Twelve Months of Music: March

12 March, 2017

Welcome to the erupting orange of March. Wintry death overcome is the theme (introduced by Mr Wagner) and the gut-raptures of a dawn that nobody believed would ever arrive. Foundationally a clear-eyed, innocent and everlasting YES, but not always necessarily sublime, the birth of a new land contains raw granite, seismic ruptures, bursting blood-vessels and a few parturient screams too you know!

The Siki Siki Baba link goes not to the Kocani Orkestar’s original but to a cover by Beirut who I went to see in Osaka, where they played this song in a third encore; such joy, which this video doesn’t come close to replicating — the audience here seems to be comprised entirely of bored Parisian hipsters rather than weird wild Osakans* — nor any of the KO’s versions I could find on youtube. Try and imagine perhaps this song, a hundred times more passionate (and I seem to remember more tightly performed), with a thousand rapturous Japs around you.

THE TIME OF THE SUMMONING

Ai: Do all the swans really belong to the Queen?
Me: Yes.
Ai: And all the dolphins too?
Me: Yes, and whales.
Ai: What other animals?
Me: Cats.
Ai: All the cats belong to the Queen?
Me: Yes, all of them — we’re just borrowing them.
Ai: What happens when she asks for them back?
Me: Well they’ll all go, won’t they?
Ai: I’d like to see that… the Queen on the palace balcony, arms in the air… millions of cats…
Me: It’s called ‘the time of the summoning’.

_{* A common stage observation of bands playing in Osaka is: ‘You guys are so much better than Tokyo!’}

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