Went upstate yesterday with Yale to a recording studio where Susana Baca is recording a new CD produced by Craig Street. It will be a more intimate record than her last couple, which might be good — it can be done for less money, so she might see some royalty money someday, and it allows Yale/Luaka some financial room to move… and it seems to be turning out to be a beautiful record as well. Less strictly Afro-Peruvian — more a collection of ballads she’s collected over the years.
During the dinner break we all sit around a huge table. Sergio, Susana’s guitarist, and Kevin, a guitarist and multi-instrumentalist from Toronto who is guesting on the CD, begin chatting about Guinga, the composer I had seen a couple of weeks ago. It turns out he’s a dentist! Or so Sergio claims — he may have retired his drills by now. Sergio said it is rumored that he would mix the two vocations so completely that on some days, when he had a break between dental surgery, he’d pick up his guitar and play or write for a while — then go back to drilling and filling.
Both Sergio and Kevin expressed awe at this guy's playing and composing, which made me feel good, that my perception of this little-known guy was not a freak sensation or an aberration. If one is alone in liking something one can sometimes wonder if maybe there might be a reason why no one else is getting on this bus. Maybe they know something you don’t?
Sat. eve, my birthday dinner is winding down. Mauro is tinkling the piano keys while something completely inappropriate plays on the stereo. I quietly put on Charlie Parker, commenting that his music somewhat baffles me, it seems to be in a bunch of keys all at once, hence almost any note you tinkle on the piano seems to “fit”.
Graham says he grew up listening to that music around the house. It’s almost predictable to him, it’s that familiar. I sit processing the idea that things that I find inscrutable, unpredictable, can be predictable and formulaic to someone else.
Graham offers a description of the role jazz played at its peak. That you could go to gig with 2 friends and one friend could be sitting, nursing a drink, enraptured, totally involved emotionally and intellectually, while your other friend would be tearing it up on the dance floor. That the music could simultaneously fulfill both these needs, and well, was the ideal to strive for.
I imagine that’s a good description of what a lot of popular composed and sometimes improvised music, not only jazz, sometimes strives for — to be able to work simultaneously on different levels. To be visceral and physical and at the same time moving and filled with ideas. Maybe all popular arts sometimes strive for that mixture — movies, theater, cooking, drawing.
