|
|
 |
Concert Review
|
| Click Here to go back. |
The Athens Messenger, Concert Review >>
9/27/2006 10:20:00 AM
African Rhythms
Zimbabwean music loosens body and soul
Matt Gallagher
Messenger staff writer
Oliver Mtukudzi filled Stuart's Opera House Thursday with an African sky, and as his rhythms rolled down, it rained sunshine tears as bright as the Nile, as salty as the soul of Zimbabwe. His music flowed with fluid and everything was wet, wild and wonderful.
Mtukudzi's music is unlike anything on the jukebox, but it's soothing movement unwinds the ears until they drip down the spine. It loosens you and saves your soul. Most people have never heard of the man, but stepping into that opera house, I felt like I had been longing to hear this type of music ever since I was born. It reconnected me to the womb, to the soul of creation. This music was spiritual, like finding God in intonation.
It was very easy to dance to, although everyone's soil had to be drenched before the dance floor rained limbs. As the music began, we all sat stiff and rigid in our seats like we were about to hear a history lecture. But as the rhythms warmed our wings with the heat of sun, people became loose and their guard went down. By the third song, the audience was abandoning their seats. By the fourth, the orchestra pit was filled with the music of dancing and we were all carried away.
The secret to this music is in its layers of rhythms. There were multiplying rhythms weaved together like a wondrous tapestry of beads, each row locked into the next, distinct but seamless. And the colors moved together to brighten, release and inspire.
It works like this: A rhythm will wiggle into your armpit and pull out the bone, and soon you are Jell-O. Another rhythm reaches into your knees and pulls out the pin, and suddenly you are rolling on wheels. This music was free-form laughter, and my limbs were giggling and crying and drooling all over themselves. This music was easy to dance to, pure, free-form joy. Soon we were all wings, flying effortlessly into infinity.
This music was gold, like a piece of the sun. We could feel the heat and the energy, moving into the layers of rhythms. We were bounding antelope into the sun-drenched grass.
Oliver's shoes were pointed at the tip like a wizard's, and I dare say they were working. I felt magical. The sky was enchanted and full of stars and spells and dragon tails. Nothing was real. We were all under his spell, hypnotized in his tide.
09/27/06 >> go there
|
| Click Here to go back. |
|
 |
|
|
|
