The other night I was at my friend's apartment for a party. It was the culmination of a tense, bizarre week where all the stress of a year and a week with no sleep seemed to catch up to me in one fell swoop. So I did what I usually do when I'm stressed out, buy some hummus, grab a guitar, and head to the nearest party where I can speak in rambling quirk and metaphor.
Musicians are a motley bunch. There was, on rough count, a minor Williamsburg thrift orchestra there. The Dijembe, saw, violin, trumpet, several guitars, 2 ukeleles, 2 kazoos, a magic wand, 2 harmonicas, (gold facepaint), and a lot of songwriters. It seemed like the most natural expression of listening to solo alongside of the newcomers songs.
There was a round of Sufjan Steven's "Chicago", ABBA's "Super Trooper", "No Woman No Cry", and a variety of originals, with spontaneous and unexpected solos, and sounded new. It's a special thing to hear new friends' songs fleshed out by relative strangers. Folk music is everyone singing a song everyone remembers, their own way, in strange places where music should sprout from. The world is rather acoustic.
In Aboriginal belief, an unsung land is a dead land: since, if the songs are forgotten, the land itself will die.
- Bruce Chatwin, Songlines
Next election, let's vote for democracy by musicals from rooftop to rooftop. We're just a big urban tribe.
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