Kenny G’s Going Home With Perestroika
Back in December, we watched Listening to Kenny G, a documentary about that ubiquitous saxophone player who everyone loves…or loves to hate.
Kenny G makes me laugh…buuuuuut I also find his music kind of comforting. (😬) He’s well aware of this tension between being easy on the ears /“predictable” and being a Serious, Tortured, and Complicated Musician. His critics — many of them appear in this film — have some interesting and valid points, but let’s not forget that Kenny G is trilling his sax all the way to the bank. (This is mentioned several times in so many ways.)
So of course my mind went to books. And authors who write the “same thing” over and over again and the people who lap up “easy listening” books. Am I like these critics, minus the try-hard funky glasses? I don’t think so. (I mean, I hope not.) There’s a difference, I think, between pointing out interesting (and funny and annoying and even eyeroll-worthy) trends while also challenging myself (and others?) to think outside the box when it comes to books.
Here are some ideas I heard from Listening to help frame what might constitute a book that propels our reading lives forward, even if just a tiny bit, instead of keeping us stagnant in our beach reads (whatever “beach reads” means for you):
* It’s great that Kenny G serves as the “gateway to jazz” for many people. But here’s a paraphrase of what one critic said about him: Jazz is a conversation, and Kenny G “borrows, without contributing much back to the form.” How do the books we read “add to a conversation”?
* “When you love a piece of music you’re basically exposing something about yourself.” Same for books, yes? Maybe this little tidbit caters too much to humans’ desire to curate their outer lives. Is this the “right” book/music/clothing to have? But on the other hand, it *is* interesting to think about what our reading says about us, right?
(So what does it say about Kenny G that in his video for Going Home — which also has become a universal “store is closing!” symbol in China — he curls up in a log cabin with a copy of Mikhail Gorbachev’s Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World?)
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