The defining characteristic which has always made music uniquely beautiful

among the arts is its evanescent quality. An arc of notes upon the air, tasted
on the palette of the mind, then gone like wind-blown flowers, but leaving its
trace in memory and desire.
Then we learned to capture the wind, to strain the perfume from the air, our
everpresent playlist a cupboard full of the preserves from last year's
gooseberries. Do we want our art to be pure simulation !n the seventeenth
century if you couldn't take your part in voice or instrument in the music-
making, you were rude, a bumpkin. "ow a person who cannot discuss
American !dol may find himself odd man out in a conversation. !s this a
desirable tra#ectory !t seems we are willing to accept the intrusion of heavily
commodified technology into virtually every aspect of our human interaction.
$%arriage counsellors report new complaints that partners compulsively
check their devices during se&.'
(or hundreds of thousands of years music has been both the medium and
insignia of our social cohesion. "ow it is a force for social disintegration,
each of us pushed into the digital consumer-bubble of our own private )*-
hour playlist. +very digital simulation replaces a human presence, and the
possibility of mutual recognition in the shared ,ift of Art. ,iven the gift of
human embodiment, we passively acccept the cheap copy. All of which is
why ! like to perform in the street, outside of every structure greedily
clamoring to skim the gold off of art by filtering it through a cash register.
! play -amba, an art which starts under the copper sheen of a tropical sky,
in the dust raised by the dancing feet of people who have nothing but can still
raise this #oy above their suffering, and ends, as .ra/il opens like a flower to
the world, through the transformation of a musical alchemy, in an art made of
whispers, spider webs and moonlight. The money men called it .ossa "ova,
which -ambistas despised as a mere marketing term. !n Annapolis, it is worth
roughly ten dollars an hour in the street.
0ne day three years ago ! was playing at the Annapolis 1ity Dock, sitting
ne&t to the Ale& 2aley statue. $!t is regrettable that many Annapolitans !
speak to seem to be unaware of the significance of this statue, which marks
the spot from which hundreds of thousands of human souls were sold into
slavery.'
There are quite a few people there on a beautiful and busy -aturday. 0ff to
one side, toward the back, three women are standing and listening. 0ne is
perhaps 34 and 1aucasian, one is fortyish and 2ispanic, and a beautiful girl
of about 56, who is .lack. This girl is moving gently in a way Americans do
not know how to move, suggesting that her body knows everything there is to
know about samba. -he seems to be restraining an impulse- ! know she
would like to dance, so, over the microphone ! suggest that she step to the
center and show us what -amba really is when it's at home on a Tuesday. -he
is embarrassed and demures, but her companions prevail upon her and she
steps to the center. ! play classic -amba from the 5784's- Ary .arroso's
Aquarela do .rasil and other classics while, for about )4 minutes, with a
posture like a candle flame, she makes her -amba, sweet, shy, composed,
proud and happy. !t is good that ! am not reading this music because ! can
barely see her through my tears. ! am an aging white .ohemian playing Afro-
.ra/ilian music, while this miracle of a beautiful girl, whose ancestors could
have been sold on this very spot, dances through the threshold of her
womanhood, the unduplicatible ,ift of an embodied human moment.