Harmony and Dissonance

If you haven't made it out to the the MAM (Miami Art Museum) for the Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller show, called "The Killing Machine & Other Stories," I would recommend it. It's over on January 20 -- and what I especially suggest is that you don't miss out on the branch of the show that takes place at the Freedom Tower. For more info: here is the MAM's website: http://www.miamiartmuseum.org/exhibitions-07-10-21-cardiff.asp

Also, here is a short, personal tale of my experience at the show -- hopefully, it'll make you want to go and see/hear/experience it, it sure moved the hell out of me.

Janet Cardiff's 40 part Motet @ The Freedom Tower

Near the edge of Downtown Miami there stands a Spanish-style Tower, casting its orange shadow of history over us. Once the headquarters of a newspaper – Miami News and Metropolis -- it later became the processing center for endless Cuban Immigrants fleeing Castro’s regime. It is from this period, between 1962 – 1974, that the tower gained its lofty name: The Freedom Tower.

My grandfather was one of the many Cubans that filtered through the tower, and so the other day, when he found out there was an art exhibit there, he told me to come along. The tower, after a period of disrepair, was bought and fixed, and now holds its corridors clear and strong to bear the weight of whatever kind of art its curators choose to make live inside it. These days, Janet Cardiff and her Partner George Bures Miller, show an installation piece there – it’s called 40 part motet and, at first sight, its just a room where, at the center, there are forty tall-standing speakers forming a broad circle around two sitting, museum-style benches. And then the music starts.

During our visit, when the music started, moved towards the center of the room, within the realm of the speakers. I go to sit, but Papan (my grandfather) says he prefers to stand. “I am a man that stands,” he says. The music that begins its quiet haunt is a 16th century choral piece by Thomas Tallis. Cardiff recorded an English cathedral choir – giving each of the boys (or young men) that composed the choir an individual mic, so that she could later transfer each of their voices into one of the speakers…

...And here we are, listening. Papan stands in the center of the space and all of a sudden I see his hand come to his brow, as the music makes the rounds around him. Sometimes several voices join and sometimes the voices are disparate, single, and solitary. Sometimes their high pitch is a screech and sometimes the choral blessing of divinity takes hold. My grandfather starts to sob…I go to him and hold him in my arms, his bony 84- year old shoulder fits in the cup of my hand. There are no muscles supporting it, except the ones that are in my own, younger hand…His face reddens with tears and I want him to stop crying, but he doesn’t want that, he wants to cry and cry, allowing himself to be moved by the gentle, rough, and furtive voices around him.