MIM

When in Phoenix, don’t miss the new Musical Instrument Museum. Worth noting:

Open just 10 months, the museum first twinkled in the eye of Robert Ulrich, founder of Target. “No one has ever done a museum devoted to the instruments and music of every country in the world,” the purveyor of cheap chic said in a New York Times interview in 2008.
You will need two visits to fully appreciate the contents of this museum that sprawls across the Phoenix desert. Visit the café for lunch. It features locally grown Arizona foodstuffs that taste as good as described on the whiteboard. For someone who felt like she’d been crawling in the desert for days looking for interesting food, this was worth the price of admission.

Music is the language of the soul, the expression of what we see and feel. MIM sets itself the task of showing how music is the thread that pulls through every tribe and nation, uniting us globally. Enter each music room and rest your eyes on instruments created from whatever clay is available – cedars of Lebanon or a Castrol oil can. Watch performance videos as you move from Greece to Turkey to Belarus and listen through the earphones MIM supplies – all timed to accommodate a carefully researched (I’m sure) attention span. For fun, take your eyes off the displays, remove your earphones and observe the people in the room. They all smile in wonder, delight or reverence, bop their toes and bob their heads like chickens to whatever beat they hear, sing along when they catch a familiar tune, unaware their voices join with others who are doing the same.

Music is entertainment and communication, ritual and rite – and right. In some cultures, only the anointed may play certain instruments or tunes. In some countries, only men may perform music. This breaks my heart.

Random thoughts:

Young musician from Belarus perform in other countries because of restrictions in their own. They are credited with bringing a new sound to the world stage, but their music sounds oddly Irish. I think there is a Masters’ thesis or doctoral dissertation somewhere in this observation.

You can fashion a bagpipe out of anything, including a cow and a dog. I’m thinking Stephen King could have a lot of fun with this idea.