monoceros blogsI realized only yesterday that the guy conducting the orchestra in Mariza's concert is Jaques Morelenbaum, who also produced and arranged the music for her album "Transparente." I know of Jaques Morelenbaum mainly because of his collaborations with a favorite film music composer of mine - Ryuichi Sakamoto. One of their most famous works is "Bibo No Aozora," which Gustavo Santaolalla (another wonderful film music composer - "21 Grams," "The Motorcycle Diaries," and "Brokeback Mountain") used in the film "Babel." Sakamoto wrote the piece years ago and recorded it with Jaques Morelenbaum on the cello and Yuichiro Gotoh on second cello.
I don't believe it's often a composer uses someone else's instrumental work in a film for which he scores but I love Santaolalla's selection of "Bibo No Aozora," which plays at the close of the film and leaves you weighted with both sadness and hope. The piano part is especially melodic, and the strings (two cellos in the studio version, a cello and a violin in the live performance) add a haunting counterpoint, and in one particular section is both beautiful and difficult. Its sudden turns make you uneasy, preventing you from relaxing and falling into a lull. Rather, it quickens the pulse with that strange harmony, deliberately jarring the listener and suggesting that every beautiful thing, even a piece of music, is not without complexity. Soon, even the piano's melody becomes equally strange and pointed. And then it ends - as all things must - whereupon you feel bereft of something unspeakably precious even though you remember how it bewildered you too.
Sadness and hope, these are what I heard in "Bibo No Aozora" and what I felt after seeing "Babel." Both are intertwined in the melody and harmony, as they are in the stories in the film. The world has become a global village, and the one the film shows us is harsh, often brutal. Despite the connectedness we're supposed to experience via technology and travel, tragedy, frustration, and anger remain.
Beneath the cover of advancements, we are still a mess, caught in a terribly human disarray of honesty (too little of it) and communication (seldom effective). And the random things that do connect us unexpectedly - like the bullet that demonstrates its alarming consequences in Morocco, Japan, the United States, and Mexico - reveal the terrible divisions among us, the result of politics, economics, class, and culture.
There's an overt but difficult beauty in the butterfly effect that the film explores, that is, the idea that everything in the world is inexplicably linked. In the case of humans, we may be linked but there's often friction whenever we bump up against each other because of our inability to communicate. This recalls the story in Genesis, Chapter XI (which probably explains the film's title as well), in which God grew angry because humans united to build a tower (The Tower of Babel) that might reach heaven, and as a result, he cast them to four corners of the earth and "confounded their language, that they may not understand each other's speech." Language barriers certainly prevent us from communicating easily. But then, two people could speak the same language and still fail to communicate effectively and honestly. Ironically, this inability is something that cuts across most cultures. We're all guilty of it. Too terrified, complacent, or plain unwilling to do so.
Where does hope lie then? Is there nothing else that we recognize as common between ourselves? Perhaps it's the universal emotions and realities that we experience - love, pain, loss, aspirations, dreams, imagination. And one more. The film doesn't address it, but it's well-known: music. Which is why this particular music selection for the ending of the film is so poignant (to me, anyway). "Bibo No Aozora" is composed by a Japanese man, recorded with a Brazilian and a fellow Japanese musician, and then selected by an Argentine composer for a film written and directed by Mexicans.
Bibo No Aozora/04, by Jaques Morelenbaum (cello), Ryuichi Sakamoto (piano), and Yuichiro Gotoh (cello)
A year or two ago, I wanted to learn Portuguese so I could go to Lisbon and listen to fadistas sing in dimly lit fado houses. (And to understand what they sing, of course.) Someday, maybe. For now, I'll satisfy my melancholic-music craving with my fado playlist.
I once wrote about fado, about Dulce Pontes, the only fado singer I knew at the time. Since then I've discovered Ana Moura and Mariza, and listened to a number of wonderful songs. But there are three I love best - "O Que Foi Que Aconteceu," "Garca Perdida," and "Chuva." All three songs strongly evoke saudade, a powerful emotion that can't easily be expressed in English. At best, the descriptions on the Internet suggest a form of tragic nostalgia, a deep yearning for something that's lost, something irretrievable.
I didn't think I could appreciate these songs more than I already did (short of mastering Portuguese or hearing them live), but I was wrong. I'd forgotten about Youtube. Over the weekend, an Amazon music critic wrote about fado and put up a video of Mariza singing "Chuva." I hit 'play', and was floored. I couldn't take my eyes off her. It seemed as if she had lived through and perfectly understood all the emotions pulsing within the song, and every expression on her face moved in tangent with each line, each word.
Chuva (live), by Mariza
Garca Perdida, by Dulce Pontes
I don't believe Dulce Pontes ever sang "Garca Perdida" live, but here's another singer, Maria Fernandes, who performs it wonderfully.
O Que Foi Que Aconteceu, by Ana Moura
Lyrics after the jump.
"Chuva" - Rain
Things which are distasteful in life
Leave us with no longing
Only the memories which hurt
Or make us smile
There are people who make history
In the history of people
And others we can't even
Remember their names
They are emotions that give life
To the longing I carry
Those which I had with you
And ended up losing
There are days that mark the soul
And life of people
And the day you left me
I cannot forget
The rain drenched my face
Cold and tired
The streets of the city
Each one I have wandered
Oh, my lost child lament
Cried out to the city
That love's fire under the rain
Had died instants ago
The rain heard and kept
My secret from the city
And listen to how it beats on the glass
Bringing that nostalgia back
===================================================================
"O Que Foi Que Aconteceu" - What Happened
It happened
I was not waiting for you
You were not looking for me
Nor did you know who I was
I was there
Just because I had to be
And you came
Because you had to come
I looked at you
the whole world stopped
That moment my life changed
Everything was to be eternal
And you forever mine
Where did we get lost
What happened?
It happened
Call it good luck or misfortune
I was not waiting for you
But you came by again
I have never felt my heart beating
As I did
When I felt your hand
In your mouth
Time went backwards
Went crazy with this lunacy
This lunacy as peace
Everything was to be eternal
And you forever mine
Where did we get lost
What happened?
...when I feel like Yoshimi.
Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt.1, by The Flaming Lips
If you haven't already seen this video from Belgium, you should.
What took place broke the monotony of a train station and it certainly knocked me out of my otherwise restless and pensive mood. Julie Andrews and a flash mob can do wonders at a time when the newspapers seem more depressing than the novels on my bedside table. The stunned and delighted reactions of the people in the station are priceless, and you gotta love the suit guys breaking out in coordinated dance moves!
Could we pull off something like this in Singapore? Maybe at Orchard MRT station? Would the transport officials allow a horde of dancers to take over the floor for a few minutes? It seems unlikely, but I'd love to be proven wrong!
A few minutes of rummaging around the Internet and I found this -
What a little music and dancing won't do for the soul! And synchronized dancing? Makes me all nostalgic for my junior college days.
Don't Cha, by Pussycat Dolls
Get Down On It, by Kool & The Gang
Do You Love Me, from "Dirty Dancing"
For the past four years, tango's been the only dance that interested me but now I'm tempted to stray. Last December, in a narrow aisle of a music store in Argentina, I danced the cumbia (definitely a vacation highlight, even if I was such a beginner compared to the guy I danced with) and found it loads of fun, but forró looks even more thrilling. If forró is what they're doing in the video, I'm a fan already.
It was my friend H, who told me about forró, and how her first lesson has turned her into an enthusiast. She's taking lessons with her new friend, N, who's from Brazil. Listening to her, I could tell how hooked she is, especially since N translates lines from the songs for her as they dance. Many of them, I understand, are love songs.
I think I'll wait for the next round of classes; I have no wish to be a light bulb. *grin*
Note: In Chinese, "light bulb" means "third wheel," or "getting in the way of a couple." Similarly, there's an Italian expression, "mi sembra di reggere il moccolo," which translates to "it appears to me like holding up the candle."
Tango (milonga) - Milonga De Mis Amores, by Juan D'Arienzo
Cumbia - Un Amor Entre Dos, by Los Palmeras
Forró - Utopia Sertaneja, by Flávio José
I love airports. Well, some of them anyway. Or rather, I love the idea of them, what they represent - an in-between place in journeys, the beginning of new adventures, the last stop of a vacation you wish would never end. I've had a few less than happy experiences in them but for the most part, I love being in these places of warm embraces and reunions, these gateways to new destinations - a part and yet not a part of the destination itself - and then the countless small shops filled with books on strange and appealing cities, but also tawdry souvenirs - all right, treasures to some. Mostly, I think of airports haunted by the ghosts of millions of travelers with infinite stories and emotions.
"Terminal" by Sam Holtzapple
after the all too usual delays -
crowded runway at LGA
thunderstorms over ORD -
you arrive here at MEE and
I get the feeling
I get the feeling yet again
that I am but a connecting stop
a hub
some CLT or ATL or PIT
you travel through
not to
pausing only to change planes and
marking the time of your layover
the weirdly dislocated hour(s)
marking - not spending - it
pacing my concourse
skimming my newsstands
bypassing my gift shops
so anxious for your connection to
some SFO or HNL or PAR
a final destination
which is and always has been
somewhere someone else
To Live and Die in the Airport Lounge, by My Teenage Stride
I've been meaning to blog about this song since last October but the idea fell by the wayside with time. Today, though, it turned up on iTunes and it seemed a perfect moment to write about it.
My friend, D, was the one who introduced the song to me, describing the lyrics as "gut-wrenching" and telling me how they hit him hard every time he listens to the song. I was impressed.
So I watched the video and succumbed even before the song began - Elvis Costello introduces the song briefly, but so expertly, speaking of it as a story. And the best songs are really riveting stories set to music, the ones that leave you thinking and wondering long after the singer is done with the last line. This song is one of them, melancholic and full of yearning - the kind that comes only from loss - but what I love best about it is the woman's point of view, her voice that comes in at the end, like a coda.
Someday, the man may find his own coda. And that would mean giving up the dream he has each night, the very thing, as Costello says, "that's all that's left of her."
*edit: Uncannily, on the day I choose to write about this song, D writes to tell me a little about his life. Perhaps, then, this post is meant for him, who, I just learned, is finding the song more wrenching than ever.
My Thief, by Elvis Costello
"This is harder than I thought."
Strings That Tie To You, by Jon Brion (from the soundtrack of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind")