Wesleyan Peeps,
This past Saturday night I endured nearly 75% of the entire duration of the Vieux Farka Toure concert in Crowell Concert Hall. It was a sold out show – there were even people gathered outside of the Crowell windows, hands cupped around their eyes in hopes of getting a glimpse through the window constantly being fogged up by the breath of the onlookers. When the show started, suffice it to say, the onlookers left, and I envied their ability to simply walk away.
The show began with the loud, grating sound of a crackling cord that everyone in the audience could hear. Rather than fix the problem, Mr. Farka Toure’s bass player Eric Herman, the clearly elected manager of communication with English speaking audiences and technical difficulties simply elected to deny its existence. Then, the aforementioned bassist suggested to Mr. Farka Toure that he turn his guitar up ALL THE WAY. This had the intended effect of drowning out the crackle of the bad cord in addition to all of the other instruments on stage. Occasionally, when Mr. Farka Toure paused briefly between his innumerable guitar solos, the crackle became audible again. As the show continued, it became clear to me that this was absolutely the most unprofessional, horribly mixed, awful-sounding embarrassment of a show I had ever witnessed at Crowell.
Let me pause briefly to apologize to anyone taking serious offense at this Wespeak. I know there are those of you out there who enjoyed the show – after all, when Vlad got up and started dancing, the rest of Crowell got up, including me, although I was seizing the opportunity to make my way for the exit.
I know I am likely coming across as a music snob, especially to those of you who don’t know me. In truth, I embrace my musical snobbery as evidence that I have ceased to accept as legitimate any music that I hear on the radio. The truth is, trusted filters for good music are hard to come by these days because the amount of audio garbage out there is enormous. Wesleyan has a responsibility to feature better music – just because that music comes from another country or features Wesleyan alumni is no excuse. Despite the fact that the Farka Toure concert was a never-ending stream of back-to-back guitar solos (separated by no more than five seconds of slightly less aggressive playing) that featured astronomical numbers of hammer-on’s, his band is quite talented. With the exception of the bass player, the other musicians in the band demonstrated a strong rhythmic synergy without which the concert would have been a complete disaster. My first thought after leaving the concert was that it is rare to see a band that would clearly benefit from the removal of the lead guitar player, but lo and behold, here was a shining example.
Honestly, the quality of this particular concert doesn’t matter all that much to me – what matters is the failure, in this case, of the process for screening artists who perform at Crowell. How else could this show have happened? Is Wesleyan simply scanning the last names of artists to see if they are famous and considering this a basis for hosting artists and using their fame? What are the criteria for playing music at this school?
Also, seeing how I am running out of words, I’d like to kvetch about some musical issues unrelated to Mr. Farka Toure—how come the two main Steinway piano’s in the main music classroom at Wes (RHH003) are completely out of tune? (If you know any of Ives’ quartertone pieces, now is the time to try playing them on these pianos). I don’t understand why there isn’t some kind of uproar, at least from the professors who teach music on these pianos, to get them tuned. Ok, enough kvetching.
Again, I hope I haven’t offended too many of you. Music is a very personal thing, but objective elements of its aesthetic do exist within the culturally subjective veil we all place over it. If you want better music at Wesleyan, step up and say so. If you play guitar, don’t follow Mr. Farka Toure’s mistake of assuming he is the only person in the band allowed to play melody.
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