Song of the Day 1/7: Belá Fleck, “Rhapsody in Blue(grass)”
Everybody who’s anybody is cancelling gigs at the former Kennedy Center these days. The latest artist to join the honor roll: Bela Fleck, probably the world’s most famous banjo player. He was scheduled to perform with the National Symphony on three dates next month, but yesterday announced,
“Performing there has become charged and political, at an institution where the focus should be on the music. I look forward to playing with the NSO another time in the future when we can together share and celebrate art.”
The toady running the place, Richard Grenell, responded with the most devastating comeback known to MAGAts – “Nuh-uh, you are.”
“You just made it political and caved to the woke mob who wants you to perform for only Lefties. The Trump Kennedy Center believes all people are welcome.”
Right. As embodied by that well of tolerance and unity, your boss.
Fleck made his name in bluegrass, but has branced into jazz and world music as well as classical since the turn of the century. He has written several pieces for banjo and orchestra, and employs one on his most recent album, “Rhapsody in Blue,” centered on George Gershwin’s iconic composition.
“There was a day when I started messing around with a few of the melodies from the Rhapsody. Soon I was thinking, ‘Gosh, what if I could really play this thing?’ So I started investigating the piano part. At that point my goal was strictly to play the notes as written and see what was actually doable on the banjo. Pretty quickly I realized that this wasn’t possible, partly because I can hit only three notes at a time. I had written all these impossible banjo manuscripts. At a certain point I had to start changing notes here and there to make it playable.”
The LP presents three different arrangements of “Rhapsody” with Fleck’s banjo taking the piano part. As you would expect, there’s a bluegrass version.
For “Rhapsody in Blues,” he recruited old collaborators Jerry Douglas, Sam Bush and Victor Wooten to perform Fleck’s bluesy arrangement.
This orchestral version, recorded with the Virginia Symphony, is something Fleck might have performed with the National Symphony if he hadn’t gone and politicized everything.
