I’m leaving imminently for a brief trip to Dakar, Senegal, where I’ll be part of a press contingent learning about Youssou N’Dour’s micro-credit initiative called Birima. This is modeled of course on the Nobel Peace Prize-winning efforts of Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh, whose concept of the “social business entrepreneur” is very much worth checking out. Yunus’s explanation of his Grameen Bank is here; his absorbing critique of one-dimensional capitalism (not all capitalism) is here.
Meanwhile, I wanted to sound an enthusiastic note on some of the music I’ve heard in the Philly in recent days.
Toumani Diabate’s Symmetric Orchestra played World Cafe Live and got me in the West African mood. Kora, balafon, ngoni, djembe, guitar/bass/drums, multiple vocalists, party atmosphere and a seriously challenging audience sing-along that I’m proud to say I nailed.
PIMA Group, led by choreographer/conceptualist Melisa Putz, staged a phenomenal site-specific event in Philly’s historic Powel House, involving seven dancers moving separately in and around the house’s interiors, to a haunting experimental soundtrack. The dancers, all young women, wore white blouses, dark short skirts and brightly colored tights, and moved about the various rooms like ghosts. Audience members were free to follow any dancer or group of dancers at will. We interacted with these silent figures as they, too, seemed to be discovering the house, present yet absent, aware of our movements but somehow removed, in another dimension. Toward the end a driving beat kicked in; the troupe seamlessly assembled on the first-floor staircase and began a mesmerizing group dance, an image that stuck with me for days. This was an inspired Bowerbird production, and without doubt a major artistic highlight of my time in Philly.
And just last night, a rare three-gig chase through various Philly neighborhoods. First was the late-afternoon premiere of “Hiding Out,” a gorgeous 30-minute work by pianist Mike Holober and his Gotham Jazz Orchestra, at the Museum of Art. Then clear across town for percussionist/composer Susie Ibarra’s world premiere of “Kit: Music for Four Pianists,” and other works as well — an Ars Nova offering at the Settlement Music School in Queen Village. And finally a mind-obliterating, thermonuclear set at Chris’s Jazz Cafe by jazz-rock guitarist Wayne Krantz and his trio, with Paul Socolow on bass and Ari Hoenig on drums. Krantz is no longer playing Thursdays at 55 Bar; he’s “maxed the place out,” he recently said. The Philly appearance was his first in quite some time, and I resolved to catch it from the first note. In my blurb for Philadelphia Weekly I wrote: “[I]t is Krantz’s under-exposed, self-marketed solo work, the abnormality of his musical architecture, we’ll marvel over in the coming decades after it finally sinks in.” Put those guitars down, kids. The instrument’s already been conquered.
I may manage to blog during my stay in Dakar, so check back in.
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