So some people (okay, one person) want to know where I was and what I was doing on Friday the 13th of August, 2004.
I was dancing.
Yeah, me. Or at least, I was trying to. Some people believe that Africans have a natural sense of rhythm. I must have missed the memo when I was born.
My mom found out that a Malagasy singer named Jaojoby was going to perform at Ashkenaz, an all-ages dance hall in Berkeley. It's not often that Malagasy artists pass through the area, so we jumped at the chance to check it out.
Ashkenaz is everything you'd expect from a club in Berkeley. The building was made of unpainted aged wood. It looked like the only things keeping it from teetering over were the Chinese restaurant and funeral home it was squeezed between. Inside, the bar had a selection of micro-brews and organic teas and coffees. All the snacks on hand were vegetarian, too. The back wall of the stage was decorated with posters and picket signs from every imaginable left-wing cause since the sixties. Yes, the place definitely was Berkeley through and through.
We arrived early and waited for a bit, catching the sunset through the window. Most of the first people to arrive were from the Malagasy community in the Bay area. Our family had never met most of them before, so it was nice to meet so many of them. Chairs were set up on the dance floor—the first hour or so of the concert would be a lecture/demonstration of salegy, the particular brand of music that Jaojoby plays. The Malagasy took up two rows on one side as other people began to arrive. Ashkenaz definitely lives up to its all ages label: the youngest person present was a toddler, the oldest were probably in their late fifties. The average age was in the mid-thirties.
The MC for the lecture demonstration was a West African man with a beret. He introduced Jaojoby as one of the most famous musicians out of Madagascar, and one of the early innovators of salegy. Jaojoby then came out on stage to brief applause. He's a trim fellow with bright eyes and an infectious smile. He apologized for not speaking English well (though he was pretty fluent) and dipped in and out of Malagasy and French during the presentation.
Salegy, it turns out, originated in the sixties, after the electric guitar was introduced to Madagascar. Jaojoby got his start singing in nightclubs for French soldiers and rich Malagasy people, singing covers of American rock 'n roll greats and occasionally slipping in Malagasy songs until he had developed his own style. Salegy moves at a snappy six-eight beat, just begging to be danced to. Jaojoby briefly demonstrated how to dance to it and invited an enthusiastic audience member onstage to show the two-person variation.
At this point, the audience was eager to get going. The chairs were cleared, the lights turned down, and the band walked onstage and immediately launched into a fast-paced number. Music is very much a family affair for Jaojoby: his wife sings backup vocals, his daughters are dancers, and his son is his lead guitarist. From the first song, the Malagasy people (with the exception of me and my brother) knew what they were doing, and immediately got down to business. By watching other people's feet, I picked up on how to salegy, and pretty soon was going at it myself. It's so infectious, it's hard not to dance to it. Everyone started dancing, including a lanky old white guy with a shock of grey hair and a homemade frilly costume that any male Russian figure skater would be proud to wear. He had even less of a sense of rhythm than I do, which is a really scary thought.
The music was attracting a younger crowd from the street, and the dance floor started to fill up. Salegy is a really good workout (I broke into a sweat halfway through the second song), so the band had an intermission. I bought some coffee (I figured it would be a late, long drive home) and went out to enjoy the cool evening air. After someone on the Ashkenaz staff had the good sense to turn on large fans tucked away in the cieling, I went back in.
Jaojoby started the second half of his show with a quieter song, a solo with acoustic guitar. This gave us just enough time to catch our breath until he launched into salegy again, including a double encore. By the time the concert had finished, it was approaching midnight. All the Malagasy people, including the band, were invited to someone's house for dinner. It was my first Malagasy meal with a lot of Malagasy people in over eight years.
Up until that moment, I didn't really realize how much I missed these sorts of get-togethers—the tasty food (everyone was saying the lady of the house should open a Malagasy restaurant), the kids, the lively conversation. I even missed all the kissing, which I avoided as a kid (afraid of cooties, I guess), as well as the social etiquette dilemma that usually comes with it—two kisses, or three? (For the record, the trick is to go for two and see if the other person is coming around for number three.) Every evening has to come to an end, and the band was exhausted. We had our picture taken with Jaojoby, and then he retired for the evening. As the gathering thinned, we also said our goodbyes, which are notoriously drawn out with Malagasy people, involving the exchange of phone numbers and email addresses and calendars. Eventually, we went through the whole round of goodbye kissing (three pecks, if you're wondering), and then left for the long drive back to Davis.
Summary: Wow. 4/4 Stars.
The story is admittedly spare, serving merely as a frame for the stunning visuals—Hero is, after all, a martial arts flick. Nameless (Jet Li), recounts a series of stories to the King of Qin (Daoming Chen), a tyrant who seeks to unite China's warring states under his rule. We see the stories as narrated flashbacks. As the film progresses, the stories change as inconsistencies are discovered. With each retelling, the predominant color scheme of the film changes, providing visual cues to the mood and theme of each episode.
The episodes take full advantage of some of the most jaw-dropping locations ever filmed in China. The autumnal scene mentioned above was my favorite, filled with swirling reds and golds and falling leaves, but all of the flashbacks are stunning visually, and masterfully edited. Even in the most intense fight sequences, director Zhang Yimou cuts to slow-motion shots of raindrops, falling leaves, a calligrapher's brush. You're left with a keen sense of the passage of time and a world that moves on, unaware of the moment that you're watching.
