two somethings to take away
Classic - Blue Rondo à la Turk
Music has been a means of international and intercultural information exchange for eons. Musicians pick up things from what they hear and the mix informs a new way of listening, and perhaps a new way of thinking. Dave Brubeck is an example. His piece entitled Blue Rondo à la Turk was inspired by hearing things he hadn't heard before.
Brubeck heard the unusual "1-2 1-2 1-2 1-2-3" rhythm being performed by Turkish musicians on the street. Upon asking the musicians where they got the rhythm from, one of them replied "This rhythm is to us, what the blues is to you". Hence the title "Blue Rondo à la Turk".
Contemporary - Red Baraat and the Brooklyn Public Library
We at NPR Music leave a lot of variables out in the wild when we make Field Recordings. That's especially true when we commission new music for the annual Make Music New York festival, as we have for three years.
Since we're not using a traditional stage and people are roaming around, we don't know exactly what the performance will sound like (though we're lucky to work with fantastic engineering colleagues). It's always held outdoors, and we can't be sure what the weather will be.
And in two of these three years - the first and this one - we've flung the doors open and invited anyone who wanted to perform to come play alongside professionals. Pretty risky, right?
But what we've found, and what is so incredibly gratifying, is that amazingly talented and generous people join in - this year, about 350 of them on the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library. With a new piece by Sunny Jain of Red Baraat, the beat and the heart were there already, but the spirit burst to life when all those musicians came out to play.