitcan Eryaman, whose piece will tackle the experience of Minnesota's seasons through the senses of a Turkish man.
The Cedar Commissions program is funded by the Jerome Foundation and gives artists the funding and mentorship to create about 30 minutes of new music. Eryaman and his fellow music makers will soon be included in a list of past Cedar Commissions artists who feature names such as Dessa, Aby Wolf, Adam Levy and Maria Isa.
Besides being an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota's Center for Magnetic Resonance Research and a composer, Eryaman also is a guitarist and songwriter. His relationship with music began 25 years ago, when he began training in classical guitar, studying the works of Fransico Tarrega, AgustÃn Barrios Mangoré, Heitor Villa-Lobos and other Spanish and Latin classical guitar composers. Eryaman also studied the music of Bach, Handel, Vivaldi and modern composers to enrich his musical knowledge and skill.
"Even though classical guitar is not the traditional instrument of my home country, it allows me to deliver my music to the listeners with a unique musical touch," Eryaman says. "In addition, the ability to use basic harmony with classical guitar helps me to add polyphonic aspects to my compositions."
With the help of Stephen Spaise, Eryaman's new piece will be sure to bring together many polyphonic aspects on a variety of traditional Middle East drums: the davul, daf and the darbuka, all of which are commonly used in Turkish music. It also will include Greg Herriges on bouzouki, traditionally a Greek instrument, and David Stenshoel on violin.
Eryaman's piece explores the changes, survival tactics and adaptations that were necessary for him to tolerate the past five years since moving to Minnesota from Turkey. While the big themes are traversed, the little ones are not forgotten.
"It's also about simple things such as things I loved and hated, things that fascinated me, depressed me, scared me in Minnesota," he says. "It's also about how the weather somehow always found a place at the center of my story."
Despite there being a few thousand Turkish-Americans living in Minnesota, Eryaman doesn't believe Turkish music is well-represented in the Twin Cities music scene. That's what makes his Cedar Commissions piece stand out from the rest.
"I believe my compositions have some Turkish elements which are less commonly encountered in the Minnesotan musical 'climate,'" he says.
He frequently uses common Turkish melodies and time signatures and involves instruments often heard in Turkish, Balkan and Middle Eastern music, in addition to his classical guitar. While Eryaman is writing and composing, he keeps his personal perspective in mind: partly American but mostly Turkish. Eryaman's friend Sarah Larsson, a member of the Nightingale trio, told him about the Cedar Commissions program. Eryaman thought it was a great opportunity to start a new and exciting project.
"I think the most important aspect is composing around a theme," he says. "It challenged me as an artist to not only create a new piece, but also to tie all components to a common musical theme."
Eryaman's piece premieres Feb. 2 at the Cedar Cultural Center, the only night it will be performed and the second night of the Cedar Commissions. Both nights are all ages, seated shows. Single-show and two-show tickets can be found on the Cedar's website.
]]>In an unassuming storefront on the corner of Chicago Ave. and E. 53rd St. in Minneapolis is a new fixture in the community — a fixture whose goal is to expand and challenge how we listen to the world around us.
"The Resonance Box aims to bring attention to how we listen," founder Aida Shahghasemi says. "Through sound exhibits, workshops, lectures by scientists and musicians, listening tours, and intimate performances, the space strives to create 'new ears' for the community through which they can hopefully become much more active listeners of the world that surrounds them."
Shahghasemi emigrated with her family from Iran in the 1990s. They chose the Twin Cities because it's where her sister and uncle's family lived. From the start, music was a fixture in her home.
"I always loved listening to music," she says. "We had ample amounts of it growing up. I started with learning more Western classical music through the violin and flute in elementary school, but realized after a few years my calling was much closer to home than I was searching. I attended a Persian classical concert, and there was no turning back from that point. I started taking percussion lessons, then vocal training, then Western music theory, then Persian Kamancheh, also known as Spiked Fiddle, and it pretty much hasn't stopped."
Persian music continues to be a driving force in her efforts and is highly influential on her approach to open minds far beyond the confines of Western classical music and the ways we traditionally think of what we hear.
"It was different from the more Western form of music I was learning as a child through the violin in the sense that it is still very much based on the oral pedagogy," Shahghasemi says. "Violin was notes and lessons and practice, all of which I have become very attached to in my later years of musical practice; however, Persian music was reading poetry, studying Persian carpet patterns, and getting a lesson that relied on the cultivation of memory and emotional connection. The notes were simple stepping stones into a world of wonder and imagination." This ability to free-form and think beyond music in order to understand music is a big reason why The Resonance Box does far more than host performances; reaching out to academics and explorers of sound to cultivate an understanding of music as a representation of the world, an expression built on the foundations with which we live and experience the world around us.
"One of the ways that has worked rather well in explaining Persian classical repertoire is to identify its similarities to jazz," Shahghasemi says. "There are certain note and rhythmic guidelines to what one does in a particular mode, but you are encouraged to deviate within those frameworks in aesthetically pleasing ways."
In the Twin Cities community, Shahghasemi has found a support system for this kind of creativity and engagement. As she has developed her skills as a composer and performer, the community has continued to revitalize her; kept her from getting too caught up in the "what-ifs."
"I have been personally surprised by how well our intentions have been received — there are many moments of doubt, and fear is always hanging out in the corner. I can simply say that the community's reaction has been a big push in my motivation simply because I can see they get it. They get it, and they are into it. We may be making people listen better, after all."
Having been open for only four months, the Resonance Box is quickly becoming a must-attend space. Frequently events are standing room only, and Shahghasemi is beginning to think about how to build on that momentum with more video and audio work that can make these ideas accessible to those unable to attend.
"I wanted to take a tangent from doing purely musical work and see what and who is/are standing at the margins of the music world," she says. "I'm interested in exploring sound in its many ways, from classical music to pure noise. I'm interested in the legitimacy of sound as it pertains to us as a species inhabiting different spaces and not just as artists on pristine stages."
For Shahghasemi, the Resonance Box is about learning to listen; about providing an opportunity to teach people how to listen better and engage with their communities better.
"I have always thought listening is an important skill," she says. "It amazes me how we don't cultivate that ability more in our society. When I speak of listening, I don't mean listening better to music, which seems to be the takeaway for most, considering the context of my work. Listening well is so multidimensional. It has to do with being fully present when someone is speaking, especially if that person has an opposing point of view. It has to do with being aware of our surroundings by assessing distances of moving objects. It has to do with relating to our world. Listening isn't just waves through air hitting the ear drum; it is consciousness at varying levels, and it is essential to our livelihood."
Garrett Tiedemann is a freelance writer for Classical MPR who volunteers for the Resonance Box.
]]>When Gao Hong was young, they called her "the little black kitten." She was 12 then and a member of a song and dance troupe based in north central China.
Every morning Gao would rise early to practice her instrument, the pipa, in a tiny furnace room, to protect herself against the bitterly cold Chinese winter.
Flecks of coal soot from the burner gathered around her eyes, giving her a feline appearance. The nickname quickly followed.
Four decades later, Gao is sitting in a St. Paul coffee shop, warmly wrapped against a Minnesota winter, but altogether in a more comfortable position.
The journey from her childhood in Mao Zedong's China, where her mother feared she would be sent away from the family home in Luoyang to one of Mao's countryside communes, has been long and remarkable.
Gao's three years with the song and dance troupe were followed by six years catching up on her delayed education.
Then, after a grueling series of tests, she gained entry to the highly prestigious Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, as one of only two pipa players admitted that year to study with Lin Shicheng, a master of the instrument.
It was a life-changing moment. Gao describes Lin Shicheng as the "Ravi Shankar of the pipa," and her face lights up as she talks about the instrument (pronounced PEE-pa), which resembles a lute but is held in a vertical position for playing.
"The pipa goes back 2,000 years," she explains. "It was played for emperors in a court setting, to accompany opera, and also for folk music. It's an ancient Chinese instrument."
Gao's relationship with the United States began in 1994, when she came here on tour as a soloist. In Minnesota, she met her future husband and has fond memories of needing a translator at their wedding, because her English was so shaky.
In the quarter-century since, Gao has continued to live in the Twin Cities, and is currently a senior lecturer at Carleton College in Northfield — the only U.S. liberal arts school, she says, where you can do a music major in Chinese instruments.
Besides her teaching duties, Gao remains an avid performer on the pipa and has a clutch of acclaimed CD recordings to her credit.
Her latest project is a collaboration with the Syrian musician Issam Rafea, an expert player of the oud (pronounced OOD), a type of Arabic lute.
Rafea came to Carleton College a year ago, at Gao's invitation, to teach her students about Arabic music. At the end of the semester, Gao suggested that she and Rafea book studio time together to make a recording.
The result is Life as Is, a new CD exploring "the blending of ancient souls from Syria and China," recorded on a rainy summer day at the Salmagundi Recording Studio in Northfield.
As Gao tells it, the sessions for the new CD were far from conventional: "There was no talking between Issam and me in the studio, no discussion of which key or scale to play in, or the form or theme. It was 100 percent improvisation."
Their rapport, Gao says, was immediate, as if the two musicians "had worked together for years, if not lifetimes." The recording was, however, not without its practical difficulties.
"The two instruments are both in the lute family," Gao explains, "but they are very different. The pipa has frets, for example, and the oud doesn't."
The biggest challenge technically was in marrying the tuning systems used by the two instruments together, as they are not naturally aligned.
"Because the oud uses quarter-tones, I constantly had to push and bend, say, my C-sharp to a place between the C-sharp and D, to match Issam's playing," Gao says.
The give and take between the two — the pipa a sensitive, at times sensual, soprano voice; the oud a soulful baritone — eventually resulted in 12 tracks being recorded.
The titles — "Walking the Distance," "Summer Rain," "Hidden Dance" — were mainly added afterward to summarize the mood or atmosphere of a particular improvisation.
For Gao, the pipa's unique ability to tell stories and illustrate them make it an ideal instrument to engage in this type of musical "conversation."
"On my pipa, I can imitate the sound of water, rain, geese, a cannon shot, a woman crying, or an ancient battle," she says. "It's not just notes; for me, the pipa is the best way of telling a story without talking."
The 12 stories told on the Life as Is CD have plenty of examples of Gao and Rafea using their instruments to paint particular emotions or situations.
Ultimately, though, Gao views the project as symbolizing something deeper, at a period when peaceful international dialogue seems an increasingly rare commodity.
"Life as Is is about how two different artists, from two totally different countries and totally different backgrounds, can meet in the middle and collaborate," she says. "I think we worked perfectly together."
Event
Gao Hong and Issam Rafea CD release concert
7:30 p.m. April 25
Cedar Cultural Center, 416 Cedar Ave. S, Minneapolis
$20-25
Many members of Afoutayi Dance, Music and Arts Company originally hail from Haiti, but the company has been based in the Twin Cities for a few years. They brought their colorful, energetic music and dance to Bel Air Academy in New Brighton in October.
Over the summer, some members of Afoutayi came to MPR's Maud Moon Weyerhauser Studio to shoot some videos of their dance and music. They start each song with "Ayibobo," which is similar to "Hallelujah" or "Amen."
Afoutayi began the performance with a song to the "soley" (Creole word for "sun" that rhymes with "Soleil," which also means "sun," but in French). Haitian people believe in the big energy of the sun, and in this song they are asking permission to take that energy. It is a blessing that can be used to start the day or an activity.
The Artistic Director of Afoutayi Dance, Music and Arts Company is Djenane Saint Juste.
Afoutayi is a family affair: Florencia Pierre and Jeff Pierre (at the drums) are the mother and brother, respectively, of artistic director Djenane Saint Juste. The child in the videos is Saint Juste's son, Hassen Ortega.
Florencia "Madame Fofo" Pierre is the mother of Djenane Saint Juste and Jeff Pierre. She has written some of the songs that Afoutayi performs, and she made up the song and game Zamn Telele. (See video below.) Madame Fofo also makes all the beautiful outfits for Afoutayi's performances.
Zamn Telele is a game with bokits that can be played by the riverside when people are collecting the water for the day.
"Bokits" [BOH-keet] can be used for work and play. They are crucial for Haitians who don't have plumbing and need to go to the river to collect water, but they can also be used as drums such as in the Zamn Telele video above.
Djenane Saint Juste brings joy to the classroom with her positive attitude and beautiful dancing. Haitian dance uses lots of hip action or "shaking what my mama gave me," small steps, raised arms and twirling. They also dance barefoot.
The flowing, colorful skirts are integral to a lady's dancing in Haiti. She holds the ends with her fingers, shakes them rhythmically, twirls in them. All the outfits are bright and colorful. The ladies wear big earrings and glitter on their faces. It's all very beautiful and helps express the joy of the movements.
Singing and playing instruments are Florencia "Madame Fofo" Pierre on the "Manman" drum, Eberle Fort on the "Mitan" drum, with the little "Kata" drum played with sticks next to him and classical/jazz singer Fabienne Denis playing the "chacha" (shaker).
John-Paul "JP" Douglas is a multi-instrumentalist, shown here with the "kone" [KOH-neh], a vuvuzela-type horn with two pitches. Many instruments in Haiti are made from recycled materials. The kone is made from scrap metal.
The metal instruments in "Tik-Tak" that Djenane Saint Juste and Melissa Clark are playing are also made of scrap metal. The instrument is called a "graj" [GRAHJZH], and it is played with a fork. It is really light, so that it can be played by dancers, and it is popular at Carnival.
Vivien Bossouamina from Congo Brazzaville (which is next door to the Democratic Republic of Congo) demonstrated the style of dancing from his country and provided the biggest laughs from his comic antics and the biggest cheers and gasps with his back flips.
Dancers Djenane Saint Juste and Melissa Clark lead half the class in dance while the other half of the class provides the beat on the bokits.
Saint Juste teaches the Creole version of "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes." Creole is one of the two national languages of Haiti. It is a mix of French (the other national language; Haiti was a French colony), English, Spanish and African languages. This song and dance is performed at Carnival, a massive festival held in the weeks leading up to Mardi Gras. Basically, it is a time to celebrate wildly before the somber time of Lent. The Creole version of this song is much more energetic than the English version. It's repetitive, though, so it's easy to learn if taught in call-and-response form. The body parts are "Mains, tèt, zepòl, vant, dada, jenou, zòtèy" or "hands, head, shoulders, tummy, bum, knees, toes."
Djenane Saint Juste makes all the children love her from the moment she opens her mouth. She is just so incredibly positive and charming. Here she is giving high-fives to all the student drummers.
"Lasirenn ak Labalenn" is a folk tale and song about a poor man who loses his hat in the sea while on a treasure hunt, but meets a mermaid and a whale. The storyteller is Hassen Ortega, the son of Djenane Saint Juste. At the beginning of the video, Saint Juste calls "swa congo," which is a call to start a "congo" dance, a dance of love.
]]>Like many people from the Iron Range in northern Minnesota, Sara Pajunen (Pie-YOU-nen) has a strong connection to her Finnish heritage. Her father grew up with his Finnish-speaking grandparents and her violin teacher was from Finland. Pajunen took classical violin from this teacher, but also learned Finnish folk music and dances as a participant in a children's performing touring group that toured nationally and internationally. As a high school student, when her family moved to the Twin Cities, Sara took Finnish as PSEO at the University of Minnesota. She lived in Finland for four years and sees living in Finland again as something in her future. She loves to sing in Finnish and has a duo with a Finnish accordionist, called Aallotar. Needless to say, her Finnish ancestry and playing violin have been a big part of shaping who Pajunen is.
Pajunen wanted to share her love of violin and its capabilities with the students who participated in the Class Notes Artist program. The violin has become a key instrument of not only classical music, but many different strains of folk music from all over the western world. It's probably one of the few instruments that first comes to mind when someone is asked to name a classical instrument or a western folk instrument (guitar, percussion and flute are probably the others).
The physics of the violin and its larger siblings is fascinating, but actually pretty logical and easy to understand. Sound itself, of course, is just vibrations through air and vibrations from the violin strings whether bowed or plucked vibrate inside the body of the instrument before they emerge as sound. The hair on the wooden bow is from the tail of a horse — it doesn't hurt the horse to remove it, it's like getting a haircut. Horsehair has little microscopic hooks on it that when sticky with rosin catch on the metal strings as the bow is pulled. This vibrates the string and said vibrations are caught on the wooden bridge and through that sent inside the hollow body of the violin. The sound bounces around and comes out the f-holes on the top/front of the instrument that project the sound. If you want to tune the instrument, you adjust the pegs to tighten or loosen the strings, which changes the pitch. Pajunen actually re-tuned the instrument for one particular piece from G-D-A-E to A-E-A-E because it actually creates more resonance. Interestingly, Pajunen has been the sole owner of the violin that she currently plays (it was made in 2004).
Pajunen has a very interactive teaching style. The students were encouraged to ask questions, and hypothesize answers to Sara's questions. They participated in exercises to learn the importance of keeping time, and counting beats. Student volunteers had the opportunity to be dynamics masters; standing up in front of the group and raising and lowering their hand to indicate forte and piano dynamics as Pajunen played. Pajunen asked that the students listen with their eyes closed while she walked among them with her violin. She too closes her eyes a lot when she plays; it makes her seem fully immersed in her playing.
Pajunen has been playing violin for 29 years and in the last few years she has ventured into the world of composition. For the students, she played her work Amass, which was constructed on and off over a period of about a year and has really special significance to her growth as a musician. We chatted for a while about this piece and the meaning behind it. In our conversation, Pajunen told me that Amass has two different meanings.
Sara Pajunen: "It's the first time that I've written a solo violin piece that feels like a complete conglomeration of all the music I've played in my violin life of 29 years and so it's amassing all that together"
Pajunen is also interested in the idea and power of sound as "presence."
"When we take just one sense — listening for example — and get rid of all the other ones, it can slow down our brain and lead us to a more open place. I grew up Catholic and you know a lot of mysticism in Catholicism also has those sensory ideas of the incense or the prayer, the repetition and so Amass come from that. I hope that it's a short five-minute bit where people can focus in on the sound and feel some sort of peace and movement within them, and leave feeling more open and more hopeful and more aware and more present."
Influenced by her childhood in Iron Range and Finnish heritage, Pajunen feels most at home out in nature, amongst woods and lakes. Much of Amass was composed on her parents' deck at their cabin (what she considers her childhood home) in northern Minnesota overlooking a lake. She likes to walk around or sway when composing. Her composition is a stream of consciousness process, that involves improvisation and allowing whatever sounds want to come out to come out. What does come cannot be defined by genre and Pajunen is totally okay with that.
Sara Pajunen: "I wouldn't really want to pinpoint what genres you hear in [Amass] because the point is that they all just exist inside of me through all the influences that I've taken in and all the music that I've played. So I think people might try to describe it in terms of genre, but it feels very much like me at this moment in my musical development, having collected and amassed everything that I have in my life, and then looking towards the future of my violin playing and my composition."
Pajunen believes that music has the power to bring people together and that dissolve genre barriers is akin to dissolving barriers between people of different backgrounds and cultures.
"I was raised playing classical music and folk music and it's just about dissolving those genre barriers and creating what reflects where we've come from both in our own lives and then historically throughout generations and culture and what we are looking forward towards in trying to be more unified. I like to think of things in metaphors, so when we unify parts of ourselves and we integrate, then maybe that has an effect on the way we operate in the world and that can help dissolve barriers that we're having trouble with in societies."
Pajunen's philosophy on breaking down barriers and sharing peace by sharing the importance of both music and heritage makes her a great role model for young students. Her open-mindedness about music and culture and her respect for her instrument hopefully rubbed off on them a little even if they don't quite realize it.
When we think of choral music in the religious context, most of us think of Gregorian Chant or music from the Catholic and Protestant traditions. Orthodox church music is from the east and includes languages as diverse as Russian, Arabic, Syrian, Bulgarian and even Finnish.
David Lucs is a board member of the International Society for Orthodox Church Music, and he represents North America, a place where orthodoxy thrives and takes on an entirely unique sound, chants and hymns sung in our vernacular, English.
Coming up this Thursday, June 23, in the Twin Cities is a regional symposium that explores not only this broad and diverse tradition but also the heightened experience of communicating with the divine in services, workshops, through discussions and in a unique opportunity to hear a concert by Cappella Romana, one of the finest choirs in the world that specializes in Orthodox music.
Among the symposium participants are Dr. Kurt Sander and Father Ivan Moody. St. Mary's Orthodox Cathedral in Northeast Minneapolis celebrates its 125th anniversary this year, and its choir will also be on hand to celebrate with directors, composers, singers, chanters, musicians and musicologists from all over the world.
Capella Romana's concert is open to non-participants in the symposium and takes place Thursday evening at 7:30 at the Basilica of St. Mary and is preceded by a pre-concert lecture.
]]>Gaosong V. Heu is a Hmong-American musician, actress, and storyteller trained in both western classical and Hmong music. She believes that music and stories are a great way to bring people from different cultures together, and that these differences are actually very beautiful. Her goal is to bridge the gap between western classical and Hmong music by celebrating the differences as well as the similarities.
Heu was born in Minnesota, but her parents came from Laos as refugees from the Vietnam War. The war actually involved many more countries in Southeast Asia than just Vietnam. Heu's parents had helped the Americans and that gave them their ticket, as it were, to a life in America. However Southeast Asia is not the original homeland of the Hmong. Centuries ago they actually lived in China, and one can discern Chinese influence in their language and in some aspects of their culture. When they lived in China, the Hmong people were prosperous until they opposed those in power, which led to enslavement by their Chinese overlords. The Chinese also took away the Hmong history books and forbade the use the Hmong language. So the Hmong had to resort to clever, secret ways to preserve their language and history in their clothing, story cloths, and music. As a result, the Hmong culture has many folk stories that have been passed down even throughout hard times. Because of this oppression, the Hmong migrated further and further south until they ended up in Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam in the 1800's. However, due to refugees fleeing the Vietnam War, there are now Hmong all over the world, with one of the biggest populations being in the Twin Cities.
Because the Hmong have had to move around a lot throughout their history, nuances in their culture and language dialect are naturally based on geographic location. There are two dialects in the Hmong language: white and green. They both use the same words — so people from the white and green dialects can understand each other — but the tone of certain words is different. Whether one speaks the green or white dialect is based on geographical location, but the white dialect is generally more prevalent. Whilst the Hmong language is related to Chinese, the green dialect sounds a lot more like Chinese than the white dialect due to the tones.
Traditional Hmong clothing is also based on dialect and geography. The basic elements of a ladies outfit are a bodice with three-quarter length sleeves, a skirt, a belt, an apron in the front with a tail round the back, and a headdress. Heu speaks the white dialect so her skirt is plain white, but a skirt from the green dialect is more colourful and has more symbols on it. The belt, apron, and bodice always have colour, decoration and symbols. The many symbols in the fabric have different meanings and are another way that the Hmong could hide their language from the Chinese. The cut and fabric of Heu's outfit is in a modern style that is more typical for Hmong-Americans, but there are still pieces that are traditional. For instance, she has hundreds of "money" pieces that jangle off her dress. Actually some of them are Francs, as the French colonised Laos and Vietnam in the 1800s so there is still a strong French connection there. The more money a girl had on her dress, and the more details in the d écor showed her eligibility as a bride. The money was a symbol of a wealthy background, the details on a dress showed how hard of a worker she was, and the many layers made a women look larger showing that she could afford to eat well. A girl would essentially be wearing a symbol of the dowry that she could bring to her husband's family.
The Hmong did not only use clothing to preserve their history. Incredibly detailed embroidered tapestries called Story Cloths tell stories of the Hmong life throughout history. Subjects can be about daily life; agriculture has been and still is a major part of Hmong life so working in the fields is a popular topic. They can also cover major life events like weddings or historical events like the Vietnam War. For example, Heu's story cloth shows the Hmong people escaping from Laos by crossing the Mekong River into neutral Thailand. The Mekong is a very big and swift river and the crossing was incredibly dangerous for two reasons: the means of crossing was either by swimming, inner tubes, or rafts, and there were guards patrolling the shores so the crossing had to be made at night. Many Hmong braved this to escape the Vietnam War and find refuge in camps hoping to reach a new life in a different country. There are many story cloths out there that document different aspects of this terrible journey and life in the refugee camps.
Sewing, textile work, and fabric are obviously a massive part of the Hmong culture, but music has also been an essential part of cultural preservation for the Hmong. There are three purposes for making music in the Hmong culture: courting, rituals, and storytelling. Whether or not there is singing does not mean that there are not words and meaning being conveyed through the music. There is a poem behind all music even if it is instrumental because the Hmong language is very tonal. Each word naturally has a pitch. Therefore even a spoken phrase in Hmong has a melody and every musical phrase in an instrumental melody has a meaning behind it.
Nature has played a big role in the crafting of Hmong instruments. Heu's main instrument, the qeej (gulp in your throat and say "eng" at the same time and that's essentially the pronunciation), is a wind instrument made out of bamboo, but decorated with ribbons and jangles. When she dances whilst playing this instrument the combination of the qeej plus the percussion of the jangly bits and the stomping of her feet turns her into a one-woman band! Her dancing is fairly simple, but there are competitions where players do acrobatics whilst playing smaller qeejs (Something for her to aspire to). Up into the last few decades, the qeej was only played by men and is still not played by very many women; Heu is one of about ten women in America who plays the qeej. In fact, there are not many people who can even make the qeej anymore, so it is rather tricky to find one hence there are no longer very many players in general.
A lack of instrument makers, however, is not a problem for players of the banana leaf (well as long as one has access to a banana tree). It is just as you would imagine: a big leaf from a banana tree blown on the same way one would blow a piece of grass. It even makes the same squeaky sound. The banana leaf played a very important role in the Vietnam War. It was used to send coded messages across the mountains. The coded message was hidden in the musical phrase, the pitches of which would correlate to the tones that the spoken words would make.
Just as the banana leaf can be used to send codes, other instruments are used particularly for courting messages. The little jaw harp is one such instrument; a boy will speak the words of a love poem to a girl that he is interested in into the metal bit. It almost has a robotic sound that doesn't sound remotely romantic to Western ears, but it really is in Hmong culture. Here's a typical situation: a boy would walk through the jungle at night to visit his romantic interest's hut. He would then knock on her hut and play her the poem outside her wall (as of course it would be inappropriate to go inside). He couldn't do this during the day as he would be too busy farming. If the girl liked the song, then she would open a window and they would be able to talk through the night. If she didn't, she would tell him to go away and he would have to walk all the way home through the jungle. So it was really something to do only if you were pretty sure of a positive result since the jungle is full of dangerous animals. This courting ritual still happens in some rural areas of Asia where the Hmong people live, but in America texting and calling is the norm. This is another example of how the Hmong have adapted to their situation.
The Hmong people have had a lot to adapt to and survive through in their history. They've proved courageous and resilient, making the preservation of their heritage a priority, particularly through textiles and music. Heu's philosophy — that celebrating cultural similarities and differences is incredibly important — is the key to building community. In particular, music is a wonderful medium for this work as it is present in every culture. Whilst the sounds may be worlds apart, what is behind the music — the feelings and purposes — are something that everyone can understand. It helps us transcend our differences, and remember that we are all human and what a beautiful thing that is.
I was introduced to Indian classical music (IC) in a rather memorable way. An Indian gentleman I had the pleasure of dating a while back opened up this beautiful musical realm to me over wine and YouTube videos of Zakir Hussain and Ravi Shankar, one bitterly cold January. He explained to me a few of the basics; among other things, pointing out how the instruments "speak" to each other back and forth, as though they were having a conversation. He described how the tabla had its own rich and extensive vocabulary: different sounds and rhythms that meant specific and unique things.
Over the time we dated, he showed me clips of Hussain playing the tabla in ways that alternately made my heart race and stop; live bits of the Remember Shakti album that blew my musical mind; and IC vocalists who sang as I had never experienced or learned to in almost three decades of choir and voice lessons. His eyes lit up excitedly as he talked about the music and saw my growing interest. It was love at first...listen. I was immediately captivated.
I had the great honor on May 3 of photographing and attending my first live IC concert: Nagai Muralidharan and Nagai Sriram, a Carnatic violin duet, were accompanied by Mannargudi A. Easwaran on the mridangam at St. Catherine's Recital Hall, a show in IMSOM's spring concert series. IMSOM is the Indian Music Society of Minnesota, an arts and culture organization now in its 35th year. Partially funded by a yearly grant through the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, IMSOM is committed to fostering the IC music community and acting as a cultural bridge among communities here in Minnesota, consistently bringing in world-class musicians from India.
It was a well-attended show. Ameeta Kelekar, president of IMSOM since 2005, greeted me as I was ushered to my front-row seat, directly in front of the four performers who sat cross-legged on the carpeted stage floor. The four musicians wore beautiful traditional wraps made of rich cloth, with intricate, embroidered edging. The two mridangams were covered in gorgeous, vibrantly-colored fabrics.
The music viscerally grabbed me and pulled me in. I have never seen or heard a violin played like these were played. It was magical, it brought tears to my eyes. Unlike most Western musical performances, the musicians sat facing one another, in a U shape, to facilitate the communication that occurred via eye contact, hand gestures, tapping, and other subtle cues I probably missed in what I quickly understood was a key, fundamental aspect of what they were playing. Leadership on-stage seemed to pass seamlessly back and forth.
Kelekar told me that "one of the differences [between Western classical and IC is that in IC we have a modal kind of melody — there's no harmonizing. Although the basic scales are similar, we have 10 'microtones' — shrutis in addition to the 12 semitones in a complete scale. IC is raga-based, and the way a raga is elaborated in a performance is highly individualized — it differs from performer to performer and is a reflection of [each] artist's training and creativity." Not surprisingly, this is not a fast process; during intermission, Easwaran told me that he has been playing music for 59 years, since he was four years old. He began performing publicly when he was 11.
The audience response was closer to what I was accustomed to at jazz shows. Unlike Western classical music performances, where speaking or making any noise is generally frowned upon, the audience for the IMSOM show was vocally interactive, with audience members (and the other performers) showing their appreciation for the musicians with audible sounds and words, letting the performers know when some part of the piece was especially lovely. "If you don't respond visibly in an Indian classical concert, it sometimes gives the impression that you don't appreciate the artist and the music. And the artist is often looking for that feedback," noted Kelekar.
Partway into the show, two other professional IC musicians arrived, having just finished another show in Edina, and were waved up to the front row by the performers on stage. Though they had no instruments, the performance then seemed to expand out to include these two additions to the front row; two more people, welcomed into a conversation circle. They joined in easily with the hand gesturing and rhythm-tracking that was happening in front of them on stage, and soon all six of them were winking and smiling and nodding to each other in camaraderie.
One of the latecomers, KN Shashikiran, a vocalist from Chennai, told me later, "IMSOM connects the best of Indian classical music, striking a perfect balance of Hindustani and Carnatic, vocal and instrumental, and has, in the last 35 years, been a perfect cultural ambassador for ICM — and now has emerged as one of the premiere organizations in North America."
Earlier last week I met Kelekar at a coffee shop outside her office at the University of Minnesota, where she is a professor of molecular biology. Telling me kindly to "Please, call me Ameeta," she sat down across from me, with twinkling eyes and a gracious presence. She talked to me about IMSOM, her own experiences with IC music, and the challenges of keeping an all-volunteer nonprofit in the black while regularly bringing in the most accomplished musicians in this genre to perform in Minnesota.
Coming from a family of musicians in India, Kelekar became a member of IMSOM a year after moving to Minneapolis, and became president soon after. Ten years later, "I haven't resigned because nobody lets me!" she tells me, laughing. "I wanted to be a part of [IMSOM], because I am addicted to listening to performances of top quality, and we have learned over the years how to get some of the best artists from India. So it's important to be part of an organization that will allow you to do that."
This fall, IMSOM celebrates its 35th anniversary. Normally, the performance seasons are divided evenly between Carnatic (South Indian) and Hindustani (North Indian) concerts. "We're doing something special for the 35th anniversary," said Kelekar. "We're going to showcase exclusively instrumental concerts this fall and the season will include a duet (jugalbandi) of Hindustani and Carnatic styles."
The next IMSOM concert will take place on May 31 at Normandale Community College in Bloomington: Abhishek Lahiri will perform on the Hindustani Sarod. For more information about this and other programs, see imsom.org.
Corina Bernstein has been looking at the world through a lens ever since she received a Brownie Camera at the tender age of six and began her journey as a storyteller. Corina has photographed and written extensively, nationally and internationally, documenting intimate, inspiring, and compelling moments of the people and places she encounters. She currently resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Interested in writing about classical music for American Public Media? Have a story about classical music to share? We want to hear from you!
Minnesota is unique in the United States for having a state learning standard specifically focused on the indelible musical contributions of its region's own native cultures and peoples: "Describe the cultural and historical traditions of music, including the contributions of Minnesota American Indian tribes and communities."
Because of its cultural specificity and schools' understandable concerns about misrepresenting those communities, it is a challenging standard for many music educators to teach.
As a composer, singer, instrumentalist, and leader, Lyz Jaakola is an extraordinary ambassador for Ojibwe-Anishinaabe music and culture. In this Class Notes video, she offers an overview of Ojibwe (also known as Chippewa) identity, which is part of the larger group of peoples known as Anishinaabe, taking us through various kinds of Ojibwe musical expression, and offering historical and traditional insights along the way.
Lyz Jaakola has also served as one of MPR's Class Notes Artists from the beginning of the program, traveling the state to perform for schoolchildren and their educators. More recently, she was honored with a 2014 Sally Award for of her work in raising awareness and appreciation of Native music and culture throughout Minnesota.
These and several other Class Notes videos with accompanying curricula, along with Classical MPR's other education initiatives, can be found here.
]]>
This week on Music with Minnesotans, Steve Staruch speaks with Luther Gerlach, a retired cultural anthropologist from the University of Minnesota. Luther and his wife Ursula did field work in Africa in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Their home made recordings of the Digo and the Baluba peoples captured both the exuberance and the spiritual reverence of these Africa tribes. But Beethoven and Purcell are also included in the musical mix.
Traditional African music of the Digo tribe from the personal recorded collection of Luther Gerlach
Beethoven: Egmont Overture, Vienna Philharmonic with conductor, Leonard Bernstein DG 413 778
Traditional African music of the Baluba tribe from the personal recorded collection of Luther Gerlach
Henry Purcell: Trumpet Voluntary from an un-released recording (from the former East Berlin) also included in the personal collection of Luther Gerlach
Next week: Arden Bushnell is a fiber artist. Her vibrant and playful works have been awarded at the Minnesota State Fair. She brings a playlist filled with gorgeous melodies and jaunty dance rhythms.
Elizabeth "Lyz" Jaakola is a musician and educator, and an enrolled member of the Fond du Lac band of Lake Superior Ojibwe near Cloquet, Minn. She teaches music and American Indian studies at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College.
She performs and composes in many styles and genres including traditional Anishinaabe music, jazz, blues and opera. She has performed as close to home as Duluth, Minn., and as far as Rome for the Rome Opera Festival, while her Native-based compositions have also been heard on radio and television. She has arranged many Native pieces for solo and choral performance.
Lyz is always striving to promote Anishinaabe music and education through her collaborations, performances and composition. This past week, she visited seven different elementary schools around the Bemidji, Minn., area, performing for more than 2,200 students. Lyz shared a variety of traditional Anishinaabe songs and instruments as well as the traditions and stories that surround them.
Here is what Lyz has to say about giving educational performances:
"Educational performances are very fulfilling for me as an Ojibwe musician, especially when children are my audience... Having the opportunity to impact "the next generation" in their opinions about Native culture and helping them learn how to listen to Ojibwe music is such an honor. I am very grateful to our elders for passing on the traditions, to the kids for opening their hearts and to MPR for this opportunity."
School visits
Cass Lake-Bena Elementary- Cass Lake, Minn.
Solway Elementary- Solway, Minn.
Lincoln Elementary- Bemidji, Minn.
J.W. Smith-Bemidji, Minn.
Northern Elementary-Bemidji, Minn.
Laporte Elementary-Laporte, Minn.
Bagley Elementary-Bagley, Minn.
About the Classical MPR Class Notes Artists program this year
Now in its fifth year, the Class Notes Artists program at Classical MPR brings performers to elementary schools throughout the state of Minnesota to give educational concerts. Each performance includes a presentation about the Artists' respective instruments, as well as the style, technique, history, and traditions related to the music that they perform.
The Artists are selected for the quality of their musicianship, and for their interest in promoting music education. This year, the following Artists will collectively travel to over 50 schools in four different geographical hubs.
Lyz Jaakola — Greater Bemidji area
Silver Spruce Duo — Duluth, Cloquet, and the North Shore
Dolce Wind Quintet — Twin Cities
Artaria String Quartet — Twin Cities
Minneapolis Guitar Quartet — Twin Cities
Vecchione/Erdahl Duo — Twin Cities
Odelia Trio — Rochester
These performances are supported by Minnesota music education standards-based curriculum designed by Classical MPR's Curriculum Specialist. These lessons and activities are given to music teachers in advance of each Artist's visit, and are to be used as learning materials for before and/or after each performance.
Students at participating schools will also receive an MPR-produced compilation CD featuring the year's Artists, allowing students to experience a wide range of different musical styles and ensembles. The 2013-14 album, A Musical History Tour is also available to stream online.
Classical MPR's goal for the Class Notes Artist program is to create authentic and transformative experiences for young pupils that will inspire their creative pursuits, and be a meaningful addition to what they are already learning from their music teachers.
