SOUNDTRACK: ESPERANZA SPALDING-Tiny Desk Concert #110 (February 12, 2011).
I didn’t know who Esperanza Spalding was before this show. But she defied my expectations by being a fairly tiny woman who sings while playing an upright bass (not a very common combination for anyone).
For the first song, “Little Fly,” she plays a kind of jazzy bass, but has a string accompaniment–violins, guitars etc. But it’s clear that the bass is the star. And while her playing is very good (she has some great vibrato), it’s her voice that is mesmerizing–she’s hunched over playing the bass and still manages to sound strong and powerful. “Little Fly”‘s lyrics come from a poem by William Blake.
“Midnight Sun” is a solo performance–just her voice and bass. I loved the beginning where she sang notes along with what she played. Then when the lyrics come in she sings in a very jazz voice (with eyes closed the whole time). Turns out this is a Lionel Hampton song that only appears on the Japanese release of her album which make explain her singing style.
Because on the final song she sounds very different. “Apple Blossom” is her own composition. It’s her singing with the string section playing along (there’s no bass). The song is lovely, but I prefer it when she plays bass in the song, too.
I enjoyed this performance and how delightful Spalding was.
[READ: January 9, 2016] “My Saga: Part Two”
Speaking of not finishing multi part essays, I ended my post about Part One of this essay by saying I couldn’t wait for part two. And then apparently I forgot all about it because here it is almost a year later before I read part two (which was published two weeks later).
In this second half of Karl Ove’s journey he spends most of his time realizing that he hasn’t really learned very much for his assignment. I can’t imagine anyone else being able to write endlessly about how he has nothing to write about (and still make it strangely compelling–his stress produces good sentences).
He does make some interesting connections though.
Like why is there no real evidence of the Viking landing in North America? Imagine if Columbus had landed on the continent and the people in Europe said to just leave the natives alone and not bother them. It’s unthinkable, but that appears to be what the Vikings did.
Karl Ove and Peter the photographer go to a Tagret (and Karl Ove seems more impressed than he might be unless they simply don’t have them in Norway/Sweden. Of course they do have Ikea so perhaps his marveling at the size of the store is fake.
He spends an amusing couple of paragraphs trying to smoke in his rental car in subzero temperature. Like his novels, he builds up to something very dramatic–a lit butt that flies back into the window and which he cannot find—only to have it go out by itself and there are no consequences.
Finally, Karl Ove reveals that he has relatives here in the States whom he has never met. Peter says that’s his story–long lost relatives finally meet. So he contacts his family back home to learn of the contact information for his relatives in Minnesota and they plan to go meet him.
They drive through Flint to Cheboygan. Here he is concerned because he feels that the waitress doesn’t understand his accent–it reminds him of when he is in Sweden and he can’t pick up on subtle things like he can in Norway. Of course he knows that these little details are things you pick up from being there, they’re not something you are taught. But when the waitress comes back she says she likes his accent. There’s a good moment were Peter asks her if she likes his accent too–he’s from Maryland.
Shame he never says what he thinks of the meatloaf–real American food.
Then we larn about his relative. Mark Hatloy’s (their name was Hatløy until they moved) and Karl Ove’s grandfathers were brothers. It’s a pretty fascinating thing to think that these two men, roughly the same age, grew up on different continents even though their grandfathers grew up in the same place. Karl Ove is still very Norwegian and yet Mark is very American.
En route to Minnesota they stop in Duluth so Peter can get a photo of himself in front of Bob Dylan’s house–Karl Ove has some good thoughts on Dylan.
Then they stop for dinner at a karaoke bar. And in this bar they meet a black woman who is Norwegian–her great grandmother was grew up ion Norway.
The last few pages of the article ar Karl Ove and Peter meeting his cousin. Mark has built the house that they are in and turned his grandfather Magnus’ 160 acres into 1800. It’s a brief but nice connection. Although the photos don’t show a lot of resemblance.
They finally get to the Viking museum in Minnesota. Karl Ove is bemused by the giant viking statue out front–the helmet, yellow hair, bulging muscles, fiery red cape. And then he saw the Kensington Runestone. It was 30 inches tall and covered in runes. I didn’t know anything about it but the story is this (from Wikipedia)
The Kensington Runestone is a 200-pound (90 kg) slab of greywacke covered in runes on its face and side. A Swedish immigrant, Olof Ohman, claimed to have discovered it in 1898 in the largely rural township of Solem, Douglas County, Minnesota, and named it after the nearest settlement, Kensington. The inscription purports to be a record left behind by Scandinavian explorers in the 14th century (internally dated to the year 1362). There has been a drawn-out debate on the stone’s authenticity, but the scholarly consensus has classified it as a 19th-century hoax since it was first examined in 1910, with some critics directly charging the purported discoverer Ohman to have fabricated the inscription, although there remains a local community who remain convinced of the stone’s authenticity.
He is most amazed by how modest the whole “museum” is. How something as monumental as ancestors coming here in the 14th century can be reduced to a small museum. he concludes, “there was something homespun and makeshift and, frankly, childish about the whole thing. And I loved it.”
It was liberating to see how small and insignificant each separate part of this history was, compared with our notions about its grandness. It felt liberating, because that is what the world is really like, full of insignificant trifles that we use to blunder on as best we can, one by one, whether we happen to be 19th-century immigrants building a log cabin in some forest glade, cold and miserable, longing to sit motionless for a few hours in front of the fire; or a local museum director in a Norwegian children’s sweater; or a crafty Swede, carving runes into a stone and burying it in a field in an attempt to change world history.
I feel a little dissatisfied by Karl Ove’s expedition to America. I rather wanted more from it. But I guess that’s what his novels are for. And part five is due out this spring!
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