fleurette africaine

by MaxEntropy_Man Sun Nov 27, 2011 7:42 pm

original by the duke:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pJlmFyaLCk

cover by vijay iyer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx7fL6kUeDI

i love the quiet spaces in iyer's version. it doesn't have the rattling drum sounds that duke's version has.

by MaxEntropy_Man Sat May 07, 2016 10:53 am

listened once again to both versions. i love both versions. iyer's is a darker version than the original.
speaking of which, found this article about him in the new yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/01/time-is-a-ghost

the author's (not vijay iyer) opinion on what temporary and permanent music is:

There is permanent music and temporary music. Temporary music remains fixed in its period. Permanent music reflects its period but provokes responses deeper than nostalgia. It is no observation of my own that much of America’s permanent music has been made by African-Americans playing jazz, although “jazz” is a term that many musicians, including Iyer, tend to shun, partly in the belief that it has a commercial taint, as if the music were merely a commodity, and partly in the belief that it has a dismissive taint, as if it stood for music made by untrained musicians who groped their way toward expression.

on his experience as an outsider trying to find his place in it:

In entering African-American music “and trying to figure out what my position is and striving for some place within it,” Iyer said, his status “has frequently been called into question. Since childhood, he has been aware of his racial identity—of being, as he has said, neither white nor black, and having a different-sounding name. As an Asian-American, he regards himself as existing “on the boundary of what it means to be American,” he said. He sees himself as someone of color but, as the child of parents who came willingly to the country, as being in a different position from people whose ancestors arrived as captives.

“To be a jazz musician is to express some American project, to be part of American history, to take in those rugged ideals to which improvisation is central,” he said. “Critical writing used to attempt to place me by othering me, by putting me outside the history of jazz. Everything I did was seen as different and not as the continuity of a tradition. Critics never describe black music as rigorous or cerebral or mathematical, although Coltrane was interested in mathematics. Since I was Asian, I was seen as having only my intellect to use.”

fleurette africaine

fleurette africaine

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