Hope Met 1

We saw Love in Exile

So, I saw Love in Exile, the star-trio of Grammy winner, vocalist Arooj Aftab, MacArthur Genius Grat awardee, pianist Vijay Iyer, and acclaimed multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily. And it was awesome 💯!!! The ambiance, helped by a darkened hall and a backdrop of colors that transitioned, through the program, between blue, blue and purple, and back to blue—bit a darker blue at the end. Stage lighting was subdued as well. Arooj even directed theat the stage lights be reduced even more, after the first piece.

It is my impression, from what I've read about Love in Exile’s concerts, album, and formation, that there was minimal pre-planned structure to the sound, and almost every aspect of the performance involved improvisation. Arooj sang in Urdu, primarily (according to the program notes) and did use a little English in a song of sadness, calling “I will see you again,” to an “old friend.” I found that was the point, near the beginning of the penultimate piece of the performance, at which I became highly involved in the concert. And from that point, I felt the music in a better, more sensual way, and was not waiting to become involved. I do not say it was the music. I say it was my way of relating to the performance that resulted in the change. I don't think there is even a “the music” to speak of in an “objective” sense, a music that is like a thing in itself, that is the “real” music, seen from a standpoint of the nobody-who-is-nowhere; that is, there is no music sub specie aeternitatis.

There is sound to be studied by psychoacoustics, acoustics, physics, electrical engineering and electronics, but that is not, in any final, primary sense, the music. It is a mistake to say anything like, “Music is an interpretation of soundwaves.” As I wrote in an earlier post, the ontological priorities, of sound and of music, are invertable, and I believe the hearing of music, and not the listening to sound waves, is prior in a crucial way. Here is the post, below. In a very real sense, nonetheless, the bass tones produced by Shahzad’s instruments managed to challenge the structural integrity of the concert hall, inducing resonant vibrations in objects inside the hall.

Arooj was an entertaining MC as well as a vocalist making beautiful sound. Her wit is keen, her humor anti-banal. She was the only one of the three who spoke. She wore a black top with sculptural form to it, the obtruding edges of which were studded with gold-colored metal. On the dimly lit stage, the studs glinted as if lit from within, and provided a focus for visual attention.

I found that my watching the performers interfered with my listening to the music. I began to close my eyes and, eventually, to squint at the lighted backdrop, my eyes losing focus on the performers. This allowed me to hear more of the music. My eyes lull me into a shallow depth of concentration due to the ordinariness, to me, of how I tend to look at people and the things of the world. The sound and the music were not ordinary to me. As soon as I closed off the ordinariness of, and coming from, my vision, I heard the music as if it came from another world, a world within this one (to paraphrase poet Paul Èluard’s statement, “There is another world and it is in this one”).