Thanks to everyone for coming out to the festival in New Bedford- I saw some old friends and acquaintances including Louis Killen, and made some new ones. I also ate fish and scallops and whatever else I could find that was fried and/or Portuguese in addition to publicly proclaiming the impending meteoric rise of Northern Roots Music, or whatever it will be called when it becomes a thing.
There’s an interview with me coming up on WBUR’s Radio Boston, and a link to an extended version. I haven’t heard it yet so I don’t know how much sense I was able to make, but I really enjoyed hanging out with producer Adam Ragusea, who came out to Amherst to record the piece. He is one of an elite group of used to be high school kids who discovered Cordelia’s Dad through a mix tape given them sometime early in the Clinton administration.
I’ve really enjoyed getting title suggestions for my next record. Thanks a lot! If you need a title for yours, let me know and I’ll see what I can do- maybe something about a sandwich, or even sandwiches depending on your style of music.
I’m posting from Belgrade, where I arrived without losing any instruments this time- just two suitcases left in Paris, and they came in today without incident. Last year a banjo and guitar were two of some 10,000 bags waylaid by a strike in Rome. I eventually got them back, but I had to change a flight and nearly had to choose between canceling shows or going on without them. The part I enjoyed is that while I checked in my guitar tuned to C, it came back in perfect standard tuning. This led me to imagine a heartsick Italian baggage handler sitting in a sea of lost luggage singing Santa Lucia.
On my last trip to the west coast people were so generous with their instruments that I decided to make this trip with only my bajo sexto and a Jews harp and see what other instruments show up along the way. With much help from booking agent extraordinaire Dusan Sviba I have high hopes.
ARCHITECTURE AND COMMUNITY IN NOVI BEOGRAD
Sounds like a term paper title- skip this if you’re bored already- but last August I started making a video about the architecture in Novi Beograd that I would love to finish this time around. There’s an article in this month’s JAT inflight magazine about it, strangely enough, including observations by architect Rem Koolhuis. The thing that struck me most is the incredible difference between the socialist era buildings and the ones they’re putting up now.
The older part of the new city is famous for its small apartments, miniscule by American standards, in largely identical buildings set around large public spaces. Each apartment has a little balcony overlooking a courtyard, a soccer field, a garden or a playground. In summer every window is open, and you can hear, see and smell pretty much everything the neighbors are doing. After years of economic turmoil, not to mention being bombed, much of the area has seen better days- the play structures have mostly been reduced to scrap metal, the siding is patchy, there’s a lot of grafitti and cigarette butts around. But everyone is out! There’s always something going on- pick up soccer games, make out sessions, grandmothers out for a walk, kids playing on the few remaining swings or finding a use for a broken see saw, somebody with a guitar.In the back parking lot there’s a colorful array of old Yugos, Skodas, Zastavas, Ficas and the occasional Ford Fiesta.
Just down the street, on the other side of Beogradska Arena, there are buildings that, although they are brand new, look similar enough that you might walk by them without thinking anything. But something isn’t quite right- it’s all strangely quiet. On closer inspection, almost every window is closed, and in the evening they glow a soft, flickering blue. There’s no public space except the sidewalk and the bus shelter, the apartments are all air conditioned and, when you do the math, appear to be three or four times the size of the older ones. Out front there are BMWs, Astras, Benzs, Hummers and the occasional Ford Fiesta.
A long time ago I was unable to write a song about the fact that when you live close to people they can all hear you, and when you live in isolation they can’t. I’m glad somebody’s making some money, keeping cool and finding some privacy around here, but there’s something melancholy about the possible decline of the problematic and lively urban community drama that socialist architecture seems to foster, possibly in unwitting imitation of older social structures.
AND FINALLY…
Tomorrow I’m making the long drive/sail to the island Ugljan and hope to return with some new songs, possibly including a restart of the one mentioned above. I’ll try to make a video while I’m there as well, and then I’m off to Praha/Brno/Namest. If our country is gonna get through this economy thing somebody better keep eating the sandwiches while I’m gone. Thanks in advance…
bunny
When I lived in Sweden, Santa Lucia Day was a big holiday, involving tasty cookies, young ladies wearing lit candles in their hair, and that same melody (with Swedish words) sung endlessly all day.
Really enjoyed your description of changing architecture. It does feel as if we’ve lost something in our modern, spacious, hermetically sealed lives. Also enjoyed hearing you are traveling lighter, instrument-wise. Doing so will open you up to even more small miracles, I predict.
Lovely post.
Two random memories sparked by your posting: 1. When I was in Bucharest, Romania in December 1979, our little group of college students got lost and had no idea where we were going. We must have stuck out like homeless people at the Metropolitan opera — we wore puffy down jackets and down vests; we wore jeans; we looked grungy and scruffy and like the travel-worn students we were. Meanwhile, all the people in Bucharest seemed to be stylishly dressed in fur coats and fur hats and heels. So there we were, lost, and this kindly older woman in the above-mentioned fur coat and fur hat took us under her wing and led us where we needed to go. She spoke a little German (no one there spoke English), which one of our group also spoke, so we were able to talk to her a bit. I was left with a sense of wonder at having been momentarily adopted by this stranger on the street. We were with her perhaps 15 minutes, but I’ve never forgotten it all these years.
2. While traveling through Bulgaria on the train, I remember seeing small cars of makes and models I’d never even dreamed of. They were little box-type four-door cars, sort of like the Geo Metro but looking like they were holdovers from the 50’s — which maybe they were.
One other memory regarding the architecture in Bucharest: It was huge and monumental, lots of concrete in grays and pastels, with really wide streets and tiny trees set perfectly in a line. There was a streetcar with the overhead electrical line. There were communist-looking billboards. The people walked down the street looking completely humorless. Just deadpan faces, not a smile anywhere. (No wonder, since it was the age of Ceacescu.) That’s partly why it was such an amazing surprise for that angel of a woman to show up amid all that cold humorlessness and kindly guide us where we needed to go.
And yet another thought about your posting, and the more-luxurious architecture (and more prosperous people) allowing people to stay indoors and away from each other: C.S. Lewis, in his book, “The Great Divorce,” says that hell consists of people in their own little spaces, their own little petty preferences, far away from each other. No one interacts. He also says that the worse the person was on earth, the farther away they are from other people in hell: Napoleon lives something like 500 miles away from everyone else. The kicker is that all these people have the opportunity to leave hell anytime! Buses run to heaven twice a day. But these people like it that way; they like being in their own spaces, having everything their own way, completely isolated from everyone else. Your description of the windows with the blue flickering lights, and no one out on the street interacting with anyone else, reminded me of this.
It was great to hear you in New Bedford. I tried to catch you, but wasn’t fast enough. You are an inspiration- Northern Roots Music! It’s happening.
I saw some great graffiti in St Petersburg this spring. Five or six years ago in Budapest I noticed a clear delineation between neighborhood blocks that either showed graffiti or none at all. I wondered if some neighborhoods had hired hitmen or something. Europeans have a whole different attitude toward buildings than Americans generally. It’s a sense of our place instead of my space. But it’s a cultural sense of place rather than capitalist. But cultural and social identities have an exclusive sense of status of their own. We went to the ravensbruck concentration camp north of Berlin and the local town seemed to pretend it wasn’t there.