{"id":19056,"date":"2012-04-30T13:37:47","date_gmt":"2012-04-30T20:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=19056"},"modified":"2012-05-02T03:13:08","modified_gmt":"2012-05-02T10:13:08","slug":"bobby-mcferrin-music-from-the-soul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=19056","title":{"rendered":"Bobby McFerrin: Music from the Soul"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Bobby McFerrin\/Photo: Ayelet Dekel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI came here to feed my spirit,\u201d said Bobby McFerrin, one of the most fascinating, versatile vocalists around. McFerrin returns to Israel after a 16 year absence to host the Tel Aviv White City Music Festival<\/a>, which will take place at the Port of Tel Aviv from May 1 \u2013 10, 2012.<\/p>\n

McFerrin will be hosting several guest artists in his concerts: May 1st with Ahinoam Nini (Noa) and Gil Dor, Harel Shachal, Muna Msheal, Shlomo Bar, and Oud player Ilan Ben Ami; May 3rd with Gadi Lehavi, The Voices of Peace Choir, and Amos Hoffman; May 4th with Mira Awad, Gershon Wiserfirer and Mayumana; and May 7th with Avishai Cohen, Victoria Hanna and Idan Raichel.<\/p>\n

McFerrin is a wellspring of sound, creativity and energy.
\n<\/object>
\nListening to the musician at a press meeting that took place this morning in Tel Aviv offered some insight into the source of his music, with certain words recurring in his conversation: work, discipline, faith, mind, and heart.\u00a0 In response to a comment that his dedication to his art and vocal perfection might be a \u201cdying breed\u201d McFerrin was quietly optimistic, and said, \u201cIt can seem that way. So many confusing things hitting one another, all those balls up in the air\u2026 we\u2019ve become so busy, so crowded. I don\u2019t think that there will ever be a generation when there isn\u2019t someone devoted to cultivating a loving mind. In fact that\u2019s an acronym: CALM, I\u2019m always working on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speech, sound and song flow and merged in McFerrin\u2019s conversation as he talked about the early days of his career.
\n<\/object><\/p>\n

McFerrin recalled, \u201cI was very much aware of Keith Jarrett and wondered what would it be like for a singer to be onstage alone? \u2026So I took about 6 years, practiced every day for two hours for six years and then I called my manager Linda and said: you know that tour that we have booked in Europe originally with a band? Well, I\u2019m going to do it solo now. So she called up all the promoters and half of them cancelled the gigs and the other half said \u2013 well, that sounds kind of interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

McFerrin described the way in which language has inspired his music, saying, \u201cI wanted to purposely stay away from anything that smacked of gimmickry, and I was afraid that if I just tried to imitate the sounds of instruments that\u2019s what people would think, so language just seemed to be a lot more interesting. Think of all the languages in the world, everyone has the same instrument but they produce thousands and thousands of sounds, so that was a little more fascinating to me\u2026just the color of our voice, my voice.\u201d<\/p>\n

At first it may sound surprising to learn that the world famous musician had once contemplated a monastic life, but at the age of 16 McFerrin had considered joining an Episcopalian monastery in Santa Barbara, and it may seem like a contradiction for a musician to describe himself as liking \u201cquiet.\u201d Yet quiet and contemplation are entirely in tune with McFerrin\u2019s approach to music. \u201cI don\u2019t hang out a lot. After gigs my first thought is getting back to my room, soaking in a nice warm tub and going to sleep. I like to stay quiet inside because if I\u2019m quiet I can hear things better. I can hear people better, I can hear music better, I can hear my heart better. So that was the thing that attracted me to a monastic order, the quietness of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Discipline, dedication, faith and joy reverberate throughout McFerrin\u2019s discussion of his work and life. Here in his own words:
\n<\/object>
\nDescribing himself as \u201can eternal music student\u201d McFerrin said that he is \u201calways looking for new conversations with musicians from other cultures\u201d and is looking forward to his concerts here, which will be an experiment in format for the ever-adventurous musician. McFerrin said he wants \u201cto try something a little bit different by having the soloists, or the guests onstage as I improvise my way through different music. When at some point I feel that what I\u2019m doing can be enhanced by a particular soloist then I\u2019ll invite that person or persons to join so that we would actually be an ensemble of some sort which is created by their presence\u2026 finding a way to make us all connect. I usually don\u2019t do it that way, I usually improvise, then invite a guest to come out and we play some things together and then I do some more solo improvisation. So the idea of having everyone onstage at the same time, I haven\u2019t tried this out so I don\u2019t really know how it\u2019s going to work, which is also fascinating to me – not knowing how things are going to work. It\u2019s really wonderful, mystery is wonderful. I love mystery.\u201d<\/p>\n

How does McFerrin view the role of the artist in society? \u201cSpeaking for myself,\u201d he said, \u201cpersonally my responsibility as far as I\u2019m concerned, is to sing things that are redeeming, sing things that are positive, bring some positive energy, bring joy into people\u2019s lives. I think it\u2019s the responsibility of any artist to engage the people in a way so that when they leave the artist \u2026 it changes people, it changes them. I expect an audience to be different when they leave. That\u2019s my goal.\u201d<\/p>\n

The full program and additional information is available on the Tel Aviv White City Music Festival <\/a>site.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI came here to feed my spirit,\u201d said Bobby McFerrin, one of the most fascinating, versatile vocalists around. McFerrin returns to Israel after a 16 year absence to host the Tel Aviv White City Music Festival, which will take place at the Port of Tel Aviv from May 1 \u2013 10, 2012. McFerrin will be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19056\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}