Alesini and Andreoni - Maya
I am racist, but I’m not a racist. The distinction is subtle, but significant. Although I try to treat everybody the same and not alter my behavior based purely on how somebody looks, the truth of the matter is that I do notice racial differences and those differences do color my perception. Noticing differences is racist, but acting on those differences would make me a racist. Perhaps the distinction is meaningless. But I will admit that if I was walking alone down a dark street at night and saw somebody approaching me, I’d feel differently if it was a young black man than I would if it was a young Asian man. I'd try not to act differently, but I’d feel different. Perhaps that’s too much of a generalization, since I’d look for other cues too (where am I, how are they dressed, what does there demeanor suggest), and I certainly don’t feel perfectly comfortable around everybody that has the same color skin as I do.
When I was growing up in rural Michigan, I had the dubious distinction of attending what was reported to be the largest junior high school in the country. There were 2500 students spread across the three grades (7-9) and of those 2500, there was one that was not white. One. Joey played cello and we sat near each other in the orchestra, as I had been saddled with the viola. He was charming and intelligent and fun to hang out with, but I always wondered what his experience was growing up black in such a relentlessly white environment. And not just white, but white white – this wasn’t Vermont (apologetically all white), this was poor, rural Michigan, the kind of place that was all about the red, white, and blue: rednecks, white sheets, and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.
Part of being racist – and I maintain that everybody, at least in this society, is racist – is knowing that people of different color have different experiences, of noticing the differences ahead of the similarities. I know this is a racist society, so I know different races are treated differently much of the time. Latinos are treated much differently here in LA than whites are. I try not to treat them differently, but I know that their experience is often so different from mine that there is a wall between us. And not just a cultural wall: I am different from people who were raised in a strongly religious household and believe in the Christian god, there is an insurmountable wall there too, but it’s an internal wall rather than an external wall. Because our culture sets up external walls between races (and then tries to pretend they’re not there), we are forced to focus on the differences. That makes us racist. All of us.
It all comes down to the idea of the “Other” – something we spent a lot of time talking about at Hampshire College. The Other is, somewhat obviously, that which is different from you – whether it is a different race, a different gender, a different sexual orientation, a different culture, a different age, whatever. And what becomes important in dealing with the Other – what differentiates being racist from being a racist – is how you deal with that which is different. That is what determines your character.
Saxophonist Nicola Alesini and percussionist Pier Luigi Andreoni collaborated in 1996 on a concept album of sorts, based on the life and adventures of Marco Polo. Although such an undertaking could be ponderous and pretentious, their light touch and the high caliber of their like-minded musical collaborators, including Roger Eno, Harold Budd, David Torn and others, insure the album’s gentle textures and exquisite production never get swamped by the “prog” pitfalls such an undertaking is prone to. Rather than a straight-forward reading of the great Italian explorer’s life, the album offers a pastiche of related scenes, abstract and poetic interpretations of the experience of going out into the great unknown.
This track, anchored by David Sylvian’s unmistakable baritone, is a tone poem on the experience of meeting another culture, one whose customs and practices are completely different, an “other”. Maya perfectly captures the disorienting experience of meeting somebody whose life has nothing to do with one’s own. It is a sobering and potentially terrifying moment, realizing that your life and its assumptions and traditions are entirely arbitrary, and that there may indeed be whole cultures that reject your principles and still live contentedly, “they need for nothing”. How one deals with this moment is crucial, and reveals the character of the culture. Unfortunately, the predominate method that Western civilization has employed when meeting the Other is to co-opt it, colonize it, or otherwise destroy it. This evocative track captures that critical moment of first contact, hiding in the bushes, watching them carry on with their lives. It offers no solution, but presents the dilemma – the actions and consequences are up to the traveler. The lyrics are mysterious and slightly foreboding, and the backing track and the strangely fragmented vocal treatment add to the haunting quality of this musical mirage, shimmering just beyond the horizon, forever out of reach. The title is a double edged sword, referring to one of the primary “other” cultures that Western explorers discovered – the Mayans – and, by extension, referencing their fate at the hands of those explorers. But Maya also means “illusion”, suggesting that the classification of cultures into familiar and foreign is false – that we have more in common with the other than we think, and that differences are superficial.
Three years later, Alesini and Andreoni gathered the same tribe of musicians – exchanging vocalist David Sylvian for his former Japan bandmates Steve Jansen and Richard Barbieri – and produced volume two of their meditation on the life and times of Marco Polo. A rich multi-media experience, volume two includes slide shows, graphics, biographies, games, and many other tools for exploring the idea of exploring. A rich and rewarding project, Marco Polo demystifies the Other and creates a common ground, where music and ideas from all over the world can blend together in rich, evocative harmony.
Too bad you’ll never find these discs. Relegated to Italy and the few adventurous music stores that will carry them, most people will never get the chance to explore these two fascinating volumes. In an ironic twist, Alesini and Andreoni’s demystification of the Other has become the Other itself – exotic, mysterious, inscrutable, and, like a shimmering mirage, forever unreachable.