Archive for Music

Paolo Giovanni Nutini

{ 16 October, 2009 @ 10:38 pm } · { Appreciation, Music }
{ } · { Leave a Comment }

I love this video. I love the music, the lyrics, the light, the way the singer sways gently and lovingly with his guitar, and the fifties Mediterranean wedding scene.

I first heard the tantalizingly different Paolo Nutini on the radio, singing High Hopes. I couldn’t imagine what he would look like: there was a warble in his voice that made me think he might be old; the accent was hard to pin down; the song started with a hint of Amazing Grace, and continued as a sort of reggae ballad.

When you first see him, it’s hard to reconcile his sound with his appearance and his appearance with his name (his father, as you might guess, is of Italian descent but the family has lived in Scotland for generations).

Paolo Nutini is 22. He is from Paisley, near Glasgow. His voice is odd, really: that warble and a croakiness, but it works. After listening to Nutini singing Candy a few times, it seems like all aspects of him meld perfectly into a distinctive whole. And he seems to throw himself, heart and soul, into making music without worrying too much about crafting a consistent image.

He’s a talented songwriter who performs a lot of his own material, with influences from folk to blues to ballads to ragtime. His recent album, Sunny Side Up, defines the word eclectic.

Delhi 2 Dublin 2 West Vancouver

{ 6 August, 2009 @ 11:04 am } · { Music, Neighbourhood }
{ } · { Comments (3) }

West Vancouver hosts the Harmony Arts Festival every summer. This is a ten-day outdoor festival right by the sea, with a craft market, exhibits, interactive sessions of all kinds, and concerts during the day and in the evenings. On the two August weekends it crosses, the place is teeming with both locals and visitors, and the evening concerts, on outdoor stages, are packed.

This year’s lineup of concerts included Delhi 2 Dublin on Tuesday night. Having seen them at the Folk Festival, I was keen to see them again. But when I arrived, I wondered what kind of a reception they would get.  The audience seemed to be composed of a lot of locals — at first glance, it appeared most had grey hair. I assume this was because it was a weekday evening and the retired members of the population had lots of time to reserve their seats close to the front. The younger crowd started to fill in, but they seemed to be in the minority.

I focused on a woman sitting across the aisle, whom I guessed was in her seventies. She was stylishly and expensively dressed, but she had a disapproving face. When the band members came out and started doing sound checks, she looked alarmed and annoyed. The sound system was powerful and the singer (shades and modified mohawk hair), who was shouting instructions to the technicians, looked menacing.

D2D4Delhi 2 Dublin is the perfect multicultural mix. Sanjay, the vocalist, brings it all together with his neo-bhangra sound, his “80s hair metal” and his leaping and dancing around the stage.  Andrew, the Korean, kilt-wearing electric sitar player, is an ideal foil, since he tends to stand still and smile while his hands have a life of their own,  playing at high speed. Ravi plays the dhol. Tarun, the tabla player, is the exemplary mix: half Punjabi, half Irish. Kytami plays the fiddle faster than any I’ve ever heard.

D2D1Their energy is startling; their music is a brilliant fusion of bhangra and Celtic, and their style is infectious. By the second piece, it seemed half the audience was up dancing. Sanjay whirls around the stage and shouts to the audience to all put their hands up in the air. And we do: all of us, including the grandmas and grandpas, the Indian families, and the well-dressed West Van matrons. It’s not long before we are all chanting: long wailing phrases or sharply shouted “hah, hah, hah” sounds,  following Sanjay’s lead. Kytami plays faster and faster and we clap faster and faster.

The woman across the aisle with the disapproving face is up dancing and clapping and making “hah” noises along with the rest of us. She looks over and smiles, just for a moment.

Old rockers never die

{ 16 September, 2007 @ 1:14 pm } · { Appreciation, Music }
{ } · { Leave a Comment }

I went to a benefit concert the other night. The special guest was Greg Leskiw, “formerly of the Guess Who.” (Since the Guess Who days were more than three decades ago, does Greg ever feel he’s outgrown that introduction?) He’s been in many other bands over the years, including Mood jga jga and Crowcuss. Currently he’s a fundamental part of SwingSoniq.

Greg drove to Vancouver from Winnipeg in a 1980 Oldsmobile. After the benefit, he drove back. Like the car, he’s got a few miles on him. He’s got that old rocker look: lots of smoky bars, lots of hard drinking and partying. He’s a survivor of the sixties, with the requisite long grey ponytail and weathered face, the eyes that have seen a lot of life, and the laid-back style.

LoveWildGreg’s musical direction is now partly back to the songs of the 1930s and 40s that he learned from his father and partly in the direction of his own bluesy compositions. He’s a musician ’s musician: you get the feeling that he’s earned his standing in the community. In between songs, he tells stories. You hear tales of life on the road and episodes from his love life, a mixture of sad and funny: the kind of thing he might tell you over late night drinks in the aforementioned smoky bar.

Watching him perform in a small theatre, you get to see him up close. He scrunches up his face when he sings, emphasizing the lines that life has laid down on his face. He croons intimately to his guitar, hunched over it, loving it.

Musical ride

{ 5 September, 2007 @ 9:06 pm } · { Music }
{ } · { Comments (2) }

Album coverI got a gift package a couple of months ago, including a Michael Bublé CD. I wasn’t too thrilled, as big band, lounge singer, Sinatra-style music is not my favourite. But I played it and there are a couple of tracks that I like: “I’m Your Man” and “Me and Mrs Jones.” So I put it on in the car occasionally when there’s nothing much on the radio.

Heading out this evening with a couple of chores to do, I absent-mindedly put the CD on and listened to some of the other tracks. You know, sometimes, if you’re in the right mood … I started humming along.

At Track 2 (“It Had Better Be Tonight”), I started singing. The drums are beating, the trumpets are blaring, and suddenly I am singing at the top of my voice, tossing my head around, snapping my fingers, letting go of the steering wheel to clap my hands. Magically, my t-shirt and ill-fitting jeans become a crimson satin gown that clings where it touches. I am channelling Michelle Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys. I am moving around in my seat, moving my shoulders, one at a time, in what I consider to be a particularly seductive way. (My daughters, who have once or twice seen a mild version of this, would find it terminally awful and embarrassing. We have not yet asked an impartial observer to rule.)

In the meantime, they are not with me. And Me and Mr Bublé, We got a thing going on.

Saturday Afternoon at the Opera

{ 17 June, 2007 @ 11:00 pm } · { Canada, Music }
{ } · { Leave a Comment }

Saturday Afternoon at the Opera — SATO — is one of the wonderful things about CBC Radio: passion, dramatic music, and the glory of the human voice in song while you drive around in the rain on a weekend afternoon, crossing chores off your list. Rich baritones, deeper than you would imagine possible, dripping with menace; the soaring beauty of the great tenors. Heroines singing in the realm of angels or pouring like syrup in the lower ranges. The chorus: the power of massed voices making you shiver.

And the quiz! Love the well-bred laughter of the host, the panel, and the studio audience. Love the way panel members act a little confused in that “oh, how silly of me!” way (the forehead-slapping, “doh!” moment is the lower class equivalent) when they fail to get the correct answer to some obscure piece of esoteric trivia. Love the willingness of the radio audience to join in the fun by sending in their quizzes (how many operas can you think of where the action turns upon the fall of a handkerchief?).

This weekend, the feature was “Daphne,” one of Strauss’s later works, replete with all the usual motifs: love, villainy, miscommunication, disguises, and the interference of the gods. Introductions were by Bill Richardson, a perfect person for the role. He has that light, amused intelligence that doesn’t take itself too seriously: you feel his delight in the delicious absurdity of the plot, and it’s hard to resist his obvious enjoyment of the music. You feel he and Stuart Hamilton, the quizmaster, would have a wonderful time chatting about opera and making bad puns over a bottle of wine. Listening to SATO gives you a hint of what it would be like to be there sharing the conversation and the wine.