Patti Smith, Mariachi Flor de Toloache at LC Out of Doors

Patti Smith and band
rocked the 2016 Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival.
photo ©2016, Deborah Feller

A perfect evening for Lincoln Center Out of Doors. Rain-free skies. July heat and humidity simmering at a comfortably mellow pitch. A pleasant crowd. Even the festival's security detail--with its new entrance gates and bag-checking procedures--kept things moving with cheerful efficiency.

Patti Smith, as I knew she would, had brought us good fortune.

More good luck arrived with Smith's opening act, Mariachi Flor de Toloache, New York's first and only all-women mariachi troupe. (Their eponymous debut album received a 2016 Latin Grammy nomination for Best Ranchero.) They offered original songs, traditional tunes, Nirvana and Led Zeppelin covers and Coltrane's "Afro-Blue," all with superb musicianship and mariachi flavor and warmth--trumpet, guitarrón, vihuela and violin blending peppy rhythms as gorgeously flutey voices ascended.  They took Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies" at a frisky pace, voices now a bit reminiscent of the Andrews Sisters. It was a little offbeat, spine-tingling and irresistible. The audience fell in love.

A taste of Mariachi Flor de Toloache performing on NPR:

Following a surprisingly quick break, Smith--mindful of LC's strict runtime policy--fondly admonishing her audience to not "mill around like a herd of turtles." Then she offered a passage from Just Kids, her beautiful remembrance of life with Robert Mapplethorpe. But her incantations (Ginsberg's "Howl") and rocking out with Lenny Kaye to "Dancing Barefoot" and "Summer Cannibals" brought the turtles rushing to the edge of the stage, phones aloft, as "Ghost Dance" rang into the night.

It was a night for calling up our holy dead--from Mapplethorpe to Ginsberg, yes, but also Amy Winehouse (a tribute to her called "This is The Girl"), Prince (a decidedly sultry "When Doves Cry"), Jim Morrison ("Break It Up") and her beloved late husband Fred "Sonic" Smith ("Because the Night"). If I recall, I might have heard a little George Harrison snaking through "Beneath the Southern Cross."

Aside from the sorry state of our politics--Smith, of course, took a few moments to excoriate Trump and the GOP and insist we use our People Power to do better--Smith very much had death and the passage of time on her mind. She startled me with the choice of "The Last Time" by The Rolling Stones, because she made me hear its refrain as a song of uncertainty about what time remains. It recalled that moody standard from way back in the '30s, you know, that goes, "For all we know, we may never meet again...."

We won't say goodnight/Until the last minute/I'll hold out my hand/And my heart will be in it

For all we know/This may only be a dream/We come and we go/Like the ripples of a stream

My heart clenched a little as I listened to the band lace into The Last Time. Smith was having fun with it but also making me imagine saying goodbye to this extraordinary being whose wit, spirituality and life force has always brought her audiences renewed belief and just the right jolt of energy in the nick of time.

I don't think the sensible and fiery Patti Smith is going anywhere anytime soon, though, and she later told us as much:

"I'm getting old," she roared, as we pumped fists into the air. "And I'm going to get fuckin' older!"

Words to live by.

* * * * *

Lincoln Center Out of Doors runs through August 7. All events are free. For schedule information, click here.

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Inuit singer Tanya Tagaq performs tonight

NATIVE SOUNDS DOWNTOWN
Tanya Tagaq (Inuit)

Tonight: Thursday, August 20 -- 6pm [FREE admission]
National Museum of the American Indian, Pavilion
US Customs House, One Bowling Green, New York City

Tanya Tagaq (Inuit) is a unique performer who has taken her love and respect of the ancient musical tradition of throat singing from her native Nunavut and mixed it with a powerful infusion of contemporary styles. She has collaborated with Bjork, Kronos Quartet, and Mike Patton (Faith No More/Mr. Bungle) and was named winner of the Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards "Best Female Artist" of 2008.

This performance is presented in collaboration with Lincoln Center Out of Doors and Americas Society.

DIRECTIONS [MAP]
The National Museum of the American Indian, George Gustav Heye Center, is located at One Bowling Green adjacent to the northeast corner of Battery Park, New York, New York.

Subway
Eastside IRT: 4 and 5 trains to Bowling Green.
Westside IRT: 1 train to South Ferry.
BMT: R and W trains to Whitehall Street;
M, J and Z trains to Broad Street.

Bus
M1 - South Ferry; M6 M15 - South Ferry.

Outdoors with Midón and Ndegeocello

I went to the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival the other night to catch up with the always-fascinating Meshell Ndegeocello, whose music I hadn't heard in a while. But I ended up falling in substantial admiration--if not total love--with Raul Midón, who opened their sweet, cool evening at Damrosch Park Bandshell.

One of his fervent fans likened Midón--a blind singer-guitarist with Black/Argentinian roots--to the venerable Stevie Wonder. Now when it comes to total love, I am fallen-and-can't-get-up in total love with Stevie, and there's only one of him. When Midón came out and stood at the stage's edge, all alone with his guitar, it seemed as if the bandshell and the open sky above Lincoln Center would swallow up this gentle man.

But then, yeah, Midón started to play and sing, sounding unmistakably like Wonder. He worked similar rhythmic pathways ("Don't Take It That Way") and mellifluous, uplifting material ("Sunshine/I Can Fly," "State of Mind"). Maybe I was hearing a little Marvin Gaye in his often-enchanting voice, and the lilting Sting of early, reggae-flavored Police ("Invisible Chains"). After a while, I realized Midón was more than holding his own with that lone guitar, with his uncanny ability to mimic a trumpet's sounds, his sense of humor and winning rapport with the audience, even his brief taxi to the dark side ("About You," as in,"I never really gave a fuck about you"). He's a delight, and his Web site is here.

For the longest time, I couldn't sort out much of what Ndegeocello was singing--speaking of things getting swallowed up--but I did get mindlessly swept up in the pumping, soupy, trancey, irresistible rock groove that she and her quartet laid down. Expect her new CD and a gig at Highline Ballroom on October 6.

A BIGLovely evening at Lincoln Center

Okay, you dance folks! I know you flocked to Lincoln Center Out of Doors last Thursday to see David Dorfman Dance--and dance those kids (and David) did; they were a tremendous force and incredibly moving in their repeat performance of 2006's underground--but you also got a hefty helping of Toshi Reagon and BIGLovely, a band most of you probably never heard of before, let alone heard. So, welcome to the rest of my world!

I've been a fan of Toshi Reagon, Toshi's mom Bernice Johnson Reagon (and her acclaimed women's acapella group, Sweet Honey in the Rock) and Judith Casselberry (formerly of Casselberry and DuPree) for many years. In fact, I recall with pleasure interviewing Toshi on WBAI, back in the day, when she was just getting notice, and I love everything about these women and their big, generous (BIGLovely) music. Their mellifluous voices and valiant, rocking rhythms got the crowd worked up, and their serious roots in social justice activism dovetailed with Dorfman's project (which is to say it resonated with underground's ultimate affirmation and images of renewal, rather than its ambivalence). All in all, it was a strong program and an unforgettable evening at Damrosch Park, and even the weather blessed it real good.

If you're craving more of Toshi's sound--or want to check it out for the first time-- you can catch the band at Highline Ballroom (431 West 16th Street, Manhattan) on Thursday, September 25. Click here for more information.

Out of Site at Lincoln Center

As I'd already had a very long day, I didn't stay around for Hidden Forests by Elaine Summers Dance, but I enjoyed most of 60's Snapshots, the program of Sixties-referencing dances by Gus Solomons jr (Random Funny Walks), Merián Soto (What is Love?), Yoshiko Chuma (RED CARPET 1967- ) and Summers at Lincoln Center Out of Doors at the South Plaza.

Solomons's male sextet--dressed in slouchy, hooded costumes in colors that made them evoke, in a purely abstract way, the entire produce section at Whole Foods--bounced around in nifty, diverting patterns amid the park trees and walkways to the music of Frank Zappa. The performers were Bryan Campbell, Andrew Griffin, Silas Riener, Saeed Siamak, Sydney Skybetter and Nick Strafaccia--dancing fools, indeed. Kudos to Oana Botez-Ban for the costumes and to Solomons for remembering that Zappa was a mad genius. Why don't more choreographers raid that treasure house of clever, delirious music?

Soto's What is Love? continues her "dances with branches"--deep, slow, meditative explorations. Her company of collaborating dancers--Danielle Kinne, Megan Mazarick, Shavon Norris, Jumatatu Poe and Olive Prince--is now renamed Merián Soto/Performance Practice. The ensemble, dressed in iconic Sixties hippie-wear, performed atop a platform under warm lighting that gave them--and the bare tree branches they carried, tilted and balanced--a poetic, Butoh-like cast. Soto draws sensitive viewers into a peaceful grove of awareness where time stretches into infinity.

Chuma's runway retrospective--danced up and down a long, red mat--seemed too insular and self-referential to connect with the actual site in a specific, meaningful and resonant way.

Lincoln Center Out of Doors continues this weekend with more interesting shows, including two afternoon-long La Casita gatherings--"a beloved little house, a city garden where poets and bards celebrate las palabras, the words"--on Saturday, August 25 and Sunday, August 26. Hey, don't you dare forget to celebrate my birthday on Sunday! And maybe I'll see you on Monday night for the grand finale in Damrosch Park--La India!