Liberties of the Fourth Wall
The Java Jazz Festival
3 March
3 AM: I've just returned from the gigantic Java Jazz Festival. Ten hours of music! My ears are ringing. Twanky funkmeisters & blind divas in sparkles, insipid Javanese heart-throbs, Chilean prodigies, Italian bezerkers, international bongos for world peace.
Tortured Soul had the gall to cancel.
Many of these performers were far from home & feeling it. Audiences tended toward huge, packed well beyond fire code (& smoking). Yet the crowds were quiet, unjazzily passive during even the most valiant attempts to stir up the funk. The fourth wall, as you call the imagined barrier between performers & audience, felt solid.
Or, rather: mediated. Phones & other devices were everywhere, the audience talking, taking pictures & sending instant messages. It literally raised a screen between them & the stage, & it unnerved the musicians. “Are you there?” they’d ask, as if concerned that this might not actually be a live performance after all. “I can see you, you know. You’re not invisible?”
The imagined language barrier played improv, too. Every non-Indonesian group spoke in English, but often couldn’t shake the conviction (despite ample evidence to the contrary) that no one in their wonderfully enormous, distressingly quiet crowd could understand them, & so got possessed by the microphone. It was like watching people enchanted, believing themselves in an on-stage dream in which not only anything was possible, but (almost) anything was permitted.
One well-known, froggy diva, between Emmy award-winning yips & screams, described in uncomfortable detail how she missed her husband sensually, extemporizing one long, rhythmic piano riff into a thinly-veiled performance of orgasm. Also, she missed her hot tub in Dana Point, which is in the shape of a grand piano. And filled with water—‘you know about THAT here, don't you? Lots of water?’—and how it—the thought of the hot tub, where water, we imagine, stays in the civilized shape, quantity & temperature of her choosing, unlike here—just made her feel so grateful, so grateful, leading to the jaw-dropping segue: "You know I feel the presence of God in the audience tonight?" to lackluster cheers, at which she launched into Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.
Less talking from the artists. But you know? Once she shut up, she was fantastic & the audience loved her anyway.
The night’s featured performer, Chaka Khan, is a mighty, mighty woman. She can raze hell with a glare & empty oceans with her scream. Intimidated at the mere sight of her bosom: mountains spontaneously level themselves. She could not, however, induce her Indonesian fans to wild abandon.
Her set started at midnight, yet she took offense at her completely sold-out, but too-passive audience, who also did not appreciate to her satisfaction her teenage daughter’s underwhelming performance at her side. Some people did shout out: "We love you!" but this was not enough by far, nor enough to convince Chaka Khan that the audience could understand English, which she doubted aloud in so many words. When, to preface the song Hollywood, she mentioned that her mother used to beat her, the Javanese girl next to me sighed quietly, in English, "Oh, nice. Great. How about a song?"
Eventually, one of her five backup singers cursed (tunefully), clearly assuming herself not understood. I was hoping for a fist fight, but they were professionals & mostly contained their obvious hatred of one another with soulful "I love yous" "You are my sisters" "You are my inspiration, my fire, my strength" as they put one another on the spot for improvisational 'Why I Love Chaka Khan' singing solos that went on for minutes, stalling. She would not come out for an encore. The audience would have liked it, I think. Maybe we were just too polite to insist.
Liberties of the fourth wall notwithstanding, this was a very good event. The MUSIC, that is, was excellent. The primary artists I heard over the course of the day were: Daughters of Soul (USA), Djanesy (Holland), Maliq & D’Essential (Jakarta), Larry Franco (Italy), John Scofield (photo below), Diane Schuur, David Benoit (USA), Dwiki Dharmawan (Java/International), & the mighty Chaka Khan.
3 March
3 AM: I've just returned from the gigantic Java Jazz Festival. Ten hours of music! My ears are ringing. Twanky funkmeisters & blind divas in sparkles, insipid Javanese heart-throbs, Chilean prodigies, Italian bezerkers, international bongos for world peace.
Tortured Soul had the gall to cancel.
Many of these performers were far from home & feeling it. Audiences tended toward huge, packed well beyond fire code (& smoking). Yet the crowds were quiet, unjazzily passive during even the most valiant attempts to stir up the funk. The fourth wall, as you call the imagined barrier between performers & audience, felt solid.
Or, rather: mediated. Phones & other devices were everywhere, the audience talking, taking pictures & sending instant messages. It literally raised a screen between them & the stage, & it unnerved the musicians. “Are you there?” they’d ask, as if concerned that this might not actually be a live performance after all. “I can see you, you know. You’re not invisible?”
The imagined language barrier played improv, too. Every non-Indonesian group spoke in English, but often couldn’t shake the conviction (despite ample evidence to the contrary) that no one in their wonderfully enormous, distressingly quiet crowd could understand them, & so got possessed by the microphone. It was like watching people enchanted, believing themselves in an on-stage dream in which not only anything was possible, but (almost) anything was permitted.
One well-known, froggy diva, between Emmy award-winning yips & screams, described in uncomfortable detail how she missed her husband sensually, extemporizing one long, rhythmic piano riff into a thinly-veiled performance of orgasm. Also, she missed her hot tub in Dana Point, which is in the shape of a grand piano. And filled with water—‘you know about THAT here, don't you? Lots of water?’—and how it—the thought of the hot tub, where water, we imagine, stays in the civilized shape, quantity & temperature of her choosing, unlike here—just made her feel so grateful, so grateful, leading to the jaw-dropping segue: "You know I feel the presence of God in the audience tonight?" to lackluster cheers, at which she launched into Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.
Less talking from the artists. But you know? Once she shut up, she was fantastic & the audience loved her anyway.
The night’s featured performer, Chaka Khan, is a mighty, mighty woman. She can raze hell with a glare & empty oceans with her scream. Intimidated at the mere sight of her bosom: mountains spontaneously level themselves. She could not, however, induce her Indonesian fans to wild abandon.
Her set started at midnight, yet she took offense at her completely sold-out, but too-passive audience, who also did not appreciate to her satisfaction her teenage daughter’s underwhelming performance at her side. Some people did shout out: "We love you!" but this was not enough by far, nor enough to convince Chaka Khan that the audience could understand English, which she doubted aloud in so many words. When, to preface the song Hollywood, she mentioned that her mother used to beat her, the Javanese girl next to me sighed quietly, in English, "Oh, nice. Great. How about a song?"
Eventually, one of her five backup singers cursed (tunefully), clearly assuming herself not understood. I was hoping for a fist fight, but they were professionals & mostly contained their obvious hatred of one another with soulful "I love yous" "You are my sisters" "You are my inspiration, my fire, my strength" as they put one another on the spot for improvisational 'Why I Love Chaka Khan' singing solos that went on for minutes, stalling. She would not come out for an encore. The audience would have liked it, I think. Maybe we were just too polite to insist.
Liberties of the fourth wall notwithstanding, this was a very good event. The MUSIC, that is, was excellent. The primary artists I heard over the course of the day were: Daughters of Soul (USA), Djanesy (Holland), Maliq & D’Essential (Jakarta), Larry Franco (Italy), John Scofield (photo below), Diane Schuur, David Benoit (USA), Dwiki Dharmawan (Java/International), & the mighty Chaka Khan.
posted by Anne E. Campisi at 3:27 PM
1 Comments:
Dude, you went to a jazz festival in Indonesia -- how cool a cat are you?!
What an entertaining, and ethnographically thought-provoking, post. Chaka Khan ... wow.
And I'm happy you saw John Scofield! I recently "discovered" him -- of all places on a DVD of Phil Lesh (of the Grateful Dead) and Friends playing at the Warfield. I was slowly but surely won over by Scofield's generous and idiosyncratic playing style. Good stuff.
You are having an adventure, Anne -- no (I admonish you with upraised hand), don't bother trying to deny it. : )
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