topic: reviews
Submitted by dash on Fri, 18/06/2004 - 16:27.
There's a thing about Tuvans at the moment. I mean, when we discovered Yat Kha all those years ago, they were the one of the most amazing musical creations I'd ever heard. Plus, their founder with his electric guitar built Tuvan throat music into a whole different kind of music. What's this got to do with Nina Nastasia? I hear you cry. Well, I'm afraid that Nina, bless her, seems to have realised (a little too late IMHO) how cool Tuvan music is these days.
Michael Ormiston came to the Venn festival, a few months after a seminal Yat Kha gig. Yat Kha themselves appeared on Susheela Rahman's last album Love Trap. And last night, Nina Nastasia brought in a couple for the second half of her gig.
There are some lessons we learn from this. Her producers made her do it. Maybe. I'd like to give her credit, it doesn't seem that she's the kind of writer to be told what to do. It's just that some of the songs were so obviously written for the Igil and they were quite annoying, boring, even, compared to the rest of her work. However, there were other songs, where it sounded more like they had been added afterwards, and those ones were really good. So my conclusion, is that while the fashion is dictating how much Tuvan music we get given these days, we can't write for it, because it is inherent in all music.
If you don't know her, Nina is a very strange mixture of sometimes simple, nursery-rhyme like melodies and jarring clashes between the viola's harmonics, an accordion and her voice. I couldn't help drawing comparisons between her acoustic sound and Kristin Hersh's... Kristin is a lot more crazy though, which is why she's the best... Other times, she sings like Jewel without the silly affected voice.
No bass player. Once I'd got over that, a lot of the songs were very compelling still, just couldn't shake the feeling that we were all being played for suckers a little bit. Yes the Tuvans are amazing. Yes their techniques are stunning, but this wasn't really up to the right standard to be able to carry it off. Just stick to what you do best Nina!
Michael Ormiston came to the Venn festival, a few months after a seminal Yat Kha gig. Yat Kha themselves appeared on Susheela Rahman's last album Love Trap. And last night, Nina Nastasia brought in a couple for the second half of her gig.
There are some lessons we learn from this. Her producers made her do it. Maybe. I'd like to give her credit, it doesn't seem that she's the kind of writer to be told what to do. It's just that some of the songs were so obviously written for the Igil and they were quite annoying, boring, even, compared to the rest of her work. However, there were other songs, where it sounded more like they had been added afterwards, and those ones were really good. So my conclusion, is that while the fashion is dictating how much Tuvan music we get given these days, we can't write for it, because it is inherent in all music.
If you don't know her, Nina is a very strange mixture of sometimes simple, nursery-rhyme like melodies and jarring clashes between the viola's harmonics, an accordion and her voice. I couldn't help drawing comparisons between her acoustic sound and Kristin Hersh's... Kristin is a lot more crazy though, which is why she's the best... Other times, she sings like Jewel without the silly affected voice.
No bass player. Once I'd got over that, a lot of the songs were very compelling still, just couldn't shake the feeling that we were all being played for suckers a little bit. Yes the Tuvans are amazing. Yes their techniques are stunning, but this wasn't really up to the right standard to be able to carry it off. Just stick to what you do best Nina!
I was also at the gig in Bristol, and very good it was too.
It's indisputable that, in the last year, Tuvan music has become very, very fashionable. I must have seen / heard 8 or 9 western artists (predominantly artists, like Nina, that I feel write mainly for an audience with a good musical technical understanding) collaborating with Tuvan musicians this year alone. Before that - almost nothing. Now, Nina may or may not have been a fan for a decade, but I read in the tour literature that her decision to invite the guys from Huun Huur Tu was 'unexpected', so she can't have been going on about them that much before.
The audience certainly thought they were 'cool', though - they got a much bigger cheer than Nina when they entered / left the stage, they got a standing ovation after they did a two-song encore. Frankly, I was a bit embarassed for Nina (who, lets face it, did most of the work for less appreciation)
As for claims of proprietary, I think you must be willfully missing the point, which was - if she's been listening to Tuvan music for ten years, how come she only involves them the year they're the most fashionable thing in world music?
It was a great gig, though, although the trendier-than-thou audience did piss me off a bit...
Now, you'll have to excuse me; I have to go and lie down until I've recovered from a man who says 'Nina Nastasia might be beyond you' accusing other people of musical arrogance. That's second only to the 'Anti-capitalist T-shirts, £15' sign I saw at Glastonbury in my 'Ironic things I read this week' chart.
I thought the show was brilliant.
Tuvan music was cool before Yat-Kha was around, maybe a few thousand years before. Huun-Huur-Tu was on the scene there long before Y-K, and Nina Nastasia claimed in her show to have been a fan for a decade. I think it may be our friend here who came in late on the scene, if Yat-Kha is his reference point. As I wrote in a review of the (f_ing brilliant) London show, the igils were most predominant in the songs We Never Talked from Run to Ruin and Underground from Dogs, a beautiful rendering in my opinion. But these songs have already been released, so I how could they have been written specially for the igil?
On the contrary, all of the songs I didn't recognize featured Kaigal-Ool Khovalyg and Sayan Bapa in fainter light, playing the mouth harp, doshpuluur or singing softly. The new material was stunning. If you're a Kristin Hersh fan... respectfully, Nina Nastasia may be beyond you. I think Nastasia and band achieved her music with these new elements beautifully, without that patronizing feeling that often comes when a westerner tries to appropriate another culture's sound.
It says something that our reviewer confuses what Michael Ormiston is doing, writing in a tradition, with a Mongolian khoomei style which is not Tuvan, and Susheela Rahman's work, which is pure "World Beat" rubbish, and what Nina Nastasia has always done, to assemble a group of first-rate musicians with varied sensibilities into an altogether unique, cohesive voice. Just stick to what you do best, Nina!
No, please! It IS fun! I mean, I was merely loath to write too much, since I'm only trying to get opinions and work on reviewing and criticism in general - trying to be as much a music geek as you are (no flattery intended :smile: ). One of my (many) bugbears is the bandwagons that occur in modern music, and I still believe that arbitrary appropriation of 'world' music is more patronising and racist than saying it doesn't work. By saying she should have done it sooner, I meant more to avoid giving the impression that she was following a trend than that she should claim ownership of the sound.
I would very much like to show off my 'credentials', but really they should be obvious in my writing, shouldn't they? I wrote a bit in my profile on this site too. I suppose I am reduced to being a dilettante through lack of opportunity, but music (almost all music) has been the main guiding force in my life.
Articulation was a problem, I was writing more about the 'Tuvan thing' than the gig, I don't feel that I should stroke my beard and let people off trying something different if it comes across as them trying too hard. I've tried to talk about something in an abstract way and it hasn't really worked! There are other artists who I would like to compare, and perhaps should have compared her to, many of whom you would probably also be able to dismiss. You can't compare a female singer's voice to a male singer's voice. That isn't sexist. Songwriting maybe, but as we've established I should perhaps stick to doing more research. Comparison is probably a bad idea, as it has given you an impression of my musical tastes / background / experience which is restricted by the examples I gave. Music on it's own merits, hey?
It is now a very different argument. I haven't taken offense, really I am wide open and it has given this story a broader scope! I knew what people think about Nina Nastasia and I wanted to see what the fuss was about. I hope that it doesn't make me less of a geek that I just didn't get it. In truth, accusations of racism and sexism are too freely bandied about these days and if I'm falling into a trap, you are too by suggesting that my arrogant (not sarcasm, you are right!) opinion that the styles did not marry well, is led more by racism than musical appreciation.
So don't worry, I relish people telling me that I'm wrong, since I often am, and I write with arrogance because it drives people like yourself to engage and since this is the internet it creates arguments in a good way. I certainly feel it's been constructive! I allow people to comment not to massage my ego, but to try and promote educated (and uneducated) discussion. I'm still very new at this...
In fact, if you listened to my music I'm sure you would laugh at my harshness of someone who's actually been able to get off their arse and make a career out of it!
Not ignorant. Arrogant. I don't think you really know why you didn't like some songs, and I suspect it's something visceral that you don't know how to articulate well, because the reasons you cite betray prejudices that don't make for good criticism.
"...maybe she should have done it sooner." The idea of proprietorship by who gets there first is, well, daft. It's the same argument you try to make for Kristin Hersh calling her "more groundbreaking". Incidentally, both artists are from the same era; Throwing Muses just made records sooner. But the seniority issue is just silly. I tried to make the argument too, about how long Nina Nastasia says she has been a fan of Huun-Huur-Tu. It's a debate for music geeks, not for people. If you just listen to the music, you can decide and comment on whether you do or don't like it without going on about whether it's novel enough to be considered.
...But you've had a hard time doing that, too. "...those songs were too basic, too simple to incorporate the tuvan sound." Huh? The "tuvan sound" is heard in Tuvan music, which traditionally adheres to a strict minor pentatonic scale - a five note scale - which is measurably "simpler" than the contemporary European scales used in the songs in question and throughout Nina Nastasia's music. If you meant lyrically, Nastasia often explores very similar themes that the Tuvan songs explore, like the rural landscape, the orphan's struggle, missing a loved one, etc. Her lyrics, I think, are of parallel depth. I'm equally happy to disagree here with regard to rhythm, harmony, arrangement, etc.
At its heart, I feel your criticism is culturally biased, perhaps even racist, as I don't imagine you making the same argument if there were a pianist up there, or a back-up harmony, or even a banjo, unless, of course, it was an African banjo (or is that sufficiently out-of-style to have a go?). The argument marginalises two thirds of the world's music culture and regards those voices as accessories to the tiny genre that you probably call something like "modern music" or "good music". You do the same, no doubt unwittingly, by comparing Nastasia — bound as you were — to the most similar recent female singer in your collection. Why not compare her to Will Oldham, or Nick Drake, or Kurt Weil, or... Sandy Denny? Joni Mitchell? There is any number of bad comparisons you could make which at least aren't confined by gender or generation. Don't get me wrong. Everybody's doing it. You just got caught.
To be honest, there were a few times I found the Tuvan musicians distracting, partly because I knew the songs so well already, partly because the two blokes moved around and whispered to each-other a lot and sat alone on one side of the stage, and partly because they sound very different from what I normally expect in this kind of music. But this isn't a recording, where one can argue timelessness to be a factor worth judging. Rather, it's a moment, a live event, a very cool live event, with a cool lineup and some really cool ideas (not your unbearable cool, my cool cool), and there is something off-putting about the arrogant way you chose to criticise it.
I think it's wrong to suggest that an artist should "stick to what she does best", rather than to bring trainspotters like us what is at best an interesting perspective on her songs, at worst, a less-preferred arrangement. If you had said, "I thought the igils clashed with the viola on that one song", or, "that growly thoat-singing distracted me from Nina's voice too much", or "that Tuvan sound is just icky (IMHO)", well, you would have said something — not a lot, but perhaps about as much as you're really thinking, aside from all the rubbish about who came first.
I confess: I am not only a faithful Nina Nastasia fan, I am also the bigger geek between the two of us. (sorry to include you, but you did respond to my response.) The debate has become far too intellectual to really be about anything. But if you're going to criticise something, prepare to be heard. Sorry you felt mocked. I thought we were having fun. I guess I did just sort of call you a racist and a sexist in one paragraph. I should clear that up: I'm sure you're no more so than the average dilettante. ;)
Of course I was 'late on the scene' to enjoy Tuvan music, of course it's been around for thousands of years, my point was more that it's almost unbearably cool at the moment - over the last few years, in terms of profile. I listen to a lot of music, and trends come and go. Remember the Brazilian drum and bass thing? Perhaps it's merely unfortunate that Nina chose to use them at this time, if she's a ten-year devotee then maybe she should have done it sooner. And, no, we will have to disagree on whether it worked or not. I still think that those songs were too basic, too simple to incorporate the tuvan sound. It sounded too disparate to work, too distracting, not cohesive at all, but since your judgement appears to be much clouded in your adoration of her undeniable talent, it appears that she can do no wrong.
Judgements on whether Nina is 'beyond me' can't be drawn from the fact I am a Kristin Hersh fan - someone who has been far more groundbreaking - there were definite similarities in the sound. It is also unfortunate that you think mockery will add credibility to your argument. As this gig was my introduction to Nina's music (your superior knowledge humbles me), I was bound to draw comparisons with what I already know. Seriously though, I do believe that there are others out there who do it better. I think that the addition of the Tuvans detracted from her songs, some of which were really good (IMHO) and many of which were not. You can dismiss this (you probably will) as me being ignorant, which you obviously believe, but try not to get sucked into the trap of thinking that your opinions are the truth. Likewise, mine.