Maybe you didn't think Cat Boucher could do it again and maybe even she didn't but lose that thinking as the second day of the World-Music Festival was as spectacular as the first and yet in more different ways from a world which isn't small at all. There is wonder everywhere and we only have to reach for it with love just as Cat did this week-end along with some special people helping her.
Cat is in Bavaria and she got some excellent support from Fredja in Holland and Sam in Italy. This was world music before the music even started playing and then the Festival went out to places perhaps some in the modern world have never heard.
The Festival opened this day with the Born-Again Pagans. They're Dutch but they spend a great deal of time in Jamaica due to a great love for reggae music and, of course, Bob Marley. The set wasn't entirely reggae as she knows well there is wonderful music to be found almost anywhere if you only care to listen for it. The Born-Again Pagans aren't so much for spectacle but they're very much for bringing One Love from wherever they may find it.
Seems fair to me to say there is One Love and we all share it or we may never find it all. Sure that sounds religious but music is religion is light is love. This is not a world of dogma but rather one of infinite freedom, One Love. Sing it, Pagans.
Naftali Torok gave us the second set and she plays a wizard violin in the style of the Gypsy or Roma people who often from eastern Europe but not at all limited to that home. This style of music holds a special place for Cat and her parents had highly-educated classical performance skills but never was forgotten the music of home, hearth and family from Romania and Poland. She also did not forget how they cook and that's another skill the sophisticated modern world should never have forgotten. Simply talking of the meals she prepares would elicit hunger even in a hibernating bear.
There's another violinist with superlative classical skills in Second Life and he has played some extraordinarily large venues. That music, while excellent, is specifically European as they are the once and future owners of classical although that could change after anywhere else has a few centuries to catch up.
Classical isn't at all the music Naftali Torok plays the the Roma style is the same source which gave us Django Reinhardt and other lesser-known but nevertheless extraordinarily-talented string musicians. This was the first time I had heard Naftali played and she certainly lived up to the billing with her magically agile violin fingers coming from a world many may never hear but it isn't even that far away.
This part of the Festival moved to the MusikCircus and I didn't question why even when experience shows moving the show is usually suicide for such festivals. There was no question at the time since the only important thing is to support and help make it happen but I am curious about why and will ask Cat tomorrow.
Next came Djoni TB and he was also called another name so that was a bit confusing but I'm going with the name he called himself. He played his ukelele with delicacy and grace I would have never imagined possible. You can hear his work and buy is latest CD, "Ukelele Organico," at his Joao Frazao site which is a highly-professional presentation. Prior to tonight, I had only heard snippets of his work and the full show was yet another amazement.
As you may guess, Djoni bring his music from Portugal where Fado is more a preference than flamenco in Spain. It's not clear to me if Fado developed in Brazil and came back to Portugal but it seems it's more likely to have been the other way around. That needs more information but meanwhile is the music and perhaps you never again hear such skills with ukelele.
Even more unusual is Djoni plays an electric ukelele and I've never seen one before. I've even seen an electric bazouki ... but the body was made of clear plastic so it might have been better not to see it (larfs). It made sense since he was a Greek kid playing for the touristas from the cruise liners so he must have felt he needed a little something to make it more memorable.
For Djoni's set, the Festival moved again back to the main Amsterdam site and I was well surprised that the original move had little effect since the audience kept building through the day.
Note: musicos hardly ever use face lights so we often can't see their faces well when they're on-stage. Mine was red / purple which I admit might have been a wee bit extreme.
Voodoo Shilton came up for the fourth set and, unlike many of the others, I have heard him play many times, always to infinite admiration for him wizard skills and his gentle manner. Gentleness was actually one of the prime hallmarks of the entire Festival since politics get checked at the door since no-one needs that sort of thing in a virtual world. You can find such things if you wish but few are so obsessive as to have interest.
I told Voodoo after he played that his record holds and he was surprised me in every set he has ever played and I've heard a lot of them. He started with Herbie Hancock and whether that music is African or America is something we leave to musicologists while we kick back to enjoy his play. That song was a cover but most or all of the others were original and going all the way to one of his songs he calls "My Old Friend." Maybe you think, hey, that's not African jazz or so but lose the idea of putting Voodoo into categories since he will defy them every time.
It's not fair to say which performance I enjoyed the most and it's been a long-standing principle with me that I won't compare musicians. Even so, Voodoo Shilton is an obvious favorite and I've always been happy to be as fan almost as much as playing myself as otherwise how should I hear new music.
Admittedly, I can be merciless with musicians I feel are lazy or whatever subjective inadequacies I may perceive but this is a whole different class in which they have worked bloody hard to achieve such skills and, almost unanimously, you won't ever see just how hard it was to get it all going. We only hear what comes of all that and there is the spectacular, they worked for it and they made it happen.
For the final set of the World-Music Festival came Yadleen. In a total contrast to the highly-organic set from Voodoo in which he plays actual instruments for everything, Yadleen uses an entirely electronic means of world-traveling and the result was a highly-surreal and mystical sense of this world and those beyond it.
Regrettably, by this time I was somewhere in a world past exhausted and we don't need to review that but it didn't leave room for much except quiet appreciation of which I have plenty regardless of tiredness.
One of the most exquisitely surreal aspect of Yadleen's music is her integration of voices which seem to be human but which I have been advised multiple times is actually electronic. Maybe you could tell me how she does it but I'm happy to call it magic. Besides, who wants to know how magicians pull rabbits out of hats anyway.
Right to the end of the Festival, the gentleness prevailed but I do have one remaining question: what's the deal with the goat?
Don't make anything of that since it's Second Life and maybe the goat is an ornament or maybe someone simply prefers being a goat. We do see the attraction since those horns can probably butt anything annoying into the next county but we're not exactly but that doesn't exactly hold with the gentle vibe. That's ok, tho, since it wasn't me dreaming of someday dreaming of being a goat.
As to what I did for the show, my only answer to people was, I'm Cat's Guardian Clown and what good am I for that if I don't show. You won't get a straight answer either but Cat knows and that's the only important thing. I can tell you she got smiling when she didn't much feel like it because, see, that's what guardian clowns do. As to how that happened, that's for guardian clowns to know and you to learn if you will ever be one. I feel good about it as I saw how buzzed on adrenaline she was when the Festival wrapped.
Note: Cat in the foreground and scarlet canare to her left. Maybe you can see the camel to the far right in the picture. It's Second Life. Roll with it.
Maybe you think Cat will relax and take things easy for a while ... but you don't know Cat. Before the last song was over she was already saying, "I have GOT to do this again and she was talking with Fredja about making it happen."
From top to bottom through the two days of the World-Music Festival was a cracking good time for all with forty or fifty people there most of the time. This emphasizes so much of thematic presentations of music from different musicians rather than, as is often the case, lining up all the people who were not washing their cars that day. Cat worked determinedly hard to find just the right musicians to present the theme of world music which otherwise may have seemed as anything which has African people in it without much of a face to it.
The World-Music Festival put many faces on the genre and illustrated possibly as well as anything could what Leonard Bernstein called 'the infinite variety of music.'
Thanks in every way for the unwavering support from Sam in Italy and Fredja in Holland and of course special thanks to Cat for having the imagination to envision this and to make it happen. I sincerely hope you were in the audience for at least part of this since there's a high likelihood this was unique in Second Life's history and I've seen most of ten years of it.
Congratulations to all of the artists and to Cat and her friends because, after everything else, you get by with a little help from your friends.
Cat is in Bavaria and she got some excellent support from Fredja in Holland and Sam in Italy. This was world music before the music even started playing and then the Festival went out to places perhaps some in the modern world have never heard.
The Festival opened this day with the Born-Again Pagans. They're Dutch but they spend a great deal of time in Jamaica due to a great love for reggae music and, of course, Bob Marley. The set wasn't entirely reggae as she knows well there is wonderful music to be found almost anywhere if you only care to listen for it. The Born-Again Pagans aren't so much for spectacle but they're very much for bringing One Love from wherever they may find it.
Seems fair to me to say there is One Love and we all share it or we may never find it all. Sure that sounds religious but music is religion is light is love. This is not a world of dogma but rather one of infinite freedom, One Love. Sing it, Pagans.
Naftali Torok gave us the second set and she plays a wizard violin in the style of the Gypsy or Roma people who often from eastern Europe but not at all limited to that home. This style of music holds a special place for Cat and her parents had highly-educated classical performance skills but never was forgotten the music of home, hearth and family from Romania and Poland. She also did not forget how they cook and that's another skill the sophisticated modern world should never have forgotten. Simply talking of the meals she prepares would elicit hunger even in a hibernating bear.
There's another violinist with superlative classical skills in Second Life and he has played some extraordinarily large venues. That music, while excellent, is specifically European as they are the once and future owners of classical although that could change after anywhere else has a few centuries to catch up.
Classical isn't at all the music Naftali Torok plays the the Roma style is the same source which gave us Django Reinhardt and other lesser-known but nevertheless extraordinarily-talented string musicians. This was the first time I had heard Naftali played and she certainly lived up to the billing with her magically agile violin fingers coming from a world many may never hear but it isn't even that far away.
This part of the Festival moved to the MusikCircus and I didn't question why even when experience shows moving the show is usually suicide for such festivals. There was no question at the time since the only important thing is to support and help make it happen but I am curious about why and will ask Cat tomorrow.
Next came Djoni TB and he was also called another name so that was a bit confusing but I'm going with the name he called himself. He played his ukelele with delicacy and grace I would have never imagined possible. You can hear his work and buy is latest CD, "Ukelele Organico," at his Joao Frazao site which is a highly-professional presentation. Prior to tonight, I had only heard snippets of his work and the full show was yet another amazement.
As you may guess, Djoni bring his music from Portugal where Fado is more a preference than flamenco in Spain. It's not clear to me if Fado developed in Brazil and came back to Portugal but it seems it's more likely to have been the other way around. That needs more information but meanwhile is the music and perhaps you never again hear such skills with ukelele.
Even more unusual is Djoni plays an electric ukelele and I've never seen one before. I've even seen an electric bazouki ... but the body was made of clear plastic so it might have been better not to see it (larfs). It made sense since he was a Greek kid playing for the touristas from the cruise liners so he must have felt he needed a little something to make it more memorable.
For Djoni's set, the Festival moved again back to the main Amsterdam site and I was well surprised that the original move had little effect since the audience kept building through the day.
Note: musicos hardly ever use face lights so we often can't see their faces well when they're on-stage. Mine was red / purple which I admit might have been a wee bit extreme.
Voodoo Shilton came up for the fourth set and, unlike many of the others, I have heard him play many times, always to infinite admiration for him wizard skills and his gentle manner. Gentleness was actually one of the prime hallmarks of the entire Festival since politics get checked at the door since no-one needs that sort of thing in a virtual world. You can find such things if you wish but few are so obsessive as to have interest.
I told Voodoo after he played that his record holds and he was surprised me in every set he has ever played and I've heard a lot of them. He started with Herbie Hancock and whether that music is African or America is something we leave to musicologists while we kick back to enjoy his play. That song was a cover but most or all of the others were original and going all the way to one of his songs he calls "My Old Friend." Maybe you think, hey, that's not African jazz or so but lose the idea of putting Voodoo into categories since he will defy them every time.
It's not fair to say which performance I enjoyed the most and it's been a long-standing principle with me that I won't compare musicians. Even so, Voodoo Shilton is an obvious favorite and I've always been happy to be as fan almost as much as playing myself as otherwise how should I hear new music.
Admittedly, I can be merciless with musicians I feel are lazy or whatever subjective inadequacies I may perceive but this is a whole different class in which they have worked bloody hard to achieve such skills and, almost unanimously, you won't ever see just how hard it was to get it all going. We only hear what comes of all that and there is the spectacular, they worked for it and they made it happen.
For the final set of the World-Music Festival came Yadleen. In a total contrast to the highly-organic set from Voodoo in which he plays actual instruments for everything, Yadleen uses an entirely electronic means of world-traveling and the result was a highly-surreal and mystical sense of this world and those beyond it.
Regrettably, by this time I was somewhere in a world past exhausted and we don't need to review that but it didn't leave room for much except quiet appreciation of which I have plenty regardless of tiredness.
One of the most exquisitely surreal aspect of Yadleen's music is her integration of voices which seem to be human but which I have been advised multiple times is actually electronic. Maybe you could tell me how she does it but I'm happy to call it magic. Besides, who wants to know how magicians pull rabbits out of hats anyway.
Right to the end of the Festival, the gentleness prevailed but I do have one remaining question: what's the deal with the goat?
Don't make anything of that since it's Second Life and maybe the goat is an ornament or maybe someone simply prefers being a goat. We do see the attraction since those horns can probably butt anything annoying into the next county but we're not exactly but that doesn't exactly hold with the gentle vibe. That's ok, tho, since it wasn't me dreaming of someday dreaming of being a goat.
As to what I did for the show, my only answer to people was, I'm Cat's Guardian Clown and what good am I for that if I don't show. You won't get a straight answer either but Cat knows and that's the only important thing. I can tell you she got smiling when she didn't much feel like it because, see, that's what guardian clowns do. As to how that happened, that's for guardian clowns to know and you to learn if you will ever be one. I feel good about it as I saw how buzzed on adrenaline she was when the Festival wrapped.
Note: Cat in the foreground and scarlet canare to her left. Maybe you can see the camel to the far right in the picture. It's Second Life. Roll with it.
Maybe you think Cat will relax and take things easy for a while ... but you don't know Cat. Before the last song was over she was already saying, "I have GOT to do this again and she was talking with Fredja about making it happen."
From top to bottom through the two days of the World-Music Festival was a cracking good time for all with forty or fifty people there most of the time. This emphasizes so much of thematic presentations of music from different musicians rather than, as is often the case, lining up all the people who were not washing their cars that day. Cat worked determinedly hard to find just the right musicians to present the theme of world music which otherwise may have seemed as anything which has African people in it without much of a face to it.
The World-Music Festival put many faces on the genre and illustrated possibly as well as anything could what Leonard Bernstein called 'the infinite variety of music.'
Thanks in every way for the unwavering support from Sam in Italy and Fredja in Holland and of course special thanks to Cat for having the imagination to envision this and to make it happen. I sincerely hope you were in the audience for at least part of this since there's a high likelihood this was unique in Second Life's history and I've seen most of ten years of it.
Congratulations to all of the artists and to Cat and her friends because, after everything else, you get by with a little help from your friends.
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