Last night I had the pleasure of attending a concert in Brooklyn that paid tribute to the music of Laura Nyro. My college friend Erika Amato who is a pure, dextrous and energizing singer, invited me. She sang Wedding Bell Blues... and there were other selections interpreted by a number of other singers. That beautiful thing happened, where in the alchemy of audience and performers and memory and longing and simple presence, something was conjured that felt like the essence of Nyro. I am so grateful to have been reconnected to the bloodroot of her music. I first heard her songs in utero, and they were very much a part of my childhood. The first time I heard her album with Labelle, Gonna Take a Miracle, I had an experience that I can only call religious. Brown Earth, oh what a morning, it feels so good, oh, what a morning, of brotherhood - that exalted bridge still makes me well up like it did when I first heard it. I remember my former mentor, Laurie, playing me the entirety of New York Tendaberry, over cups of tea as Butch Morris swept in and out and in and out of their LES apartment. And the sense of human witness in her voice, in her voices (lyrical, musical, physical) of the harrowing openness of proclaiming your love to another. She and Abbey Lincoln were the two I went to as ministers to my endemic heartbreak. And through Nyros capacity to gather time and space in her hands like a crumpled letter, she taught me to keep my heart wide open, even as it burned and stung and kept me awake many a night. I had been estranged from the music, through my own associations between it and some disappointing experiences. But last night, a gift, a precious reminder. Very grateful.
Posted on: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 00:42:52 +0000
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