Latest Articles by Sarah Canice Funke
...but what the blazes is wrong with Mozart???
Sometimes the folks at Pitchfork just really get me with their "hypermasculine" aesthetic. I'm listening to the Beatles poppy boyband stuff out of sheer retribution...(which rather ironically includes their cover of Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven.")
I apologize for all the piecrust blog promises I made on Sunday. In order not to pull a complete Evan Donovan,* I'll give you a two (or three or four) sentence run-down on everything.
* :P
African Guitar Summit: There was only one drawback to what otherwise would have been a perfect concert: The venue was not suited for the uptempo dancable West African rhythms these guys were cranking out. The Music Hall was a old theatre in line with the Tivoli. Can you imagine trying to groove in the Tivoli. A few brave souls got themselves out into the aisles, and one rather ample African woman nearly stole the show with her hip dancing skills. Being with a group of grad students, I wriggled miserably in my seat, trying to dance in a semi-recumbant posture. But after the encore, I figured, I'm already standing and I don't care if I'm with a bunch of grads; the official concert is over and I'm dancing. So I went up to the front and drew on my Latin dancing repertoire. And that was an interesting thing (which another grad student noticed): the West African rhythms were very easy to put to Latin dance steps (bolero, merangue, salsa). I don't know why the similarity was there, but my body felt it. And I was so much happier down in front, dancing away. I could see the musicians better; the musician/audience rapport was stronger. The excitement and fun was a tangible entity down front.
The charasmatic Kitchener church: well, though I missed Collin performing for the youth conference at this church (his band 33Miles played at the same time as African Guitar Summit, a required concert for my world music class, and though I don't like to be a fair weather friend, sometimes grades trump love), I met up with him at the 11am service, which was radically different from the Dutch Reformedness I've been steeped in lately. I almost had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn't back at the concert: people were dancing up and down during the worship music. I wondered: why do I enjoy dancing at a concert so much and feel so uncomfortable about it when it happens in church? And at one point, I think they started praying in tongues, but I'm not really sure: I just couldn't understand it at first, then the English started. It was quite an experience.
Collin's a special friend (he met his girlfriend, whom my family's known since she was one, through our family) and when the pastor highly commended the band members' character before the entire congregation, I was pretty proud. They've signed with Sony and their album is slated to hit the shelves in March/April.
Friend who is taking me back to her house for Thanksgiving: Another Sarah who is getting a second bachelor's, in education, at Redeemer. She's actually a little older than me, so I finally don't feel like the old fogey in the group.