The Island and the Lion
In a couple of days as I write this — on Monday, September 23rd to be precise — I’ll be talking with David Brooks here in Waco about his recent work. If you’re local, you can use that link to register for this free event, bit we’re also going to livestream the event, and if you’d like to watch here’s the link.
Nobody really knows how the mechanical lion Leonardo da Vinci made for the King of France actually worked, but it has been reconstructed and the reconstruction looks wonderful. Please do take a gander at this much larger image.
In 1991, Henry Kaiser and David Lindley took their guitars and a portable digital recording studio to Madagascar and recorded, and played with, many musicians of the island. I’ve been listening to the music they recorded ever since the first album of tunes came out in 1992. There’s a wonderful moment when Kaiser gets a little acoustic-slide groove going and a couple of drummers join in and then here comes the great Malagasy flutist Rakoto Frah! What emerged Kaiser and Lindley called “The Rakoto Frah Two-Step,” and it’s pretty awesome. You want to know how cool Rakoto Frah is? He’s on Malagasy money:
But for my money the most beautiful song that Kaiser and Lindley recorded is by a band called Tarika Sammy and is called “Hana.” Interestingly, it’s a cover of a Japanese pop song. Except things are a little more complicated than that.
The song comes not from the main Japanese islands but rather from Okinawa — here’s a version by the Okinawan singer Rimi Natsukawa — where much of the population is Ryukyuan rather than ethnic Japanese. And while the ancestry of the Ryukyuan people is complex, they may be related to certain Austronesian cultures — and the Malagasy people are also descended from Austronesians. Maybe the members of Tarika Sammy heard something in “Hana” that connected them to their ancient roots.
One more thing: You know where else the Ryukyuan people ended up? Hawaii. And that achingly gorgeous solo on Tarika Sammy’s version of “Hana” is played by David Lindley on a Hawaiian lap steel guitar. It all fits.
STATUS BOARD
- Work: From Rousseau to Frederick Douglass is quite a shift of tone and substance.
- Music: One more highlight from A World Out of Time: Lindley in his comical high tenor singing Merle Haggard’s “I Am a Lonesome Fugitive” with the Malagasy band Rossy.
- Reading: Europe at Dawn was terrific though perhaps slightly anticlimactic? But I strongly recommend the whole series.
- Food and Drink: Toast is really great, you know? Toast.