My fondest memories of peace and solitude came during camping trips in school. I remember riding in the school bus and feeling the heavy city lifting off me like articles of clothing being removed from my body. I felt naked. My first memory of being stripped naked by nature was when on one of these trips I sat alone in a wide, open field and watched the big orange ball of sun, slip it’s lips, slowly into the horizon. I felt as if I had heard the sound of the sun heaving a sigh of pleasure. The second time, we had gone on a hike in the gorgeous Algonquin Park of Northern Ontario. When we reached an old abandoned logging camp. With the sound of the powerful falls bellowing in our ears we looked down realized that we were at the top of the falls looking down at the old logs and water below. My feet inched closer to the edge of the slippery edge to see the magnificent mist of the falls, thrusting itself into the water below. I got that feeling again. Feeling, stripped free, and on the edge of something great. It’s not a feeling I expected to feel at a concert, but that’s exactly the way that I felt at the Jose Gonzalez’s show, watching on the edge of something great.
I didn’t have high hopes for this concert as it was at the Phoenix Concert Theatre, which is a venue that is notorious for having a bad sound. As I walked into the cavernous mouth of the venue, I was met with the low sweet voice of opener Mia Doi Todd. Back lit by red light, her voice lent a coffeehouse air to the heavy atmosphere. Very Joni Mitchell like in her delivery and chord choices. What I saw of her I liked but perhaps the putrid Phoenix is not the venue for this artist. Something smaller that brings the audience in would have been more appropriate.
At 7:30 pm the lights went down and the sound of Jose’s light strumming could be heard. The white lights came up and projected Gonzalez’s smoky, shadowy image against the curtain. As he begun to play the driving chords of the song “Down The Line” I was transfixed. Gonzalez played the first few songs by himself. Barely, speaking to the audience, except to introduce himself, and his collaborators. Just, Gonzalez, bent over on a chair, his voice sometimes a whisper, for the first few songs. The effect was akin to sitting in a room alone with him. He was able to hold the attention of the audience with the urgency of his playing and the sparseness of his environment. For those few songs the audience was quiet and it was like everyone was holding their breath. For the remainder of show he brought out a percussionist and a background singer. Which changed the direction of the show.
What began as a pacifist like, whisper began to build into a raging fire. His guitar playing took on a more flamenco style, and became more frenzied. His voice at times turned into a growl. With these turns he proved how versatile he is as an artist. He cannot be pigeonholed into just being seen as a folk artist. I think he could different genres and put his trademark style of playing on it. I was amazed with the tactile way that he took on Massive Attack’s “Teardrop”.
There is a warmth in his music, and an almost “enviromusical” like nature to it. I’m going to tackle this, theory of the “enviromusics” in a future journal. This is one of the reasons why I feel that this show relates to my experiences in nature. I think there is music that is directly tied to our environmental experiences. Songs that bring us back to our sensations that are felt in nature. There were times in show when I closed my eyes and could think about how I feel when I hear rain on my windows, the feeling of hot sunshine, dry on my cheeks, and or the way that the wind drives up the dust in an empty field. Music that evokes our relationship with our physical environment, and the sensory memories that comes with that. Gonzalez’s music makes me think about this movement that I think is going on in some music today, a more creative way of recording the movement of the environment and our place in it. Listening to him I could once again hear the sound of the falls below the rock that I stood on. Daring myself to come closer to the edge, and bathing my ears in nature’s sonic booms. Standing on the edge of something great.
I didn’t have high hopes for this concert as it was at the Phoenix Concert Theatre, which is a venue that is notorious for having a bad sound. As I walked into the cavernous mouth of the venue, I was met with the low sweet voice of opener Mia Doi Todd. Back lit by red light, her voice lent a coffeehouse air to the heavy atmosphere. Very Joni Mitchell like in her delivery and chord choices. What I saw of her I liked but perhaps the putrid Phoenix is not the venue for this artist. Something smaller that brings the audience in would have been more appropriate.
At 7:30 pm the lights went down and the sound of Jose’s light strumming could be heard. The white lights came up and projected Gonzalez’s smoky, shadowy image against the curtain. As he begun to play the driving chords of the song “Down The Line” I was transfixed. Gonzalez played the first few songs by himself. Barely, speaking to the audience, except to introduce himself, and his collaborators. Just, Gonzalez, bent over on a chair, his voice sometimes a whisper, for the first few songs. The effect was akin to sitting in a room alone with him. He was able to hold the attention of the audience with the urgency of his playing and the sparseness of his environment. For those few songs the audience was quiet and it was like everyone was holding their breath. For the remainder of show he brought out a percussionist and a background singer. Which changed the direction of the show.
What began as a pacifist like, whisper began to build into a raging fire. His guitar playing took on a more flamenco style, and became more frenzied. His voice at times turned into a growl. With these turns he proved how versatile he is as an artist. He cannot be pigeonholed into just being seen as a folk artist. I think he could different genres and put his trademark style of playing on it. I was amazed with the tactile way that he took on Massive Attack’s “Teardrop”.
There is a warmth in his music, and an almost “enviromusical” like nature to it. I’m going to tackle this, theory of the “enviromusics” in a future journal. This is one of the reasons why I feel that this show relates to my experiences in nature. I think there is music that is directly tied to our environmental experiences. Songs that bring us back to our sensations that are felt in nature. There were times in show when I closed my eyes and could think about how I feel when I hear rain on my windows, the feeling of hot sunshine, dry on my cheeks, and or the way that the wind drives up the dust in an empty field. Music that evokes our relationship with our physical environment, and the sensory memories that comes with that. Gonzalez’s music makes me think about this movement that I think is going on in some music today, a more creative way of recording the movement of the environment and our place in it. Listening to him I could once again hear the sound of the falls below the rock that I stood on. Daring myself to come closer to the edge, and bathing my ears in nature’s sonic booms. Standing on the edge of something great.
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