The Michigan Daily-Wednesday, November 8, 1978-PageS5

Chuck Mangione feels so bad

By R. J. SMITH
Monday I heard some really fine jazz.
First I heard the new Woody Shaw
album playing at Schoolkid's, and then
I went home and played Thelonius
Monk Live at the Five Spot (with John-
ny Griffin!). But soon I had to go to the
.Chuck Mangione concert at Hill
Auditorium, it was time for something
other than good jazz.
I finally figured out why Chuck
Mangione has such a dopey grin on his
TAce as he cuddles his fluglehorn on the
-cover of his break-through album Feels
So Good: he's so happy because he's
squeezing the life out of his horn before
be plays it. After hearing him play
Monday night, I bet he must do it before
" every show.
ALTHOUGH HE has gained his
greatest recognition as a composer
rather than an instrumentalist,
Mangione showed Monday that what
talent he does have is in the area of
technique and tone quality. Like many
. of the current pop-jazzers, (George
Benson, say, or Jean-Luc Ponty)
Mangione must perpetually hang over
the cliff of politeness, always risking
tumbling into an endless pool of
smarm.
Mangione showcased much material
from his most recent album, The
Children of Sanchez. When I asked him
earlier last week how he arrived at the
Latin themes that dominate the album,

he said laughingly, "I keep wondering
about that, too - I used to watch the
Cisco Kid on TV. Maybe that's where
my Spanish influence comes from."
And although he later told how the
Latin-influenced music of Dizzy
Gillespie and Miles Davis had helped
shape his conception of the music, it
seems that his original remark about
the Cisco Kid may be the one most on-
target.
If Mangione and his music are right,
then our friends in Spain, Cuba, et al
were the true forefathers of the hustle
and the bump. "Hot Consuelo" gives
the game away before you hear the

song, and the main theme from
Children of Sanchez is preluded by a
soupy, shallow lament sung by bass
player Charles Meeks, playing the role
of one from Sanchez, in which he pleads
for love, understanding, and some ear-
th in which to grow his chili beans.
THERE WERE many other surprises
in store Monday evening. The quintet
whipped off a strut-yer-stuff "Hide and
Seek, Ready or Not, Here I Come" as
fey as anything in Nick Gilder's reper-
toire. "The Day After Our First Night
Together," "Song of the New Moon,"
"Land of Make Believe," and lots of
other songs whizzed by - but one song
in particular, "Chase the Clouds Away"
is the perfect title for them all. Like a
cloud, his songs are puffy, hollow things
that glide in on breezy melodies and
keep on drifting over the transparent,
insubstantial soloing. They are cute,
and, of course, a beautiful cloud can be,
inspiring - but with Mangione, you can
see it's all thin air.
Mangione pens tight, crisp tunes
which generally smother any sort of
expansive solowork from the members
of his band. A funny thing soon became
evident at the show: the band was
playing the melodies more cleanly, and
straighter, when,supporting the soloist

than when they were running through
the melody at the song's beginning.
Rather than listening to the others'
solos and then reacting, the musicians
often did their fanciest work during the
statement of the melody.
I think Mangione fares much better
as a musician than a composer. But so
what? There are lots of better in-
strumentalists around, and they don't
take themselves nearly as seriously as
he. "I like most of our audiences, but
today's college audience is a very
educated, hip one," Mangione told me
last week. "It's really fun to get as close
to your audience as you can get with
some college places."
BUT MONDAY, the closest he got
was when he would announce which of
his songs were the hits, and which
albums they were on.
It's really dangerous to think of
college audiences as being "hip" or
knowledgeable; we may be more
knowledgeable than some other crowds
but quite often what sells on campus is'
not the high-quality work of a master
but the lowest common denominal work
of a compromising artist. Is Chuck
Mangione a jazz master? Only if you
have faith in the land of make
believe ...

Doily Photo by ALAN BILINS
Chuck Mangione brought his funky sounds to Hill Auditorium Monday night.

FAYE DUNAWAY and WARREN BEATTY hit the road in the title roles. Penn's
tragic-comedy view of the two legendary depression gangsters has horrify-
ing violence and moving pathos. "We're in the money" and "I'm no lover
boy .. ." Penn's best film.

Southern cloggers
stomp 'Yankee'Ark
By ERIC ZORN
It seems that everyone, even little kids, can dance the clog steps down in
the Appalachian region. Each year I go down to the Traditional Music
Celebration at Berea, Kentucky, and feel like an out-of-place city slicker
during the square dances as the natives hoof and stomp around me. No
more. This afternoon the Green Grass Cloggers, the only national touring
clog dancing team, are coming to the Ark to hold a workshop before their
evening performance. They promise to have even the clumsiest clomping
away with the basic stepbefore the clinic is through.
"Part of the reason for our popularity is that we give the folks something
they can take away with them," says veteran clog dancer Rodney Sutton.
"Once you learn how to dance to mountain music, you never forget. We can
teach the simple steps in about a half hour."
CLOG DANCING is basically unknown in the northern midwest, and the
only person most of us have ever seen doing anything close was Jed
Clampett doing improvised shuffles on The Beverly Hillbillies.
The dancer kicks and stamps intricately like a vigorous tap dancer,
occasionally piercing the air with a rebel yell. "The style has its roots in
Irish step dancing and English clog dancing," says Sutton. "The people of
Appalachia have adapted the dance to the off-beat rhythms of clawhammer.
banjo picking."
Back home in the mountains, practically every community has a clog
dancing team. In 1970, a group of students at East Carlina University in
Greenville, North Carolina decided that even though they were in the'
flatlands, they'd also like to have a team.
THE GREEN GRASS Cloggers, as they called themselves, developed an
eclectic style that drew on the varied dancing traditions of the places they
visited.
"We added clogging to western square dancing, and ended up copping
the world championship traditional clogging title in 1971 at Fiddlers Grove,
North Carolina. Some of the old mountain folks frowned on our innovations,
but it's the difference th'at gives us such a broad range of appeal."
And, indeed, Sutton says, the ten traveling Green Grass Cloggers have
been all over the country. "We were at Carnegie Hall not too long ago, and at
the Mariposa Folk Festival in Canada, as well as four years in a row at the
Philadelphia Folk Festival. A tour of China is also in the works." From a
weekend hobby, the team decided two years ago they'd like to expand their
operations to full time. They work consistently at colleges and schools both
teaching and performing, but the troupe of folk entertainers isn't exactly
getting rich on their operations..
"NO ONE SENDS any money home," admits Sutton who travels with his
wife, also a clogger. "We travel on very meager sums, live in our bus, and
eal by cooking communally. We hope to keep ourselves going until we get
certified by the federal government as a non-profit educational organization,
and that could take up to two years. Until then, our hands are tied as far as
seeking funds from the National Endowment for the Arts."
Group members, who average twenty-five years of age, trade off the
responsibility for getting bookings and handling finances in order to
distribute the pressures. "Sure, it's a grind sometimes," says Sutton. "We
carry ten people, even though we only need eight for our formations because
knee injuries crop up. But we love it and are going to keep at it. With all the
moving about and meeting people, I'd say it's the kind of education you
couldn't buy anywhere."
The kind of education that couldn't be bought anywhere in Ann Arbor
wvill be available at the Ark this afternoon. Hopefully, I'll never again find
'myself feeling so citified in the presence of those Appalachian children. It's
time.
Jazz notes

Old 'song and dance'
merges in eurthmy

By KATIE HERZFELD
jEurythmy, a 65-year-old art form
relatively unexplored in the U.S., will
be performed in Ann Arbor today by the
German Eurythmeum Stuttgart Com-
pany. Eurythmy was first developed in
1912 by Rudolph Steiner,. an Austrian
philosopher, scientist, and artist "to
bring new impulses to the existing arts
of movement" by combining primitive
gesture with language.
Steiner was aware that a person's
movements can be categorized by those
gesture which are "consciously guided
by inner intentions or motives, and
those which have become habitual or
even mechanical." He developed
eurythmy from the former two as "a
fine working of the audible and visible,
brought together through visible ex-
pression."
Eurythmy, which is a Greek word
meaning harmonious, meaningful and
beautiful dynamic movement, can be
considered as a form of dance in that it
is a moving art form. However, it is
very different from ballet and modern
dance. Eurythmists wear colorful
costumes which show the "flowing
togetherness" of individual sounds and
images. The garments are made of
light silk with flowing silk veils.
SPEECH EURYTHMY, the art of
visible speech will be performed today
to poems such as "Four Quartets" by T.
S. Eliot, "I'm Nobody" by Emily
Dickinson, and "The Merry Inn" by J.
R. R. Tolkien. Else Klink, the artistic
director of the Eurythmeum Stuttgart,
works, through eurythmy, to form "a
deep connection with sounds so that one
is able to express in gesture that which
the person experiences in sound."
Sounds put together form words which
form sentences which form poems.
Through eurythmic movement, the
sounds and meaning of a word or a
poem are related and thus enhanced.
Eurythmy is taught in the same way
a baby learns a language. An infant's
first sounds are usually "m" or "b" or
"d." Alice Stamme, a coordinator for
the Stuttgart company, explained that
like a child, a eurythmist learns to
make gestures for all the sounds of a
language. For example, the sound 'ee"
as in see is viewed by eurythmists as
expressing the experience of "standing
freely and upright in the world." The
gesture 'ee" is made by stretching the
arms diagonally, with one arm striving
upward and the other downward. In-
stinctively, we say 'ah' and our arms
open wide to express awe or wonder.
Eurythmically, this gesture is moved in

the same way at the sound 'ah' as in
father.
Klink clearly states that "one does
not spell a word in eurythmy. One
creates the quality, the color, the mood,
the force of sounds. .. (so that) the
concept or thought behind each word
becomes visible as well."
ALICE STAMME demonstrated that
when the word waves is expressed
visibly, the artist must show if it is a
huge or small wave, or a field of wheat
waving. When a eurythmist expresses
the phrase "my heart leaps up,"
his/her gesture will leap from below
upwards. It will not, Stamme ex-
plained, "flow upwards slowly or pitter
patter up. Clearly it will leap up."
This evening, the Stuttgart Company
will perform to such works as The
Hebrides by Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
and Symphony No. 8 in B minor by
Franz Schubert. They will be accom-
panied by the Romanian State Or-
chestra.
DURING EURYTHMIC training, a
student learns how to execute a walk:
"One becomes conscious of lifting the
foot away from the earth, carrying it
over the earth, and placing it once
again upon the earth."
Stamme has found that "through
eurythmy, one can awaken the ar-
tist/performer and the audience to the
very intimate connection between
language and movement. Words can
cut, soothe, hurt, and inspire."
Realizing that there is a real creating
force behind language, a eurythmist
can reveal through movement that
which lives behind sound."
The Eurythmeum Stuttgart Com-
pany, in their first American tour, will
give a lecture-demonstration in the
Union Ballroom from noon to 1:00 p.m.
this afternoon. They will perform in
concert at 8 p.m. tonight at the Power
Center. Come see them for yourself!

featuring the University of Michigan
, SYMPHONY BAND-H. Robert Reynolds

* THE FRIARS


Tickets are $5, $4, and $2 and can be purchased at the Hill
Auditorium Box Office Monday, Nov. 6-Friday, Nov. 10, 9 AM to
4 PM,'and Saturday, Nov. 11, 9 AM until concert time.




Explosive avant-garde pianist Cecil
Taylor and his group, who will be per-
Yorming Friday evening at the Power
Center, will be in residence at the
University today through Friday. The
group will be giving a series of lecture-
demonstrations Wednesday and Thur-
sday.
Co-sponsored by Eclipse Jazz and the
School of Music, the schedule of related
events for the next two days, all held at
the School of Music, goes as follows:
" Wed., 2:30 p.m. - Violinist Ramsey
Amin will speak on "The Simplicity of
the Tender Warriors - A Workshop on
the ethics of making music," in room
2043.
+ Thurs., 3:30 p.m. - Drummer Ken
Tyler talks on "The History of Jn-
novative Styles in Black American
Music: a) Reflexology b) Science of the
Feet," in room 2038.
* Thurs.,7:00 p.m. - Alto sax player
\ I

Jimmy Lyons will speak, and Cecil
Taylor will give a lecture-demon-
stration entitled "Seven."


k

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