It was supposed to be a stopgap, a way to mark time between real records — a soundtrack project released ten months too late to support the movie (in this case, Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ), its 22 wordless tracks of largely nonwestern rhythms and scales had zero chance for radio play. As a follow-up to the commercial juggernaut that was So, it was a disappointment. But in the arc of Peter Gabriel’s career, Passion is a high point and a milestone.
Gabriel’s previous soundtrack effort, Birdy, was more of a remix record, consisting mostly of reworkings of previously-released material. Passion, though, was all-new in a number of ways. It marked Gabriel’s first full-on foray into world music. Where African and Brazilian rhythms had underpinned much of his previous solo work, he had previously combined them with classic pop structures. Passion announces its break from this approach with the opening track, “The Feeling Begins.” An Armenian doudouk, playing a traditional lament, is answered by L. Shankar’s Indian violin; the conversation simmers until it explodes in a flurry of North African rhythms, punctuated by roaring rock guitar.
Too much so-called “world music” cops only the exotic surfaces, forcing them into tried-and-true pop contexts: Scottish fiddles with drum machines, Senegalese vocals with drum machines , Gypsy guitars with drum machines … you get the idea. But by building their compositions from the ground up with elements from different traditions, Gabriel and his collaborators create something entirely new — a world music that is truly global, partaking of many musics but ultimately tied to no single source. Passion paved the way for later experiments in the same vein by hybrid artists like Afro Celt Sound System and the late Hector Zazou. (more…)
In the Seventies, New York’s music scene was largely downtown in the Village area. Aside from all the traditional West Village clubs like the Village Vanguard, the Village Gate, Gerde’s Folk City and the Bitter End, two of the mainstays were the Bottom Line and Max’s Kansas City. Allan Pepper and Stanley Snadowsky opened the Bottom Line in 1974, and it quickly became an adjunct to the New York record business – the premier showcase spot for both new and veteran acts. The owners of the club worked closely with the major labels, and if you worked for one of these labels, you could walk into the Bottom Line on any given night, and you’d know enough record executives there to literally work the room for 30 minutes before showtime, meeting and greeting both your competition and your colleagues.
In 1998, Terrence McNally’s play “Corpus Christi” was first performed in New York City. It wasn’t hard to predict that portraying Jesus as a promiscuous homosexual living in Corpus Christi, Texas would inspire vehement condemnation from religious groups – and it most certainly did, as “Christians” spewed death threats against the members of the Manhattan Theater Group that first produced the play, and when the play opened in London in 1999 a British Muslim group issued a fatwa calling for the assassination of the playwright.
On Sunday mornings, I’d drag my ass out of bed and wander over to the cafeteria to replenish my fluids and put some food in my stomach. After that, maybe I’d take in the Browns game or listen to music on the headphones. This was the routine in spring semester, 1989 — even though the spring was a far-off, distant thought as winter dragged its feet on its way out. My favorite Sundays during my freshman year of college were the ones in which my friend Dan and I would venture into downtown Bowling Green to idle away the remains of the weekend. It wasn’t a long walk, but the inclement weather of northwest Ohio made these trips seem like they lasted for hours. Dressed sloppily in sweatpants or jeans so grungy they practically did the walking for us, hair askew and crammed under a baseball cap, and bundled in our down coats, we’d trek off campus.
Gabriel, crushed, came back two days later and said, “You want a single? Suck on this, fuckers. ‘You know your culture from your trash / You know your plastic from your cash.’ Boom boom BAP, ba-boom boom BAP!” The eyeballs of every exec in the room morphed into dollar signs. Some of them even howled like dogs.