Friday 21 August 2009

ADRIANO ADEWALE: SOUND JOURNEY

20/8/09, St Augustine's (Edinburgh Fringe)

A rather self-indulgent 50 mins by a Brazilian musician living in London (who's played Edinburgh for many years with Antonio Forcione) who used to be called Pinto but changed his name after going back to West Africa in search of his roots.

Lots of different percussion instruments and effects. A long cod dialogue accompanied by a West African instrument which looks like a long bow with a gourd for a sound box. A jacket and wrist and ankle bands covered in little metal bottle tops which rattled as the body shook. A rather wonderful collection of plastic drain pipes played by slapping flip-flop soles over the ends (he played Beethoven's Ode to Joy before launching into something more Afro-American). And then a collection of rattles, whistles and drums, plus a large plastic bottle of water which drained into a terracotta pot, with which he created the sounds of the forest at night. (The sounds gradually faded away: he congratulated us at the end, telling us people in the modern world had lost the ability to listen to silence).

Intermittently intriguing, but too long.

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