From: owner-shindell-list-digest@smoe.org (shindell-list-digest) To: shindell-list-digest@smoe.org Subject: shindell-list-digest V7 #126 Reply-To: shindell-list@smoe.org Sender: owner-shindell-list-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-shindell-list-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk shindell-list-digest Thursday, May 19 2005 Volume 07 : Number 126 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [RS] Shindell profile in La Nacion ["Gene Frey" ] [RS] Where is everyone? ["Bill Chmelir" ] Re: [RS] Where is everyone? [Rongrittz@aol.com] [RS] Great Waters Music Festival [adam plunkett ] Re: Translation of the La Nacion article [Was: Re: [RS] Shindell profile in La Nacion] [Vanessa Wills Subject: [RS] Shindell profile in La Nacion Hey you guys: I used Babelfish to translate the web page. An excerpt: How got to saturate in these coasts a North American musician in the heat of folk activity? This data, improbable but real, is the result of a cocktail of reasons in which a impenitente spirit search, an almost Eastern delivery to winds of the destiny, a quota of loosening fit and, as he corresponds, a woman. Might lose a little in translation. Gene F. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 08:52:47 -0700 From: "Bill Chmelir" Subject: [RS] Where is everyone? Hey all, I just received post #125 this morning, the first post in probably 2 weeks. So I am still on the list. I thought I had been kicked off for past transgressions. Has spring sprung in the north east and drawn you all outside away from your stereo and computers? To the meat of my post. The Shindell web site looks great! When was it changed? Is there a real time chat section there that everyone has switched to using instead of posting on the list? Have a nice day, BillC ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 14:42:04 -0400 From: Rongrittz@aol.com Subject: Re: [RS] Where is everyone? >> Has spring sprung in the north east and drawn you all outside away from your stereo and computers? << Generally, I have found that traffic on ALL discussion groups have dropped off dramatically from what it used to be. Plus, when an artist doesn't have a brand new release, or isn't in the middle of a tour, it gets even worse. There is a simple way to fix that, though, and that's for people to post and start discussions! RG ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 16:35:06 -0700 (PDT) From: adam plunkett Subject: [RS] Great Waters Music Festival I noticed that Richard will be plaing this festival this July(week after Falcon Ridge, located in New Hampshire). It is a bit on the pricey side but the one time I went it was great. Also there this year is Nanci Grittith, Odetta (if you havent seen her you should!), Chris Smither, Harry Manx, Bill Morrissey, Redbird, and David Jacobs-Strain(you probably havent heard of him but he is really good). I haven't decided if I will go yet as it's the same weekend as the Lowell Folk Festival here in MA which I am a regular at. But I thought I'd pass on the news. Adam, who is off to a free fest this weekend Discover Yahoo! Use Yahoo! to plan a weekend, have fun online and more. Check it out! http://discover.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 01:40:43 -0400 From: Vanessa Wills Subject: Re: Translation of the La Nacion article [Was: Re: [RS] Shindell profile in La Nacion] Oops--one more thing. I meant to go back over the first paragraph of the article proper. (I'd mistranslated "tema" as "theme," whereas in this context it should be "song" or "tune.") And a question to anyone who might know: how many albums does Richard actually sell in Japan?! --V P.S. First one to quip that Richard is or is not "big in Japan" is a rotten egg. :-P The man is a New Yorker, works as a songwriter, and everything is going well. The Boston Globe called him a "master craftsman of songs." The New York Times ranked him among "the best" and compared him to Bruce Springsteen. "He is so literary," they said, "that his ballads would go directly into The New Yorker if they were prose." Like Springsteen, many of his writings describe the other face of the American dream in small, perfect stories. Nevertheless, today the seed of his songs can hide itself in a glimpsed scene in the woods of Palermo or in the gesture of an old woman that walks Florida Street. Because Richard Shindell has been living in Buenos Aires for five years; more precisely, in the neighborhood of Belgrano, where he mingles with his neighbors and where he composes the songs that he later sells in the United States, Germany, or Japan. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 01:34:03 -0400 From: Vanessa Wills Subject: Re: Translation of the La Nacion article [Was: Re: [RS] Shindell profile in La Nacion] On 5/19/05, Vanessa Wills wrote: > > For everyone onlist who doesn't spoke Spanish > SPEAK Spanish. Bleh. --V ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 01:30:27 -0400 From: Vanessa Wills Subject: Translation of the La Nacion article [Was: Re: [RS] Shindell profile in La Nacion] On 5/18/05, Gene Frey wrote: > > I used Babelfish to translate the web page. An excerpt: > Might lose a little in translation. The scary thing, Gene, is that that translation isn't even as far off as one might expect! Most of the article isn't so abstract, though, happily. For everyone onlist who doesn't spoke Spanish, I just finished translating the article from La Nacion. It ain't perfect and it ain't pretty, but if you just wanna know what the hell they wrote, well, there ya go. It's a pretty interesting article, with some things that I didn't know and some things I'd known long ago but had also long ago forgotten. Also just a neat perspective from Richard on what it's like to be living abroad. - --V ---- Richard Shindell: anclao en baires. [Note: I know, it's a bad sign that I can't translate the title. I don't know what "anclao" means (it looks like a word borrowed from some other language), but that "baires" looks like a contraction, a nickname for "Buenos Aires."] a story of love that brought him to Argentina, where he's lived with his family for five years. He lived in a Buddhist monastery, was a street musician in Paris, and studied in a seminary. Today, he says that here he feels at home and returns with relief from his frequent tours abroad. A profile of a celebrated--and until now, hidden in our country--songwriter. - --------------------------- The man is a New Yorker, works as a songwriter, and everything is going well. The Boston Globe called him a "master craftsman of songs." The New York Times ranked him among "the best" and compared him to Bruce Springsteen. "He is so literary," they said, "that his ballads would go directly into The New Yorker if they were prose." Like Springsteen, many of his writings describe the other face of the American dream in small, perfect stories. Nevertheless, today the seed of his themes can hide itself in a glimpsed scene in the woods of Palermo or in the gesture of an old woman that walks Florida street. Because Richard Shindell has been living in Buenos Aires for five years, more preciesely, in the neighborhood of Belgrano, where he mingles with his neighbors and where he composes the songs that he later sells in the United States, Germany, or Japan. How did a North American folk singer in full swing come to penetrate these shores? This fact, improbable but real, is the result of a cocktail of reasons that include an unrepentant spirit of searching, an almost eastern [Oriental?] delivery [devotion?] to the winds of destiny [Translator's note: Extra points to whomever can figure out what the ?&%! this is supposed to mean], a good share of generosity and, as he reports, a woman. What is certain is that since June 2000, Shindell, born in New Jersey in 1960, has had his life here (family, home) and his work (tours and concerts) in the other hemisphere. An equilibrium that for this man of short profile, "one of the best songwriters of this or any era," according to Joan Baez, results simultaneously in an equitable solution and an adventure. "The life of the musician is difficult, but still more so for his family," says Shindell in the living room of his home, where he received the Revista. "In my case, the woman is an Argentine. I leave on tour constantly, and after living in the United States for many years, it seemed fair to me that she could be in her country, around her family and her friends. Moreover, when a couple is bicultural, it is necessary to balance. I didn't speak Castellano, I knew very little about Argentina. And I was enchanted by the idea of trying something new." In fact, Shindell took his first step towards Argentina more than twenty years ago, in Paris, when he went to the Sorbonne in search of French lessons. He had travelled to Europe in order to live the experience of being a street musician, the reason for which he abandoned the Woodstock Buddhist monastery where he had enrolled one year before, at the age of 23, after studying philosophy and religion. "I played in the subway, where there's good acoustics, but a fracas resulted. In Paris they are accustomed to more showy and pyrotechnical spectacles. I wasn't spewing fire from my mouth or carrying a monkey on my shoulders. There was only my guitar and me, who timidly played instrumental pieces and Simon and Garfunkel tunes." Good guesses. In the Sorbonne, they gave him a sheet of paper with a multiple choice exam. For Shindell, the beginning of it all is there, on that paper, in those responses that happened to be largely correct and that put him in the same course with Lilia Caimari, then a young Argentine woman with a degree in history who pursued a doctorate in the City of Lights, and is today a researcher and professor at the University of San Andris. "I didn't speak a word of French and I stayed in the intermediate level, a total mistake. Thanks to that we know each other, because she also entered in this level. If I hadn't divined those answers, it could be that we never would have met." Perhaps it is about that, about those lucky answers to that test, that Shindell thinks when he reunites with his friend Bob Telson, the writer of the music for the film, "Bagdad Cafi," also married to an Argentine woman and also a resident of Buenos Aires. "What are we doing here?" they ask one another with astonishment at a Buenos Aires party as though they had been together since they were small [Translator's note: as far as I can tell, this sentence ends in what must be a series of nested metaphors that I don't quite get: "in the middle of cuts and gulches and with funding of two for four." My best guess is that it has something to do with growing up together through boyhood injuries, excursions in the outdoors, and hard financial times.]. Those answers arranged an encounter, but they didn't seal a destiny. Because that year Shindell returned to the U.S. and enrolled in the Union Theological Seminary in New York, an ecumenical seminary. He didn't want to be a pastor. His idea was to become a psychologist, but to work within the Anglican church. "It was a mistaken decision. I was there for three years but I never received the title. So then I didn't really know what I was going to do. The music had always been there, for nine years. But I didn't imagine that a career as a musicion was possible." According to The New York Times, Shindell possesses "an invaluable gift for a songwriter: a genuine absence of ego." Although he studied and played in groups and always carried a guitar with him, he says he never intended to become a musician. It simply happened: between theology classes, at 26 years of age, he took a pencil and wrote his first song. He took others and began to play them in bars and cafes. When he had a good number of songs, he recorded them in a friend's home studio, who, without telling him, sent the tape to a label. "Out of nowhere, I got a call from the label. They wanted to make a CD of my songs. Print it, distribute it, everything. And pay me," he recalls. In 1992, he released Sparrow's (sic!!) Point, his first CD. But he was still skeptical: "I can't live off one CD with one small label, in a marginal folk circuit, playing depressing songs about desperate characters, I thought." Nevertheless, he was receiving excellent reviews and selling more albums (today he has six), more presentations, tours, and a European tour with John Baez, who recorded three of his songs. Enough to seem to him, belatedly, like the beginning of a career. If the music made her lonely, Shindell intended to make those years up to Lila, whom he hadn't seen for six years. The problem is that he didn't have her contact information. He didn't know where she was. "It was a visceral necessity. So I went to the New York Public Library, where they have phonebooks for the whole world. I didn't know if she was in France or in Argentina. In the yellow pages, I came across a business with the same name. It was the business of a relative, in Buenos Aires. It was a complicated conversation. I didn't speak a word of Castellano. I only know how to say, "I am looking for Lila Caimari," parodies Shindell. His precarious Spanish sufficed to reunite him to that Argentine student, and together they made a home in the New York suburbs and had two children, Ana and Martin (he has another child, Sam, from a previous relationship). Now, Shindell manages Castellano with a Buenos Aires accent and much ease, to such an extent that his last CD, Vuelta, includes his first composition in the language of Cervantes, "Cancisn sencilla." Dedicated to his wife, of course. Anyway, it wasn't so easy to adapt to having landed in Buenos Aires. "I didn't understand the culture, the rules, the jokes, the food. I watched the news trying to absorb everything," he recounts, "At night after the kids were asleep, I went walking during students' hours, Villa Urquiza, el Centro. Because you can't assimilate the odor or the concrete of a city with a map. You must walk." National politics was another story. Two days after his arrival, a general strike happened. Shindell had seen strikes in his life, but he was impressed by the word, "general," and the crowd that won the streets. "But the strongest was the renunciation of Chacho Alvarez. After his denunciation, I thought there would be an enormous scandal. And nothing happened." The following year, his mother came to see him. She flew from Massachusetts for her first visit to Buenos Aires on an inopportune date: December 18, 2001. When they walked the Ezeiza, she wanted to know why the businesses were closed, why the people were burning rubber or gathering in order to bang pots. Shindell told her that these were the festivities for an important football game. Upon arriving at Belgrano, the people shouted "that they go together," and they had to tell the truth. "My instinct was to protect her from the information, and at the same time protect the decision of coming to live in Buenos Aires with my family. My father called from the U.S., worried because of the images on CNN. But my mother's reaction was very cool. She was very interested, wanting to understand what was happening. We finished by banging pots at Cabildo and Juramento." Shindell, whose most recent CDs, were produced by Larry Campbell, Bob Dylan's guitarist, recorded his last CD in Buenos Aires, with Argentine musicians. What a gesture. It was Bob Telson who took him to a Puente Celeste concert, the group who accompanies him on Vuelta. "They are excellent musicians, very versatile and sensible. For me, recording here was a challenge. At the time of making the CD, I felt that it would be a capitulation not to try to be where I am. And I am here." Now Shindell drinks and lives with mate, a custom that he acquired during rehearsals for his latest production. And in the library, Blake, ee cummings, and Auden today live together, for example, with Juan Gelman. "Every time that I return from a tour, for me it is a relief," he says, "Here I feel like I am at home." By Hictor M. Guyot (translated from the Spanish by Vanessa Wills) *Live in the City* [Translator's note: There's info about Buenos Aires tour dates that I am far too tired to translate right now, so there. :-P] *Helping Hand* [Tr. This would translate more literally as "A hand that is held out."] After the 2001 crisis, Richard Shindell, like many Argentines, felt the necessity to help. A friend, Luca, proposed having a concert to benefit a children's soup kitchen that had begun to operate in the neighborhood La Loma, de Lomas de Zamora, opened by a neighbor--Sra. Jacqueline--in her own kitchen. Since then, on his tours Shindell invites the public to donate to the project Crecer con Amor, that today feeds and tutors eighty kids. "I talk to people about the project and request help without pressuring them, but I remind them that their money in Argentina is worth three times more and that they can do a lot of things," he says. On his last U.S. tour, between last September and January, he gathered 10,000 dollars for the center, with which they are now improving the facilities (there are pictures on his webpage, www.richardshindell.com ). ------------------------------ End of shindell-list-digest V7 #126 ***********************************