Sunday, August 26, 2007

Womadded

Highlight of the day, so far: brunch with Brian & Tony at the Upper Thomson Road prata place. This punctuated extended bouts of marking which, in itself, would have guaranteed a good time, but the good time was most definitely greatly enhanced by good company & good grub .It was all, in fact, good. In passing, I realised I knew nothing about the colonisation of New Zealand. There seems no end to my disturbing ignorance on matters (now) so close to home, relatively speaking. This is not so good.

Youssou N'Dour sparkled last night. His voice sounded as youthful as ever and is better live than on record (if such a thing is possible.) I was a little taken aback by the intensity of his performance. Somehow I've imagined him as someone who smiles as he sings - an impression partly created the one time I'd seen him on film, singing In Your Eyes with Peter Gabriel. At Womad he was, if anything, scowlingly straight-faced, despite the utter exuberance of the Super Etoile de Dakar (who were sensational - genuinely super.) Coming after the rather show-busy David D'Or, an Israeli singer with a fabulous voice and (another) great band, this was a bit of a relief. Generally performers at Womad seem to feel obliged to tell the audience how great they are and how much they love them. I suppose this is good PR and perhaps some who say this are being honest, but it gets extremely tiresome. A large proportion of the audience really suck, to be frank. If you're anywhere not too close to the front you get to hear the music through a not-so-thin-veil of ceaseless chatter which leads one to question why a number of these folk have chosen to shell out not a few readies only to have their conversations interrupted by inconsiderate musicians who insist on wanting to be heard - if not actually listened to.

Listening to music changes it. (Not my aphorism, I'm afraid. From Robert Fripp's Guitar Craft, if I'm not mistaken.)

Sometimes I am (and have been) guilty of using music as wallpaper, which is, I think, what the modern world encourages us to do. But this is not healthy.

Paradox: you listen better in a crowd, assuming the crowd is listening.

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