Salutations From The Land Of Cows

On the face of it the whole thing seems silly. Spend $200 to rehearse choral tunes with a bunch of strangers all day. After having spent the day doing just that I’ll say that when you have Eric Whitacre at the helm he makes the whole thing not only make sense but he makes it deliciously rich.

What he brings to the table is sheer childish joy of music,coupled with a mature razor sharp understanding of what he is doing with it. He gleefully shares his insight with humor, wit, and intensity. He wastes no time, gets right to work “lets make music shall we” was the invitation right before he dug into the the bowels of the scores he composed to shine light on all their dimension. Beauty and power, strength and silence. Whimsy, lust, joy, sadness, light, heavy, love…so many things in this man’s tool chest. He worked the ensemble efficiently but completely to bring out a mightily inspiring performance from this varied group of strangers. More than once I was wiping away tears as we sang.

Yet this experience was more than a rehearsal, it was an insight to composition, the process, the conceptual, the nuts and bolts. It was an insight to ensemble conducting, to public speaking. He communicated very clearly using artistic metaphor, jokes, gestures and expression that got across his message. He’s brilliant in a way not to many people are. He’s learned to communicate very complicated things quickly in a very down to earth comfortable fashion. Nary a harsh word even when he might not be happy with something. He communicates in such a disarming and positive way you can’t help but get caught up in the positivity of it all. We could all learn by living our lives in this way.

I came to this workshop feeling different than many of the participants. Most were young college age people in choral music or fans of choral music with some singing chops of their own. I’m a 50 year old musician that has spent most of my life grinding it out in bands playing clubs and small concerts. I’ve got some choral experience but nothing in a long time. I met enough people to know I wasn’t the only one. Everyone was most welcoming. The Whitacre joy is very catching.

I wanted to do this because his choral music inspires me, touches my muse in a way other forms can’t get to. I jumped on this workshop because it was a way to encounter Eric Whitacre and his compositions in an intimate fashion. It’s something well out of my comfort zone, that required me to prepare quite a bit and blow rust off skills that have laid around for a long long time. It made me work, but I was doing the work of a musician rather than sitting and listening as audience. Under his lead we were all working to make music in that moment in that space. It’s is what I was meant to do.

So it’s far more than a reading of charts, it’s a completely immersive musical experience where Whitacre joyously calls you to take part to the edge of what you can bring.

Doing this was a completely selfish act which I haven’t done much in music in a long time. I inconvenienced many people to take a day away from my life to nurture my musical spirit. Having done so I am inspired, humbled, pleased, sad, thrilled…and so many other things. It was a “most amazing day”. Eric, I thank you for doing what you do and sharing so freely with us all.

My “friend” has been torched beyond recognition. I think perhaps the most obvious arsonist was Facebook, but it occurred to me having listened to my 4 year olds’ usage of the word that the ignition began long before that, and Zuckerberg was just a symptom.

Everyone my boy knows or comes into acquaintance with is now “My Friend”. That means his teachers, his cousins, his mother, the boys next door; there seems little difference between them as far as friends are concerned. I thought this was something new but being a latecomer to the world of children I missed this evolution along with the one that morphed your teacher from “Mrs. Smith” to “Miss Lisa”. So while I grew up with Mrs. Smith and her ruler Zuckerberg probably grew up with Miss Lisa and her French Maid outfit.

Now everyone is your friend, which means no one really is.

When I was a little boy you had a couple friends that were close playing buddies.  We shared toys, food, drinks from the hose, told and kept secrets; my parents would definitely not be my friends even if they wanted to be. We also indented our paragraphs, put two spaces after a period, and knew how to use a semicolon that wasn’t a wink.

Your friend status had to be earned, not clicked. That badge was worn only by those that had proven themselves; sometimes by keeping a trusted confidence, sometimes by standing up at the playground to some injustice with the kickball. It was cherished and not taken or given lightly. You gave your friends anything you had even if you loved it. You held the things they gave you as precious metal knowing you had been given sacred trust.

Indeed, friendship was a sacred trust. Mostly it was a way to pick your partners in life. Sorting through all the humanity that comes your way in a lifetime is a daunting task. Only a few can negotiate the twists and turns of everyday occurrence with you. Most you careen off of like a pinball bumper. You can’t pick your family but you always choose your friends. Yet from daycare to Facebook I wonder if my boy will ever know what a friend is? I wonder if he’ll understand the earning of trust, the sharing of stuff, The Code of conduct between those that truly are partners.

Friends have come and gone in my life. Family seems perennial but even that is cut short by death. The collection of my friends has changed over the decades, moving in and out of our circles as the needs ebb and flow. Picking up with those that have long since moved away shows how clearly people can grow away from each other over time even when it seems you’ll never do so during the period you were such close friends. So it goes with friends. You are with each other when need be; when those needs change you move on to others. Then again there are those friends with whom time stands still.  It’s as if your relationship once cemented becomes more perennial than family. Even if you’ve grown in different ways, learned to love different things, somehow it doesn’t matter, it just adds spice to an ever evolving swirl of dimension in what is two people revolving.

That’s really what friends are for; to dance in this world alone together.

Everything I do in a day honors my family.  I didn’t start out my life trying to do that, it just unfolded that way day in and day out as I made choices and commitments along the way.

A typical day for me starts and ends with my young son doing various family things.  I’ll dash off to run my business and work on guitars.  Most weekends I’ll go to play gigs after Baby Vincent and Mama Cheri are snuggled in bed.  Somehow it occurred to me the other day that all these things I do I inherited from people in my family.

My Grandmother Rose D’Alessandro and her brother Darcy lived in Brooklyn New York most of their lives.  They both sang for part of their daily bread.  The music gene runs deep in the family.  Banging on pans as a toddler, I was destined to become a musician.  I see exactly the same behavior from Vincent.

In an attempt to beat the Allegheny mountain heat of the early 20^th century, my Grandfather Joviale Paterlini like to burn his lunch hour jumping into the Monongahela River from the railroad bridge he was helping to build.  Born and raised in Charleroi Pennsylvania, the depression forced him to move his family to Akron Ohio so he could work for the Goodyear Zeppelin Corporation building airships.  He worked for “The Goodyear” the remainder of his working life.  He was the only worker I know that was completely taken care of by a corporation until his death.  He taught me my love of tools and working with my hands.  Merging working with hand and tool with my love of music led me to repair guitars for a living.

The D’Alessandro family was all about business.  My Great Grandfather ran a contracting business in New York in the late 19^th century well into the 1940’s.  Picking up that torch my father Joseph Maneri spent his life in all kinds of business, working with large retail firms and then later teaching.  He taught me quite a bit about running a business.  I didn’t take all his advice over the years but I’d have been better off had I done so.  Stubborn children are destined to make the same mistakes of stubborn parents no matter what they say.

My mother was all about family.  She stayed with her family of origin right up until it was time to start her own family.  Her life was completely devoted to her children.  She found great pride in their achievements and it seemed to make her a complete woman.  I understand this drive now having a young child of my own.  I hope I can honor her in raising my child with the same kind of devotion.

The legacy I’ve inherited from my forbears plays out in everything I do.  I’m a fortunate man to have the opportunity to do the things I love to make my daily bread.  I thank all my ancestors for what they’ve given me.

Over the past few years I’ve been deeply mired in the process of making my acoustic double bass sound great loud by electricity. It’s a process that has been fun and exasperating. The irony is that this is a 150 year old double bass that for most of its life has had no trouble expressing itself without electrical assistance. What I have discovered after spending thousands of dollars and god knows how much time is that nothing electrically created or reinforced sounds better than then my 150 year old double bass acoustically.  It is warm, complex, round, full, and sweet in a way that is sublime and amazing. The work required to create such a thing in 1860 would have been quite a labor of love. The fact that it’s still around making music is a testament to its creators long since dead. Any attempt to make it louder via electric means diminishes it.

The opportunities for me to use that bass in contexts that don’t require electric sound reinforcement are few and far between and frankly these days hardly ever attended by people spending their daily bread. While I search for them their absence is profound to me.

Modern expectations of volume and crowd coverage require electricity and frankly I think we are not better off for it.  They say volume allows for nuance where acoustic performance sacrifices nuance for power.  Bing Crosby vs. Pavarotti.  Perhaps, but Pavarotti was full of dynamic range in a way that Bing, although beautiful, could never match. I think maybe the listener has gotten lazy. I would suggest that it’s the listener that has been beaten up by electric volume rather than the performer enhanced by it.

Our attempts to make this beautiful natural sound loud to compete with subwoofers and THX certified surround sound have diminished its richness.  While we are not to be faulted for it, the music listener is surely shortchanged from it.  Over the last 80 years as the modern hi-fi arose from the ashes of the Victor Talking Machine, the last true acoustic sound reproducer, we have become more and more subject to the demands of electric sound reinforcement. True acoustic performance has less value as listeners loose their patience for it and frankly don’t have the hearing for it anymore. This is evolution. Technology is developed to help us experience music performance without having to actually go to it and also help us hear it when it’s hard to while we are there. Then that same technology develops a life of its own. People start using the technology to make the music. Hence the rise of the electric guitar, then the electric bass; pretty soon you’ve got rock bands in stadiums with PA’s that can be heard with clarity from miles away.

My Grandmother used to bitch about how loud everything was. She loved to go to the Met in New York, and small clubs to experience acoustic music in all its forms during her time there through the first half of the 20^th Century. When she moved out to Ohio to spend her last years with her son and us pesky grandkids, she couldn’t come to my rock band performances. To much noise, she said. She loved us and wanted to see what we were doing but I know now the electric sound was too much for her. Her ear was trained to listen for the subtleties and beauty of acoustic performance and the electric pounding was so offensive to that training it caused her more pain than the joy of seeing her grandbabies do something special.

I now understand that. After decades of classic rock that were the mainstay of my teens, twenties and thirties, when experiencing music as a listener I find myself more and more eschewing electric performance for acoustic. Symphonic, chamber, small combo jazz with no electrics have replaced the barrage of electric guitars and drums that I’ve spent my life studying. I sold my huge Ampeg SVT bass amps for a 150 year old double bass. Why? Because electricity is killing my hearing and I now realize some of the spirit of music too. I think my grandmother had it right.

The folly is as a professional musician I spend scads of money and time and energy converting that beautiful old instrument’s sound into electricity to keep up with the demands of the people coming to hear me perform. I reduce this glorious old box to 600 watts and a handful of small speakers so it’s loud as hell but sounds like shit. As I sit in the bar and warm up acoustically I inevitably get people coming up saying things like “my god that thing sounds beautiful”. After the show the comments are “you rock”.

The next great technological advancement is happening in music with the computer and the internet. It has removed acoustic sound creation entirely and is in the process of changing the way music is distributed, marketed, heard and experienced. Progress marches forward and for the first time in my life I can’t keep up anymore.

All the while my old bass sits there watching I think. When it started playing there were no computers, no cars, no phones, no electricity, no Bing Crosby not even my grandmother. When it made music the performer had to carry it to the performance space and everyone who came to hear had to travel to do so. The first devices for recording sound had just started to be conceived. It was already 60 years old by the time electric recordings started being made and modern sound reinforcement had it’s beginnings in the military during the First World War. By the time the Beatles played Shea stadium and nobody could hear it that old bass was over 100 years old.

I wish it could talk.

Maybe it is and that’s why I felt compelled to write this.

The polarizing attitudes in this country over the last 10 years are very disappointing.  The divides in attitudes about politics between people have gotten larger and larger fed by media rhetoric, often untrue, dispensed by talking heads that rarely use fact to back up their opinions.  This doesn’t help anything.  It feeds the hysteria and widens the divide.  Glen Beck and Bill Marr are both extremists asking us to move further away from each other in their own ways.  It’s not helpful, it’s not useful, it’s surely not Christian as I understand it if that matters to anyone at all.

There are some monumental issues confronting the American public these days and instead of information and data we get “news entertainment”.  We get polarizing talk shows none of which give us data, they just give opinion on data they cherry pick to interpret in whatever way suits their target audience.  That is not informed discourse, it’s pandering; it’s bullshit served up on a huge platter in HD and then taken as fact by the sheep that can’t tear their eyes away from it.

Bill Marr isn’t fact.  John Stewart isn’t fact.  Keith Obermann isn’t fact.  Glen Beck isn’t fact.  Bill OReilly isn’t fact.  Rush Limbaugh isn’t fact.  They are all opinions with very little factual information to back up their rants.

I want real information and exchanges uncluttered by the ratings of the lunatic fringe on both sides and I’m afraid we’ll never see it.  Mostly because it won’t fit into a sound bite.  Mostly because people don’t want to spend the time to make up their own minds, they just pick a side and look for the propaganda that supports it.

It’s disappointing.  It makes us look like stupid people. 

He’s a star!

Man he’s a cute little rat.

They messed up the order of things in the blog and killed my Gallery in their move to another server.

To be continued….

Edit:  I fixed some of it.  At least the order is right.  Now on to the Gallery.  Thanks Ipower.  You suck.

I had many requests for the context of my parents eulogies given at their funerals. I have made a page for them separately you can access from the tabs above.

Your comments are welcome.

Joseph Maneri passed away Sunday October 7, 2007
He died of Cancer early that morning at the health center in Friendship Village in Columbus Ohio.

Calling hours are Friday October 12 from 2pm to 4pm and 6pm to 8pm

Southwick-Good & Fortkamp Funeral Chapel
3100 N High St
Columbus, OH 43202
Phone: (614) 267-0362

http://www.southwick-good.com/

The Funeral Mass will be celebrated on Saturday October 13 at 10am at

St. Anthony Parish
1300 Urban Drive
Columbus, OH 43229

http://www.saintanthony.catholicweb.com/

The graveside service to follow immediately at

Resurrection Cemetery
9571 N High St
Columbus, OH 43085
(614) 785-0964

Following the Cemetery service there will be a gathering at our house approximately 1pm or 2pm to 6pm
There will be catered dishes and beverages but covered dishes are encouraged.

Email or contact family directly for details.