{"id":37999,"date":"2016-08-14T12:21:58","date_gmt":"2016-08-14T16:21:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=37999"},"modified":"2016-08-14T12:21:58","modified_gmt":"2016-08-14T16:21:58","slug":"imaginary-anthropologies-summerworks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2016\/08\/14\/imaginary-anthropologies-summerworks\/","title":{"rendered":"SCRUTINY | Imaginary Anthropologies Funny But Not For Everyone"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Imaginary
Imaginary Anthropologies with Gabriel Dharmoo (Photo: Alfred Jansen)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Performance Festival\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

Imaginary Anthropologies<\/em>, Gabriel Dharmoo (performer) at\u00a0Factory Theatre Studio. August 5\u201313.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Musical Toronto is perhaps not the ideal place to review Gabriel Dharmoo<\/a>\u2019s show Imaginary Anthropologies<\/em>. It is perhaps more a work of experimental theatre as opposed to strictly music. This is especially pertinent as the exaggerated performance is the main selling point. But there is enough music, even if purposefully obnoxious, to write about.<\/span><\/p>\n

Programmed by the Summer Works Performance Festival, Imaginary Anthropologies<\/em> is a multimedia satire poking fun at disingenuous anthropology and cultural appropriation. A mix of soundscape, film, theatre, and experimental vocal technique, the show is an anthropological documentary in which its narrators, who are pre-recorded and filmed, describe a menagerie of fictional indigenous cultures. As these narrators talk, Dharmoo performs in real time the vocal techniques described.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This sounds straightforward. However, the vocal techniques devolve rapidly from \u201cbelievable\u201d to absurd. When one of the less extreme examples include humming and thumping your chest a la Matthew McConaughey from Wolf of Wall Street, you can only imagine how ridiculous things get. The most ridiculous? Well, Dharmoo sang into a bowl of water that is used in a prior scene to perform a preventative exorcism. You did not read any of that wrong.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This show is not for everyone.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the most poignant moments are when Dharmoo mocks western music. He presents twelve-tone music as a child\u2019s game where singers democratically build their tone row. He imitates a pop song, sung in gibberish, while the narrator’s praise the indigenous culture for its effective assimilation of other and, as implied, superior cultures. These examples really do hit closest to home, in spite of being played up for easy laughs. Who is to say we are not looking into the future where other societies will view our music and culture as unrefined and \u201cquaint?\u201d Twelve-tone has a lot of \u201cserious music\u201d baggage behind it, but what\u2019s to say a future society won\u2019t find it naive and simplistic?<\/span><\/p>\n

The show ends with yet another punchline. It is revealed that the narrators are a combination of students pursuing studies in useless and cryptic subject matters, self-help gurus, and a retired cardiologist who just happened to go on a road trip for two weeks that gave him \u201cperspective\u201d. I did expect the show to be funny, but not nearly this over the top and parodical.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Alas, that is perhaps why the show falls a bit short of its scope. For such contentious subject matter, I cannot help but feel that Dharmoo\u2019s irreverent approach to the topic missed making profound political statements. His message is quite clear that we as Westerners have a habit of trivialising and misinterpreting the music of other peoples. I just wish I spent more time reflecting on this concept as opposed to laughing at a performer braying like a donkey. As it stands, the show is entertaining, funny, but not particularly profound.<\/span><\/p>\n

That said, Dharmoo\u2019s energetic and at times acrobatic performance, combined with genuinely impressive vocal range, made the show memorable at worst. Definitely not for a casual audience, but this crowd was certainly into it \u2014 once the joke became obvious \u2014 which came in the second scene where Dharmoo pantomimed eating bugs.<\/span><\/p>\n

#LUDWIGVAN<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dharmoo\u2019s energetic and at times acrobatic performance, combined with genuinely impressive vocal range, made Imaginary Anthropologies memorable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":38003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5723,52,59],"tags":[6310,6308,6311,6309],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/08\/Berichte-an-eine-Akademie-13-Alfred-Jansen.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-9ST","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37999"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37999"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38004,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37999\/revisions\/38004"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37999"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=37999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}