Dervish at the Crossroads: A Soundquest Through the First Two Decades of the New Millennium

by Wanda Waterman

Overview

Dervish at the Crossroads isn't a music guide so much as an autobiographical exploration of the experience of music from 2000 to 2020, with commentary on what makes the experience of music during these two decades radically different from all that came before. As the title of the book implies, due to the unique conditions of our time we can no longer think of ourselves as points on a series of evolutions; we're now much more present to all of music, from the beginning of written and recorded music, all of which turns around us like spokes on a wheel. This grants us a unique vantage point from which to appreciate music in itself. The book alternates text with a comics and infographics detailing the history of the author's discoveries as a music journalist during this time, along with personal experiences and ruminations and interviews.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781771835008
Publisher:	Guernica Editions, Incorporated
Publication date:	09/01/2020
Series:	Essential Essays Series , #73
Pages:	190
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Wanda Waterman’s poetry has been published in Descant, Pottersfield Portfolio, Tigertail, and Our Times, and her articles in The New Internationalist and This Magazine. She’s worked as an independent music journalist since 2005. After having grown up in Nova Scotia and living in New Hampshire and Tunisia, she’s now settled in Montreal, where she writes and makes music with people from all over the world. Dervish at the Crossroads is her first published book.

Table of Contents

Introduction: story of a soundquest 7

The weirdest, most transcendent period in music's history 13

Has music ever been pure? 25

Forging new old trails 31

New ways to make it in music 43

A Brazilian band, a Canadian home tour, and a cuica 53

Music in the time of terror 63

The kurd's tale 69

Soundtrack for an age of pain 105

It plays us 133

Slave, exile, survivor, mystic 145

References and inspiration 165

About the author 166

Editorial Reviews

"A thoughtful, artfully written exploration not just about how music works, but how it makes us feel." —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2020-07-16
A Montreal-based poet digs into our fascination with music and its relation to our search for meaning.

Outside of her poetic output, Waterman has collected a diverse collection of essays about creativity on her blog, The Mindful Bard. Many of these thought exercises and interviews concern music, but in this book, she writes, “they’re better and make more sense.” The most primal narrative thread is the idea of the “soundquest,” which Waterman defines as “a kind of hero’s journey” with more than a little bit of obsession involved. “A soundquest,” she writes, “begins when you hear something mysteriously thrilling, something that drives you to keep tunneling into the genre until you find the quintessence—the performance or the recording representing the culmination of listening pleasure for that genre.” Refreshingly, the author doesn’t limit her illuminating discussions to just Western music, though she does look at Bob Dylan’s influence and the cultural touchstone of Don McLean’s 1971 hit “American Pie.” Physically, intellectually, and spiritually, Waterman travels much further. She analyzes the work of musicians from Brazil, Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco, among many other places, showing what drives these artists to create remarkable music. Waterman also shares the interesting, little-known fact that the mythology of the so-called “dark man at the crossroads” (in America, think Robert Johnson and the devil) reverberates across many cultures: “The crossroads being such a potent symbol of the intersection of the sacred with the profane, the soul standing at that intersection now complete can enter a state of mystical turning that, incorporating all, transcends all.” There’s a patina of New Age–y spirituality to the writing, but Waterman’s insights into the nature of jazz, blues, and other genres, as well as her personal discoveries, are well worth exploring.

A thoughtful, artfully written exploration not just about how music works, but how it makes us feel.

Kirkus Reviews