The Roving Musicologist

Birthing Roma Stars (Pecs, Hungary)

    Someone told me to be in the parking lot of the big market and to look for a guy in shorts…you will go and see guys in caves, some gypsy guys, and here, take these contact mics with you.  Then a writer is there from Wire:  http://www.representativetrust.co.uk/archives/414

and this guy Balazs Pandi I know, who plays the drums:

http://fucktothemusic.blog.hu/

SO there we were, after a long drive, recording these Roma kids freaking out.  They turned the power on just so we could do this, and turned it off almost the minute that it was over, finally over, after a straight hour of noise.  Once I tried to go outside and the kids tried to get me to drive them around in the car.  I wasn’t going to drive that car; “fuck you” one of them said over and over.  He didn’t know what it meant.  When Balazs explained to him what it meant, he started saying it over and over again.  Those were his words, yes, no, fuck you.  He was the MC on the track.

Hungry Hungry Hippos Amplified (Portland, Oregon)

Re-enacting the Tragedy of the Commons provides hours of entertainment.

Contact microphones attached to an aggressive behavior-inducing board game provides us with this sound.

Travel Post #24: Mekong Boatmen Chaos Chorus (Luang Prabang, Laos)

An example of the boats that the singers live on.

There was nothing to do in Luang Prabang most nights, unless you went to the markets.  But the markets were dead most of the time and so Jacques and I ended up down by the river, for lack of money and ideas. 

At the river, boatmen sat in a circle and moaned in a musical way.  Some would  yell and leave, then sometimes come back and join together.  Various instruments took their turns; first a guitar, then an accordion, and finally a keyboard softly pumping out a generic beat.  But all of them were punctuated by the put-put of riverboat engines, as long craft in the dark made their way to points I would never see - except across the river, where the silhouette of a large boat settled in and let a car off onto the far shore of houses and temples, and maybe other things that were now just lights floating across the water mixed with the heavy haze in the air.

Jacques said the smoke was because the farmers were burning forest, which they always did, but for some reason it was worse today.  The smoke burned my eyes and scratched my throat, but it was too nice to leave here yet.  Lights, fluorescent, were nailed to the trees up on the bank, but they left the grand staircase down to the beach unlit, making the lights from the banana shaped boats seem much stronger. 

Hanging in the boats were pots and pans, the organization of lives shining in the light, radios with digital screens, and maybe a lantern here and there.  So many boats were moored here and yet the river was supposed to be too low for them to go anywhere.

Jacques talked about Egypt…the Mekong reminded him of places by the Red Sea.  It was like this, he said, people living like this. 

Travel Post #18: Bells, Dogs, Crows (Mumbai)

Travel Post #12: Istanbul Asian Side Ferry Station

People like it when things beep

This is an example of the most common cosmic concept.

And this is another goddamn tourist:

Tourism is Terrorism. Note ferry in background, which gives the picture relevance to the topic.