Time to Put Away the Jelly Shoes

Hello, here we are at the autumnal equinox!

I’ve been feeling guilty about having made so little progress on the bossa project in the two months since kicking off research with the Autry Museum field trip. I did do one assignment, going to the beach, because Dre told me the feeling of being at the beach is essential to bossa nova. So I dutifully headed to the water with The Routledge Handbook of CoFuturisms and my Brazil beach blanket from Rio.

Reading the book is an interactive experience, and I catch myself talking back to the pages. The collection of perspectives on futurisms of the Global South is provocative in the best of ways and is transforming my outlook on the world. I’m grateful to Professor Grace L. Dillon, a co-editor of the handbook, for introducing me to the book, because it has opened up the next chapter of my life and provided a framework in which to organize the seemingly disparate pieces of my creative practice into a connected whole.

Reading on the beach is starting to fade to a distant memory as we head into fall, and it’s time to put away the jelly shoes and swap my summer blanket for a duvet.

Speaking of swaps, I played a private event recently where the client offered exposure in exchange for a lower artist fee. I knew that exposure would not be a valuable trade for me and declined saying as much, but it got me thinking about negotiations that go sideways. What happens when the two parties involved try to negotiate, but the currency one offers is not of value to the other?

I’ve seen this play out across business and personal relationships. It’s like trying to pay with Hong Kong dollars in the USA. Or a man offering security and status tethered to fixed gender roles to a woman looking for partnership.

On occasion there is malicious intent, like when a music festival organizer offered me a slot in the lineup—on the implied condition that I go on a date with him. In his mind, the booking was a valuable enough trade, but I was like no thanks, definitely not! The interaction inspired this song, “You Are Sorry.”

Most of you probably have not heard the above song before, so I’ll count it as the new song for this month. I know it’s a cop-out (sorry!), but I need to turn my attention to another deadline tonight for a children’s concert I’m giving with music education colleagues at Oberlin later in the fall.

🔊 Do you ever randomly start singing a line from a long-forgotten song and wonder where it’s from? I found myself singing “Estou pensando em você, pensado em nunca mais” and searched the lyric, landing on the name Paulinho Moska. His song was on a mix CD my first Portuguese teacher burned for each student (probably included to showcase conjugations of the verb “pensar”), and it still reminds me of her love for her homeland she so generously shared. I’m not really drawn to this kind of rock in English but I love hearing most anything in Portuguese and have been playing this on loop.