I am delighted to be part of this (free!) performance tonight at Voxman Music Building in the Recital Hall beginning at 7:30 pm.
More details from John Rapson:
“Hi friends,
I am writing to invite you to a Faculty Showcase this Tuesday at the School of Music. I am proud of the wonderful collaboration that has produced this “jazz tone poem” (a story told with music) and am truly excited to share both the story and this unusual music with you. Please read below to get a semblance of the various threads we are pulling together.
(We are expecting a good sized crowd, so please come early.)
“Hot Tamale Louie” or “Two Buckets and a Yoke”
*** The Story of Zafir Khan ***
Tuesday November 1, 2016
7:30p – Voxman School of Music Recital Hall
100% free and open to the public
Created and performed by
John Rapson
with
Special guest artist:
Dave Moore voice, slide guitar, accordion, harmonica
Iowa City’s legendary singer/songwriter
Introducing singer/songwriter:
Daniel Gaglione voice, North African mandole
Recent Iowa City immigrant from France
and UI alumni:
Ryan Smith, alto and soprano saxophones, flute, clarinet
Tara McGovern, fiddle
Dan Padley, guitars
Blake Shaw, doublebass
Justin LeDuc, drums
Cameo monologues by UI faculty member Paul Kalina
A genre-bending tale with lilting Western ballads, gentle Mexican waltzes, folk songs and melodies from the East, evocative tone poems and raucous ragtime melded together by
JAZZ; Based on an article by Kathryn Schulz in the June 6/13, 2016 issue of The New Yorker: American Chronicles: Citizen Khan and used with permission.
a story about LEAVING HOME
of TRAVEL and wandering the WEST
a COMING-OF-AGE story
a story of FORTUNES won and lost
of IMMIGRANTS and CITIZENSHIP
of GENEROSITY and HATE
a story of LOVE late in life
and a dastardly MURDER
with cowboys and Indians, landowners and congressmen,
society ladies and ladies of the night, school children and old folks
Afghanís, Mexicans, Chinese, Czechs and Poles,
and special appearances by the famous
Buffalo Bill Cody and Medicine Joe Crow
You will laugh, you will cry, you will fret, you will sigh
Synopsis:
An Afghani child of twelve leaves his home near the Khyber Pass, wandering India for years before boarding a boat in Bombay and landing in Seattle. After exploring the west, he settles in Sheridan, Wyoming to take over a business selling tamales. He works 80 hours a week and becomes famous for his food, eventually learning how to invest in the stock market. As he gains and loses fortunes, he nonetheless lives frugally choosing to spend his money in acts of kindness and generosity. He gains citizenship in 1925, has it revoked by U.S. xenophobic laws and regains it again thirty years later. He becomes a legend, both back home in the borderland between Afghanistan and Pakistan and in Wyoming. He has an arranged marriage late in life and sires six children before abruptly and tragically being murdered in his 80s. His children and their offspring have recently founded a mosque in Gillette, Wyoming that has drawn the ire of some eastern Wyoming residents and received national attention in the press.”
You can read the article “Citizen Khan” by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Kathryn Schulz (upon which this tone poem is based) here.
