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Once again I’m annoyed by film criticism. As a family excursion we went to see ‘Lee’, showing in German cinemas as ‘Die Fotografin’ (‘The Female Photographer’), with Kate Winslet as Lee Miller. The reviews I had read beforehand, admittedly only skimming through them, were largely very negative, so I was hesitant as to whether it was worth watching the film at all. It’s a mystery to me how movie critics can be so unjust in their treatment of a film that is – by objective standards – good, especially given the way other films I’ve seen in recent months have been reviewed and often ‘waved through’ in a very complimentary manner and without any major criticism. Nothing wrong with that for the time being, but when compared to ‘Lee’, I’m astounded and upset. And it annoys me even more when I compare this with similar films with historical themes that are screened for a very similar, more or less middle-class Charlottenburg audience in the same theatres. 

Certainly, ‘Lee’ is not radical art cinema like ‘Zone of Interest’ or a harrowing war thriller like ‘Civil War’. But at no point is that its intention. Yes, well, the film is by and large a conventional ‘biopic’ about a famous person of the 20th century, with the usual historically accurate buildings, costumes and hues, produced with the mainstream appeal of shining a light on a person from history and telling an emotional and psychological drama about life and art. So far, so good. But the fact that the film is written and directed with a great deal of subtlety and numerous well-judged decisions – as are many others – does not warrant any disparaging criticism. 

And then it seems that it has been completely ignored that anyone who hasn’t just started watching films yesterday, but has already seen dozens, if not – like me – hundreds of comparable films about more or less similar subjects, themes, characters and stories, i.e. anyone can easily see that in this film, from front to back, so many major and minor screenwriting and directing decisions were made by female screenwriters and a female director; countless details differ from the viewpoint that dozens of male writers and directors have shown in comparable films for decades. The difference is so striking throughout the film that it carries far more weight than the question of whether this is the umpteenth historical biopic set during the 1940s in Central Europe. 

Ellen Kuras, who has shot many award-winning and outstanding feature films and documentaries as a cinematographer over decades, with countless (very) big directorial names, many works that have remained in my memory without me realising that they were all captured by the same person’s camera, demonstrates in countless creative decisions, that even topics that we seem to have seen until we’ve fallen asleep can be told with a respectful perspective that takes the audience and the treated ‘material’ (= themes as well as historical figures) seriously, so that attentive viewers are continuously captivated and can actually witness a female gaze. What’s more, the director and the film succeed in addressing present-day issues without making a big fuss and in tackling the topic of depicting, documenting, looking away from or at horrors in a confident and respectful way. 

I am astounded that these issues are not acknowledged and certainly not appreciated. 

At first (superficial) glance, the film looks no different from ‘all the others’ – but if you just pay attention, you will see so many things that differ from ‘all the others’ that you can’t even begin to name them. And it’s not as if these are all wrong decisions that make no sense. 

In the famous Neapolitan song "Tammurriata Nera" many influences got merged in a fascinating way and also the performances have many fascinating variations and extensions. The most outstanding are the versions of Peppe Barra. Here is a highly captivating version with him 

V  I  D  E  O   Tammurriata Nera w/ Peppe Barra 


But would we then call this a musical hybrid? I don't think so. So, when do we speak of musical hybrids and when not? 

In the comment links to more versions for those who got turned on by this music.

here is something suiting to Brian’s post on musical hybrids: a one-month residency of 23 young ‘world’ musicians from all over the globe under the heading of KINSHIP + GATHERING at the Avalon Farm Music Institute, New Hampshire, U.S.

It celebrates the spirit of kinship in our practices and lives. Focusing on both physical and conceptual spaces that serve as sanctuaries for connection and belonging, this residency invites fellows to uncover the threads that weave us together, recognising the inherent strength and beauty found in the tapestry of community. Via my personal connection Kateryna Ziabliuk to this residency, i hopefully can post some interesting observations. Here is an overview of the participants and link to the organisation.

Participants are from a greater variety of countries: India Nepal Kazakhstan Ghana Indonesia USA Japan Argentina Egypt Turkey Ukraine Kenya Brazil Colombia Nigeria Cuba Senegal Pakistan

Up to your imagination how this could work (out) in the hands of a present young generation. To be continued …

[I recently had a discussion on social media with an iconoclastic instrument inventor who had a lot of strong ideas about the state of today’s music and the industry itself. One thing he touched upon was the uselessness of categorization of musical styles. He didn’t like the term “World Music” because he felt every music on the planet was in a very real sense, “World Music.” How could I not agree? What follows is a short essay I wrote when he suggested that not enough cross-pollination is going on in today’s musical realms. He also asked what it might’ve been like if European composers had, for instance, incorporated  Indonesian music in their orchestral works.]

First of all, in my opinion, the term “World music” is a perfectly fine way to describe music from around the globe. I have no problem with it and it sure beats the term “ethnic”. In truth, I consider all of these categories as arbitrary, and are essentially meaningless, as for the most part they don’t convey any useful information, and are created by suits to describe music primarily so they can sell it. A lot of contemporary artists don’t fit neatly in a pigeon hole.

There’s a lot unpack in your comment, but I’ll just say this: cross cultural pollination is exactly what is happening today and it’s never been more vibrant.

And it goes back a long  way:

In fact, European composers did exactly what you have suggested – incorporate gamelan music, and as early as the late 19th were influenced by it. Debussy is a good example: when he first heard a Javanese gamelan at the Paris World Fair in 1889, it totally flipped him out and it influenced his work, especially in pieces like Pagodes. 

The first wave of the influences  of  different cultures always seems to start out as a passing, rather shallow toe dip into foreign waters, usually followed by a much deeper dive. For example, in the European dominated symphonic traditions, we later find composers like Colin McPhee, who lived in Bali for a number of years in a hut in the middle of a rice field, with an old upright piano, and wrote some magnificent music. 

in the 50s Lou Harrison, who also studied Balinese and Korean music, composed music for both gamelan and western ensembles. He incorporated some of the Balinese techniques such as kotecan (interlocking parts,) into his chamber music compositions. Check out his wonderful Concerto for Violin, Piano and Small Orchestra. Find the CRI version conducted by Leopoldo Stokowski if you can. A contemporary of Harrison, Henry Cowell was another pioneer in bringing the music of Persia and Asia into Western music. 

Also, Jody Diamond of Gamelan Sekar Jaya fame comes to mind. Along with Ingram Marshall, she became an important composer of new music for Gamelan. There is also a new generation of Balinese composers who have in turn been influenced by western composers. There are countless examples of this kind of thing. Indeed, today we live in a world where cross cultural pollination is no longer rare, but in fact, the norm. It’s literally everywhere, in pop, jazz, electronica, classical etc. In a way, this hybridization is the cornerstone of 21st century music. It’s a huge subject, and I’m only going to focus on jazz for the rest of this piece.

Jazz is an art form that started right out of the gate as a cultural hybrid, in this case primarily a blend of African music/rhythm and European harmony, and also soon incorporated popular music from the American songbook, which was sourced mostly from show tunes and films. Later, artists like Dizzy Gillespie became fascinated with Cuban music, and thus began a longstanding tradition  of cross pollination between two cultures that is still vibrant today. 

The same thing holds true of American jazz musicians like Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd, who started hanging out and playing with Brazilian musicians in the “first wave” in the 60s, but once again, it quickly became a two way street, morphing into an ongoing feedback loop where at a certain point it became difficult to parse who was influencing whom. 

Artists like John Coltrane and Miles Davis experimented with incorporating Indian music into their music in the 60s and early 70s. After all, jazz being an improvisational tradition, it seemed only natural for western jazz artists to start playing with Indian musicians. Later, artists such as John McLaughlin (who seriously studied the Raga and Konecal systems) and Indian tabla master Zakir Hussein, who helped bridge the cultural divide from the Eastern side, came together to form Shakti, a true east/west collaboration that remains active today. Of course there were earlier experiments. The much earlier collaboration between Ravi Shankar and Yehudi Menuhin comes to mind.

Another Miles Davis alumni and one of the founding members of Weather Report,  Vienna born Joe Zawinul always brought together musicians from all over the world into his bands, which allowed each artist to bring his or her individual cultural voice to the table. I have always thought of Zawinul as a visionary, not just because of his wonderful musical contributions, but because of his utopian vision of a world in which each culture remains unique and distinct, yet comes together to create a harmonious whole.

And any discussion of hybrid music which blends the influences of different cultures would be incomplete without mentioning Paris born Vietnamese virtuoso guitarist/composer Nguyen Le, yet  another cutting edge musician who has created a kind of “world jazz” that’s entirely unique, collaborating with African, Moroccan, Vietnamese, Sardinian and American artists (just to name a few,) to create his own unique hybrid. 

Cuban piano/keyboardist Omar Sosa, has become an ambassador of unique collaborations with artists from other cultures. Pictured above is his SUBA trio with African kora master, Seckou Keita and Venezuelan percussionist maestro, Gustavo Ovalles. Sosa exemplifies the healthy exploration of searching for and finding common ground between cultures.

Tigran Hayasman is another interesting example. As a young boy living in Armenia, he started off as a classical pianist but soon became fascinated with jazz. He was a prodigy, and while still in his teens, won the Thelonius Monk competition. But Tigran quickly outgrew the constraints of the jazz label and started making music which is impossible to categorize. He loved the complex time signatures of his native country and soon incorporated them into his own compositions, combining traditional folk melodies with heavy metal, prog rock, electronica, hip hop, pop and classical music. The result is hard to describe, and while I realize it is an acquired taste for some, I find it challenging, often quite beautiful and staggeringly original. 

Last, but hardly least, Oregon needs to be mentioned. To me they exemplify the essence of intelligent, passionate musical cross pollination. They effortlessly blended western contemporary classical, jazz, free improvisation, world music of all sorts, and in the early days at least, East Indian influences in particular, to create an emblematic hybrid that has stood the test of time. Indeed as the decades have rolled by, their importance has only grown in stature.

In this world of ours, which has gotten so much smaller thru technology, this kind of thriving collaborative community is only natural and ongoing in virtually all genres and subgenres.

The subject of cultural appropriation sometimes comes up in discussions like these. What I have learned regarding whether it is appropriate to borrowing from other cultures has a lot to do with the culture one is borrowing from, and the attitude of the person doing the borrowing. For instance, in Bali, my sense has always been that Balinese musicians are very open, and generally love collaborating with people from other cultures. They not only welcome it, they have a long tradition of embracing it. My own teacher in Bali once proudly played me a cassette of himself playing drums with a gifted young Australian blues guitarist. The whole time it was playing my teacher was proudly beaming at me. The Balinese people have always been open to experimentation; I once attended a performance in Bali in which all the musicians were sitting down at synthesizers instead of traditional acoustic gamelan instruments.

On the other hand, my longtime music mentor, who is friends with a number of musical luminaries and considered to be one in certain circles, once told me a story about a famous artist who had borrowed an mbira part which he incorporated into a contemporary track. Apparently, when the African artist who had played the mbira part heard the finished track, he broke down in tears,  because to him this was sacred music, and it was being desecrated by being used in what he perceived to be a secular context. 

At one point, I was considering taking up the traditional African mbira myself, and the teacher I asked for lessons snubbed me because she felt that I was going to use it in my own music and that I didn’t show enough respect for the sacredness of the tradition in order for her to accept me as a student.

My take on cultural appropriation is that one should always ask one’s teachers and fellow musicians how they feel about incorporating their music into one’s own. That being said, my own experiences have shown me that for the most part, musicians from other parts of the world are flattered when an artist shows interest in their musical culture.

©️FoBo_ 

Es gab in meinen zwei letzten Jahren an der Oberschule ein Transistorradio in der Küche, und da spielte eines Morgens Frank Zappa. Es war die Zeit seines fulminanten Jazz-Rock-Epos „The Grand Wazoo“, und bei diesem unvergesslichen Liveaufritt gab ein gewisser George Duke den Keyboardmeister, der Frank Zappas vertrackten Synkopen in jeden hintersten Winkel und darüber hinaus folgte. Ich hatte grossen Spass an dieser Musik, zumal ich meinen leichten „Kater“ vom Vorabend mit zwei grossen Gläsern Milch und einer Alka-Seltzer gut in den Griff bekam. Was für eine verspielte, wandlungsfreudig rockende Big Band! Frank Zappas Hang zur Satire sorgte dafür, dass ich das Opus irgendwo zwischen den Marx Brothers und Monty Python einsortierte. Nie in meinem Leben liess ich auch nur den geringsten Lacher los beim Ansehen eines Films der britischen Komiker, während der anarchistische Humor von Grouch und Co. mich meistens leichtfüssig einfing. Es passt dazu, dass ich „The Grand Wazoo“ seit damals mit einem gewissen Hin- und Hergerissensein hörte: enweder liess mich die ausgefuchste Klangkunst kalt, oder sie packte mich mit ihrer immensen Spiellaune, die, live dargeboten, noch manch freien Extralauf und Schabernack bereithielt. Zuletzt hörte ich das Album in wunderbar gelungenem Surround, und das Pendel schlug wieder aus in Richtung der unbändigen Freude von einst, anno 1972, in der Küche mit dem silbernen Toaster, dem kleinen Metallradio, George Dukes irrwitzigen Läufen, meinen 17 Lenzen, und zwei rasch heruntergestürzten Milchgläsern!

There are a couple of album covers with my live drawings in the recent past among them also a c over for LA SELVA DE LOS RELOJES of young Catalan cellist Pau Sola Masafrets (living and working in The Netherlands). He gave me the recordings he made with his group comprising Björk Nielsdottir (vocal), George Dumitriu (violin), Marta Warelis (piano) and George Hadow (drums) that he wanted to release as an album and asked me if I can produce a drawing for the album cover. I can, I said, but i can only do it when the music is played live. Pau then organised a private session I joined with my live drawing. This is documented in a very nice video made by Beatriz Lerer Castelo. The music works with texts of Frederico Garcia Lorca and Albert Einstein.

V I D E O

The music of the album you can find on bandcamp