A Memory

First posted on December 21, 2010, lightly edited 15 years later.  It feels like yesterday.

Big Cuter and I sang along with the Tuvan Throat Singers and Bela Fleck and the Flecktones at the Rialto Theater last night.  

Bela Flek's banjo picking is clear and precise and quick.  Even if the banjo isn't a real instrument, as the Flektone's tonsured-with-dreadlocks bass player snarkily smirked onstage, Bela Flek sure does make pretty music on it.  He's been nominated for Grammy's in more categories than any other artist, and I'd give him a statue in each and every one of them.

We were sitting in the balcony, always the right choice at the Rialto.  Floor seats are folding chairs smashed too close together on a totally flat floor.  Unless you're 7' tall, sight lines are non-existent.  But up in the loge, there are cushioned seats with arm-rests, and the rake is such that even if that 7' person is right in front of you there's a good chance you'll still see what's happening down there on the stage.  Big Cuter and I sat in the front row of the second section, with a low ledge for jacket and foot resting right there in front of us.  We were up near the ceiling, as close to heaven as we were likely to get in Tucson this season.

Big Cuter noticed it first - there was no one actually playing the drum kit.  There was definitely percussion, but there did not appear to be a musician creating it.  I wondered if it were taped, but that just didn't feel right.  The girl to my right pointed out Futureman, the Flecktone standing stage left, and told me that he was making the music... with the small wooden whatchamacallit around his neck.

The whatchamacallit was also called the Vegetarian Electronic Porkchop, but the liner notes from the cd I bought told me that it's a drumitar.   Futureman (aka Roy Wooten) invented/created/developed/played it... sometimes with his left hand while using his right more traditionally with brushes or sticks on the drums themselves.  For the most part, though, he stood upright, assuming the posture of a guitarist as he created drum sounds from that (wood?) gadget hanging around his neck.  It was odd.  It was delicious.  It was unlike anything we'd ever heard or seen or thought of before.

Just like the rest of the concert.

Three or four songs into the program, unannounced, four men in odd dress walked on stage.  Big Cuter looked at me.  I looked at him.  In one voice we said TUVAN THROAT SINGERS???

Long ago, we heard their music and their story on All Things Considered.  Captivated, we stayed in the car until the end of the piece.  Their sound was otherworldly and strange and impossible.  It tickled our fancy; we loved it for no reason beyond that we loved it.  It came up in conversation over the years, more often than you might imagine. 

And then, without warning, they were on stage right before our very eyes.  Surprised does not come close to what we were feeling. 

We couldn't stop smiling.  At one another.  At the stage. At the audience.  We were each with the other's perfect person for this moment.  

Did anyone else in the auditorium know what was coming? There were murmurs, of course; very tall men in unusual attire were setting up items which vaguely resembled musical instruments.  While my son and I talked about serendipity and answered Tuvan Throat Singers to the whisperers' Who are THEY??, those very tall men got themselves organized and the caroling continued.

It was really something, all those instruments playing Jingle Bells. The entire audience was giggling, then trying to sing along, then giggling some more.  Bela's 5-string banjo and  Jeff Coffin's one man horn section accompanied the Tuvans on their their igil and byzaanchy and doshpuluur and kengirge and shunggyrash, which really were no weirder than the drumitar.

There was a gentle light show, with snowflakes and geometric shapes wandering the walls and ceiling.  The sing-along, in Tuvan, was coordinated with the lights, which illuminated the audience when it was our turn to chime in with Aa-shu Dekei-oo.  The players were introduced by spot-light, and the mood was in turns dramatic and giddy and concentrated as the colors changed from blues to reds to greens.  

It was pretty special for Tucson.  For anywhere, really.

The throat singers did not come all the way from Siberia just to sing Jingle Bells. They came back after intermission and sang songs about fast horses and beautiful women and then some songs about beautiful horses and fast women.  They seemed to be having as much fun as we were.  

It got better and better.  Jeff Coffin played two saxophones at once (really, he did) and Bela Fleck sat on a high stool all alone on the stage and talked to us through his banjo.  This was a holiday concert, and hidden among the notes were Silent Night and What Child is This? and Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies.  

Throat singing originated before there was language, yet it blended right in with ancient Christian hymns played on modern instruments. The jam band wound around and into and over and through bluegrass and classical and Tuvan; traditional music sounds the same the world over. 

The throat singers are returning to their home on the steppes.  The Flecktones are doing their Christmas shopping. And Big Cuter and I are annoying the hell out of TBG, because we've had the Jingle All The Way cd blasting on the stereo all day long.