Been playing with a new group – “The Fox and the Bird.” Below is a performance/interview filmed by Hal Samples of Space Studios. You can see the full article here. Thanks to the Dallas Observer for hosting us at DC 9 in Space.
Posted by Wheeler at 10:32 AM. Filed under: Back Home, Original Music
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My music was featured as the theme song for “Wamkelekile – Welcome Back,” a short film about an estranged son, Lukhanyo, who reunites with his mentally challenged father, Simpiwe, for the first time in ten years. Released in Cape Town, South Africa for a November 2008 premier, the film has been nominated for Best Film and Best Director for the AFDA awards in Cape Town.
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Below is the trailer, featuring music I arranged and performed for the film. The song “When I Was Nine” was written by Claude Morcos. With his permission, I made a few tweaks in the arrangement, and recorded it as the theme song for the film.
Wamkelekile – Welcome Back Trailer
It’s light hearted film with a heartwarming story, shot in the beautiful medium of 16mm film. The primary language is “iXhosa,” though the film has English subtitles. The soundtrack includes music by a number of international artists including Jack Johnson and Hot Water.
You can get more info on the film through Facebook, or visit the official website:
http://welcomebackthefilm.co.za/
Posted by Wheeler at 10:32 AM. Filed under: Before Leaving
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A composition and recording from early this year
Posted by Wheeler at 10:32 AM. Filed under: Original Music
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As I arrived to Egypt, the bustle of Cairo was overwhelming at times, and my experience was quite different than in Morocco. I have been living in Maadi, a small international community outside of downtown Cairo that is known for a strange combination of diversity and affluence. It is a completely different world than the old medina in Fes.
As a matter of fact, it would be easy to forget it is Cairo, if not for the armed guards in the streets with machine guns and everybody driving with their headlights off at night. The pyramids, deserts, jallabas (robes for men), and mosques help me remind me as well. The traffic poses a much bigger threat than almost anything else – there are no speed limits, traffic lights or stop signs; lanes are optional and crossing the road on foot is a very dangerous game of dodgeball. It’s like where I lived in Morocco, only with cars, not donkeys.
A big difference from Morocco, is that around 10 percent (or more) of the population is Coptic Christian here, and most of the mosques are open for non-Muslims to enter outside of prayer times. There are ancient churches as well as mosques, and an old Coptic Christian area of the city as well as an Islamic one. I have traveled around Egypt a good amount – Luxor, Alexandria and the Sinai peninsula. I have also spent some time at the Mother Teresa orphanage in Garbage City, helping out especially with their Christmas celebration for all the children in the surrounding area.
From Muqatam (Garbage City) ????? ??????? ??????????? ???
What I Am Learning and Doing:
I have spent significant time writing new music and learning much about myself in this way. The result of an email from a very respected person, I began thinking about the connection between science and art. Since then, I have come to understand that the two are inherently inseparable. For me, understanding the science of music – what makes it appealing to our minds and what makes one sound distinct from others – serves as a kind of artistic catalyst for me, enabling me to create something new. The more I come to understand about the mathematical side of music, the more I begin to define my artistic expression’s direction. Simply put, by defining what it is that sparks my creativity (the science of a particular interval, rhythm or sequence), I actually open up a multitude of opportunities and possibilities to create something new (art). Rather than sitting and waiting around for a creative lightning bolt to strike the firewood, I am trying to teach myself various ways to build a fire.
Visual aid: Think outside the box, ride your camel outside the boundaries.
In this way, I enable myself to create my own muse rather than waiting for it to reveal itself to me. Waiting for inspiration enslaves me to my work. Thinking outside the box helps me master it. For example, when you get writer’s block, you are supposed to keep writing in order to overcome it. If you concentrate on changing the structure of your sentences, using fresh images or even disrupting the rhythmic flow of your paragraph, you have a much better chance of tearing down the wall. Music can be treated similarly – rhythms, melodies and harmonies can be broken into words, sentences and paragraphs. You just keep writing… which I had the time (and solitude) to do in Egypt.
Speaking of time in Egypt, mine was perhaps even more of a cultural experience than Morocco, even though many parts of the two cultures are very similar. I was involved with the national community here through projects like the orphanage in Garbage City. But the most constructive use of my time was with the huge Sudanese refugee population, who fled their home to escape the Darfur genocide.
There have been over 450,000 people killed and more than two and a half million people displaced as refugees. The stories from the Sudanese are harrowing – boys told me about sleeping with their families under trees in the middle of the wilderness, staying awake in order to be ready to run. Some of the refugees left their loved ones back home and now have no way to return to them. Others fled to Cairo with their families, but now have difficulty providing meals for them each day.
The church helps directly and indirectly by supporting schools, training teachers, and even providing vocational and adult literacy training for non-school age refugees. Through volunteering to help with youth medical screenings, giving music lessons or just taking time to really listen to their plight, I realized just how far even a little help can go. I attended their worship services weekly and even visited a school to talk to the students about music through a translator. I only wish I could have done more. Needless to say, the church’s efforts are making a difference and, as of now, I would like to return to Egypt to become involved at a greater capacity following the conclusion of my Watson year.
Honestly, my heart goes out to many of the places my Watson year will never take me since I am not permitted to travel to many of the countries that need the most help. Maybe it’s the whole forbidden fruit philosophy – that what you can’t have draws you the strongest – but having made a friend who lives in Gaza doing non-profit work and teaching English and having been invited to Sudan by many of its people (who insist that in the coming years Sudan will once again be a strong nation), I can’t help but feel as though I want to get involved as well.
I have encountered aid and relief programs to Iraq, Pakistan, Congo and Eritrea, as well as those in Palestine and Sudan. If the suffering in the world tells you there is no God, certainly the organized and effective outreach and development aid programs which combat such suffering across the world offers a rarely acknowledged opposing argument! Many men I met have devoted their entire lives and families in order to ease the suffering of others.
Being here in Egypt was perfect for me because it enabled me to get involved and to see what a difference can be made by even one willing soul, without putting my life at unnecessary risk. Still, I find myself wondering, “Is it normal for me to desire to live in places like Palestine or Sudan, to put myself in danger in order to help others?� or “Is the fact that I long to better understand the suffering of the world a less-than-subtle form of masochism?�
The truth is, I long to better understand the suffering of our world so that I can better understand the solution. Each part of life teaches us to appreciate the other. When we are suffering, we cry out to remember the days of peace. I have never truly suffered, and I have therefore never truly appreciated peace. However, it is not enough for me to witness suffering, I want to experience it for myself and to battle it on the frontlines of our world. Why? Christ calls us to rejoice in suffering. How can I do that if I have never truly experienced it?
For example, there is a difference between reading a travel book and visiting the actual country. In the former, you miss so much of the ugly pictures, unfriendly faces or garbage piles. What’s more, you lack an understanding of the country and, until you set foot on the soil, it remains nothing but a series of loosely connected photographs and words that are pieced together by various expectations. Suffering is a part of life that all too often we claim to know when we do not. In reality, I have no idea what it means to suffer for Christ and rejoice in it, but it is something I long to learn.
Sure, what I write scares me to some degree. But my time in Egypt has taught me that we are able to fight for those who are physically suffering in so many amazing ways and on so many different levels. I wonder, “In what capacity will I fight?” I have no way of knowing right now, but my heart goes out to those in harsh conditions and I believe I have the necessary drive to accomplish something with that desire. The only thing I love more than being around people who are different than I am, is being around people who are different and who also tremendously need help and care that I have the ability to provide.
I no longer view my Watson year as a finite adventure but as the doorway to a full and flourishing life, defined by continually facing what is uncertain, intimidating and unpredictable with a vigor that is inevitably rewarding. The Watson has trained me to think in a way that is unconventional to our world – to view the earth and its people as a solitary whole, unconfined by countless boundaries, cultural differences, plots of soil and ocean waves. If I cannot know the wonders my next six months hold, why should I expect anything less from my own life?
As I board a plane for Uganda tomorrow, my project has not changed in any drastic ways. I am still fascinated by people and the stories of their lives, and how these stories are connected to their music and art. However, for the next sixth months, my eyes will be open, as I look for long-term service opportunities with which to become involved following my amazing one-year opportunity. I will also be looking more closely for ways that my music project can overlap with local service projects or educational programs, and two months of service to the Batwa people in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Uganda could be a perfect match.
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
James 1:27
Though loved ones may only exist in our lives for a season, we do not forget them when they are gone.
She said “It’s my gift to you,”
Then put it over my hand and she laughed at me.
She would call it funny but I never really got the joke
and I wore that band ’til it turned black and broke
Oh how I prayed that it would last
’til the end of the earth
So I tied it in a knot and then I
put it on again until it wore too thin
to stretch around my hand.
Oh how I prayed that it would last
’til the end of the earth.
Oh how I prayed that on my wrist
you would see the way I feel.
Trespassing over old abandoned rock quarries and fields,
If I had been alone, I never would have had the guts to go
Where fireflies fought the stars above to give us light
the casualty was night
and grass up to her waste helped us to hide.
Oh how I prayed,
and I guess that if she never left my mind
it would last ’til the end of time.
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I spent a day on an island in an ocean of blue
the sun there was angry and strong.
I couldn’t help thinking of you.
Oh please hear me before you decide you know what I’ll say.
I don’t mean that you left me sunburned and peeling away
But I couldnt sleep on my back for days.
Remember the time we drove to the river at night
and we walked along in the dark
until we lost my car.
Oh we wondered the road that winds where the river winds too.
Each step away from the car but each one a bit closer to you.
Each step was closer to you.
They say we grow closed as we grow older,
we start to board ourselves in
And the light starts to hurt our eyes
when we open the windows to let it in.
I think it’s more like we search by the daylight
and when we’ve found enough we come in
‘Cause oh the freedom of day burned my pride away,
And the sun was too strong so the night was all I could long for.
And so that sunburn made me wish that I was with you,
to wind where the river winds too.
A voice calls out both loud and clear
from the desert sun and sand
“Prepare a road with your two hands!”
We shall go there, you and I
Beneath a desert sky,
To build a highway for the Lord to come again.
Raise the valley to the plains,
Every mountaintop must fall.
The road it must be straight
So all will see Him as He comes,
And all will know His name -
The one John the Baptist spoke of on Jordan’s banks
(Prepare a highway)
And all will see him as he comes again.
(The recording isn’t bad for living out of a backpack, right?
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Posted by Wheeler at 10:32 AM. Filed under: Original Music
The creation of music is a rare right of passage binding impression to melody, flesh to soul, the tangible to the intangible. For the next twelve months, I seek to write, play and experience music with people in the context of other cultures I do not know as intimately as my own.
About Me
