From the Sep 9 – Sep 15, 2004 issue

Music

CLASSICAL, JAZZ, & AVANT

Live at the RNC Protest

by Christopher DeLaurenti

No matter your opinion of the GOP, the Republican National Convention (RNC) in New York City and the resulting series of protests, assorted art actions, and masses marching in the streets served up an aural feast for the ears.

Listening here isn't easy. Along with NYC's continually rumbling traffic, it's damn hot. The temperature hovers around the 80s and low 90s with a thick, cottony humidity you never feel in Seattle--except after a night of sweaty wintertime sex inside a basement apartment whose windows were painted shut before you were born.

In Central Park, my ears savor a memorial honoring fallen Iraqi civilians and U.S. soldiers. As I pace around a plaza filled with tattered shoes symbolizing the dead, a bell chimes and a name is intoned. Nearby, beyond a cluster of trees, roller skaters bob and swirl like kernels in a popcorn machine to an ironic, almost metaphysical musical pun: Bobby Byrd's cult funk classic, "I Know You Got Soul."

The big march Sunday before the RNC and the violent, unauthorized procession the following night made the numbing heat worthwhile. I was entranced by the helicopters juddering ominously overhead, ballistic bursts of ultra-distorted speech squalling from police radios, and the all-enveloping flood of cheers and chants surfacing, surging, and flowing from city block to city block. I was overwhelmed by the polyphonic traffic jam of marching drum corps, stray bits of conversation and law enforcement chatter ("It's just a right turn, people!"), and the jungle of assorted hoots, hollers, honks, and whistles.

I don't know what was more terrifying: the cops gunning and thrusting their motorcycles into the crowd--I was right in front and feared for my crotch--or perusing my police scanner and hearing New York's finest practicing elongated burping over the air. CHRISTOPHER DeLAURENTI

chris@delaurenti.net

Buy Tickets for Other Events