Love Songs & Dance

Sat 11 Feb, 2006, 8pm
$10 All-Access
Old American Can Factory

Shahzad Ismaily and Andrew McGraw host an eclectic evening of prehistoric, classical, and ultramodern love music and (Asian) dance in an intriguing Valentine’s weekend concert. Bring your date!

The evening will include performances of the obscure, nearly extinct and fantastically quiet and intimate Asian heart lute

a troubadour’s instrument of the bygone Lanna (Northern Thai) kingdom, here accompanying traditional Lanna offering dances. Mr. McGraw will attempt to perform a rare, if not apocryphal, New Guinean serenade in which a live dragonfly is played as an instrument. (Note: the performance of this piece is dependent on our being able to actually obtain a dragonfly). Balinese master musician I Nyoman Saptanyana will lead members of the Indonesian Consulate gamelan in performances of the classical Legong Kuntul courtesan’s dance. (Dancers lead by Nezia Azmi of the Indonesian Consulate dance ensemble). The gamelan ensemble will continue with the rarely heard repertoire of the delicate semar pegulingan, music of the love god, traditionally performed to accompany the Balinese raja’s evening escapades (often with legong dancers). The exuberant music from the love scene of the Balinese Ramayana shadow puppet drama will be followed by the languid hushed music of the love scene from the Javanese Mahabharata shadow puppet play.

Changing gears, fiddler and banjo-player Sam Amadon (Doveman) will join McGraw and Ismaily for some old timey American love music. Singer-songwriter Garret Devoe (pure horsehair, here accompanied by McGraw and Ismaily) will present a modern take on love in America. The show will be rounded off by the inevitable experimental work for marital aids (apologies to Judy Dunaway for the cop): vibrators on gongs and drums, dangerously over-inflated amplified condoms.

Free chocolate!

Andrew McGraw is an ethnomusicologist, performer, improviser, writer and educator who has lived, taught and composed throughout Southeast Asia for several years. He has collaborated and composed with sevearl of Indonesia and Thailand’s leading composers and performers. He teaches music at Emerson College in Boston. In New England and New York he regularly performs in several traditional ensembles and in various new music ensembles with the likes of Mr. Ismaily.

Shahzad Ismaily is a multi-instrumentalist who plays in an almost bewildering number of bands in New York and Los Angeles. Currently, he can be seen regularly performing in Marc Ribot’s hard ensemble Ceramic Dog, Karla Kihlstedl’s Tin Hat Trio, Carla Bozulich’s Nightporter, Trey Spruance’s Secret Chiefs 3, Doveman and Barbez. Mr. Ismaily was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania and any suggestion that he is an authentic bearer of traditional Asian musical culture is wholly dubious.

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