Angélique Kidjo Transforms the FAC Into a Global Village (with a Dance Hall)

ANGELIQUE KIDJO

University of Massachusetts Amherst Fine Arts Center

October 30, 2014

Angelique Kidjo

Miriam Makeba died in 2008. So vast was her influence that she was dubbed "Mama Africa," and so firm was her grip on that title that speculation immediately raged as to whom could possibly assume her mantle. That debate is over. Benin-born, Grammy Award winner Angélique Kidjo now reigns and commands such global respect that she has been dubbed "Sister Africa." For once the Music Hype Machine got it right.

Ms. Kidjo brought her high-powered act to the University of Massachusetts Amherst Fine Arts Center on Thursday night and transformed the building into a swaying, dancing village. You needed to be there to understand what a feat this was. The FAC is a cold, unlovable venue–a cavernous, windowless expanse of Brutalist concrete slabs whose architecture is evocative of East Berlin under Stalinism. If you can make that place rock, you can pop open graves and get skeletons to dance.

Kidjo is now based in New York City and belongs to the world, not just Benin. Her style is suitably au courant­—a veritable mash of pop, jazz, blues, folk, carnivalesque zouk, and soukous. For those unfamiliar with the latter two categories, souk is lively party music that developed on former French Caribbean islands such as Martinique and Guadeloupe; Benin was also a French colony, and Ms. Kidjo is fluent in French (plus English, Fon, and Yoruba). Soukous is a Congolese variant of rumba. The word translates "to shake," and few can do so with the facility and electric excitement of Angélique Kidjo. She informed the nearly full FAC that dancing at her concerts was a "rule." A rule, mind, not an option. And what a spitfire she is–think a muscular in-your-face mélange of Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga, James Brown, and the twirling, fight-like stances of West African dancers. Only Tina Turner rivals Kidjo for bodily attitude and insouciance. When Kidjo decides to spin, get out of her way–as she pointedly reminded her guitarist and bass player at several junctures during the concert when she nudged them to the parts of the stage to which she wished them to retreat!

As I mentioned earlier, Kidjo is now a global phenomenon, which means it's a mistake to see her music as Beninese village music. She's the sort of force that can and has played with Bono, Herbie Hancock, Carlos Santana, Counting Crows, Alicia Keyes, Cyndi Lauper, and Philip Glass. She's covered songs by Jimi Hendrix, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and Miriam Makeba. If you must apply a label, the term Afropop is probably the best. Check out her smash hit "Africa," which got the FAC audience on its feet, and you can see how she fuses the germ of traditional styles with glittery pop.

With a voice such as hers, Kidjo could sing algorithms and you'd be impressed. As glorious as her visual show was, though, my favorites moments were when she slowed the pace, stripped down the instrumentation (guitar, bass, two percussionists, and programmed sounds), and just sang. Kidjo delights in singing across rhythms, sometimes on the off-beat, but there was a magical moment in which she visibly took a slow song down a notch because she needed to allow the reverberations of her voice to die down before the next blast, lest she unleash a concretized cacophony.

Kidjo is touring in support of her latest album, Eve, which is dedicated both to her mother (whose voice we heard on tape) and to women in general. Kidjo is also an activist for the rights of women and girls, messages she delivered in chat and song. Looking for a role model of a strong woman? There's this singer from Benin who can transform a room into a musical conversation…  Rob Weir

Me Before You an Unorthodox Story of Love and Social Class

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ME BEFORE YOU (2103)

Jojo Moyes

Penguin Books, 400 pp; ISBN 978014124544.

* * * *

Me Before You is a love story–of sorts. Two very improbable characters are thrown together by misfortune and tragedy: Louisa "Lou" Clark, a 26-year-old working-class woman, and Will Traynor, a 35-year-old upper crust high-flying London investor. Both lives take a dramatic turn–Lou's when she loses a café job that helps support her family, and Will's when he distractedly walks into traffic, is struck by a motorbike, and is left a quadriplegic.

Few people think about social class as much as the Brits like Moyes, who romanticizes neither the workaday proles nor the haute bourgeoisie. Lou lives in a shabby row house with her parents and single-mother sister, Katrina, in a Hertfordshire village that's about as exciting as watching the teakettle boil. Its sole claim to fame is Stortford castle, a place where tourists gather, but people like the Clarks visit only on school trips. Clark's family is too ineffectual to be dysfunctional. Everyone is just trying to make do–Lou's dad is on the dole and trying to pacify a wife who's a bit 'round the twist, Katrina coping by playing the victim/guilt/still going to be somebody role to the hilt, and Lou putting up with boyfriend Patrick, once pudgy-but-fun and now a personal trainer more concerned about his own body fat/muscle ratio than Lou's body.

On the other side of town, miles away physically and socially, Will sulks in his ruined body and in a home filled with money but devoid of passion or compassion. He is angry, unapologetic about his moral and intellectual superiority, and contemptuous of the notion that anyone should, as Lou has been doing, simply make do. She enters the unhappy Traynor household because she needs a job. Though she knows little of what she's getting into, Lou becomes one of Will's caregivers.

A relationship that begins with mutual contempt evolves into one of respect and love by a different name. Will considers his life over and has extracted a promise from his mother, Camilla that he will submit to caregivers for one year. If he finds no joy, Camilla has agreed to allow Will to go to a Swiss clinic and end his life humanely. Moyes employs the classic literary ploy of a race against the clock. (She cleverly juxtaposes Patrick's obsession with his running times with Will's count down.) Will comes to accept Lou, who is his match in irreverence and sarcasm. Over time, he finds himself oddly attracted to her bubbly optimism and plucky obstinacy. Mainly, though, it angers him that she's stuck in a town he calls a "placemat." He hates it in Hertfordshire and thinks everyone should.

We're not sure if Will is in love with Lou in his own way or simply living vicariously through her. For her part, Lou does everything she can to try to make Will consider that life is worthwhile, even when experienced from a wheelchair. Field trips become one of the ways through which their two worlds converge—Lou is elevated and Will voluntarily descends from a social perch he comes to see as shallow and hypocritical. Soon we don't know who is saving whom or from what. Both of our protagonists cling stubbornly to the belief that everyone has the right to live according to one's own terms, but each acknowledges that those terms are more fluid than once thought. The book's ending is morally ambiguous in a delicious way and will either be exactly as you'd predict, or completely the opposite. That either would be feasible and satisfactory is among the book's many charms.

Moyes is a much stronger storyteller than prose wizard, but her tale is so strong it will draw you in and make you care deeply about Lou and Will. I give the book kudos for doing something American novels seldom do any more–consider social class. Moyes deserves a second shout for how she handles the British class system. If in America we don't discuss class at all, in Britain, writers often do so by contrasting paste-up yobbos against twit-like toffs–neither with well-oiled brains. Me Before You shows characters with the capacity for self-reflection and growth, so much so that they can reinvent themselves here and in the hereafter.-- Rob Weir

For Halloween: Only Lovers Left Alive

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ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE (2013)

Directed by Jim Jarmusch

Sony Classics, 128 minutes, R (brief nudity, language)

* * * * *

I’m pretty bored with the overdone vampire genre, but I give a hearty thumbs-up to the stylish treatment given by director Jim Jarmusch. There aren’t too many people who can do laconic ennui tinged with surrealism as well as Jarmusch. Want a film for Halloween season viewing? You won't find a better one than Only Lovers Left Alive, a film that disintegrated at the American box office like Dracula exposed to sunlight. Idiots! This German/British production is chilling, touching, and visually stunning.

It centers on two vampires who have been lovers for many centuries. How many? Well, their names are Adam (Tom Hiddleston) and Eve (Tilda Swinton), and that’s Jarmusch’s first little inside joke. If you recall, Eve ushered in Paradise Lost when she took up the serpent’s offer to eat from the Tree of Wisdom. In some translations, that arboreal temptation is the Tree of Eternal Life. In essence, Adam and Eve found a way around God by becoming immortal vampires.

After all these millennia, Adam is so bored he’s suicidal. He and Eve have lived apart for many years, but she decides to travel from Tangiers, where she lives surrounded by books, to rescue Adam, who resides in a post-economic apocalypse neighborhood in Detroit, surrounded by vintage guitars. (All traveling is confined to night flights, naturally.) Where better to be a vampire than in the deadest of dead cities? Adam is fed up with everything, including moronic people he calls “zombies.” Call it the second joke--if there’s anything more overdone than vampires, it’s zombies! Adam has, for years, passed himself off as a moody musician, first as a punk rocker then as a reclusive avant garde art rocker, hence all those guitars. Nobody quite understands his music, which means to the walking zombies it must be brilliant. Eve gets him, though. Both are classy, highly sexed, discerning vampires that require Type O negative blood to avoid getting sick on their sustenance. Detroit is a great place to find it, a place scarier than any vampire could ever be. Adam simply buys his blood from Dr. Watson (Jeffrey Wright), who needs the cash more than he needs to know why his mysterious client, Dr. Faust, wants it. Call their names more inner jokes.

Eve and Adam adore each other and almost have a good thing going until Eve’s younger vamp sister, Ava (Mia Wasikowska) drops in from Los Angeles and ruins a good thing.  Her LA demeanor is as trashy as Eve is classy; like LA, excess trumps restraint. She messes things up so badly that Adam and Eve must hightail it back to Morocco—at night, of course—to score some “pure” blood from Kit Marlowe (John Hurt). Another twist—he’s Christopher Marlowe, the real Shakespeare, who faked his death in 1593. Let’s just say not all goes according to plan. The film’s ending is both terrifying and beautiful.

This film is drenched in atmosphere—all of it tone perfect. There is a heart-wrenching scene involving a café singer (Lebanese star Yasmine Hamdan) that is positively otherworldly. The soundtrack, including music from Jarmusch’s own band, SQURL, rightly won an award at Cannes in 2013 and the film itself was nominated for a Palme d’Or.

You will walk away filled with doubt as to whether being undead might be preferable to being (semi) alive in Detroit and, of course, you will muse upon the question of whether transience is preferable to immortality. Hiddleston and Swinton have amazing chemistry together and, as usual, it’s almost impossible not to stare at Swinton when she’s on camera—her pallid complexion and icy demeanor jumping off the screen as all you’d imagine a vampire queen to be.  Only Lovers Left Alive is a small masterpiece whether you view it for Halloween or Arbor Day.

—Rob Weir

Parsonsfield afterparty Flirts Boundaries of Chaos

PARSONSFIELD

afterparty

Signature Sounds 2067

* * ½

How do you like your old-time (ish) music, straight up or mashed? Languid and melancholic, or caffeinated and raucous? Controlled or ragged? I generally get bored with stuff that hews too straight to tradition. In that spirit, Parsonsfield (formerly Pure Old Shine) ought to be just my shot of Old Red Eye. And so they are, but just one shot, not the whole jug. There is much to be admired about this young band, not the least of which is that everyone in it has a good voice and they know how to harmonize. They also sport a fine balance of whimsical songs (Mississippi John Hurt's "Let the Mermaids Flirt with Me"), funky (a cover of Bert Jansch's "Strollin' Down the Highway"), 50's style doowop rock ("Anita, Your Lovin'"), and some old-time mountain pathos ("Hang Me" and "Lay Some Flowers on My Grave.") Not only do these five lads sing well, they're also fine musicians on everything from the usual stringed instruments to things such as glockenspiel, trumpet, and musical saw.

So why a middling rating? Frankly, these guys exhaust me. afterparty is an EP and its seven tracks are pretty close to my limit. The reason lies in the execution, not the effort. These tracks involve the kind of involvement one puts into training a kitten–both the fun parts and the moments when you just want things to calm down. That is to say, Parsonsfield tends to arrange material that teeters on the brink of chaos. Usually they pull back just in the nick of time, but sometimes they don't. I get the idea that they wanted to make a spirited album evocative of evenings when the real party begins when the official one ends. I also get it that they wanted to keep the mood light and the music unrestrained. Oddly, though, all this full-tilt energy has the net effect of making seven really different songs feel the same. There's a reason why more experienced lineups spend a lot of time working on the pacing of their set lists. afterparty still makes it onto my personal playlist, but I like it a whole lot better when it's loaded on my iPod with other albums and the mode set to shuffle.  Rob Weir

Can Fracking Lead to Foreign Policy Shift?

They say you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, but maybe that's wrong. Consider two things that most reasonable people think are problematic: fracking and redeployment of military personnel into Iraq. If you think both are nightmares, you get no argument from me. Fracking is a public health and environmental disaster and I don't want to be within a hundred miles of a hydraulic fracturing site. Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam. But if a combination of the two makes the U.S. government radically rethink both its energy policy and foreign policy in the Middle East, history may look more kindly upon these dual follies.

Could this lead to...

Because of fracking the United States is now awash in oil. We've got so much that you don't hear much from the got-to-drill-in-the National Parks crowd anymore and those big companies that lined up for right to drill offshore and create the next Deepwater Horizon spill have deserted the queue. Even Texas wildcatters are complaining there's not enough profit to justify sinking new wells. They’ve had the gall to seek subsidies and price supports, but not even this Congress buys that sorry tale.

I don't give a damn about making the world safe for gas-guzzling SUVs, but it sure would be fun to see the US flip the bird to OPEC and it would be positively delicious to witness a radical shift in Middle East priorities. Step one would be to call Saudi Arabia what it is–the world's number one exporter of Islamic terrorism. The ruling Saud family has been a band of authoritarian thugs since 1902, and we've looked the other way since the 1973 oil boycott for fear the Saudis would turn off the petrol nozzle. Payback time, baby! Tell King Abdullah if he wants to keep his butt on the throne and his head on his neck, we have a few conditions: (1) Aggressive action by the Saudi secret service to ferret out and destroy terror cells, (2) Full civil rights for Saudi women. Don't want to play? I'm sure Egypt, Israel, and Jordan would love to some of that U.S. aid that won't be coming your way.

Speaking of Egypt, does anybody still believe in Arab Spring? The U.S. should stop pulling punches and get behind the el-Sisi government. The overthrow of Morsi was a good thing and saved Egypt from the loathsome Muslim Brotherhood that would have led to another war with Israel and occasioned the misery of any Egyptian with a desire to live in a century more advanced than the 7^th. A strong Egypt is crucial to U.S. interests in the region. What we don't need there is another Erdogan.

Does that name ring any bells? Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the putative democratically elected president of Turkey. He's actually an Islamist in a Western-style business suit, and his band of cronies are as backward looking as the Saud family and ISIS. Did you catch his craven and cowardly non-response to the siege of Kobani? As Kurds died on his border, he lifted not a finger to help, refused to arm Turkish Kurds who wanted to help repel ISIS, and wouldn't allow US planes to use Turkish sites or airspace. He cried like a hungry toddler when we dropped weapons to Kurds on his border. Why? Because he and ISIS are on the same page and he's scared to death of the Kurds.

...this?

If there's anyone (big IF) we ought to arm in Middle East, it's the Kurds. If Syria and Iraq ever stabilize (an even bigger IF), an independent Kurdistan is a given. A U.S. backed (and militarily secured) Kurdistan could help a whole host of problems. Kurdish nationalists have long envisioned a homeland that embraces parts of modern-day Syria, Iraq, northern Turkey, and western Iran. Imagine what a presence it would be. Imagine how nervous it would make America’s enemies. And get this–Kurdistan would be a predominately Muslim country that has no historic hatred of Jews or modern grudge with the existence of Israel.

Turkey would drop out of NATO and good riddance. Along with that withdrawal would go any hope of joining the EU and all of Europe would breathe a sigh of relief. The Turkish economy makes those of Portugal and Greece seem like Saks Fifth Avenue by comparison. Should we mention human rights? Turkey has a deplorable human rights record internally, and ask the Macedonians, Greeks, Cypriotes, and Armenians about what good neighbors they've been. Turkey has yet to admit to its genocide against the Armenians in 1915 because it claims those 1.5 million women and children it slaughtered were really enemy combatants. That's their story and they're sticking to it.  But the West shouldn't stick with Turkey. The Cold War is over, Turkey isn't essential any more, modernizer Kemal Ataturk died in 1938, and Turkish democracy is an oxymoron. Turkey is in dire need of a makeover and Erdogan, the Turkish lira, and Sharia law can't be part of it.

Dare I dream of Lebanon without Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas? Or Palestine? Too much, you protest. Perhaps. Don’t even get me started on Cold War dinosaurs Pakistan and Afghanistan—short version, embrace India and dump those other two like the toxic bad dates they were. Fracking oil and the end of the Cold War means we don't have to deal with bastards who bankroll monsters. If we can shut off the money pipeline to Texas oil drillers, we can do it to tinhorn dictators. Open that sow’s ear silk purse and spend the lolly on dance partners with whom you’d not be ashamed to be seen.

Letter to Democrats: So Long, It's Been Bad to Know You

The Third Way's real agenda

We are weeks away from the 2014 election, one that appears destined to deliver a crushing blow to the Democrats and deliver the Senate and quite a few of the remaining governorships into GOP hands. Am I depressed? Nope. The sooner the Democratic Party is destroyed, the faster reform-minded Americans will be forced to assemble a coalition that actually stands for something. Look around the Democratic Party: John Kerry, Barack Obama, the Clintons, Joe Biden, Mary Landrieu, Harry Reid, Debbie Stabenow, Cory Booker, Jay Rockefeller…. A pulse, anyone, a pulse? Better yet, a spine?

Here in Massachusetts we have Martha Coakley running for governor against Republican Charles Baker. Let’s see, both are pro-choice, pro-business, and pro-casino gambling. Do I give a damn if Charlie beats Martha? Nope. In fact, I hope he does. Here in the Bay State we use the slam “Martha Chokely.” She’s the pathetic loser who squandered a 30-point lead in a month and allowed the detestable Scott Brown to fill out Ted Kennedy’s seat in the Senate. Brown got whupped good by Liz Warren and hightailed it to New Hampshire to run for a different Senate seat. If he defeats Jeanne Shaheen, a rare principled Democrat, in November, you can blame Martha Chokely for rescuing Scott from the obscurity he so richly deserves.

I can hear some of you scream, “But what about Elizabeth Warren?” Love her! My God, the woman actually talks sense. A few days ago she lit into Obama with the blunt assessment that at every chance he had to come down on the side of ordinary Americans, he chose Wall Street. You go, Elizabeth! She’s right. Anyone looking at the Stock Market lately? It’s down over a thousand points this year. Thanks Barack. You delivered the market to the short-term profit makers who have now backed out, making even your tenuous claim to economic recovery look pathetic. So what’s the Democratic Party seeking to do to Liz Warren? Isolate her, of course.

Just when you think Dems can’t get any lamer, they manage. A Democratic think tank group calling itself The Third Way is out coaching candidates against what it calls “soak-the rich” advocates and “populists” like Warren. They tell everyone it’s the only way the party will win the “middle class.” Of please! Who wrote that crap, Ronald Reagan? It’s the same old tried bullshit about an “ownership society” that takes hard-pressed middle-income people, stuffs a few nostrums down their throat, and convinces them to believe that the middle class and the upper class are allies.

Let’s call The Third Way what it really is: Make Way for Hillary. Great. About the only thing America needs less than another Clinton is another Bush.  The Third Way is a business consortium and what it really wants is for Liz Warren to STFU. They don’t like the fact that she holds their feet to the fire and calls them the pirates they are. I mean, the woman talks banking regulations, for God’s sake! Can’t have that. So let’s get a Clinton in the Oval Office and some Third Way Democrats in with her so everyone can get a piece of the sweetheart action the Clintons cut for Wal-Mart. Remember Bonkin’ Bill? The guy who rewrote the Communications Act so that the same rightwing moguls could own more than one media outlet in the same market? The guy whose signature is on NAFTA? The one who signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law? The one who dismantled Great Society welfare benefits?

But wait—it gets worse. Still another group of Democrats wants to steer the party away from environmentalism. Not surprisingly, they are centered in West Virginia, where Republicans are poised to take Jay Rockefeller’s seat. “Clean coal,” they cry. “Fairies, elves, and unicorns,” I reply. There’s no such thing as clean coal. What this is really all about is the same thing The Third Way wants: a total dismantling of business regulations. Up in Vermont you find another Democrat of conscience, Pat Leahy. Guess what Leahy has had to defend since the day he stepped into the U.S. Senate? Vermont’s Act 250, its Land Use and Development Act that requires compliance with environmental impact study findings before a project can be green-lighted. Guess who always funds Leahy’s opponents? Big Box retailers and resort developers.

The Democrats are going to bleed in November. I hope it’s fatal. I want to see the Warrens, Shaheens, and Leahys of the world with stethoscopes around their necks, shaking their heads, and pulling the plug on the life-support machines. I want them to start over. And go ahead and hate me, but I’m writing in Dan Berwick’s name for Massachusetts governor. Of my candidates, I require a pulse and a spine.

  

A Trip to Vermont is Good for the Soul

Not everything that's good for your soul makes sense. That's why, yesterday, we found ourselves heading north through the predawn fog for a 3-½ hour drive to have breakfast at Klinger's, a South Burlington, Vermont bakery. That was followed by a hike in Red Rocks Park, a stroll down Burlington's Church Street Marketplace, a drive to Montpelier to have a late brunch at the New England Culinary Institute, then the southward journey home broken only by a brief peak into Queechee Gorge. That's about it–seven hours driving for a cinnamon meltaway, some lakeside exercise, window-shopping, and brunch. And it was the best thing we've done in months.

I admit to being a total romantic about Vermont. It's little exaggeration to say that we spent the first quarter century of our lives in Pennsylvania, but that we "grew up" in the eight years we lived in northern Vermont. We were there when Ben & Jerry's made ice cream in a refurbished downtown Burlington gas station, when Bernie Sanders was mayor, when IBM ruled Essex Junction, when First Night debuted, when traffic was banned from Church Street, when baseball returned to the Queen City, when you tripped over downtown bookstores, and Woolworth's and Grand Union were the only chain stores in evidence. In Vermont we held the first professional jobs we actually enjoyed, helped run a folk club, ate the first fresh bagels that ever passed our lips, and both played like kids and took on our first adult responsibilities.

But nostalgia isn't why yesterday's back-numbing road trip felt so good. It's because a trip to Vermont is life affirming. There is, of course, its jaw-dropping beauty. If you've forgotten what awe feels like, drive through the Ascutney region as the sun is coming up and the mist is swirling round the base of its peaks like volcanoes being filled from the bottom. Watch patches of distant hillsides emerge from their veils of morning condensation illumined in October glory. Vermonters will tell you that this year hasn't been great for foliage, but they say that every year, and you can just nod your head whilst recalling that one shapely maple you saw–afire in red perfection, a prima donna strutting its stuff among its yellowed neighbors. And there's just not much in this world that compares to walking upon a Lake Champlain peninsula to behold the Green Mountains rising across the blue expanse to the east and the Adirondacks to the west.

Vermont also feels like a place where America still works. It's a state where they grade your civil service exam on the spot, and one where they don't refer problems to some damn city planning board when a road washes out–they just dump loads of gravel on it and complain about it at Town Meeting Day in March, like sensible people should do. You see young women wearing Sorrel boots, not Uggs, because the latter make no friggin' sense. Flannel is a matter of pragmatism, not affectation. You hear people talking politics, but without the self-righteous pretension and humorlessness of neighboring Massachusetts. Vermonters manage to be both crankily insular and civic-minded at the same time. Most of the Vermonters I know don't get lathered up about gay marriage, abortion, and other such nonsense because they think it's nobody's business what others do and that government ought to be there to remind busybodies to MYOB. Come 2016, Vermonters will give a Sorrel boot to both for-profit medicine and Obamacare when they put into place what the rest of America has needed for decades but doesn't have the guts to enact: single-payer health care.

I'm romantic about Vermont, but I'm not blind. It's not Utopia. No place with winters that long and that hard can be Utopia. I know there's way too much poverty up there, that the state has some serious drug problems, and that University of Vermont is one of the most expensive state universities in the nation because Vermont does a lousy job of raising and allocating money for public education. I've seen Corporate Generica erode Burlington's downtown uniqueness and witnessed plagues of Yuppies swarming at every hillside steep enough to support a ski lift. Green Mountain Coffee and Long Trail Beer are undrinkable.

For all its faults, though, I feel my tension levels drop and my spirits rise each time I cross the Vermont line. One bite of a Klinger's meltaway or glimpse of Champlain's cold waters replenishes me. Seven hours driving seems a small price to pay.