I’m not sure why Andy Statman is not a household name. He is in several households in Brooklyn where he hangs his yarmulke but otherwise one of the planet’s most accomplished mandolinist and clarinetist is but a shadow. A living, breathing music mind genius of a shadow whose works blend the sacred jewish, bluegrass,
jazz, surf, and rock forms into his unique patterns. World class players from all ends of the wild blue yonder have thus been drawn to him and now it’s your turn!
“Pennies from heaven
Don’t make me laugh
Here all you’ll get
Is the pattering rain
Or yon two crows up over the hill
Looking for winterkill
Always at your boots
The mud behind the byre
With its clammy hold
Would mock you up a grave
Here in the mire of a wrecked sheepfold
And all you’ll bring to this
Is muscle and grit
Persistence, that’s just about it
What made you think
There’d be a living in sheep?
Eat, work, eat, work and sleep
Duck under the eaves
Of the bothy
To sit here, caged by rain
Somewhere to go conjure
A next move
When I have to think again
The dog lifts his gaze to plead
Believes the wizard has a magic stick
Leans his weight into my tweed
I give an unholy hand to lick
I take a swig of sheep dip
From my flask
And once again I ask
What made you think
There’d be a living in sheep?
Eat, work, eat, work and sleep
They were at this game
Two hundred years ago
Had thirty ways
Of dying young, poor souls
Laid to rest in their soggy rows
Rain on their holy books
Blood and whiskey
On the tongue
And no-one watching over anyone
No-one left but your stubborn one
And the crows and rooks
Ah, the dying young
Well I’m not done
You watch me and I’ll watch thee
I can still work for two men
And drink for three
And I raise my flask
To the clearing skies
To you, sweepers
You carrion spies
To scavenge and survive
If you can do it so can I”
For those not familiar with her, the vocalist from the Pentangle compositon is the great Jacqui McShee in 1968!
“Watazumido-Shuso
New England Repertory Theatre
Fall 1981
As a guest at my humble home preceding the evening performance, he asked for soft foods. I believe this was due to an issue with his teeth. So I made butternut squash, ratatouille, and mashed potatoes. Through a translator from a Boston based Buddhist center, Watazumi said he liked the food very much. At least that is what I remember.
Watazumi was a student of Rinzai Zen, one of the three sects of Zen in Japanese Buddhism. He attained the title of Roshi, a term reserved only for individuals who have completed the entire kōan curriculum. He was a Zen Master.
When asked about his music he responded (through the translator) It’s fine that you are all deep into music. But there’s something deeper and if you would go deeper, if you go to the source of where the music is being made, you’ll find something even more interesting. At the source, everyone’s individual music is made. If you ask what the deep place is, it’s your own life and it’s knowing your own life, that own way that you live.
In the audience at this performance was a geography professor from Clark who had recently won a MacArthur genius award. He sent a letter to my attention following the event in which he made it clear that he felt this was not what he paid his $5 for, and he wanted his money back. I replied to him that I was sorry this had not lived up to his expectations, but that Watazumi was a master of the end blown Japanese bamboo flute and this was less of a concert and more of a demonstration of how sounds of the natural world could be reproduced through the breath across bamboo.
I did not return his money.
”
An old friend of mine once described the internal voices we have as our “inner mambo.” While I have not tried to master that particular dance step i get the voices part. Sometimes voices. Sometimes a conversation of voices. Voices of our parents, voices from history, voices of our friends and maybe the religion we grew up around and are trying to forget. Within the cacaphony of sound is there the voice that sustains us? Can we hear and absorb the wisdom provided by the small anthems that wind their way through the barriers that we knock ourselves down with?
Yes!