umichsmtd
By Bertolt Brecht, translated by Ralph Manheim
Directed by Malcolm Tulip
Department of Theatre & Drama
Oct. 5 & 12 at 7:30 PM Oct. 6, 7, 13, & 14 at 8 PM
Oct. 8 & 15 at 2 PM Arthur Miller Theatre
League Ticket Office 734-764-2538 tickets.smtd.umich.edu
The RC congratulates its award-
winning faculty and students!
Find our schedule of events at
lsa.umich.edu/rc/alum-
ni-friends/the-residential-col-
lege-50th-anniversary-celebration
Heather Thompson (2017) and
David Turnley (1990), winners
of the Pulitzer Prize
Laura Kasischke, long-listed for
the National Book Award (2017)
32 students have recently won
the prestigious UM Hopwood
Awards!
Book by Jeremy Desmon
Additional songs by Jeff Thomson & Jeremy Desmon
Arrangements and Orchestrations by Jesse Vargas
Oct. 12 & 19 at 7:30PM • Oct. 13, 14, 20 & 21 at 8 PM
Oct. 15 & 22 at 2 PM • Lydia Mendelssohn
Theatre
Reserved seating $30 & $24 • Students $12 w/ID
League Ticket Office • tickets.smtd.umich.edu
Department of Musical Theatre 2017-2018 Season
A new jukebox musical about love, rock ‘n’ roll,
and second chances featuring pop hits
from the 80s to today
6B — Thursday, October 12, 2017
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
MUSIC PROFILE
COURTESY OF THE LOTUS FESTIVAL
Lotus Festival shows what
we gain from world music
International musicians and artists gathered in Bloomington for
three days to share in individual culture and personal performance
In an ideal world, people
would
see
something
“like
nothing
they’ve
ever
seen
before” on a regular basis. Some
lucky people do. Sometimes
the phenomenon is scheduled;
sometimes
it’s
completely
spontaneous.
In Bloomington, Ind., that
awe is guaranteed at least once
every year, one weekend in
September.
This
experience
is
the
Lotus World Music & Arts
Festival: a yearly tradition in
Bloomington that brings in
artists from all over the world
and of all different genres
for a spectacular weekend-
long experience. Lotus is well
known for its variety. One of
the popular acts this year was
Making Movies, an Afro-Latin
band that mixes the persistent,
energetic
beat
of
alt-rock
with the rhythm of zapateado
huasteco, a traditional dance
form from Mexico. Performing
at the same time as Making
Movies
was
the Raya Brass
Band,
which
specializes in —
according to the
festival schedule
— “Balkan brass
with
an
urban
edge.”
Earlier
in
the
evening
was
Lo’Jo
(“genre-bending
French-North
African-Gypsy mix”), and listed
later on the program was Trio
da Kali (“soulful Malian Mandé
griot traditions”).
Lotus was established in
1994, which makes it one of the
oldest world music festivals
in the country. Every year,
more
than
12,000
people
congregate
in
Bloomington,
where the festival is set up
in the streets downtown. It’s
situated
primarily
around
the
courthouse
square:
the
intersections
of
Kirkwood,
Walnut, College and 6th Street,
blocking in the city courthouse.
This square is the center of
downtown and the heart of
Bloomington,
which
is
the
college town home to Indiana
University.
“I was excited to perform
for a new audience that never
saw
me
before,”
Canadian-
Cuban singer-songwriter Alex
Cuba said of Lotus in an email
interview. “I look forward to
[lifting] people’s spirits up ...
and [making] them connect
with
beauty
and
happiness
through the positive vibes of my
songs.”
Cuba played Friday evening
in
First
United
Methodist
Church, one of seven venues set
up throughout downtown. All
told, there were three churches,
one historic theater, one club
and two giant tents. The tents
were set up on blocked-off
streets, and had food, soda and
locally brewed beer sold at their
entrances.
“As a Cuban musician, it
is possible that some of the
Caribbean flavors are in my
music,” Cuba said. “I don’t
think of genres or styles when I
do music. I just write the songs
in whatever style they come
to me and that’s how I record
them. Music for me is above
everything
else
freedom
of
expression.”
This was a sentiment that
nearly everyone at Lotus seemed
to share. The artists differed
widely not only in terms of
origin and genre, but also the
energy level of their music.
Some of the performances were
high-energy and fast-paced, and
some were slower and gentler,
but equally invested with depth
and emotion. This investment
was
the
common
thread
between them — the profound
care for the music and the
passion of wanting to share it.
One band further on the
high-energy
side
was
De
Temps Antan, a
Canadian group
that
specializes
in
traditional
Québécois folk.
“Fiddle music
in
Quebec
is
really
lively
music,
full
of
joie
de
vivre,”
said vocalist and
fiddle
player
André
Brunet.
“We
sing
call-and-response
songs, so it’s a lot of energy
on stage, especially with the
tapping we’re doing with our
feet.”
The
energy
that
Brunet
and his two bandmates, Éric
Beaudry and Pierre-Luc Dupuis,
bring to the stage is nothing new
to them. Growing up in Quebec,
the three were long exposed
to the roots of
this
“kitchen
music,”
which
Brunet describes
as “the sound of
the kitchen, you
know, the spirit of
everyone.”
“The
traditional music
was
there,
so
anytime
of
the
year was a time to
sing a song, to tap
the feet, to take
out the fiddle, the
guitar, and sing,”
Brunet said. “So
we grew up there
with the music
and with the bands. I want to
say the music is still a big part
of us being here... It’s really a
kitchen party where everyone
is dancing and being part of
the same big party. So this is
what we create live on stage
with different arrangements of
traditional music.”
And he was right: everyone
was
dancing.
This
was
a
commonality
that
could
be
traced
through
the
entire
festival, but most particularly
with the bands like De Temps
Antan
that
played
in
the
tents on the streets around
the courthouse square. The
audiences were made up of
people of all ages, from children
with their parents to high
school and college students to
older adults, and all of them
LAURA DZUBAY
Daily Arts Writer
were smiling and dancing
to the music. They weren’t
dancing in the same way, but
that hardly even mattered —
to look at them, they were all
dancing.
“Everywhere we’ve been on
the planet, everyone has the
same reaction,” Brunet said.
“Because we sing in French,
so they’re like, ‘Okay, what
is that language? It’s French,
but it’s not from France, it’s
not from Louisiana — oh, it’s
from Quebec, okay.’ After a
while, they understand that
... all of the words that we
say go with the rhythm of the
music.”
This
could
have
been
some sort of an illusion, but
at Lotus, it really did come
across like everybody was
on the same page. During
the
half-hour-long
breaks
between
shows,
people
got food and drinks, they
checked out the arts tables set
up on 6th Street and stopped
to
catch
the
enlivened
performances
of
Indiana
University’s
Breakdance
Club. Then they filed back
into
the
tents,
churches
and other venues to see the
artists, and even if they had
never heard of or seen those
artists before, they were still
perfectly excited to be there
and ready to dance.
“It’s really fun when we
see those reactions,” Brunet
said. “Some people would
say to us, ‘Wow, I just forgot
all
my
problems
for
an
hour and a half during your
show!’ So it makes us really
happy, because it’s exactly
the purpose of our music in
Quebec — well, traditional
music from every country
on the planet. The main idea
is to get everyone involved
and play all together, and
forget
about
what’s going on
and just have
a
nice
hour
or two of fun.
So
it’s
really
nice to see the
differences, but
it’s more or less
the same thing
from place to
place.”
Lotus
is
a
great
yearly
experience for
Bloomington,
offering
a
weekend
of
fun
and
togetherness
for the students and faculty of
IU and for the rest of the city.
However, it’s also a communal
experience within a broader,
international context. It’s the
act of seeing people connect
so genuinely to music that
comes from so far away
from them, whether that’s
Chilean folk fusion, Tuvan
throat-singing
or
Chinese
guzheng. It’s like nothing
you’ve ever seen before, and
arguably nothing that you
could encounter anywhere
else. It’s an experience that
makes the word “community”
momentarily mean something
bigger,
something
that
goes beyond the city itself:
something all-encompassing
and belonging to nothing
smaller than the world.
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“Music for me is
above everything
else freedom of
expression”
It’s like nothing
you’ve ever
seen before,
and arguably
nothing that you
could encounter
anywhere else