More Pynchon Music!

[Allen Ruch]

Hello, Whole Sick Crew!

After taking some time off to regain my mental sanity, I return bearing a few (hopefully welcome) musical gifts:

The first is this interview with Sam Shalabi. For those of you who may not be familiar with him, Shalabi is a Canadian-Egyptian musician and composer, the creative genius behind the 30-person jazz-rock-psychedelic orchestra Land of Kush. In 2009, Shalabi and Kush recorded “Against the Day,” inspired by the Pynchon novel of the same name. It’s a fucking AMAZING album—Oum Khlasoum meets Sun Ra meets Frank Zappa meets Silver Apples, etc., etc., best to just listen to it. Seriously, of all the Pynchon-spired music I’ve covered, this is one of my all-time favorites.

It’s also a favorite of Christian Hänggi, the fellow who wrote “Pynchon’s Sound of Music” and edits the “Pynchon and Music” pages at Tim Ware’s amazing Pynchon site. So Christian and I teamed up to interview Sam Shalabi, and that interview is now live:

http://shipwrecklibrary.com/the-modern-word/interview-sam-shalabi/

Shalabi is a great interview subject, and discusses a wide range of topics in a stream-of-consciousness style: Thomas Pynchon, James Joyce, musical shamanism, Nasser-era big band music, jazz, Arabic Maqam, William Gaddis, etc. It was definitely a fun interview, and Shalabi is a 100% dyed-in-the-wool Pynchon fan who discusses most of his books.

The other Pynchonian music news comes from Christian Hänggi. He’s in the United States right now, promoting his excellent book in NYC and Philadelphia. As some of you may know, Hänggi worked with a few NYC musicians to produce an album of Pynchon songs:

https://now-everybody.party/wp/

Christian asked me to post this information along to the List. His Pynchon group is playing two upcoming gigs:

August 13
Pete’s Candy Store in Brooklyn, 9 PM
https://www.petescandystore.com

August 14
Franky Bradley’s in Philadelphia
https://frankybradleys.com

Also, Christian has a book launch in Brooklyn for “Pynchon’s Sound of Music”:

August 11
Unnamable Books, 7 PM
https://unnameablebooks.square.site

You can read more details here:

https://now-everybody.party/wp/live/

Sadly, a prior commitment disallows me from attending the concerts, but I’ll be at the book launch! I hope to see some of you there!

—Quail