Back-seat criticism

Awesome moment in the car today, on the way to work - but it'll take a little setting up. So: flash back to the summer of 2011, when we were in Cape Town, and Cleo's daily DVD of choice was a collection of video shorts of Maurice Sendak stories. One of Cleo's favorites was 'In the Night Kitchen,' in which a boy named Mickey tumbled mysteriously from his bed into a rollicking world of mustached cooks, who seemed intent on baking him. As they did their thing, mixing, and stirring, and dancing, what seemed to be a lively klezmer band - Sendak was the son of Polish Jews - played a bouncy tune in the background, and I can still recall the off-kilter melody of the horns and the rhythm of the guitar strings behind the slow gestures of the ample, animated chefs.

Okay, then. Today, as we headed out the door,I decided to play something new for Cleo. So, girl: would you like to hear some Ornette Coleman, or some Django Reinhardt? Django, she decided, after a prolonged negotiation in which I promised to follow two of his songs with three by Milkshake. And, bless her heart, she listened, as the first track, Nuages, played in our little car. And then, at the first intersection, as the Eastern European-inflected swing floated about us, she excitedly announced, 'It's like Mickey in the Night Kitchen!'

Well, now that you mention it, yes. Yes, indeed. But don't simply take my word for it; listen, instead, to National Geographic's musical historians, who point out in a readable entry on Roma music that "it became commonplace [in early modernism] to see Gypsy and Jewish klezmer musicians playing together" - and that "in artists like Peret or even the late genius Django Reinhardt you can hear the long road the Gypsies have travelled across the years."

Reinhardt, Mickey, and the Romas, all bound by a common musical DNA, in a way that's even audible to a 3-year-old. Or, at least, to a 3-year-old who happily follows up her observation regarding similarity with the immodest claim that "I've got good ears!"