Metro, Jan. 5

For the weekend: a big cover story on the Bowerbird @ Landmarks program, which brings experimental music to Philly-area historic homes; it landed Toshi Makihara on the cover and packed the Physick House. Metro is still slacking about posting issues, but here's a scan from Bowerbird's site.

Also, a piece on the Montana-based experimental theater company Missoula Oblongata's Puppet Uprising-hosted play, Wonders of the World: Recite; and one that got cut on Slavic Soul Party, a Balkan folk-funk party band comprised of moonlighting members of the Brooklyn new-jazz scene, which I'll include here:

A Brooklyn-based brass band playing funk party tunes inspired by Balkan folk music isn’t too hard to accept. Names with suspiciously non-eastern European inflections like Toriyama or Noriega is a little stranger. But when the group’s leader turned out to be Matt Moran, usually known as vibraphonist for new-jazz ensembles like John Hollenbeck’s Claudia Quintet and the Mat Maneri Quintet, the whole concept seemed particularly intriguing.

“I sort of have a split personality musically,” Moran admits, “where I’m playing new music on vibes and playing drums in brass bands. This is where I synthesize my Balkan interests and my love of American music too.”

Moran first discovered Balkan music when the Bulgarian Women’s Choir (aka La Mystere des Voix Bulgares) came to prominence in the States in the late 1980s. “I really loved it,” Moran said, “so I just started chasing it down and eventually met other Americans who were into it through the international folk dance movement of the sixties. Then through them I found immigrant musicians playing the music here in New York and it just kept snowballing.”

On top of studying the music and learning its conventions, Moran says, “the main thing an American has to absorb, it seems to me, is attitude. Not to shy away from the clear and simple. And you’ve just got to really connect with intensity and passion. If you don’t feel a red-hot livewire running through yourself around this music then you shouldn’t be trying to play it or write it.”

But despite his appropriation of Balkan music, says that“the very concept of world music is anathema to me. We’re playing neighborhood music, and these are the influences and the things that bubble in our neighborhood. I walk out my door and you hear Albanian cats blasting Albanian pop, you hear Mexican banda, you hear hip-hop, you hear Bangladeshi music. All this stuff is here, and this is just us living and working in our neighborhood.”