“Voices of the Middle Eastern City” was performed on May 14th at the University of Chicago as part of the 25th annual Middle Eastern History and Theory Conference. The symposium attracted scholars from such varied institutions as the University of Melbourne, Columbia University, and Turkey’s Bilkent University. The assembly hall of the International House was filled with these intellectuals and others who chose to spend last Friday evening listening to the sounds of the Middle East.

The University of Chicago’s Middle East Music Ensemble took the stage next, parading their collection of bendirs, ouds, and santours alongside violins, recorders, and clarinets. Students, professors, and others jubilantly strummed and hammered and bowed away at their respective instruments. Men got up one by one to sing as the performance moved through classical Arabian songs, old Iranian folk tunes, and Andalusian poetry put to music.

From the outset, “Voices of the Middle Eastern City” spoke to the plurality of the word “voices.” Throughout the performance reverberated echoes of Jewish, Persian, Turkish, and Sufi traditions, to name a few. With each bedtime tale read aloud, each personal thought jotted down in a journal 200 years ago that was again invoked on stage, each folk tune being sung for the umpteenth time, the understanding deepened: there is no singular Middle Eastern perspective.

Last Saturday night at the University of Chicago’s International House marked the debut performance of the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic Chamber Ensemble. Under the artistic direction of composer and trumpet player Orbert Davis, the thirteen-member ensemble brings together some of the best talent from the larger Chicago Jazz Philharmonic to play smaller arrangements that blend jazz and classical influences. Saturday night’s program built the bridge across genres from both ends. After a modern rendition of Mozart, the ensemble played lush string arrangements of jazz standards, and contemporary pieces by Davis and legendary Chicago arranger Bill Russo.

The play between styles went well beyond the piece selection and into the live performance itself. Davis often played his trumpet with one hand and directed the accompaniment with the other. At moments where the score called for improvisation, he walked entirely off the stage and let the musicians lead each other. The crowd of a few hundred was appreciative, and their reactions followed the music across genres. The audience sat still and attentive through the classical sections, but when the rhythm loosened, so did the atmosphere, and throughout the darkened room heads started to nod and feet started to tap. During the noisiest sections of free improvisation, several kids in the audience bounced wildly in their seats; when the flute player stood up and delivered an astonishing reproduction of a Charlie Parker solo, most of the audience had a similar reaction.

There was a lot to talk about after the performance, but words weren’t the important part. In a question and answer session following the concert, Davis tried to resolve some of the tensions that arise in bringing musical traditions together. “With this music,” he said, “we need to let go of the boundaries and let it be what it is.”

According to the group’s webpage, throat singing originated among the nomadic tribesmen of the tiny Central Asian republic of Tuva. The practice consists of several different techniques, each meant to mimic the sounds of a different part of nature; in the workshop, audience members attempted the xoomei style, which produces a low drone and a high whistle simultaneously, and the kargyraa style, which produces up to six simultaneous pitches in a low register. According to the group’s translator, “in order to truly learn [Tuvan throat singing], you must start on the path correctly, then practice, listen, and repeat until you are confident.” The small audience of 25 tried valiantly to learn the underpinnings of this style, growling and howling to the best of each man, woman, and child’s ability, creating, according to Quirk, “all of the horrible noises that new practitioners necessarily make.”

Our futile attempts, though applauded by the members of Alash, paled in comparison to the precise and beautiful performances put on by the masters. Throat singing, performed correctly, utilizes the constriction of the vocal folds to produce overtones of varying frequencies and pitches with little to no mouth movement. Accompanied by strings, flutes and harp-like instruments, the subtle notes combine to form haunting melodies.

All third-generation singers, the members of Alash came together in 1999 and began to tour the U.S. in 2006. The group has also performed in various locales in Asia and Europe. Although most masters begin their studies of throat singing at a very young age, it is possible to learn the practice later in life. The most important thing, according to Quirk, is “to have an honest ear in order to self-improve.”

Giovanni opened her lecture, which had a total attendance of not more than forty people, by asking a woman in the front row where she had purchased her Obama T-shirt. That, in essence, set the mood for the rest of the morning. From there, she moved on to her opinions that there have only been four First Ladies during the course of American history who were not bigots (Abigail Adams, Dolly Madison, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Jackie Kennedy), that John Brown is an American hero who would be on our currency today if he had wanted to repress slaves instead of free them, and that, in reference to Sarah Palin, “the Vice President of the United States should not say ‘you betcha.’ Not allowed.” Along with these assertions, Giovanni voiced support for what she heard was a recent move in the Catholic Church to canonize Martin Luther King, Jr. Nobody in the audience was quite sure where she heard that or why she believed it, but her aimless ranting was in such full force that it would have been a shame to interrupt it.

Wait, so how did Tupac come up out of all that? As it turns out, Giovanni eventually got around to mentioning the two children’s books her tour is supposed to be promoting, “Lincoln and Douglass” and “Hip Hop Speaks to Children,” the latter of which Mr. Shakur is a posthumous contributor to. “Lincoln and Douglass” explores, through story and picture, the friendship between the two great American men, while “Hip Hop Speaks to Children” is a collection of poetry by a wide range of artists (Paul Laurence Dunbar, Mos Def, Gwendolyn Brooks, A Tribe Called Quest) accompanied by a CD recording. If Giovanni had spent more time talking about her new work and less proselytizing, there might be more to say here about her unexpected turn from women’s lib and black power poetry to picture books. However, that was not the case.

Oh well. The tattoo part was pretty interesting.

Klein delivered many of the zingers that audience members likely looked forward to in the beginning of her talk—notably her comment that the establishment of the Milton Friedman Institute would be the “academic equivalent of a big yellow Hummer sitting in the middle of your campus.” She then focused on highlighting the pitfalls of an academic ideology that has proven disastrous in reality. Constantly stressing her status as a journalist, as opposed to an academic, she railed on the negative historical consequences of Milton Friedman’s ideas and the techniques of the right used to sustain the empty ideology. The relentlessly negative tone of the talk was felt by audience members, as their questions reflected a desire to move the discussion towards the topic of positive change rather than a rehashing of the problems that most attending already acknowledged. The talk even ended with a sincere request from an audience member to “end on a positive note.” Klein did so in her own style, with a long story about the horrors of the Argentinean financial crisis which, in a roundabout way, led to a small acknowledgement of the potential for mass change.

A friend and fellow Dawkins devotee suggested arriving an hour and a half before start time to get a good seat. It was true: Dawkins fans had to arrive early to hear him speak. I got a seat forty-five minutes early, and only fifteen minutes later, the main gallery was full. Late arrivals were directed to a side room, where the lecture was pumped in over the audio system. Still others were turned away entirely, at the behest of the almighty fire codes. Some milled about the windows outside, gazing in on the assembled congregation.

The audience consisted mostly of interested and curious University of Chicago types, but two other distinct species appeared as well. First, the Hot Topic “rebels” showed up in full force, with acne-swollen noses, awkward facial hair, and those tastefully flared black pants. Yes sir, they read Nietzsche (or at least the first six pages of “The Portable Nietzsche,” a serviceable “best-of” compilation for all you teenage rebels out there). Now, they had turned to Dawkins to flesh out that cliché of teenage disillusionment. God Bless.

The second, and slightly more predictable, breed was the born-again bloggers. Each had discovered atheism at a particularly meaningful junction in life and now devoted part of his or her retirement to spreading the good word. Resembling a half-breed of Willie Nelson and a Harley biker, these devotees passed out homemade literature advertising their blog/website/discussion-group/demonstration/point-of-view/YouTube documentaries. They talk amongst each other like comrades stuck in the intellectual trenches, one-upping each other with twenty-first-century religious war stories. “Man, I was at this abortion rights protest, you know? And like, there was this church group there…” Each one also took a moment to speak to Dawkins and mumble, in his or her own star-struck way, “I run a little website you see, and….” as the professor politely smiled and placed the card in the handkerchief pocket of his suit.

The lecture was not a gathering for those teetering between the faith and the faithless life, but rather a congregation of the choir. That said, Dawkins preached incredibly well. He was witty and charming. He gestured widely and reservedly, and spoke gravely and whimsically. Dashing between the highbrow and the lowbrow, Dawkins recalled the terrorist attacks of 9/11, begging his audience to “think of a world without religious violence.” Minutes later, he laughed enthusiastically at an Italian fresco of God bearing the caption “Imaginary Friend.” He gripped the podium with both hands outstretched, braced against it. Each sentence was meticulously crafted and delivered with such deliberate punctuation. The crowd hung on every word. They may have lost their faith in God, but they surely haven’t lost their faith in Dawkins.

Upon a visit from Iida Japan’s Imada Puppet Troupe, our own International House was crawling with a diverse audience including both families with young children and serious culture buffs. To open any show, the Bunraku puppeteers perform the Sambaso, a celebratory dance piece performed with Shinto priest puppets in order to spread good fortune to their viewers. These were no ordinary giggling Muppets. Instead, the auditorium went dark, and down each of the aisles came groups of three figures covered from head-to-toe in black garb. Among each group of three was a single puppet elaborately decked in traditional Japanese dress. The entrance was enough to send chills down everyone’s spines, but as the puppets began to move to the rhythm of the shamisen, a Japanese stringed instrument, the performance drifted away from a child’s worst nightmare to a wonder in craftsmanship and coordination. As each puppet and its three puppeteers made their way around the auditorium to spread the good fortune that they had promised, a closer look revealed the intricate design behind the eyes, eyebrows, and faces of these puppets that were demanding their operators’ constant attention throughout the entire performance. The synchronization of expressions in both the eyes and mouth gave these puppets an unnervingly life-like quality that was much more advanced in craftsmanship than any typical ventriloquist dummy.

Between pieces, the audience was treated to the trade secrets behind Japanese puppetry by Tamon Sawayanagi, director of the Imada Puppet Troupe. With every word, he revealed the intricacies behind the presentation of the puppet, such as the stride with which certain puppets may walk, the angles created by the knees to show despair, and the necessity to conceal a female’s wrist beneath her kimono. Each aspect of the presentation mimicked human emotion and etiquette so much that the idea of using less than three puppeteers per puppet was out of the question. Each puppeteer retains a specific function and must accomplish that particular function while maintaining coordination with the rest of the team.

Although Sawayanagi’s troupe consists of twenty-four members back home in Japan, only three members of its cast made the journey with him to the States. Doing most of the puppetry with his troupe was the Bunraku Bay Troupe of the University of Missouri, whose enthusiasm for the art form and advanced technique have added to its reputation both here at home and in Japan. While advancing their professional reputations in Chicago, both troupes also succeeded at adding a little bit of perspective to puppetry for those of us who were only familiar with the Jim Henson variety.