Saw Lenine, the Brazilian “rocker” last night at Joe’s. In a way I enjoyed it better than Manu Chau a couple of nights ago — probably because this show was more intimate. I could see up close that the band was having a great time, and there were almost no arena rock gestures or urgings to sing along, jump or pump fists — all of which I snobbishly recoil from. What’s the matter? Don’t I want to join in? Well, I did dance and sing along at the Manu Chau Brooklyn show, but whenever I am urged to do so I get suspicious.
With Lenine “rocker” is in quotes because although the first impression might be that Lenine and band are playing straight rock, beneath it is a foundation of maracatu and forró rhythms from the Northeast of Brasil that informs every song. They swing in a way that most rock doesn’t.
I had only seen Lenine in a sort of folkloric setting before — singing with percussionist Marcos Suzano and Banda de Pifanos — a traditional group focused around some cane flute players.
He’s named after Lenin, the Russian revolutionary, and he looks like Wild Bill Hickok, the western gunfighter who was later a showman with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show.
From Wikipedia: Hickok was level-headed even while fighting, as evidenced by a legendary exchange of words with Phil Coe. Supposedly, Coe stated that he could "kill a crow on the wing" (i.e. flying), and Hickok replied, "Did the crow have a pistol? Was he shooting back? I will be."
Speaking of gunfighters and show business, the connection might not be as silly as it seems — there were two songs (at least) that distinctly mentioned Lampião, the legendary Brazilian outlaw. He was a figure from an era of vicious landowners, desperate poverty and slavery — and the exploits of Lampião and his men became Robin Hood like examples to the people and songwriters of that region. When he was captured his head and those of his henchmen were displayed in a box that toured the countryside.
Chechen rebels also displayed the heads of captured Russians on sticks. (No picture). U.S. military displayed this picture of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi after he was killed in an explosion. The picture ran in the NY Post and other newspapers as proof of the elimination of a baddie.
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Further thoughts re: PL's lawsuit with the man he photographed. From Time Out NY:
A Korean artist becomes the Leonardo of the rabbinical set
Never put a rabbi’s image on the floor. That’s one lesson learned by Ki Yong Sung — a portrait painter who runs a small shop in the arcade at the Fulton Street subway station — when a troop of Jewish schoolgirls accosted him and demanded that he move a likeness of their rabbi up onto the wall. Another useful tidbit gleaned from limning more than 50 rabbinical portraits over the past three years: Honor the Sabbath. “Friday evening, I never paint Jewish picture,” says the 69-year-old Seoul native, whose Jewish clients are so observant, they don’t want him to work on their commissions during holy days.
Sandwiched between a barbershop and a tie store, Sung paints from photographs of his subjects, which include not only hoary rebbes, but blushing brides, pooches and deceased parents. (He charges $200 for a 12 x 16 canvas.) He painted his first rabbi in 2003, after a fellow Korean artist told him about a framing shop in Midwood, Brooklyn, that needed artwork to sell to the local Orthodox community. Sung and the owner worked out an arrangement to produce portraits of religious leaders at a bulk rate. Like the tablets Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai, word of Sung’s skills soon spread, and today, orders arrive from as far away as California and Florida. Still, he remains puzzled by his customers. “Not his wife’s picture, not his parents’ — he only wants the rabbi’s picture,” he muses of his typical Orthodox client.
What about the injunction against idols and graven images?
