Maurice Ravel plays his Bolero

Maurice Ravel plays his orchestral piece Bolero. From a piano roll in the 1920's. The photograph is also from the 1920s; Ravel is playing the piano along with Éva Gauthier, on the far right is George Gershwin.

Moanin'

In the jazzier genre, here's the Belmont Sr. Secondary Jazz Band "A"; what I really like about this clip is the infectious joy of the performance. The kids take a chance on taking a rollicking favourite, and making it their own, right down to the "Play that Funky Music" intro, it is their music, their sound played their way.

Which is the only way we can play it. I think it was Joe Walsh (of the Eagles) who said there was no sin in stealing licks from other players because you cannot recreate their sound. Even if we have the same gear strung in the same way, we won't have the same feel, we will have our own, it will be our music whether or not we consciously try to copy the past. John Cage proved as well how you cannot even copy your own performance; the wire-recordings of the most expert players do not line up.

This particular moment of play, it's yours, you own it, the moment already has your stamp on it; you might as well roll it out your own way. It may be a Mingus romp an Amparito Roca or a Star Spangled Banner or Steve Reich's 6 players: you are going to be yourself out there, so you can be all timid and standing self-conscious in someone's shadow, or you can go out there and boldly be who you are.

"If we're gonna die out there, Benny, let's die doin' our own stuff." (Gene Krupa)

Amazon: Charles Mingus

The Folk Song Suite

Encapsulating the mood, the emotion of the time, and setting it forth right there in the concert venue, that's what we do, and last time we looked at the strange attractors of nostalgia and patriotism as the domain for a concert band's command. Here today I'm digging a little deeper, off into a topic that occurs over and over with our music, the whole sense of the deeper meaning of a repetoire piece, in this case Ralph Vaughn Williams' military band tapestry called the Folk Song Suite.

Today's film sets this so-typically-English tune where we normally encounter it, as a statement in nostalgic patriotism, an opus from over 'ome, the iconic epitome of England. That's how many approach the work, as a stately grand and respectful thing, woven from ancient quaint folk songs.

The real story, on the other hand, is quite different. To begin with, these are not just any folk songs; most are old baudy ballads, barrack-room tunes of lusty wenches and trickster maidens and the soldiers who woo both!

You see, in the historical perspective, we have Vaughn Williams as a soon-to-retire commander of a post-war peacetime army band, which is to say a squad of bored young men lead by a man with little or nothing to lose.

"But if you come round to my mummy's house, when the moon shines bright and clearly,
I will come down and let you in, and my mummy shall not hear me.


So I went down to her mummy's house, when the moon shone bright and clearly,
She did come down and let me in, and I lay in her arms till morning."

Ok, hardly competitors to Salt'n'Peppa lyrics, but remember, only the soldiers know the real lyrics of the tunes -- to the bystanding public, it is a quaint english ditty they may have heard hummed by grand-dad at work in the garden. We also have Lazarus and Dives which is the familiar barracks tales of Officers vs Enlisted Men where only one of them is going to find St. Peter's favour, There is the Green Bushes which one might parallel to Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree from WWII swing-era, John Barleycorn, a song about beer and the sad-sack Baffled Knight slyly outwitted by the maid of his (lusty) dreams. For the lonely-hearts, My Bonny Boy could well be the lament of the sweethearts left behind, or those yet to be. If you ask me, it's Soldier-Boy material all the way,

Amazon: Ralph Vaughn Williams

A Place To Stand

What do we do? Up there, on a daïs or a bandshell, in step behind the flags. what is our purpose? Yeah, I'm in a philosophical mood, but bear with me just a bit.

We know a concert band provides a soundtrack music to real life. Unlike a bar-band or a dance-band, we're not about people paying us to make their customers spend more on beer, we're out there, nearly invisible, out in among the everyday. We illuminate sermons, we set the flow in VIP visitations and set the frame of the public moment in a parade or to cheer the hometeam in a ballpark or as the orchestra to the ballet of a fireworks display. We deal out sound-emotion, binding waves of co-compassion, and that leads me to a topic of patriotic anthems and iconic tunes like Dolores Claman's "A Place To Stand".

This song was originally commissioned to illuminate a film by the same name shown at the Ontario Pavillion at Expo-67 in Montreal. Everyone here remembers it, not necessarily enough to sing along, but it gets instant recognition. The song is iconic.

And it also is, well, kinda ... quaint; we have band members who cringe when it bubbles up in the playlist and it's for fixing that sentiment that I wanted to post about this tune.

You see, it's simple and plain, but not at all a boring song; it's only kitch or cliché if we play it as such. But we aren't required to kitch it up: If we get inside any tune, when we get inside the head of the composer and discover their intent, when we find the meaning and purpose of the work, the band can re-invent it, and reinvigorate the spirit of the thing. Far from boring, patriotic icons can become a rich vehicle for expression because of the cliché.

Like this tune. On the surface, a government commission, yes, by a jingle-writer true, and for a blatent tourism commercial yes, but ...

• This was one of the most popular displays at Expo-67, with huge line-ups and many repeat visitors


• The film was an Academy Award winning short film


• It's innovative technique of the multi-panel live action montage won the praise of Norman Jewison (who subsequently used the method in the Thomas Crown Affair) and blew the socks off Steve McQueen; there's even homage to this film today in every episode of 24!

That's pretty cool, really. That's something of A Place To Stand in itself: This short tourism flick and the chart-topping jingle were crowning moments that Ontario film-art on The Map! The song and film actually lived their kitchy message!

The song has since been covered by Jim Carey and the Barenaked Ladies yes, that's something of itself, and it must have hit a nerve because was a hit: it sold 50,000 copies and still makes the news.

But here's something else to ponder in our play. Think about the set and setting of this work: This was 1967, a very different and very optimistic time, Lester Pearson and the days of Penny Lane and Happy Together, and here, drawing us a sound portrait of those times, we have the same composer who later writes our National alter-anthem, the ubiquitous theme to Hockey Night In Canada

Rising prices, global warming ... Dolores Claman has left us a flashback time machine to snap us back to those innocent times, and all you and I need do is power it up!