I don’t know about you but there’s just something about summer that lights a fire in me. When I turn that season’s feeling into the realm of music I, quite simply, have reams of music just waiting in the docket looking for their time to come out. As I write a little bit less on the blog this season, I try to share a bit more music of worth in my LYL Radio mixes to (hopefully) give you, the listener, various pieces to explore on your own. With summer just beginning, my mind turned toward music that evokes a specific kind of locale: the Pacific.
You could say this Digging Deep mix I was inspired by Michel Delpech’s hypnagogic tropical ballad, “Rêve de Gauguin”. In it, trying to tackle the controversial (and influential) life of Impressionist painter, Paul Gauguin, Michel wisely focuses on the more “universal” touchpoints that fed into a more global “idea” of what life in the Pacific is.
From mango trees to coral reefs, hammocks swaying to distant notes of ukuleles, everyone’s island paradise could exist or come into existence with paintings, art, or music that captured the delirium of conjuring desert island dreams. Of course, the reality is always far different than the idealized dream.
In essence, our ideas of the “noble savage” – as stupid as they are – grant us some leeway to at least attempt some escape from the day-to-day ideas of what modern, urban life requires of us or of what colonial thinking tries to stamp into you. So, if you’ve ever experienced Gauguin’s art in person you already have a sense of what I’m going on about.
It’s this shared feeling that I find fascinating, revelatory, and exploratory of “Balearic” music. In the hands and ears of those who understand how to tap into the power of tropical-tinged music, you can explore hazy gradients of emotion and living that aren’t so black and white, paint a world that’s truly a paradise.
So, for at least an hour, I invite you to reimagine the Pacific and the desert island jukebox as more than a dream. As the late Jim Seals astutely wrote, a “summer breeze makes me feel fine, blowin’ through the jasmine in my mind”. Let’s see where this wind takes us…
Rêve de Gauguin
William Pitt – City Lights
Hilario Camacho – Letanía
Monica Törnell – Sommarbris
Manrico & Nicola – Con Un Cuore Nel Corpo
Johnny Hates Jazz – Listen
Eurogliders – Absolutely
Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso – Moby Dick
Mario Acquaviva – Il Nome Che Non C’è
Jil Caplan – Ta Voix
Michel Delpech – Rêve De Gauguin
Enzo Enzo – Pacifico
Mario Lavezzi – Molecole
Mebae Miyahara (茅野遊) – 昔みたい
Pierre Schott – Mille Ans De Solitude