Big Ears: The whole world is listening, Part 2

The Big Ears Festival in Knoxville is the Grand Canyon of the avant garde music world, so vast, so colorful, and so complexly beautiful, it defies description and evades explanation. All you can do is gaze at its splendor, take in as much as you can, and wonder how in the world it was ever created.

From Thursday, March 24, through Sunday, March 27, the sparkling performance venues in Knoxville hosted more than 200 events, from (un)conventional concerts to ad hoc poetry readings. There is no other place on Earth where it is possible to see and hear so many groundbreaking artists on a single weekend. Thank Ashley Capps for that vision. And thank Aaron Greenbaum for the nuts and bolts management of it all.

I heard the Kronos Quartet’s original take on “House of the Rising Sun” at the base of the Sunsphere in World’s Fair Park, and saw John Medeski almost climb inside a Bosendorfer grand piano with its mirrored lid. I saw incredible drummers named Ches Smith, Brian Blade, and Kenny Wolleson working in extremely varied trios and quartets, bringing an experience, finesse, and power to the stage I hadn’t seen since the days of Billy Cobham and the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

I heard one-of-a-kind voices, from Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw, to the haunting Grammy Award winner for Global Music, Arooj Aftab, and the Haitian/Cajun-spiced Leyla McCalla, who channeled Langston Hughes like Taj Mahal used to channel Robert Johnson.

And then there was the amazing Sō Percussion Ensemble, maybe the happiest musical group I’ve ever seen. Happy in their sharp-edged professionalism, happy in their rhythmic playfulness, and then happy when they let it all out, go for broke, and delight in blowing the roof off. It’s a natural wonder.

There were two MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” recipients, pianist Jason Moran and writer Hanif Abdurraqib. In both cases, the genius in the room was as tangible as the ghost in the machine. You can’t see it, can’t touch it, but it sees and touches everyone else in its presence.

Hanif Abdurraqib, like Nikki Giovanni the day before, filled the Mill & Mine to its SRO limit. Cutting an unapproachably tiny silhouette behind the lectern, in a hooded pink flannel pullover, there was a deep mystery in his countenance.

He was a man who had been sent by a higher power, it seemed, to tell us something extremely important, but only if we asked the right question.

Abdurraqib read from "They Can't Kill Us Til They Kill Us," and "Go Ahead in the Rain," and ended with an excerpt from "The Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance." He's the kind of speaker that can cast a complete hush over a very large gathering.

Then finally, someone asked the right question, about grief, and personal loss.

"Grief," he said, "is one of the many things that make up my relationship with sound … with the impermanence of sound. I don't live in grief. Grief is a resident in me. Grief will always be with me."

That line echoed in my head for the rest of the weekend, and longer. I may never forget it. Of all the magic at Big Ears this year, Hanif Abdurraqib's will prove the most profound.

The Festival became a swirling lifeform with a momentum that accelerated almost uncontrollably to the end. There was the gifted guitarist Julian Lage, the singularly iconic Patti Smith, and Marc Ribot, the Sons of Kemet, Craig Taborn, John Zorn, the exquisite Yasmin Williams, the Bill Frisell tribute to the late Ron Miles, the Kronos Quartet's stunning live performance/film hybrid … and scores of other performers it wasn't humanly possibly to catch.

I'll wrap this up with two quotes from Nikki Giovanni, who held her audience in the palms of her frail little hands.

"I turned myself into myself," she read from her 1968 masterpiece "Ego-Tripping," one of the rarest of jewels. A perfect poem.

The line seemed like it could be the motto of every performer at Big Ears.

I turned myself into myself.

And she closed her hour with the smartest admonition of our era.

"It's time we decided we're not afraid of each other."

Amen. Can't wait 'til next March.

John Job is a longtime Oak Ridge resident and frequent columnist for The Oak Ridger.

This article originally appeared on Oakridger: Big Ears: The whole world is listening, Part 2