PRI's The World » musicians

French Band ‘The Two’ Stars Ara Starck and David Jarre

Marco Werman — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:00:46 +0000

For the Global Hit we are featuring Ara Starck and David Jarre, members of a French band called “The Two.”

In Paris, both Starck and Jarre are considered celebrities by birth.

Jarre’s father is French composer Jean Michel Jarre whose albums of electronica in the 70s and 80s became quite popular.

Starck is the daughter of modernist designer Philippe Starck who has crafted chairs with stiletto heels and orange juicers that seem to defy gravity.

There is a lot of 60s British folk and acoustic pop influences in the music of “The Two” : Donovan, Nick Drake and a bit of Vashti Bunyan.

Starck and Jarre are darlings in France, but they are hoping to find the same sort of love in the US.

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Discovering ‘Awesome Tapes From Africa’

The World — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 12:00:44 +0000

While traveling in West Africa, Brian Shimkovitz found himself buying cassette tapes of obscure African musicians.

His collection soon grew to thousands of tapes.

Shimkovitz started a blog and called it “Awesome Tapes from Africa.” He started a record label and will release these tapes onto CD for the first time.

Anchor Marco Werman speaks to Brian Shimkovitz about his blog and label.

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Music By Africans for Africans

The World — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 12:00:56 +0000

For the Geo Quiz we are looking for a place in Africa whose name translates to “the city of cool waters.” It is now the largest city in East Africa, but used to be a swamp once. The British developed it as a supply depot for Uganda Railways. The city is also a major center for culture and music especially, hip-hop. It is no surprise then that the city is planning to host a major concert at the end of the year to raise money to fight famine.

Nairobi, capital of Kenya, is the answer to the Geo Quiz. A major concert is planned for the end of the year to fight famine and to pressure African governments to do the same. The performers will include some of Africa’s top musicians. The name of the organization behind the event says it all – “Act 4 Africa.” One of the headliners at the concert is singer-songwriter Sara Mitaru. She is helping to put together this benefit concert. She says the idea came from her producer David Muthami.

American artists and Iceland

The World — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:15:25 +0000

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Iceland has been one of the countries hardest hit by the economic crisis. One thing it still has going for it is its draw for American artists, writers and musicians. Writer Alissa Quart has the story.

I went to Iceland three months ago because I knew it was a country of paradoxes. For starters, there are only about 300,000 Icelanders. Yet most of them are really literate. Much of the small island is covered in ice. Yet their homes are heated by scalding water that literally runs under the ground.

I bought into Brand Iceland. I visited the art spots Reykjavik, Stykkiholmur, and Budir. I swam in a hot river and slept in a hotel where the walls were painted lichen-green. When I came back to New York, I was still seeing traces of Iceland everywhere. There was even a new Iceland-themed exhibit by the American artist Roni Horn. It’s going on at the Whitney Museum right now.

Icelandic singer Olof Arnalds played at the opening. Horn’s show starts right in the elevator, with aquatic sound art.

Horn’s show is full of pictures of Iceland: geothermal water, taxidermist birds, faces floating on the surface of hot springs. She’s drawn to the isolation, the communal atmosphere, and above all, the landscape.

Donna De Salvo curated Horn’s show. She sees the draw of Iceland like this:

“You know the extremes, where you have volcanic activity marching right down to the sea, and this collapse in a sense for us at when you live in an urban environment like NY to see this extreme range of terrain is just magical.

Iceland has long attracted other American artists. Call it Artland. Yoko Ono, Richard Serra, and the poet Anne Carson all came here looking for a muse. Same with Eileen Myles. She just wrote The Importance of Being Iceland.

“Iceland is really interesting because it just happened to be to the side in a way so certain things could continue to exist and certain people could have a self-effacing way of looking at their own culture.”

I love that Icelandic self-effacement. There’s that appeal of their music and literature. It’s all about stubborn iconoclasm. An experimental writer like Myles could seem odd in the world of American letters. But in Iceland, odd is perfectly normal.

Eileen Myles: “Icelandic artists are really proud of how many odd strange people who’ve lived in odd strange ways were part of their history American artist wouldn’t go for a folkish approach to who we are and really claim lineage to these oddballs, there’s a kind of funky pride.”

While Iceland was a dreamscape for artists, it was also floating by on a wildly inflated economy of credit. Iceland’s fishing culture had migrated into banking and boutique hotels. Then it all crashed. Now crushed by debt, their currency devalued; do the newly poor Icelanders still see themselves in the portraits American artists make of them? Philosopher Oddny Eir Evarsdottir says in a way they do. Icelanders depend on American artists’ view of their country. Just like American artists depend on Iceland.

“We are living inside it like inside the crisis situation we are like really hoping that inside Iceland’s economy we are heading toward this metaphor of an Iceland as a health and beautiful place where you can go way like an asylum and I really hope we will go there so at this moment, the guest’s eye, the metaphors of others, it’s so helpful.”

These metaphors may not help much in the end. But Iceland will still have its amazing, strange indie music to keep Artland alive. All those heated, water-logged dreams. For The World, this is Alissa Quart.