When Israeli guitar virtuoso Yosi Piamenta played SUNY-Buffalo in the late 90s, I was keen to meet him. Knowing of his nicotine habit (I’d seen him puffing away during long sets at the Wetlands Preserve in Manhattan), I was sure I’d be able to find him during the intermission smoking by one of the stage doors.
By the time I found him (sure enough), a nervous, clipboard-wielding stagehand was already pestering “the Sephardic Santana” to get back inside. We could only make a bit of small talk before Piamenta shook his head, extinguished his unfiltered Players, and said:
“Only two puffs! Not enough time.”
I found myself recalling this pleasant meeting upon learning recently of his death, aged 64, and not just because those of those cigarettes, which played a part in his demise.
Yosi Piamenta’s achievement is honest, organic originality, which to my mind is the gold standard among creative artists of all media. The product of a secular Sephardic family with deep roots in Jerusalem, he used Arabic oud techniques on the electric guitar to reinterpret the canon of Ashkenazi devotional music, ending up with something of equal interest to Hasidim (who have a complex relationship with Sephardim, Arabic oud techniques and electric guitars) and urban hipsters.
The whole brew becomes even more piquant with the touch of jazz, and hint of Hendrix, that made the whole thing work. Indeed, it was as a jazz musician that Piamenta received, from Stan Getz, his first invitation to the U.S. in the 70s.
There’s something about great art that’s disorienting, and sometimes feels slightly preposterous. Recall that terrific moment during Robin Williams’ iconic appearance on Inside the Actors Studio when host James Lipton, gasping at his guest’s performance, says: “What the hell is going on?”
Here’s Williams, delivering jokes that share none of the defining characteristics of jokes, but manage to be so much funnier than jokes—funny to the point of being somehow violent. Nobody knows quite what they’re laughing at.
Think of Beethoven, Borges, Burroughs, El Greco, Roscoe Holcomb, Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Marx Brothers, Thelonious Monk, Vladimir Nabokov, David Foster Wallace. They’re all radically disorienting. There’s a certain sort of organic surrealism that’s a hallmark of all superior art.
Piamenta demonstrated this surrealism often and exuberantly. In the Village Voice back in 1994, Richard Gehr recalls watching Piamenta play, and wondering: “What was going on?”
By the time I found him (sure enough), a nervous, clipboard-wielding stagehand was already pestering “the Sephardic Santana” to get back inside. We could only make a bit of small talk before Piamenta shook his head, extinguished his unfiltered Players, and said:
“Only two puffs! Not enough time.”
I found myself recalling this pleasant meeting upon learning recently of his death, aged 64, and not just because those of those cigarettes, which played a part in his demise.
Yosi Piamenta’s achievement is honest, organic originality, which to my mind is the gold standard among creative artists of all media. The product of a secular Sephardic family with deep roots in Jerusalem, he used Arabic oud techniques on the electric guitar to reinterpret the canon of Ashkenazi devotional music, ending up with something of equal interest to Hasidim (who have a complex relationship with Sephardim, Arabic oud techniques and electric guitars) and urban hipsters.
The whole brew becomes even more piquant with the touch of jazz, and hint of Hendrix, that made the whole thing work. Indeed, it was as a jazz musician that Piamenta received, from Stan Getz, his first invitation to the U.S. in the 70s.
There’s something about great art that’s disorienting, and sometimes feels slightly preposterous. Recall that terrific moment during Robin Williams’ iconic appearance on Inside the Actors Studio when host James Lipton, gasping at his guest’s performance, says: “What the hell is going on?”
Here’s Williams, delivering jokes that share none of the defining characteristics of jokes, but manage to be so much funnier than jokes—funny to the point of being somehow violent. Nobody knows quite what they’re laughing at.
Think of Beethoven, Borges, Burroughs, El Greco, Roscoe Holcomb, Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Marx Brothers, Thelonious Monk, Vladimir Nabokov, David Foster Wallace. They’re all radically disorienting. There’s a certain sort of organic surrealism that’s a hallmark of all superior art.
Piamenta demonstrated this surrealism often and exuberantly. In the Village Voice back in 1994, Richard Gehr recalls watching Piamenta play, and wondering: “What was going on?”
With an unfiltered Players usually clasped between its fourth and fifth digits, [his] paw seemed to strum the strings like a rhythm guitarist, yet wildly spiraling Arabic melodies spun up and away out of all visual relationship—screwed-tight Oriental outbursts punctuated by distant echoes of the electric-guitar pantheon, from Clapton to Zappa to Mahavishnu John.
One senses there would have been so much more.
“Only two puffs! Not enough time.”
Indeed.
“Only two puffs! Not enough time.”
Indeed.
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