John Philip Sousa once said, “Jazz will endure just as long as people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.”
I’m not sure if it was jazz or some other beat that inspired the creation of these three curvaceous musicians, found in a plaza a block or so off the Malecon in La Paz, and since the descriptive tablets have either been removed or never existed, I may never know.
What I am certain of, is that the music that inspired this public art had to be the kind you hear, not just with your feet, but with every part of your body.
I imagine the sculptor hearing a street musician play a tune, while another joins in. I imagine a balmy breeze spreading the salt air from the bay throughout the city, and people out and about in the evening, listening to the combined voices of singers, instruments, sea birds, rustling palms, and ocean waves.
My friend Carmi says that this week’s Thematic Photographic theme is “curvaceous.” I’m pretty certain these sculpted musicians played the curviest music in history.
I’ve been in a kind of funk the last couple of days. I haven’t had a true migraine, just tension headaches and feeling really tired. I was up at 7:30 this morning, but then I went back to bed at 9:30 because I was so exhausted I felt like I’d been drugged into sleep.
I woke again at one-thirty this afternoon.
I’ve tried to write, tried to research, tried to get into the mood to do some more Christmas decorating, and all I want to do is sleep. I haven’t even cracked open (metaphorically speaking, as it’s a Kindle file) the Cleo Coyle book I got on Tuesday at 2:01 AM Central time.
Tonight, in an effort to shake the funk, I played a bunch of music, but even that didn’t help, so I went to YouTube and found a Peter, Paul and Mary video (because I am SUCH a geek) that never fails to make me grin.
I’m not generally a fan of Philip Glass. I mean, I like his music better than I like, say, the music of John Cage, but when it comes to orchestra and quartet music, minimalism is just not my style.
However, earlier this evening I was poking around YouTube because after a friend introduced me to “chambersoul” musician Shana Tucker’s awesome fusion of classical, jazz, soul and folk forms – and did I mention she’s a cellist? – I found that my interest in my own cello was renewed. It’s been sitting in the closet for over a year, partly because I haven’t been in the mood to play, and partly because my hands hurt from so much typing, and partly because the C-string needs to be replaced and I’m terrified the string will hit me in the eye during the process.
But I digress.
So I was poking around iTunes, because I’m all about instant gratification, and I found a song by CelloFourte (aka Tate Olsen) that I quite like, even though his band (Skillet) is largely unknown to me. (I’m even less of a Christian music/Christian rock fan than I am a Glass or Cage fan, because while I believe everyone is entitled to self expression, I think praise music is a bit smarmy. To me, it always comes across as insincere. (I think they doth PRAISE too much.))
But browsing for music is all about finding the unexpected, and so I was surprised to come across a Kronos Quartet album called Dracula. Now, the Kronos Quartet has been in business almost as long as I’ve been alive and their repertoire includes a healthy blend of contemporary, classical and contemporary classical (no, that is NOT an oxymoron – it refers to modern music composed in a classical style). Even though they seem to be partial to Glass, I generally like their albums.
But Dracula? Really?? Could it be that one of my favorite quartets had celebrated one of my favorite stories?
As it turns out, it could. The album isn’t at all recent, but is the recording of Kronos Quartet’s performance of Philip Glass’s Dracula quartet, which is basically a modern, alternative score to the original 1931 movie which starred Bela Lugosi. In fact, KQ has played the piece live, under the movie, more than once.
The music alone is amazing – it really feels scary, mysterious, creepy, cautious, hopeful, and triumphant at various stages. As I have a DVD of the movie, I’m considering playing the two together some dark October evening (it begs for a dark October evening. Dracula doesn’t work in the late summer twilight. Trust me on this).
Meanwhile, I found a YouTube clip, of the music and the film, which I’ve shared below.
