Weekend

This weekend was largely domestic. Other Kenjari and I put together the new bed we got from epilimnion. It's really nice, but for some reason we are both having a little trouble adjusting to it. It's in the exact same place in our bedroom as our old futon was, but it's more than a foot higher off the floor. I wouldn't have thought one simple change would make that much of a difference. I'm a little sleepy today as a result. We also did a ton of laundry. I feel like we must have washed every garment we own, even though I know this is not the case. Now everything I need for my upcoming trip to Kansas City is clean.
On a less happy note, I found out today that one of the statisticians in our department was diagnosed with non-hodgkins lymphoma. And last week I got the news that one of the stat programmers has liver cancer. These aren't people I work with closely, but I do see them regularly. Crap.

Warsaw Village Band

On Sunday I saw the Warsaw Village Band play at the Museum of Fine Arts. They kicked ass! They were amazing! Not only do they play extremely well, but they are obviously very involved in the music. The Warsaw Village Band plays traditional Polish music, some of it very old, almost forgotten.
The members of the band, in addition to being great musicians, also engage in some serious ethnomuicological activities. They travel around Poland to find and learn songs as well as well as to get instruction in traditional performance techniques. In fact, at the concert, they prefaced one of the songs with a field recording of an elderly man singing the song. The band members are also very interested in preserving this music, so it will not be lost. One of the instruments they use, an archaic fiddle dating from the 16th century, they had to have reconstructed from paintings and drawings because there were none extant. Then they learned to play it from written descriptions in the primary sources. For me, knowing this makes the musical experience even better. I have a great fascination with and respect for ethnomusicology, and to see it combined with such good performance in this way is really wonderful.
They make the music so immediate, so present. Above all, it's exciting and visceral. This is not the kind of cheesy, schlocky, commericalized, Dick Pilar and his orchestra "polka music" that passes for Polish music where I grew up, this is the real thing. It's got life and passion, almost a fierceness. It's very compelling.
And damn, can they play. In the concert, they added some extended solo sections to a couple of the songs I was already familiar with from listening to their CD. The hammered dulcimer solo was incredible, fast as lightning yet haunting and mysterious at the same time.