And look at ships! They are so big that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are steered by a tiny rudder wherever the helmsman directs.
In my most recent arduous counter-reflections of scholastic venture, I have been fascinated in the idea of the adaptive, impermanent performance. Groups like the San Francisco Mime Troupe & El Teatro Campesino, though at this point having progressed beyond radicalism & into popular culture as mere memories, both began in the 1960’s as theater groups whose pieces were performed in arenas of improvised social spectacle, the former in public Frisco parks, the latter on flatbed trucks on the fringes of SoCal & Mexican working fields. The method of performing unannounced & without preconceived social awareness fascinates me because it constructs a form of performance that keeps one step ahead of the market’s tendency (& I would say inevitable capitalist trend, for better or worse) to devour artistic ingenuity that mirrors the cultural hip.
The Shins on the Take-Away Shows
This is just a terribly overwrought way of saying this: if you put on a performance without announcing your performance, it will have ended before the chameleonistic market has a chance to catch up. All of this, of course, is just another transition to a million great videos.
Because although this was the way of many groups in the 60’s & into the 70’s, the trend continues today in the relevance of the traveling troubadour. In particular, a French-Canadian director calling himself “La Blogotheque” has amassed a more than impressive collection of popular & semi-popular musicians quite literally taking their music to the streets.
The Take-Away Shows (or Concerts-a-emporter, if you’re a frog) follow a simple direction to create unbelievably moving results: take a musician, make him play music in public (usually while walking), & make a video of it. These performances, then, become half-musical/half-reactionary; the average street-goer stops & stares, or stops & cheers, or stops & jeers, & it is all a result of the public performance as intrusive, unapologetic object. I could espouse on this further & further, but the videos tend to speak for themselves, & if ever you have a moment to experience musical movement (both literal & emotional, in just about every case!), take the time to watch these videos. The lighting is haunting & glows radiance onto the performers; the music fades high & low as the camera pans to different angles, or follows a musician in circles (the Fleet Foxes video is a great example of this, as well as Beirut), offering the listener an in-house experience; the performers themselves are modest & oftentimes uncertain, baring their souls un-produced & un-hinged in the middle of a street or park, the fear of refusal or rejection always an option on the audience’s part.
These are real moments in the lives of real people, & the performer as debased-human-interloper has never been as apparent. Sometimes it is a mere moment that makes you gasp & weep, not the music: the sun setting as Andrew Bird pauses & a bird whistles with him; the wind whipping through Sufjan Stevens on a forgotten warehouse roof, his soft resiliency & harmony; the cameraman falling over to My Brightest Diamond’s pealing laughter just as she ends a Franco-English heartbreaking hymn. These are those moments, & so much more:
Beirut – Nantes & The Penalty (both are so different, yet such remarkable moments of street fare)
Fleet Foxes – Sun Giant/Blue Ridge Mountains
Fleet Foxes – A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.
My Brightest Diamond – L’hymne A L’amour
Sufjan Stevens – The Lakes of Canada
Andrew Bird – Spare-Ohs
There is more to come on this subject, & I promise to stay closer to the hearth within these next coming weeks. This space has been left dormant once more, let’s push onward. For now, spend time on these Take-Away pieces, peruse the archive & you never know if your new favorite heart-ful artist is waiting for you.