A Head of His Time
Friday at Carnegie Hall, David Byrne mumbled what might be charitably described as a post-verbal introduction to a group of some twenty-five odd and innovative folk singers, folk-rockers, and folk-hip-hoppers. One of the great things about the former Talking Heads frontman is that he remains an avid fan of the sort of quirkily accessible music he creates himself. Just check out the releases on his Luaka Bop record label and his terrific Internet radio station (which is playing a lot of experimental Scandinavian folk music these days). Not to mention this group of mostly young and fairly underground singers assembled under the rubric "Welcome to Dreamland" during a four-night Carnegie Hall Byrne-athon pretentiously titled "No Boundaries."
And dreamy it was indeed, as singers and musicians drifted on and offstage like players in a midwinter night's happening. There was a divalike quality to the two CocoRosie sisters; one an operatic soprano, the other a squeaky-voiced folk-rapper. There was a diva-like quality to the wonderful Adem (born Adam Ilhan), who sang about love on other planets in clear, confident tones, and also to Devendra Banhart, who sang about spiders and flags.
The evening's unlikely focus, however, was Vashti Bunyan, a sixtysomething British songwriter whose 1970 debut album of ethereal folk music, Just Another Diamond Day, was re-released in 2000, just in time to inspire a new generation of smart, wafty singers raised on everything from the Beatles to Talking Heads and hip-hop. Bunyan was maternal, self-effacing, and even seemingly regretful about the decades she had spent in domestic obscurity. But here she was, playing Carnegie Hall.
Byrne didn't reappear until the end of the evening, when everyone reconvened to perform a shaky round by the eccentric blind musician known as Moondog, who used to perform on the sidewalks of 57th Street outside Carnegie Hall. Even after his death in 1999 at age 83, Moondog remains in many ways the freakiest folkie of them all.
The following evening, Byrne presented a strictly musical early glimpse of his forthcoming multimedia opera about former Philippines First Lady, shoe fetishist, disco queen, and so-called "Steel Butterfly" Imelda Marcos. Byrne's Here Lies Love sounded remarkably toothless, like Evita minus the passionate hubris. Byrne's self-deprecating explanations between songs ("The house was full of Heinz sandwich spread," he noted at one point, and at another, "This is not artistic license, this is reportage") didn't so much illuminate the music as make you wonder why he wrote it in the first place. Oh well. After an evening like "Welcome to Dreamland," anything David Byrne dished out could be granted artistic immunity.