Suzanne
Vega is her name. As she is going onstage in Warsaw this weekend, we dearly regret not being able to see her in the the flesh. The radio concert, we can’t afford to miss it, will have to take us there. She is special in many respects. In a way it’s a wonder how she has managed to survive in a very cynical, macho industry, where everybody pushes their way through, without that prima donna attitude you usually get.
As teachers, we’ve had a secret relationship with Suzanne for nearly twenty years. Through little occasional trysts. In the classroom! With her seemingly simple music and lyrics she has offered us her unpretentious persona, wit, reflective mind, numerous mini-stories, the sensitivity and warmth of a wiser, older sister we’ve never had and always missed. ‘Luka’ and ‘Tom’s Diner’ have invariably been on our list of classic, song-based lessons.
One of the students, old enough to be her grown-up daughter, recently remarked while visualising ‘Luka’ at a lesson: ‘Funny, I’ve heard it so many times and always thought of it as a happy song, but it isn’t.’
In Liverpool (.mp3 approx. 4.3MB)
Dedicated to …
… all our students and teachers, for a good start. Two little stories and a lullaby for the atumn.
An old pilgrim was making his way to the Himalayan Mountains in the bitter cold of winter when it began to rain.
An innkeeper said to him, “How will you ever get there in this kind of weather, my good man?”
The old man answered cheerfully, “My heart got there first, so it is easy for the rest of me to follow.”
A women dreamed she walked into a brand new shop in the marketplace and, to her surprise, found God behind the counter.
“What do you sell here?” she asked.
“Everything your heart desires,” said God.
Hardly daring to believe what she was hearing, the women decided to ask for the best things a human being could wish for. “I want peace of mind, and love and happiness and wisdom and freedom from fear,” she said. Then as an afterthought, she added, “Not just for me. For everyone on earth.”
God smiled, “I think you’ve got me wrong, my dear,” he said. “We don’t sell fruits here. Only seeds.”
British_folk_gem (.mp3 approx. 2.9MB)
Lisbon, round midnight, by the sea
You have nothing to lose.
seven minutes of summer bliss (.mp3, approx. 7MB)
In praise of BB
No, no, not the 60s French cinema icon Brigitte Bardot. Another ageing BB, Burt Bacharach The Composer, undisputed genius of American popular music. Sad to admit, but when we carried out a quick poll among random students and teachers, his name rang a bell to only one out of nine. And don’t tell us that media are to blame for it. Or perhaps. Ironically, these are rare occasions when any Polish station plays a song of his, or when you spot some odd record in a shop.
The fact that he’s a Jew is enough for another Jew, the obsessed John Zorn, to classify him under Great Jewish Music. After all, so many American songwriters have been Jewish ? Berlin, Weil, Gershwin, Bernstein, Dylan, Reed…. An epitome of the British yob, one of the Oasis men, summarized his music bluntly: “If you you can’t convince a girl to sleep with you after you’d played her a Bacharach song, you might as well forget it.”
No matter what perspective you take to listen, his songs always transcend what a popular song is expected to be. Hummable? Yes, but after a few bars you come to a halt. Simple as they are, they suddenly become deeply complex when he stacks unexpected, twisted harmonies, crams rich musical details, or adds orchestral arrangements topped with horns ? all within the space of a three-minute marvel. And if Bacharach turns his tunes into works of art, their other layer, lyrics by his long-time collaborator David Hal, seem to bring human emotions to their simplest (American) form. Perhaps that’s why the impact of their songs has been so great that few just shrug their shoulders and walk on by.
classic Bacharach (.mp3 file, 3MB, approx. 3 minutes)
Playing with a new toy
A couple of days after much hyped World Book Day, it’s interesting to listen to this fascinating talk about the future of the book ? more precisely, the effect of the digital world on the traditional book. Andrew Marr and his quests talk on BBC Radio 4 programme, Start the Week.
listen (.mp3 file, 3.4MB, approx. 3 minutes)
We listen to …
…’The Drift’ by Scott Walker, which we finally (way too late) got hold of last month. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, study this. In short, Walker is a London-based American artist who has managed to transcend the boundaries of pop and rock in his long, spanning some fifty years, career. He has gradually become a kind of musical recluse, releasing one album per decade, ‘The Drift being his latest.
It’s one of those records people either ditch straight away, or give themselves a second chance and treasure them for the rest of their lives. The former bunch, no doubt prevailing in this case, may question the artist’s sanity; the latter will grant him a cult status.
‘The Drift’ perplexes you, it knocks you dead, and it grows on you with every push of a button. Each song is a witty, elaborated mini-play about life and death in contemporary world ? all ten songs form an array of complex, cryptic, but compelling masterpieces. Sonically, the record brings together disciplined keybord-guitar-percussion textures, exotic instruments, orchestral noise, radio snippets and obscure real world sounds. Dark and beautiful. Get the drift. Cossacks are (mp3)
Christmas sharing
It’s not at all easy to plan a good lesson just before Christmas break; in the week of densely scheduled events, shopping madness and tension regular teaching and learning simply isn’t happening. What to do then? Fill those 60 or 90 minutes with Jingle Bells again, or, worse, some more recent musical pulp? Do a related reading? Discuss shopper’s dilemmas? How boring!
This December sees a revival of Christmas Teas at GV – a string pre-Christmas get-togethers which, to put it simply, turn the classroom into … a tea room, where an enhanced version of the beverage is collectively planned, brewed, and enjoyed to the sound of seasonal music. Last night we saw how little it takes to make it an even bigger event. Marzena, Kate, Agnieszka, Grzegorz and Michał spontaneously staged a 20-minute carol singing act with about 30 other people, which was all sharing at its purest form.
This is one of the pieces we sang while Marzena was strumming the chords. English translation, courtesy of Jolanta Kozak.
GV playlist
A collectively compiled GV playlist for late September:
- Tony Gatlif, Arrinconamela
- Gorillaz, Slow Country
- Lao Che, Powstanie Warszawskie
- Nigel Kennedy & The Kroke Band, East Meets East
- Matisyahu, Live at Stubb’s
- Ennio Morricone, Il était une fois dans l’Ouest
- The Orb, Orbus Terarrum
- PowerShovelAudio, Sample CD
- Thievory Corporation, Revolution Solution
Music
For rather obvious reasons English teachers don’t get out much – they work anti-social hours and they work quite a lot. So how do they fulfil their need to be out with people? Well, some just go on pretending there’s no such thing as a life outside classroom, some treat their classes as social events, some extend lessons into improvised get-togethers in bars around town. (We’ve long abandoned this habit.) Others plunge into solitary activities – they surf the web, watch videos, read glossies, listen to whatever. (Doesn’t it sound a bit like teaching and learning?)
Listening can really be a serious and inspiring pleasure and as such has always been an important part of Global Village. In spring 2001 we managed to draw in quite a crowd to an all-night music event called ‘Zgrzyty i trzaski globalnej wioski’. In four of our rooms we continuously played back long pieces of contemporary music from the avant-garde to improvised music to electronica. The listeners sat or sprawled on the floor, in almost complete dark, and soaked up otherworldly sounds for hours.
At the other end of musical spectrum there is always plenty of pop around the place. Someone might be humming and whining, trying to impersonate Barbra Streisand or George Michael. Someone might be downloading hip-hop mp3s for later onslaught on their ears.
But nobody can beat Rogal, a teacher at GV until 2004, a true fan of real music. Always with a bunch of CDs in his bag to share, always ready to risk a sleepless night after an escapade to a one-off concert 400 kilometres away. Hey, Rogal, how about another Invisible Jukebox session one day?
Rogal – a fan of many things
