The Last Tears Of The Deceased
“Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is.”― Maxim Gorky
In the old city of Jerusalem, tucked away between the markets and ancient buildings, there is an Ethiopian community, deeply religious, who have made a home where supposedly the Queen of Sheba made a voyage to meet King Solomon, returning back to Ethiopia carrying the country’s future first King, Menelik. The community members live in modest shacks near a small monastery next to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the spot that is said to be where Christ was crucified and where his resurrection took place. They choose to live where they do to be as close as possible to the deep sources of their faith (for deeper reading about them, click here to a great article). In 2006 when visiting Israel I made a trip to the Ethiopian area, looking for one of the most beautiful pianists of the 20th century, Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou. I had just missed her at the small corner area of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where the Ethiopian group has access and was directed to her house less than a minute walk away. When I arrived at the modest, small clay shack with two small windows looking in the direction of the church, and knocked her door, I was told by an elderly gentleman sitting a few feet away that she had recently gone out…I had missed her again. I never got a chance to meet her.
I first heard the music of Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou through a compilation of her work making up the 21st volume of a series called Ethiopiques. Triumphed by Aquarius Records in San Francisco (which is where I was introduced to the series), Ethiopiques set out to release compilation after compilation of Ethiopian recordings of the past, many of which were groove-oriented bands with a unique African flair… artists from the late 60s to early 70s who made music until a tyrannical regime silenced their modern devil’s music…incredible artists like Mahmoud Ahmed, Gétatchèw Mèkurya (the “Negus Of Ethiopian Sax”), Muluken Melesse and many others. Volume 21 was different. Ethiopiques Vol. 21 featured quiet, Western sounding solo piano pieces, laden with the sparse calm of Erik Satie, the mellow complexity of Ellington (and later Don Shirley), sharing with the latter a heavy influence of the blues. The first time I heard the first track on Ethipiques 21, The Homeless Wanderer…I was a devotee of Tsegué-Maryam and the sublime world she created with her fingers
Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou was born in Ethiopia in 1923 to the Amhara family, a wealthy family whose influence in the country datesd back to the 12th century. She was sent to boarding school in Switzerland as a child where she started learning various instruments and learning about Western culture. At ten years old, upon returning to Ethiopia, she performed regularly for Haile Selassie (I have read before that she might have been related) and progressed her skills until the Second Italo-Ethiopian War where she and many of her family became prisoners of war. After the war Guèbrou continued studying in various European universities, honing her violin and piano skills, working under violinist Alexander Kontorowicz. She put out her first record in the 1960s featuring songs like the Homeless Wanderer and The Last Tears Of The Deceased that have become over the past few decades her most beloved compositions.
Emahoy passed away yesterday at 99 years of age. She had made a home in the old city of Jerusalem for over thirty years, focusing on her religious practice, barely playing, living in self-decided obscurity. Yet she lived to see her music reach new audiences, ever since the Ethipiques release in 2006. Since then, her name spread amongst music enthusiasts, record collectors, musicologists and when she turned 90, a group of fans produced a show to celebrate her, her life and her music…a show she was able to attend. The great Mississippi Records label released her first record on vinyl a few years back, are readying a release of new recordings next month.
I cannot recommend Guèbrou’s music enough. It is wandering, like it says in the title of her song, it is sentimental, drawing out memories with the musical paths it takes, it is an aural quiet stream antidote to the chaos and craziness of our world…and I write these words as it is storming crazily outside.
Rest in Peace Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou.
EXHIBITION REVIEW: BERND & HILLA BECHER
For Bay Area readers or visitors, this is the final week to check out the Bernd & Hilla Becher exhibit at the SFMOMA. The exhibit showcases hundreds of photographs taken of industrial architecture. To me, the crazed formation of these structures reminds me of the landscapes of H. R. Geiger….strange tubes and symmetry reminding us that we are aliens on our own planet. The article above was written when the show was in New York….but it is is for all practicality the same show.
Film Interview: Budd Schulberg on Being a Screenwriter in Hollywood
AF: In A Face in the Crowd, a Southern con man (Andy Griffith) becomes a demagogic political figure with a following of adulators.
Schulberg: Why in 1957 didn’t anyone get it? It was not nominated for anything, though Andy Griffith was extraordinary. People thought the story was artificial, that it couldn’t really happen that way. It was too far ahead of its time. So much bad stuff had happened maybe starting with Nixon, so much lying. People now would just say, “Nothing is new.” They aren’t shocked like my generation was. It’s really time for us to scrape off this cynicism and take a good hard look at what is happening in this country. There’s so much fakery and we don’t mind it. When I watched [George W.] Bush looking like Tom Cruise in Top Gun, playing a war hero, I realized that we live in a world that is staged. Our politics is a reality show.
Rock's Backpages Podcast
Steven Baker turned me on to this podcast…and I am totally hooked. Rock’s Backpages has been a pay-to-use site that holds a huge collection of music journalism and criticism from the last 80+ years. Founder Barney Hoskyns and some of his fellow grey-haired journalists interview other writers, music professionals, others who have made careers touching the center of the music beast….celebrating, highlighting, exposing and sometimes damning great records and artists. The stories from this podcast are just incredible, many I have not heard of before. IT IS DEFINITELY worth a gander.
Shriek of the Week: Treecreeper
“Their vocalisations are fine and whispery. The high-pitched ‘seeee seeee seeee’ contact call is often given as they creep their way through woodland. This sounds similar to a number of other bird calls, and is a tricky one to be confident about.”
A Taste of Paradis: Joan Didion, in Conversation with Mark Marvel
Interview magazine just republished a great, old Joan Didion interview…
Private Japanese moon lander sends home stunning image from lunar orbit
A lot is going on with the Moon right now. This morning it was reported that a Chinese probe might have found water on the moon as a Japanese lander, scheduled to land on the moon in April, is sending back some pretty incredible video footage…
James and the Giants :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
I love James Toth…all of his configurations. Wooden Wand: great. One Eleven Heavy: oh yeah. This new group of his looks great too!! And a solid interview to boot.
A TRUE ACCOUNT OF TALKING TO THE SUN AT FIRE ISLAND
By: Frank O’Hara
The Sun woke me this morning loud
and clear, saying "Hey! I've been
trying to wake you up for fifteen
minutes. Don't be so rude, you are
only the second poet I've ever chosen
to speak to personally
so why
aren't you more attentive? If I could
burn you through the window I would
to wake you up. I can't hang around
here all day."
"Sorry, Sun, I stayed
up late last night talking to Hal."
"When I woke up Mayakovsky he was
a lot more prompt" the Sun said
petulantly. "Most people are up
already waiting to see if I'm going
to put in an appearance."
I tried
to apologize "I missed you yesterday."
"That's better" he said. "I didn't
know you'd come out." "You may be
wondering why I've come so close?"
"Yes" I said beginning to feel hot
wondering if maybe he wasn't burning me
anyway.
"Frankly I wanted to tell you
I like your poetry. I see a lot
on my rounds and you're okay. You may
not be the greatest thing on earth, but
you're different. Now, I've heard some
say you're crazy, they being excessively
calm themselves to my mind, and other
crazy poets think that you're a boring
reactionary. Not me.
Just keep on
like I do and pay no attention. You'll
find that people always will complain
about the atmosphere, either too hot
or too cold too bright or too dark, days
too short or too long.
If you don't appear
at all one day they think you're lazy
or dead. Just keep right on, I like it.
And don't worry about your lineage
poetic or natural. The Sun shines on
the jungle, you know, on the tundra
the sea, the ghetto. Wherever you were
I knew it and saw you moving. I was waiting
for you to get to work.
And now that you
are making your own days, so to speak,
even if no one reads you but me
you won't be depressed. Not
everyone can look up, even at me. It
hurts their eyes."
"Oh Sun, I'm so grateful to you!"
"Thanks and remember I'm watching. It's
easier for me to speak to you out
here. I don't have to slide down
between buildings to get your ear.
I know you love Manhattan, but
you ought to look up more often.
And
always embrace things, people earth
sky stars, as I do, freely and with
the appropriate sense of space. That
is your inclination, known in the heavens
and you should follow it to hell, if
necessary, which I doubt.
Maybe we'll
speak again in Africa, of which I too
am specially fond. Go back to sleep now
Frank, and I may leave a tiny poem
in that brain of yours as my farewell."
"Sun, don't go!" I was awake
at last. "No, go I must, they're calling
me."
"Who are they?"
Rising he said "Some
day you'll know. They're calling to you
too." Darkly he rose, and then I slept.