excerpt
“I have given up my own ambitions in order to carry out a promise
that I made,” he said.
The Toronto newspapers reported the confrontation, and culture appropriation
ceased to be an issue.
Nick Peros was one of his unexpected visitors. He was a young man
with dark hair that flopped over on his forehead like a young colt’s forelock.
A classical composer, who was writing his final thesis and who had
been following Ken’s story in the newspapers, he wanted to compose
a symphony for Isumataq using an augmented orchestra and a choir.
Would Ken commission such a piece of music?
Ken offered a painting in trade and Nick became a regular at the studio,
watching Ken paint, listening to his stories, and occasionally jotting
musical notes on his sheets. When people asked, Ken said, “He’s composing
a symphony.”
“What?”
“A symphony for Isumataq – and not just any symphony. It’s for an
augmented orchestra and a choir.”
“So you’re going to have a bigger-than-full symphony orchestra and a
choir! You can’t have just a symphony?”
“Of course not.”
“And where are you going to do this?”
“I have no idea. Tomorrow will reveal itself. Today we’re in the business
of composing a symphony.”
“But what does a symphony have to do with it?”
“I don’t know. But what does a symphony not have to do with it?”
“On the other hand,” Salvador cried, “Why not an opera?”
While Nick was writing his symphony, Joe Canavan, one of the young
professionals brought his brother Patrick to the studio. Patrick was a rock
and roll musician and composer who played in several local bands. “Forget
the symphony,” Joe said. “What Isumataq needs is rock music.”
Patrick joined Nick in the studio, asking for stories, turning them into
song lyrics and giving them titles like “Rifles, Bibles and Booze”.
Ken told the ancient stories: the moon chasing the sun and the girl
whose chopped-off fingers became all the animals in the world. While
Ken talked, Patrick strummed on his guitar and one day he brought the
rest of his band members. When they asked about money, he offered
“Ken dollars” and after several months of talking and composing, they
took their songs into a recording studio to cut a CD.
Ken fulfilled his promise to create slide shows to lure people to the North.
He sorted the photographs he had taken into a twice weekly studio exhibition
for about sixty people each evening. Although they loved the photos
and stories, they balked at paying three thousand five hundred dollars…
Libros Libertad 