The quoted section in the headline above referring to the composer and lyricist of this “Brilliant Song” selection may look odd, but like so many other matters in United States history, it is all tangled up in the legacy of slavery that in many ways serves as the primary fault line whose cracks continue to influence our cultural and political life. Type “Swannanoa Tunnel” into You Tube and you can scroll through cover songs from a wide variety of artists for a very long time before reaching its end. I stopped counting at 50, and listened to at least half…
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I have no idea anymore how I came across Clint Mansell’s chilling musical composition, “Lux Aeterna.” Literally translated as “eternal light,” the words are from the ending prayer of the Latin mass for the dead, beseeching God to be merciful in shining light and love on the departed for all eternity. One link or comment or other lure begets another, and whatever I was initially looking for was subsumed a few notes into the Kronos Quartet’s performance (see below). Mansell engaged the renowned group to serve as the musical interpreters of his friend Darren Aronofsky’s “Requiem for a Dream,” a…
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One of the sneaky pleasures of this “Brilliant Cover Songs” series for me is that I get to immerse—and perhaps give you a first listen or re-introduction to—not only the cover version but the original, as well. And when we’re talking about such powerhouse musical forces as jazz trumpeter Miles Davis (1926-1991) and the Spanish modern classical composer Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999), the pleasure is all the more enhanced and worthy of attention. The last time Davis appeared in this space was in a post a bit over three years ago that explored the question of how transcendent, soul-satisfying art so…
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After a couple of years of what has felt like an extraordinary period of loss, I’ve come to realize, in that forehead-slapping “Duh!!! kind of way signifying I’ve been a bit slow on the uptake, that there’s nothing “extraordinary” at all about people dying with regularity at my age, all through my family and friendship circle. It’s just the way of things, a pure math and probability issue, that a certain percentage of people die at rates that increase with each decade. Just a few tragic unfortunates suffer their demise in the early decades, but the trend line goes steadily…
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I was watching the fifth or sixth version of Beth Hart’s “Leave the Light On” the other night when I realized my hand had been on my heart since somewhere through the first version I’d heard. I must have placed it there when I began to realize what the song was about and had become fully absorbed in its pathos. The link to the full lyrics is here, but these four lines in the second stanza got my immediate attention, and Hart’s fine elocution and dramatic rendering did the remaining work: Little girl hiding underneath the bedWas it something I…