I’ve been studying up for the Big Ears Festival, listening to a 96-hour playlist my friend Will has amassed in preparation for our March trip to Knoxville, Tennessee. And while I’ll never get through the full list, I can at least sample enough music to pick out a few highlights — which I’ve already been doing on this blog (here and here in posts highlighting Ichiko Aoba, Bing and Ruth, Caroline, Catherine Lamb, Kali Malone and Tarta Relena).
Two more artists I’m hoping to see: Lesley Flanigan and Xylouris White.
Lesley Flanigan – I can only assume that Flanigan, a New York-based experimental musician who makes her own instruments, is still making music, but the latest two releases on both her Bandcamp and Spotify pages are Hedera from 2016 and Glacier from 2014. The 20-minute “Hedera” juxtaposes a steady, driving percussive sound against layered, ethereal female vocals. “Can Barely Feel My Feet” builds on a foundation of vocals while also exploring drone, microtonality and shimmering electronics.
For more mainstream-oriented audiences, “Shattering” from the 2014 release Glacier will be a more accessible distillation of Flanigan’s ideas, also building up from layered vocals but offering the additional entry points of lyrics and a clear melody. What will she sound like in 2023? I have no idea, but I’ve heard enough from these two releases to know that I want to find out.
Xylouris White – Lesley Flanigan has fewer than 200 monthly listeners on Spotify; Xylouris White has just under 1,200. It’s a testament to the philosophy of Big Ears that the festival opens its doors to artists with such small followings alongside artists with hundreds of thousands or even millions of listeners. Lead with quality, and the listeners will show up.
Xylouris White is a duo consisting of George Xylouris, a Greek singer and laouto player (the laouto is a stringed instrument that is part of the lute family), and drummer Jim White of the Dirty Three. The music — which includes both original compositions and Cretan folk music — ranges from melancholic, traditional-sounding ballads to propulsive, rhythmically complex tunes that evoke experimental jazz. Xylouris is a powerful singer with wide emotional range, and his laouto playing similarly runs the gamut from gentle, refined plucking to manic strumming. White is a versatile and intuitive percussionist, matching Xylouris’ mood at every turn and adding not just rhythm to the equation, but also tonal color.
The beauty of this music is in how well Xylouris and White complement each other, how much emotion and energy they both bring to the music, and how it can sound both deeply traditional and fiercely fresh — sometimes alternating between the two, other times simultaneously.