Sunday, September 7, 2008

Music for Our Times


I. Marvin Gaye What's Goin' On/What's Happening Brother




This is one wonderful piece of film. Apparently it coms from a 1973 concert film called Save the Children. There is a cutaway montage of street life and black families at leisure that actually adds to the musical performance which by itself is very remarkable.

Check out Marvin's extended piano solo. It would easy for a cynic to say it is in the same zip code as Patti Smith on clarinet or guitar. Or Fela or James Brown when they get into organ riffs. But the odd quasi-Monk flourishes work well against his conga player's rhythms because he is so totally into it. And the strength and passion of his vocal delivery here rejects comparisons to other performances of his or just about any other soul singer. The segue to What's Happening Brother took my breath away the first time I saw this.



II. Gil Scott Heron with the Amnesia Express: Winter in America




This performance from Spring 1990 shows Gil a little ragged, but the Amnesia Express including Ron Hollaway on flute contribute to give the tune the intensity and fire it deserves. I have played Winter in America as a kind of tonic to the world we live in since well before the Reagan years and will probably return to it for some time to come.

The Constitution, a noble piece of paper but free society
suffered and it died in vain.
Now Society is ragtag on the corner looking for some rain

There will be more winter, but there are also the robins in barren tree tops--just a little bit of hope even "if there is no one fighting because no one knows what to save." There is this lovely ascending keyboard figure that counters the heavy views of this country's status in Gil's lyric. Listen for it, it always feels very hopeful to me.


posted by well-executed buffet at 2:59 PM
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