Field Recordings
The hands of Dragut Ionel, “Nelu”, and the violinist Covaci Mil,
Rom musicians recorded in Lyon, France, May 2002
While I don’t specifically travel for music, in the course of doing field research on traditional cuisines I often find myself in the presence of beautiful music. Here are a few examples of field recordings I have made while traveling — Gypsies in a park in Lyon, street musicians on a New York subway platform, Samburu women and children in Africa, kids playing music in a market in Tijuana, Mexico. Everywhere there are people there is music.
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I was in New York in the winter of 2003 to cook at a restaurant. On the day that this recording was made I didn’t have to be at the restaurant until mid-afternoon. I left my hotel in the morning. Walking to the platform I needed at the confusing 14th Street station I heard a beautiful voice. As I wasn’t in a hurry, I followed the sound. I spent a couple hours talking and recording songs. The singer is a colorful African-American woman — a self-described designer and musician. She splatter-paints clothing, boxes, and in the case of her guitar, her guitar. The work is gorgeous. At once free and meticulous. The face of her guitar is painted with layers of tiny acrylic splatters, but not the tiniest splatter is on the side or the neck of the guitar. Meticulous masking. As for her underground routine, she works as a designer on one of the 14th Street Platforms, and as a musician on another, never mixing the two jobs. Friendly, a good musician, she is respected by other subway performers — several of whom gave her money. But unlike the Moms Mabley character in from her house on Staten Island to play the subway cars, our friend has life problems. Her bedroom the W train.
Boutiques and restaurants — that is Lyon’s old town. Beautiful — Lyon is a UNESCO Heritage Site — but dispiriting. Tour buses bring propel to restaurant-lined streets. Lyon is a center of food as recreation — a business, certainly, that I am in — but in travel timing is everything, and I wasn’t in the mood for the mass celebration of Lyonaisse cuisine. On the second day, I found a culinary sanctuary in a restaurant. that cooks all its food in a fireplace or in a bread oven — simple clean flavors — so in the evenings I was happy eating by candle light in front of a fire. But I grew increasingly impatient during the daytimes, wondering just how many pairs of shoes, how many shirts, how many dresses, etc., it was necessary to own. In fairness, Lyon, of course, is a regional shopping center, but I was so much not in the mood that I walked past all those store windows with the gait of a man in a hurry.
In the central square, I found a group of gypsy musicians. As they didn’t object to my recording, I set up my microphones and recorder. I recorded for a couple hours. I came back the next day and listened and recorded some more. The accordion player was the lead musician. Our common language was a few words of French. I asked, and asked, and asked again, whether they could play some Rom music — but I got nowhere. They were playing a pastiche of French music. And they were clearly bored. I sat and listened and recorded hoping that something would change — charming as their act was. Finally, Dragut relented. “Come back tomorrow at 2 p.m..” I returned to the park at the appointed hour. It was an overcast drizzly day. Dragut came with his group’s violinist. They went to a deserted section of the park and there Dragut and Covaci played a concert for me — about an hour of incredible, energetic, music. Dragut calls it Romanian Pop. Pop?! Pagannin! Bartok!
I was walking with my wife. I heard music. Drumming. A horn. It was a holiday. We followed the sound. It led it into a residential neighborhood — the Muslim neighborhood. There were many little boys in the streets. A boy ran up to my wife and pulled her hair. She became upset. She wanted to leave the neighborhood. I wanted to catch up to the band. The boys were milling around. I week earlier, on a village road, I had had a group of young boys turn on me. They starting throwing stones. It was weird. But this was in the middle of the city. I hate turning back, the music wa calling, but my wife was uncomfortable. At this moment of tension a young man came up to us — curly hair, sparkling eyes — “I am a musician, he said, this is my house. I invite you to come in.”
We came in. We crossed an interior courtyard into his family’s flat. He made us comfortable and began to sing. His younger sister and brother came in. They sang for us, too. And his mother came in. And she listened, smiling. Can you came back later? My brother, he is the best musician. We could. After more music we came back at the agreed upon time — eight in the evening. We came for dinner. I had expected that we would all be eating dinner together but this was not their idea. The family had set up a small table with a candle and two chairs. My wife and I ate together by candle light. When we were done the two brothers, now dressed formally, said that they were read to play for us. Their father, a banker, was the tabla coach. This was the third generation of music in the family. They played us a concert until neighbors went out into the street and and banged on the shutters.
The song fragment included here begins with laughter — the laughter or Elizabeth’s oldest daughter, pictured here. In the area where Elizabeth lives, near Wamba in Northern Kenya, the Samburu houses are made of sticks and cow dung and a very small — one cannot stand up in them. There are no windows — the light, even at noon — is the light of of dawn or dusk. I held a burning stick to create enough light for this photograph — the need to keep still explains the quiet attitude. A few minutes before I took this picture there was singing, and the laughter that begins this song fragment.
My wife’s name is Sonia. My name, of course, is William. You will hear both names as this is a song intended to entice my wife to join me on my next visit. I don’t understand Ma, the language in which the song is sung. Given the number of times the singers broke up in laughter, I can only assume that some fun was being made of me, perhaps the recounting of my adventures in a style more grandiose that the adventures warranted. The Samburu sing through life. They sing through a hard life. They sing while walking, the sing in the evenings, they sing in the daytime. Once, walking where there are tall trees – up by Maralal — I heard singing coming from the sky — what turned out to be a young boy up in a tree singing to sing. I include this informal song — this spontaneous song — to give you a sense of the kind of relationships that are built — but rarely recorded — between travelers and the people they meet.
No. Africans are not born with any more rhythm than people from other ethnic groups. But it seems that the importance placed on singing and dancing in Africa has carried forward into the American African diaspora. The drummer whose music I present here gives his name as Jesus. While I was listening and recording a woman was also photographing him — and it is this photographer you hear me speak with at the end of the recording. You may have seen street drummers before — people — usually African Americans drumming on improvised drum sets. This performer was drumming on discarded pots and pans and an oven rack. He drumming with sticks — not finished drum sticks — but rather broken pieces of wood. Scrap. Disturbed, in a world of his own, this man’s drumming is also on an exceptional level. Shortly after the recording ends a police officer told him to move on. The recording takes place on the edge if Central Park, a few blocks down from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
My wife’s family has been shopping at a particular market complex in Tijuana, Mexico, for thirty years. My wife’s mother lives in Los Angeles, but whenever possible goes down to Tijuana to do her shopping. Whenever I go with my wife to visit her sister in San Diego we cross the border to go to this mercado. I buy terra cotta cooking pots in Tijuana — in fact Tijuana terra cotta has replaced my 19th century copper pots as my cookware of choice. On a recent trip there were two young teenagers playing music for money. The drummer is a girl, the clarinetist, a boy. Neither child smiled. They played, as you hear, loudly, at me rather than to me. This isn’t a perfect recording, the drum overpowers the clarinet, but in the harshnes of this recording is caputued something of the harshness of their performance — and the harshness of the streets of Tijuana.
East African Pentacostal Church, Wamba, Kenya
The sound of drums is the sound of Kenyan churches on Sunday. The drumming is what you hear at a distance, and then the singing. I made this recording in a small church in Wamba. Wamba is in the Samburu district of northern Kenya. The service was conducted in Swahili and in the local language. The transitions between singing and preaching, and praying and singing, and praying and preaching are fantastic. Even when the congregation is in a trance state there is control. The female leader is named Beatrice. It is her voice that is shouting in the prayer session and it is her voice that often leads the singing. To retain the transitions I present this as one cut. It is almost one hour long and represents about half of a three hour service. I cut out some of the preaching but left enough for you to get a sense of the rythm of the service. What sounds like voice response in the preaching is actually translation from Swahili into Samburu or Samburu into Swahili. The recording begins very quietly. A single male voice. He soon joined by a second male voice, then a third, and fourth, then by more men, then the women. It takes about five minutes for the congregation to reach full voice. The men and women are sitting separately — there are about twenty adults in the congregation. I am standing towards the front with the men.
Samburu women’s song blessing milk
Milk is the Samburu’s staple food. As with bread in our culture, there is a huge mythology surrounding milk — and milk plays a role in religious ceremonies. This song, sung here by two women in Maralal, Kenya, is normally sung by a large group of women as they walk into the mountains to pray. As they walk they dip green grass into milk and sprinkle the milk on the ground as they go. They also drink this milk so it is both a blessing to God and food.
