The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com Arts Wednesday, March 15, 2017 — 5A ‘Cries From Syria’ gives crisis needed humanity New HBO documentary a laudably sobering look at Syria’s plight You’ve seen the pictures. Two of them, specifically. You’ve seen the image of three-year-old Alan Kurdi, face down, dead, on the shores of a Turkish beach, lifeless in a bright red shirt and blue shorts. You’ve also seen five- year-old Omran Daqneesh, painted grey in rubble and caked with blood against the stark orange backdrop of his chair. It’s quite startling, then, when these images begin to move — when the waves keep crashing into and passing over Kurdi’s body, when Daqneesh absent-mindedly picks at the blood on his face and examines his arms and feet. “Cries From Syria,” Evgeny Afineevsky’s (“Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom”) new HBO documentary about the ongoing Syrian Civil War, is bookended by the footage from these two viral moments. It’s fitting. The youth — and, by extension, Syria’s increasingly uncertain future — are the focal point of Afineevsky’s unsparing film, the prism through which he frames each chapter and political development. Children, the movie argues, are the ones who have lost the most in this abhorrent humanitarian crisis (one of the world’s largest and most urgent), and it’s they who stand to gain the most if peace is to be achieved. In the documentary’s most disturbing scene, the aftermath of the sarin gas attack in Ghouta is laid bare for the audience to witness: Teenagers, toddlers, infants choking and unable to breathe, piles of convulsing bodies strewn about a chaotic hospital floor, children whose pupils have rolled back into their heads as their mouths foam viciously. It’s unwatchable, horrific, utterly depressing — and, at the risk of sounding too cliché, morally necessary. Indeed, “Cries From Syria” is, at its most basic level, a profoundly graphic visual document of the atrocities of war. It is not a political film, insofar as its producers do not posit a critique of the Syrian opposition’s treatment of religious minorities or suggest the refugee crisis as an indirect result of American foreign policy. The movie is obviously positioned on the side of the Syrian Free Army, but its point of view is purely ground-level; the only voices heard in interviews are Syrian activists, refugees and defected army members. Outside of a particularly scathing segment critical of Putin and Russian airstrikes, the film doesn’t aim to persuade viewers on one political ideology over the other. Rather, “Cries From Syria” subjects its audience to two hours of relentless carnage and bloodshed, focusing on the war as, objectively, a sickening global crisis. It sounds brutal to watch — and it is — but as the film makes clear, there is no other option. You have the luxury to gripe about having to endure two hours of misery on your TV screen — imagine that as your everyday, lived-in reality. In fact, what’s most remarkable about Afineevsky’s documentary is that, well, it’s not really his. The footage is almost entirely amateur video from activists and citizen journalists as the events took place, and consequently, the film doesn’t pretend to be concerned with artful camera angles or an overproduced score. Save for what one assumes was a grievously difficult editing assignment, the documentarians recede into the background, silent, instead letting the cruelty of war and those who suffered — and still suffer — speak for themselves. And as the film is structured chronologically, the final chapter ends, elegantly, with an honest look at the refugee crisis in our current political context. Each chapter, from Al-Assad’s appalling cruelty in Ghouta to ISIS’ barbaric takeover of Raqqah, has constituted a broad, forceful argument to bolster this declaration: A piercing portrait of families stranded, separated, displaced and utterly, completely abandoned. There are no easy answers, but it’s clear compassion is the only way forward. Yet as thousands of women and children are rejected, rounded up, or forced on to the streets by supposedly developed countries, we hear testimonials from a number of young orphans. Their families ripped apart, these children have no other outlet with which to air their titular cries. It is sobering, to say the least, to confront your own inaction. Once you remove political inclinations and theorizing from the equation, you are left with nothing but a stark portrait of people less fortunate than you, and for whom you have done so shamefully little to help. What Syrian children, what Syrian women, what Syrian men, what all victims of the Syrian Civil war have endured is, for the most part, a concept in the abstract for many of us, a reality so far removed from our own that to even consider the possibility of a government using chemical weapons on its own citizens is to entertain the ludicrous. When the dust settles, then, when the picture is clearer and the gasbag rhetoric deflated: We will be remembered for a systematic dehumanization of a people who have done nothing but suffer; we will celebrate whatever supposed progress the world makes in the coming years, and it will be irrevocably tainted by the unequivocal shame of Executive Order 13769; we will confront, without pretense, our refusal, both collective and individual, to fight for children who could be our own but, unfortunately, whose names sound too different and whose prayer rugs look too Middle Eastern; we will be forced to reckon with the profound idiocy of categorizing refugees as the terrorists they so desperately seek shelter from; we will, eventually and much, much too late, come to terms with the sadistic moral calculus our leaders feel the need to compute to determine who is worthy of safety and who is deemed a threat to this ethically bankrupt nation. The children of Syria have suffered, and we have ignored them; the cries have fallen on deaf ears, and indifferent hearts. HBO NABEEL CHOLLAMPAT Senior Arts Editor Snarky Puppy to take on Hill Eclectic, funk-pop, jazz quasi-collective Snarky Puppy is about to inject some soul into Ann Arbor. The band itself was formed in the college town of Denton, Texas while members were attending the University of North Texas. “I was writing music that sat somewhere between jazz, pop, and God- knows-what, and asked 9 of my friends to play it with me every week,” wrote Michael League, bassist and bandleader for Snarky Puppy, in an email interview. “Things really just snowballed from there.” Now based in Brooklyn, the group has evolved to grace the international landscape with its innovative sound. “I find inspiration in many, many different musical traditions from around the world,” League wrote. “Each one teaches me something different. Piazzolla tells me to wear the emotion on my sleeve. Sufjan Stevens tells me never to show it. Stravinsky tells me to explore the entire universe of harmony. Ali Farke Touré tells me that two chords is all you need (if that). The whole universe of music is constantly offering you food if you’re hungry for it.” With strands of everything, nothing and yet-to-be- discovered melodies, Snarky Puppy rests in profound instances of utter originality, separating them from other contemporary instrumental groups. The band is big (both literally and figuratively), consisting of instrumentalists Michael League (bandleader, composer, bass), Bill Laurance (keyboards), Justin Stanton (trumpet, keyboards), Shaun Martin (keyboards), Cory Henry (keyboards), Bob Lanzetti (guitar), Mark Lettieri (guitar), Chris McQueen (guitar), Mike Maher (trumpet), Jay Jennings (trumpet), Chris Bullock (tenor saxophone, flute, clarinet), Bob Reynolds (saxophone), Nate Werth (percussion), Marcelo Woloski (percussion/ drums), Keita Ogawa (percussion/ drums), Robert “Sput” Searight (drums), Larnell Lewis (drums) and Jason “JT” Thomas (drums). An eccentric force of sound, Snarky Puppy recently won their third Grammy in February, taking home “Best Contemporary Instrumental Album” for their 11th record, Culcha Vulcha. Their music has no concrete destination, yet it hits every dot on the map. Spontaneous, carefully practiced, huge and miniscule all at once, their sound is one like no other. “We never expect to win awards because we were unknown for so long. Although it doesn’t make you a better band, it creates new possibilities creatively. People trust and value you more, so the crazy ideas that we’ve always had in our heads can actually become reality. That’s what I’m most grateful for,” League wrote. Propelled by their deserved recognition, the group isn’t afraid to take chances. They use their live performances as a time to delve into what makes their music so invigoratingly distinctive. “One of my favorite things about Snarky Puppy is the way in which we improvise as a group,” League wrote. “The same song can be almost unrecognizably different from night to night based on a single thing that a single player contributes in a single moment. Everyone’s ears are open, receptive to the subtleties floating around the stage from each individual player, but without disrespecting the essential content of the composition itself. This allows us to consistently deliver the emotional content of the songs each night while allowing the music to grow and breathe, creating a unique musical experience each night (for better or worse!).” League’s personal favorite songs to perform live are, “the ones that have the strongest melodies,” he wrote. “‘Shofukan,’ ‘Thing of Gold,’ ‘Sleeper,’ ‘Flood’–– tunes like that. I feel that a good melody never gets old.” Deeply passionate about their work, the group has an undeniably genuine nature. They understand their roots and challenge themselves out of a pure love for what they do. “The band started much more acoustic, much jazzier. We were white college students from the suburbs who had grown up in garage rock bands and got swept away by jazz,” League wrote. “I think this is evident in our first few albums. But when we started playing on the predominantly black gospel/R&B scene in Dallas (and when people like Bernard Wright, Robert ‘Sput’ Searight, Shaun Martin and Bobby Sparks joined the band), the sound of the band changed dramatically. It got funkier. We started focusing more on groove and melody rather than complex harmony. But I think the most important change was that we became more communicative, and consequently, more accessible to audiences.” Fearlessly exploring the limitlessness of their own abilities, Snarky Puppy is set to share their passion with Ann Arbor tomorrow, March 16, at Hill Auditorium. FILM REVIEW “Cries From Syria” Documentary HBO INTERESTED IN WRITING FOR ARTS? Email arts@michigdandaily.com for an application. GROUNDUP MUSIC ARYA NAIDU For the Daily COMMUNITY CULTURE PREVIEW UMS presents “Snarky Puppy” Hill Auditorium Thursday March 16 @ 7:30 PM $12 - $20 Students, $30 - $50 Adults SINGLE REVIEW Frank Ocean has made it. If you didn’t believe that after Channel Orange, you do now after Blonde took over the world, sound-track- ing that last hour of every party you’ve been to in the last seven months. He’s created a niche that few knew we needed, a mellow, brooding croon that fits better on midnight drives than the dance- floor. Ocean has become a pop titan with only one true radio hit, now bigger than most straight- edge pop artists. He is the new commercial. You can recognize this on “Cha- nel,” his first solo single since Blonde. The track is immediately recognizable as Ocean’s, the pen- sive piano coupled with a mov- ing, rhythmic syncopation that he mastered so well on Channel Orange. Though he left that pair- ing behind a bit on Blonde in favor of more guitar and synth, it still sat beneath the surface of each of those tracks, and “Chanel” offers the perfect bridge to easily under- stand how Orange and Blonde are two sides of the same coin. It’s also one of his most assured vers- es in a while, more reminiscent of his verse on Earl Sweatshirt’s “Sunday” — “I mean he called me a faggot / I was just calling his bluff / I mean how anal am I gon’ be when I’m aiming my gun” — than most of the poetic muses on Blonde, which ruminated on love and loss. On “Chanel” he dives into the theme of duality that he devel- oped on Blonde, asserting that he “sees both sides like Chanel,” a reference to the two-sided Cha- nel logo. He paints a beautifully jagged and seemingly contradic- tory portrait of images that never stop to reassess, only to march on. Many have made the over- simplified connection that this refers specifically to bisexuality, even though Ocean has publicly shirked that term. That ignores the dynamism that Ocean has long discussed, the power of ambiguity. He has always refused to be placed into a category. “Chanel” is no different, and like all of his tracks, exists on a plane of its own. It, like Ocean himself, resists easy classification, clear only in the power to mesmerize — the power of perfection. - MATT GALLATIN “Chanel” Frank Ocean Blonded BLONDED