Slide & Steel Guitars at Centrum

Leo Kottke's Yes and No

Yes

Velcro, doubt, Ruth Roman, soybeans, crabgrass, Haynes manuals, Crayola silver, morphine, thermocline, blimps, laissez-faire, mahogany, wicker, Java trench, radar, fifties Gibsons, small blocks, teachers, Brompton's mixture, Velveeta, windmills, thumbs, verbs, punctuation, metaphor, divergence, synchronicity, coincidence, rain, PFAW, cumuli, titanium, the Empire State Building, Alvin, largo, chemosynthesis, beans, crop rotation, echoes, fish, deuce coupes, the Panama Canal, paint, moonshine, cotton, limnology, jiu-jitsu, craps, open windows, silence, glass eyes, Grant's tomb, GPS, frontal lobes, filtrums, opisthenars, palms, sleep, coelcanths, the Raid of the Terribore, corn.

No

Leaf blowers, de-regulation, sushi, spitting, snowmobiles, firecrackers, "community," black ice, brussels sprouts, public address systems, segregated use zoning, the Drudge report, CNN, sealed buildings, sperm banks, tags, room deodorant, Uzis, PCP, PCBs, high school, Monsanto, charter schools, lead, pulp, kumquats, binder, filler, Glade, teaching assistants, stun guns, Christmas records, mosquitoes, super delegates, billboards, talk radio, dog grooming, HMOs, boot scootin', diesel combustion, processed crossovers, cheeseburgers, cattle, sitcoms, hog lagoons, greeting cards, Mr. McPheeley, content labeling, soft money, personal contributions, corporate contributions, billboard lobby, speaking in tongues, Three Stooges, crack, hair blowers, 16-bits, entrepreneurs, super tankers, the NFL, Fox, diet plans, infomercials, advertorials, neologisms, adverbs, like, Valium, crank, spittoons, flower gardens, black holes, blue moons, Nostrodamus, belts, aspartame, Good Morning America, Demerol, styrofoam, Xanax, lapel ribbons, Hamburger Helper, possums, Trent Lott.

Friday, October 5, at 7:30 pm, American guitar virtuoso Leo Kottke gives a special performance at Fort Worden's McCurdy Pavilion. Tickets are available by calling Centrum at 360.385.3102, x117 as well as online at our secure site. 

Mike Marshall to Lead Special Fall Choro Workshop

Mike Marshall, one of the world's most accomplished and versatile acoustic musicians, will lead a Brazilan choro music workshop at Centrum the week of November 8-11. Registration is available by calling Centrum at 360.385.3102, x114 or by registering on our secure online site.

“The Brazilian musical style of choro represents the coming together of European melodic and harmonic traditions with African rhythms and sensibilities,” says Marshall, who will be teaching with his band, Choro Famoso (pictured). 

“The way this came together in Brazil is particularly exciting," he says. "There was something about the Portuguese and Italian influence that gave a strong romantic feeling to the resulting melodies, giving choro a swinging groove that is so Brazilian underpinning everything.” 

Choro, which emerged in Brazil in the middle of the nineteenth century, is a cousin of jazz with sense of yearning often described as a “sweet lament,” says ethnomusicologist and clarinet player Andy Connell, adding that many ethnomusicologists believe that the name of the music comes from the Portuguese verb chorar—that is, to weep or to cry. 

Beneath the sparkling veneer of choro—the parades, floats, and the fluidly ecstatic sound of the music  itself—lies the darker history of colonized Brazil, Connell says.

“There is a wonderful bittersweet quality about it,” he says. “It often seems bright and happy on the surface. But if you dig, deeper you find a kind of sadness, a longing that the Brazilians call saudade.”

Saudade is a Portuguese word for a feeling of longing for something which is gone, but might return. It often carries the knowledge that object of longing might never return. This sense of longing, combined with the Brazilian slave trade that forced Africans into labor for the coffee and brazilwood trades, gave choro music its lament.

The “bright and happy” are elements of choro as well, Connell says. By the late nineteenth century, the music was dazzling Brazilian nightlife. Rio de Janeiro burst with choro musicians. The musical arena was uniquely tolerant of the mixing of classes, he says. Choro ensembles were made up of slave musicians playing primarily guitar, flute, and the cavaquinho, a small string instrument.

Between the eighteen-seventies and the nineteen-twenties (when North American jazz greats like Louis Armstrong met and played with with choro musicians), makeshift choro bands, paid in food and drink, worked the all-night party circuits.

The composers were equally diverse. Chiquinha Gonzaga flouted convention, becoming Brazil’s first female composer. Her operettas and choros, such as “Só no Choro” “Corta-Jaca,” and “Forrobodó” are an essential part of the choro repertoire.

And choro continues to develop and change, Connell says. “Choro musicians have responded to music they heard coming from the U.S., coming from Europe, or wherever,” he says. “The music’s not the same now as it was thirty years ago, let alone one hundred years.”

“My god, this is the sound” Mike Marshall said, when he first heard choro in its element. “I knew about samba and bossa nova, but this genre is just mind-blowing.” 

Leo Kottke in Concert at Fort Worden!

[Leo Kottke onstage playing "Rings"] 

Leo Kottke, who has been referred to as "quite possibly the greatest guitarist on earth," will give a special performance at McCurdy Pavilion on October 5, at 7:30 pm. Listen to Kottke's classic hard-driving tune "Vaseline Machine Gun" here.

"Once you fall prey to Kottke's rollicking groove, it's hard to deny its allure, year after year," writes critic Josef Woodward. "He doesn't sweat the small stuff. It's all about an energy force, captured in well-honed musical terms."

Kottke's unique sytle of music draws on blues, jazz, and folk music influences. Growing up in Muskogee, Oklahoma, Kottke played trombone and violin before moving to the guitar. A mishap with a firecracker permanently damaged his hearing in one ear, a condition that would be exacerbated during firing practice during his service in the Navy.

After receiving his discharge, Kottke attended St. Cloud State University in central Minnesota where he was known for skipping class and instead going to the auditorium and playing his guitar for hours on end!

He calls his guitar playing "fussin'" with the guitar. And sometimes during performances, his mind floats off the stage, he says. "It just plain leaves," he says. "Gone until the night's over. There's no room for me. Sometimes when I come back I don't have a clue where I've been, I mean, while I was playing. Where I go when I'm gone is another story. I'm not there, either."

Kottke has collaborated on his records with his mentor John Fahey, as well as with Chet Atkins, Lyle Lovett, Margo Timmins, and Rickie Lee Jones. He is also a frequent guest on A Prairie Home Companion. For Tickets to the October 5 show, call Centrum toll-free at 800.733.3608 or 360.385.3102, x117 or visit our secure online Acteva site.