Recently, Martin Krusche?the band’s leader, tenor sax player, and composer? took the time to answer Wanda Waterman’s questions about the differences between jazz and brass band and where Magnetic Ear fits into the glorious hodgepodge of New Orleans music.

Beginnings

Magnetic Ear started as a trio and progressed to a five-piece jazz band?and from there to much more of a brass band than we’ve ever been since we’ve added another trombone and are now a six-piece band. Because we’ve inched over to becoming a brass band, the question of jazz is a whole different question.

There is a Difference

I don’t mean to create an unnecessary separation, but the jazz band and the brass band traditions are two different things. In the broadest sense they have common roots, but they are very different animals. The brass band is a format designed for playing music in the street while parading, while second lining. The band needs to be moving while playing, so you can’t have a stationary drum set.

Brass band music comes originally from military music and consists of, in addition to the brass players, a bass drum player and a snare drummer. Along with this goes the whole culture of the second line (the first line is the band and the second line consists of the dancers who follow the music). If you are aware of that, then You’re aware of the differences between jazz, whether traditional or modern, and the brass band. These are two very different genres that have served two different cultural purposes.

We try to get as big a sound out of our small six-piece ensemble as possible, to get as close as possible to the sound of a bigger brass band. That has to do with arranging and how you spread it out to make it sound big, but That’s basically what we’re after.

This is New Orleans, and everything is dominated by brass bands. The most dominant New Orleans brass bands are the Rebirth Brass Band, the Soul Rebels Brass Band, the Hot 8 Brass Band, and the Stooges Brass Band. And then you have the more traditional brass bands like Treme Brass Band. There are also a lot of new, up-and-coming brass bands.

Our band plays in clubs, and so we have a drum set player. We also occasionally have a percussion player with us, but our format is in that aspect not completely true to the classic brass band format, where you have a separate bass drummer and snare drummer. We are a little bit of a hybrid, if you will. The Dirty Dozen band is similar in that sense . . . they have a drum set player and not the divided section between bass and snare drum.

Do You Make ?em Dance?

Yes, That’s a big part of what we’re trying to do. In the broadest sense, we’re trying to play exciting, hip dance music.

I think for a long time we’ve been in a place where we’re free about where we’re getting our inspiration from, and that goes for other brass bands as well; everybody covers whatever they like. So we do a mix of original music influenced by all different styles and/or different covers that we like. In that sense we’re completely in the tradition of brass bands, and I’ve never heard anybody taking issue with us being eclectic. We’ve never tried to be anything other than an entertaining, danceable, interesting band.

On Writing Music for a Brass Band

Duke Ellington said that if it wasn’t for deadlines, there wouldn’t be any written music. I wrote a lot of music when we decided to make this last record. When it comes to writing, having the gun to your head helps.

You have to find a way to not go crazy and to continue to write. You enter a process where you get used to returning to your pieces every day. Maybe You’re writing multiple pieces at the same time and switching back and forth; if you run out of inspiration here, you go over there. That’s when You’re in an intense writing period, which I had leading up to the making of that record.

Other than that, there’s simple inspiration that hits you . . . if you have a lucky day, you have a great idea That’s the start of a song or something. But with the music that we play, there’s a moment of an idea and you have your inspiration, but you work it out, you flesh it out, because It’s not just the original idea. You also need to arrange that idea.

It’s different from writing for the jazz combo. Every member of this band has some music in front of him when he first starts playing the original composition. When you write for a jazz band, writing the chords and the melody suffices. Everybody knows what to do with it. If you give a bass player in a jazz band a chart, that chart contains the melody and the chords and the man knows what to do with it. So will the drummer and the piano player . . . and so on and so forth. But in the case of the brass band, everyone has to have his own particular harmony part, and It’s something that you might work on some more when you put the music to everybody. It’s still something that has to be written out in every last bit for everybody.

(To be concluded next week.)

Director: Iciar Bollain.

Cast: Gael García Bernal, Luis Tosar.

?We are a conquering race. We must obey our blood and occupy new markets and if necessary new lands.?

Albert J. Beveridge

?Man has set for himself the goal of conquering the world but in the processes loses his soul.?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The Unbearable Lightness of Moral Superiority

We arrive at a movie set on the outskirts of Cochabomba, Bolivia. The director, Sebastián, receives many more auditioners than needed; he simply hasn’t time to audition them all. The producer orders him to pick whom he likes and to send the rest home. Sebastián is gracious and polite with those waiting in line as he gently breaks it to them that their dream of stardom?or of simply knowing where they’ll get their next meal?ends here.

But the mestizos and the Quechua have walked miles and have waited for hours in the hot sun. One of them, Daniel, reacts to the dismissal by inciting a small insurrection?winning himself a leading role in the film.

The film within the film is about the Spanish conquest of South America 500 years ago. Sebastián is smitten with one historical personage, a priest who condemns the conquest, and It’s this character who has sparked his enthusiasm for the story.

But although Sebastián’s film is set five centuries ago, the overarching film takes place in the year 2000, the year when Bolivia, under pressure from the World Bank on which it depended, privatized its water supply and began charging ridiculously high prices for the privilege of using water. This price, and the multinational water company’s punitive means of crushing any attempts to circumvent the water fee, eventually met with massive violent demonstrations.

A group of Quechua, led by the firebrand Daniel, buys a well. Everyone commences to dig a ditch several kilometres long in order to deliver the water to their community, but their hard work is rewarded with locks being put on their well. And so the troubles begin.

Filming continues while production and cast fret about whether the escalating protests will prematurely terminate the project that they’ve poured themselves into. It has become for them a god to whom they seem willing to sacrifice lives.

The self-righteous liberals are constantly accusing each other of moral laxness, just as the conquistadores accused the natives of sin and godlessness on arrival in the New World. There are endless disputes about who is the most ethical, or rather, who can best rationalize his or her lack of ethics.

Ironically the actor who plays Christopher Columbus is the biggest accuser of them all, frequently and brazenly pointing out the blatant hypocrisies of all in the cast and of the historical personages on whom their characters are based.

The message of the film within this film appears to be that yes, the Spanish conquest was brutal and unjust, but that some of the people who took part in it were really good people and that we modern Europeans are just like those good ones and so why can’t you trust us now?

There’s a meeting between the cast and government officials, during which Sebastián suggests that the $450 annual water rate is too high for people who only make two dollars a day. The official archly replies, ?I’ve heard that this is what You’re paying your extras.?

Sebastián, unabashed, says, ?Yes, but we’re on a tight budget.?

The official: ?we’re all on a tight budget.?

Appropriately, the film is about finding a saviour. In one scene a massive cross sweeps onto the set, dragged across the sky by helicopter. In the film the Quechua are to erect this cross and bow down to it or be burned at the stake.

The paradox of the cross is that the paradigm of salvation by means of belief in it often leads to actions and attitudes that are in direct contradiction to the teachings of Jesus. Particularly dangerous is the belief that God smiles on those who accept?or who claim to accept?a particular doctrine, regardless of the actual state of the soul or the nature of the sins. The true saints are those who, like Mahatma Gandhi, reject the cross as a symbol of moral and political superiority and choose instead to embrace the teachings of Jesus and to fulfill his social mandate.

In the end It’s the recalcitrant producer Costa who is transformed by his descent into this hell of injustice. After springing Daniel from jail, Costa looks like Brando in that scene in Apocalypse Now where he’s about to pontificate on the virtues of embracing ?the horror.? Even the lighting is similar.

Even the Rain is dedicated to the memory of Howard Zinn, an American scholar and social activist and a very salient example of the kind of person we should all be aspiring to emulate.

Even the Rain manifests seven of The Mindful Bard’s criteria for films well worth seeing: 1) it poses and admirably responds to questions which have a direct bearing on my view of existence; 2) it harmoniously unites art with social action, saving me from both seclusion in an ivory tower and slavery to someone else’s political agenda; 3) it inspires an awareness of the sanctity of creation; 4) it displays an engagement with and compassionate response to suffering; 5) it renews my enthusiasm for positive social action; 6) it is authentic, original, and delightful; and 7) it makes me appreciate that life is a complex and rare phenomenon, making living a unique opportunity.

Genre: Documentary

Director: Jeff Malmberg

?All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.?

Edgar Allan Poe

Traumatized Brain Generates Magical Kingdom Complete with Avenging Barbie Dolls

After having received a vicious thrashing in a Kingston, New York bar, Mark Hogancamp spends nine days in a coma and wakes up with no memories, in a state of helplessness that requires him to become a toddler all over again, learning to walk, talk, read, write, eat, and rebuild a life whose reality for him is now permanently altered.

He copes by manifesting what would appear by most measures to be a very odd personality: he walks along the road each day in World War II regalia, pulling a miniature jeep full of Barbie and soldier dolls whom he introduces to the very few brave enough to stop and chat him up. These eccentricities may have existed before the bar attack, but now seem to be clamouring for release. It is as if giving voice to this self is an essential part of his healing as well as a means of conceiving some of the most original and engaging outsider art imaginable.

Hogancamp’s oeuvre is a miniature outdoor village called Marwencol, a deliciously nostalgic world inhabited by Barbie dolls and action figures posed in a series of fictions expressing both Hogancamp’s personal climate and the tensions and hypocrisies of the world around him. The village is set in Belgium during the Second World War. Hogancamp’s alter ego, a dashing soldier, owns a clandestine bar called The Ruined Stocking, in which the Barbie women stage cat fights and consort happily with the American and British soldiers and the resident Germans. The soldiers all get along famously, but the SS are constantly patrolling the area in search of Mark’s bar, which is considered subversive. The scenes of these stories are religiously documented by Hogancamp by means of an old camera with a broken light metre.

The story is an allegory of the attack Mark suffered and the circumstances surrounding it; It’s also the sweet aura emanating from the trauma at the center of American memories of World War II. As these stories unfold It’s clear that Mark is playing out his fantasies, processing the trauma, working toward facing down his fears, and discovering his true self. He’s also commenting on the world at large, judging and condemning his former self (amazingly his alcoholism hasn’t survived the attack), forging a greater freedom of identity, and ultimately giving voice to parts of his personality that before the event had been dormant.

In this film, which is Jeff Malmberg’s directorial debut, every scene is visually mesmerizing. There’s a delightful campy weirdness about the contrast between the soldier action figures and the glamorous Barbie dolls. Jeff Malmberg has wisely avoided making this a documentary about the scientific causes and effects of brain injury, choosing instead to reveal how Mark’s personal artistic journey is both therapeutic for himself and illuminating of the bigger pictures of recovery, human psychology, violence, social decadence, and art.

Marwencol manifests eight of The Mindful Bard’s criteria for films well worth seeing: 1) it poses and admirably responds to questions having a direct bearing on my view of existence; 2) it stimulates my mind; 3) it provides respite from a sick and cruel world, a respite enabling me to renew myself for a return to mindful artistic endeavour; 4) it is about attainment of the true self; 5) it inspires an awareness of the sanctity of creation; 6) it displays an engagement with and compassionate response to suffering; 7) it is authentic, original, and delightful; and 8) it makes me appreciate that life is a complex and rare phenomenon, making living a unique opportunity.

?. . . And I will sit in the shade of your smile,
and ask you your story directly from your mouth,
as we sip from Salsabil, ice cold,
and would be deeply embarrassed if you asked me for mine,
Cuz I never did anything right, other than loving you
and then . . . if you let me, I would love . . .
for a hug.”

Ammar AlShukry, from the poem ??Until I See You?

What Do You Need in Order to Write a Poem?

A deadline. I don’t get to write as much as I would like, and usually what forces me to sit down and focus on writing is having some upcoming event or request . . . It doesn’t affect the nature of what I will write but it does put pressure on me to find the time to do it. A lot of times I’ll have concepts swimming in my head for days or weeks before I’ll put anything down.

Why Rhyme?

I’ve never been as fond of poetry that didn’t rhyme. I never got the point of it. This year I’ve kind of become more acquainted with free verse and the imagery that some great poets create, and I do appreciate it a little bit more. It’s about the message that you are trying to convey, without needing to be confined by a rhyming scheme.

Should Muslims Do Poetry?

I think the arts in general have been neglected by the Muslim community in the pursuit of more stable and respectable careers (i.e., being a doctor and engineer); poetry has, however, definitely been an important tool used in our societies to capture history, express emotion, understand language, and convey knowledge.

It’s nothing more than a medium, and like other media it becomes praiseworthy or blameworthy depending on what it is advocating for. So if that which you are advocating for is good, and the means that you are using to advocate it are good (by good I mean within the confines of what is Islamically acceptable), then you’ve got a green light.

On Inspiration

The conclusion I’ve come to is that I can’t write if I’m not inspired. All of my favourite poems that I’ve written have been quick in their process?they’ve just flown out of me within an hour. I may go later and brush it up or polish it, but It’s completed from beginning to end. I’ve had other poems that I would write two lines, and then save it, then go back the next day and erase one of those lines. That process isn’t fun; in fact, It’s very stressful. So I would say, don’t force it, just write what comes to your heart, even if it doesn’t rhyme and even if you don’t think It’s great. And at the very least there may be a line from that exercise that you might be able to use at a later time or for another piece.

Also make sure to record lines when they come to you. A lot of times for me, I will think of verses as I’m walking down the street, usually very random situations where I’ll never have a pen or notebook with me. Depending on my memory to remember them later fails more often than not, so I will type it into my phone, or use a voice recorder on my phone to record it.

Listening

I always hear people say that they don’t listen to anyone else in their genre because then they might affect their style. I can see why they would say that, but I can’t help it. I listen to poetry in English and Arabic, and you’ll get ideas on performance, or how someone uses their body language and posture to further adorn their words, or how they use their voice. When I read books, sometimes a paragraph or point made by the author will inspire a verse or few lines, so I just make sure to jot it down when I think of it.

Getting the Poetry Out

Well initially I didn’t want to ever have to do public performances; I just wanted to write what I could and show the world online. I began to understand later that public performances for an artist help build social capital?they help you get your message out to people who would otherwise never hear it. Also for someone like me, who is hardly a professional poet, It’s good to be able to sharpen your presentation skills, as a big part of it is how it is performed.

There is a verse in the Quran that speaks about poets and says that they say what they don’t do. So I reflect on that verse a lot, and I try to remember that if I’m saying it, I have to do it. So in that sense it will make you more purposeful; if You’re constantly reminding others, you don’t want to be the first one to forget.

The poetry of Ammar AlShukry was recommended to Wanda Waterman St. Louis by Abobakr Abdellah of Egypt.

Director: Michael Goldbach.

Cast: Kat Dennings, Reece Thompson, Andie MacDowell, Rachel Blanchard, and Josh Lucas.

How to Get Yourself Lost in the Woods

?Plato: I used to lie in my crib at night and I’d listen to them fight.
Jim: Can you remember back that far? I can’t remember what happened yesterday. [laughs] I can’t. How do you do it?
Plato: Oh, I had to go to a headshrinker. Boy, he made me remember.
Jim: Did he?
Plato: Then my mother said it cost too much, so she went to Hawaii instead.?

Rebel Without a Cause

Young Caroline Wexler isn’t a likeable person. She’s annoyingly cocky. She’s emotionally shallow, manipulative, predatory, selfish, and fearless; at first she even looks like a psychopath. She sardonically observes the absurd demonstrations of self-destructive behaviour around her while selling off her own personal resources to satisfy the whims of her ego. Smart, beautiful, and a bit snooty, she has an overweening sense of entitlement that attracts the contempt of females and the desire of males. Her hero is Monica Lewinsky, whose only flaw (according to Caroline) was indiscretion.

Caroline’s school, Hargrove High, is the social purgatory of your adolescent nightmares, a place where everyone is so filled with hopelessness and self-loathing that they’re poorly equipped to give or receive love even though the need to do both is at times overwhelming.

As we listen to Caroline justify seducing her teacher, It’s clear that She’s simply trying to assure herself that the licentiousness of her society is in fact good and desirable; this way she doesn’t need to face any inner conflict. And That’s the whole point: to run from conflict to the point of exhaustion, and then to die.

Daydream Nation is aptly named. The characters abandon themselves to daydreams, delusions, drugs, alcohol, sex, or even a fantasy bedroom decorated?quite hideously?with a unicorn theme. At first the characters make attempts to convince themselves that their various forms of self-abandonment are actually liberty and autonomy, but that wears thin pretty quickly as we see the absurd measures the characters take to avoid having to deal with reality.

Dope-smoking slacker Thurston has a moment of clarity when he realizes that switching from being a hero to being a victim is actually a huge relief. The tragedy is that he thinks he has only these two choices?hero or victim. He’s desperate for anything but to seek the fulfillment of the self That’s a stranger to him.

As is fitting in a film about teenagers, sex and death are twined together in a way that contaminates them both. We see the full spectrum of depravity in this string of characters, ranging from an innocent little girl to a serial killer.

It’s not mentioned explicitly, but It’s clear that most of the action unfolds at Halloween (in many shots you see children and teenagers dressed in costumes). It’s a telling symbol of the need for masks and disguises as ego defenses, aids to help you make your way in a world in which control has been abdicated by all those responsible for maintaining it.

The great performances coaxed out of these actors just enhance the high level of conflict in the plot. And the soundtrack is magical?delightfully childlike, and inspiring of wonder.

Like Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter, Caroline must come to terms with the fact that although she and her cohorts believe they live according to their own laws, they’re still nestled inside a network of moral directives that are bigger than they are.

This film is much like one of David’s Psalms; it starts out bemoaning the wickedness and misery of this world but somehow ends up affirming that God’s in his heaven, that we are loved, and that our redemption is nigh.

Daydream Nation manifests five of The Mindful Bard’s criteria for films well worth seeing: 1) it poses and admirably responds to questions having a direct bearing on my view of existence; 2) it is about attainment of the true self; 3) it inspires an awareness of the sanctity of creation; 4) it displays an engagement with and compassionate response to suffering; and 5) it makes me appreciate that life is a complex and rare phenomenon, making living a unique opportunity.

A More Thoughtful, Elegant Indie

?If somebody wants a sheep, that is a proof that one exists.?

Antoine de Saint Exupéry, The Little Prince.

This last Tuesday, the trio Raleigh released its debut album, a wondrous opus with original musical motifs in droves. Clea Anaïs, Brock Geiger, and Matt Doherty blend cello, guitar, and drums to create little gems of aural and literary pulchritude.

To see their photos you’d assume that they’re merely playful artists, but their music reveals a rigorous artistic discipline.

There is a pattern: glowing seams of music are overlaid by other glowing seams of music until the song reaches a crescendo. The cello adds a poignant, tender serenity informed by heartache. Clea and Brock both have lovely voices and an intuitive singing relationship; these two were born to harmonize together.

Many of these tunes sound like they were written for electronic instruments, and It’s a delight to hear such music interpreted by cello. The cello is a bit of an anomaly in the alternative music world, which is a good thing: although a few bands have used it, its use is not frequent enough to make it cliché or to distract from the soulful quality of the instrument.

There is a wealth of melodic ideas here, many of which are reminiscent of ?60s prog rock and yet sound sparklingly new. And the lyrics are insightful explorations of inner landscapes.

Raleigh is currently touring Canada from east to west; check here for upcoming dates and venues.

?The goal of the journey is the journey itself . . . poetically put, it is a journey that takes us far away, and back to ourselves. In order to find there our being, a liberated ego, God, reason, the heart, or the void. But always, always, tenderness and love.?

Tariq Ramadan, from the introduction to The Quest for Meaning

Imagine a massive block of apartment buildings looking out onto a lovely park. Amazing plants grow in the garden, amazing creatures sport in the lake, and myriad birds circle the sky and land in the lush trees. But because the tenants won’t leave their apartments, they can only see this world from behind their windows.

Each window is designed to allow a distinctive view of the garden, and although the tenants in each wing of the apartment complex agree roughly on what they see, there are deep ideological conflicts.

But if these tenants were to turn their backs on these windows, descend the elevator, and go outside to actually look at what it is they think they have a handle on, the differences?not all, but most?would fall away. It’s kind of like Plato’s argument in The Republic: the true philosopher is the one who turns his back on the shadows in the cave and goes outside to see what’s making those shadows.

Now that we see that this garden is in fact Ramadan’s metaphor for reality?and the building a metaphor for religious pluralism?what are some of the questions within this reality that we can’t seem to agree on?

For starters, who or what is God and with what faculties should we be addressing the questions of his existence, his nature, and his demands? How should we treat each other? How are we to negotiate the terms of a new liberty without letting go of the richness and freedoms afforded us by our finest traditions?

Ramadan, a Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University, is clearly a master of both Eastern and Western ideas, with profoundly original insights into both. He addresses each question in meticulous detail, pointing out the hazards and necessities of working out the terms of pluralism to build a society in which multiple points of view can safely coexist.

The Quest for Meaning could not have come at a more appropriate time. It appears on many world fronts that human survival depends on dialogue, on reaching consensus on a few key issues, both within religions (tensions between fundamentalists and moderates can be deadly) as well as between them.

The Quest for Meaning is a significant and vital contribution to a debate that now concerns, in one way or another, every being on this planet, and the insights within it are as rich in compassion as they are in wisdom. Ramadan’s arguments are, as always, exquisitely worded paragons of reason and clarity.