Saturday, July 10, 2010
Bobby McFerrin sings the Alphabet
The first time I was aware of Bobby McFerrin, he was on TV singing (vocalizing) for dancers who were doing a stage thing with balloons all over the floor. It was on a PBS series about dance, I think. Or maybe about arts in San Francisco, or at some particular theatre. It was the early 1980's. If anyone knows what that was, and if there's video somewhere, I would love to see it again. Keith and I just stood and stared. We had the TV on while we were doing things around the house, and when we heard him, we just looked at him, and listened to him, and the dancers were like backup video. That was way before any way to look things up, so I wrote his name down from the credits at the end of the show, and that's one name I've never forgotten.
This is at the end of a video of Star Wars. We don't use our videos anymore, but I'm really glad it's available for others to see. I used to pull out that video and find it for guests sometimes. The Wizard of Oz, the whole show, in less than eight minutes. He gets audience participation, another of his trademarks. SO cool:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1mvfzoHm9g
I think this is my favorite of his stuff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRfyyq-tlyc
Have you seen this?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6tB2KiZuk
On the TED site, it's called "Bobby McFerrin hacks your brain with music". It makes me smile.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6tB2KiZuk
ReplyDeleteI hadn't seen that, and it's wonderful. I had seen some similarish things by him, but going over two octaves with the fifths is awesome!
AND what's trickiest about that is he was doing the mirror image. He was facing the audience so the "notes"/keyboard were their left-to-right. He was jumping "down" (left) to go up. AND singing harmonies to his backwards jumping.