[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It from WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart, and today we're excited to launch the second edition of the Public Song Project. Once again, it's a chance for you to hear your musical stylings on WNYC. We launched the Public Song Project in 2023 by inviting anyone 18 or older to send us an original recording of a song based on work in the public domain. We got some great ones like this version of The Best Things In Life Are Free by Alan and Alida Kafinski.

[MUSIC - Alan and Alida Kafinski: The Best Things In Life Are Free]

The moon belongs to everyone

The best things in life are free

It shines tonight on everyone

Beaming for you and me

And there's a drift across the sky

A brilliant sphere of radiant light

Holding our dreams in possibility

It glows for hope for everyone

The best

Alison Stewart: The Song Project is Back. This time you'll get a chance to have your work featured online and on-air alongside not just your fellow listeners, but also musicians like Rhiannon Giddens, who's on the new Beyonce, by the way, Bela Fleck, Arturo O'Farrill, Valerie June, and many more friends of the station. To help explain and launch this year's Public Song Project, I'm joined by All Of It producer behind the project, Simon Close. Hi, Simon.

Simon Close: Hey, Alison.

Alison Stewart: Can you remind everybody how the PSP works?

Simon Close: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Public Song Project.

Simon Close: The Public Song Project, the PSP. We're inviting anybody, 18 or older to pick a song, a film, a book, poetry, whatever, something in the public domain, they make a recording out of it, some kind of musical recording, they send it in to us, and then a select few will be played on our air and get to be interviewed.

Alison Stewart: Now, it's around the 1920s. Why the '20s? What's different about this year?

Simon Close: This year, we're doing it a little different. It's the 1920s, the first where we're asking people to focus on work from the 1920s. First reason, a century is a nice round number. That felt good. The 1920s are also just in themselves a really interesting decade musically. A lot of musical innovations technologically and new styles of music were emerging at that period. Also, it just so happens that 1924 was the year that WNYC first started broadcasting, so that felt like a nice thing to commemorate.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about people are taking songs from the pop domain, from the 1920s. Who can submit?

Simon Close: Anybody 18 or older can submit. You don't need to be a professional musician to do it. You can just be someone who likes to listen and hum a tune even.

Alison Stewart: What happens after someone sends in their submission?

Simon Close: After they send in the submission, it'll go through a process with our esteemed judges, which includes some familiar names from last year, like Paul Cavalconte, John Schaefer, Lara Downes, who you heard earlier, Shanta Thake from Lincoln Center, and some more people that we'll be announcing later on. They'll pick some of their favorites. Then all the songs that we receive, the qualifying songs, will get to be put on our website. If you send in a song, you'll get some shine, but our favorites will get to be on the air.

Alison Stewart: How long are submissions open?

Simon Close: We are holding the submissions open through May.

Alison Stewart: How can people find out more?

Simon Close: We are in the process of updating the website, so wnyc.org/publicsongproject. Throughout this week, we'll be updating it with more info and sharing the songs like Arturo O'Farrill's song that you're about to hear after I finish speaking. Check back to that website, wnyc.org/publicsongproject throughout this week for more info.

Alison Stewart: We'll put some stuff on Instagram as well.

Simon Close: We'll put some stuff on Instagram, yes.

Alison Stewart: All right. That's Simon Close, All Of It and Public song project producer. Thank you, Simon.

Simon Close: Thank you, Alison.

Alison Stewart: This is where you exit quietly as I make a segue to our next guest. To kick off the Public song Project 2024, all this week, we will debut songs sent in to us by Friends of WNYC, and your songs can end up alongside them if you submit. Each day you'll hear from one of the artists about their song, why they chose it, how they approached it, and then you'll get to listen to the song as well. To get things started, I'm joined now by a very good friend of WNYC. The pianist, the band leader of the Afro Lattin Jazz Orchestra, Arturo O'Farrill. Arturo, thank you for being with us.

Arturo O'Farrill: Are you kidding me? I would've missed this party for the world. This is the best party in town.

Alison Stewart: What is it about this project that interests you?

Arturo O'Farrill: Centennial really is. Like it was mentioned is a very good round number. Plus we just got out of the centennial of Chico O'Farrill, my father. We're celebrating Tito Puente centennial. We're celebrating the centennial of WNYC. It's the 125th anniversary of Duke Ellington. It's a good opportunity to look at works in the public domain and why the public domain is such an important and fertile ground for learning about our history, our culture, where we're going, where we've been, where hopefully we won't go in the future. Lessons from the past are always incredibly important, and so I'm hoping that everybody who is listening will think about the past. What it was like, where we're headed, and what we can do to continue to be on a path that's progressive and visionary.

Alison Stewart: Arturo, where are you? I hear music.

Arturo O'Farrill: I'm so sorry. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: What's going on?

Arturo O'Farrill: That's hilarious. I am in the practice room 528 of the New School of Jazz and Contemporary. I'm a professor here. Have you ever been in a conservatory and there's like 59 pianos going on? It's the best feeling. I always feel like the air is so electric, it's so pregnant with possibility. Young people are practicing all around me, and I feel their energy. I'm so happy. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: I love it. I'm just like, "Where is he? It sounds like he's in some special piano heaven."

Arturo O'Farrill: If you want to hear something really funny. The room right next to me has my student in it. I'm just grooving heavily on their work.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about the song that you chose to record, Siboney. You have a relationship with this song. Tell us a little bit about the history of the song and your personal history with it.

Arturo O'Farrill: It was a piece of music that was written by the great composer, Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona, and it was a piece that I've been playing for 20, 30 years. It's a piece that is somewhat classically inspired, but very much inspired by the Cuban rhythms. It's a piece that I got to perform the very first time I was invited to Cuba to play the Plaza Jazz Festival in 2002.

Chucho Valdez invited me to play on a concert with him and Gonzalo Rubalcaba, a solo piano concert. Needless to say, I was intimidated by the company, but nonetheless, it's a piece that's very close and dear to my heart. Cuba, as a lot of folks know, is very near and close to my heart, and the struggles of my people for so many reasons. I'm not going to get political, but we need to stop this horrendous criminal blockade. Did I get political? Did I say that?

Alison Stewart: Oops.

Arturo O'Farrill: Oh, sorry. I love the fact that I am transcultural. I am Irish, German, Cuban, Mexican. My wife is African American, Jewish. My kids don't know who to hate. So much of Cuba is like that. If you walk down the streets of Cuba, you will see people look out at you, and their eyes will be African, Spanish, Asian. I think this is inexorably where the planet is heading towards. Those people that want to crack isolationism, they're wrong. Look at history. Look at the history of our city and the beautiful things that happen here. Siboney is very, very wrapped up in this whole journey of mine to be a musician of the future, a human being of compassion and love.

Alison Stewart: Right now we're going to debut your solo piano cover of Siboney for the Public Song Project. Arturo O'Farrell, thank you so much for being with us.

Arturo O'Farrill: Oh, what a pleasure. You kidding me? I'm such a fan.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a listen. This is Arturo O'Farrill with Siboney.

[MUSIC - Arturo O'Farrill: Siboney]

Alison Stewart: You just heard Arturo O'Farrill's cover of Siboney by Ernesto Lecuona for the 2024 Public Song Project. All this week we will premiere songs for PSP 24 from Friends of WNYC, and over the next few months, you'll get the chance to hear yourself alongside them by submitting your own songs to the project. For more information, check out wnyc.org/publicsongproject.

Throughout this week, after you hear those songs, you'll also be hearing from some music history experts to give context for the songs and help share some inspiration and other parts of the public domain to explore. Joining me now is Anna Celenza. She's a professor of musicology at the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University, and author and editor of many books, including The Cambridge Companion to Gershwin. Anna, welcome to All Of It.

Anna Celenza: Thank you so much. It's really a pleasure.

Alison Stewart: We just played that amazing version of Arturo O'Farrill's version of Siboney. Let's start there. Will you share with us the musical context behind this song and how it fits into the history of 1920s and early 20th-century jazz?

Anna Celenza: Yes, sure. Happy to. First of all, loved that performance.

Alison Stewart: Loved it.

Anna Celenza: I will say it sounds so different from what the song would've originally sounded like in 1927. The title of the tune is actually a reference to the indigenous people of Cuba, Les Siboneyes. This is something that's really important about Ernesto Lecuona and is that like Gershwin, he was very interested in incorporating indigenous influences into his own music. This tune definitely does that.

It was originally a song tune, and if anyone's heard a version that Bain Crosby sang in 1945, do not pay attention to those lyrics. The English lyrics have nothing to do with the original. The original lyrics are actually-- It's a love song, and Siboney is referencing Cuba in general and in some way, a lost ideal Cuba. It's a love song. It's someone yearning to connect with Siboney again, and all the beauties of its natural-- what it was in nature and its beauty, but before, say, the civilization kicked in the '20s and '30s. In that way, the song, it's especially important for our folks that want to connect with Cuba because it really is about a love of Cuba and missing Cuba.

Alison Stewart: Today's the 100th anniversary of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. We spent the first hour of the show talking about it. Let's synthesize some themes that we've talked about today. How can one draw the line from Ernesto Lecuona to Gershwin?

Anna Celenza: Oh, it's really tight. It's very close. In fact, it starts in 1916 when Ernesto Lecuona played as a young boy, a solo concert at Aeolian Hall, the same place that Rhapsody in Blue was premiered. Gershwin came in touch with him in 1928 when he was in Paris. Actually 1927. He was in Paris getting inspiration to write his American in Paris. He gets invited to a private concert of Ernesto Lecuona. Gershwin goes and revels there, and they're all amazed by his performance abilities. Gershwin connects with him there.

Then in 1931, Lecuona is brought to Hollywood. He did a lot of film music, and he performed in a film in 1931. He performed a song called The Peanut Vendor, which became a very popular song. He was there, and he was also performing in Hollywood Bowl. Of all pieces, he played Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, and Gershwin was in the concert. He went up to him afterwards and went, "Wow, you play that better than anybody." They really formed a connection.

In 1932 when Gershwin goes to Cuba for two weeks to discover its music, he connects again with Lecuona. Then he, Gershwin, writes his Cuban overture, which is very much inspired by a lot of the innovations that Lecuona had done. One last little thing, because Lecuona had a huge-- He studied classical music. He was a fabulous classical pianist, but he was also a composer of all different genres, and was very much engaged in popular music. For example, Siboney was a song written for a review, which is, it's like a Broadway show, but it's a mix of song and dance and sketches and this sort of thing, in the same way that Gershwin's Sweeney was written for a review.

These are songs, and what's interesting is both of those songs, although in very different ways, are about someone longing for the past, and they also engage in indigenous musics, if it's Siboney or if it's an imagined idea of what African American music was in the South. It's fascinating there were a lot of parallels. In fact, Newsweek even called Lecuona-- There was an article, and he called him the Jorge Gershwin Lecuona. He was the George Gershwin of Cuba in a lot of ways.

Alison Stewart: The event where Rhapsody in Blue premiered was called an Experiment in Modern Music, and it opened with a song called Livery Stable Blues. Let's listen to a little bit of that performed by the Dixieland Jazz Band.

[MUSIC - Dixieland Jazz Band: Livery Stable Blues]

Alison Stewart: Anna, what does this period owe to the blues?

Anna Celenza: Well, to answer that question, we need to step back just for a second and talk about, there are two big different types of blues. There's Delta Blues or Country Blues. That's one type. That's the type that's really most connected to folk music and came first. That was a person playing a guitar or a banjo and singing the blues form, singing the blues. That gets heard by WC Handy and other folks who bring it to New York, and then they create this music, blending it with ragtime and dance music, and they create what we now call urban blues or classic blues. This Livery Stable Blues, that's an example of that. It's early jazz. For Gershwin, when he heard the word jazz, this is what was in his mind.

This was the first jazz recording by, as you said, the original Dixieland Jazz Band. These were a group of men from New Orleans. They were white. About half of them were Italian immigrants. They did not invent jazz. That is definitely an African American genre. It had been existing in New Orleans for quite a while, but they were the first to commercialize it. They went to Chicago first and they came to New York, and they recorded this record which became a global hit.

Soldiers took the record with them in World War I when they went to France and various places. This song really was, in the mind of many, the first jazz tune. In the experiment in modern music, what Paul Whiteman is trying to do is he is trying to come up with a new American sound. He's trying to blend the popular music of jazz that's considered very American but in the context of this European concert hall.

Alison Stewart: I am going to dive in there because we are going to check in with you a little bit later on this week. We're running out of time for today, but we'll talk to you a little bit later on. Is that okay?

Anna Celenza: Oh, okay. That sounds great.

Alison Stewart: Anna Celenza is a professor of musicology at the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University. We'll speak with her a little more later this week. If you'd like to know more about the Public Song Project, go to wnyc.org/publicsongproject. Check back to the website throughout the week as we'll update it with more songs and information. I'm Alison Stewart, I appreciate you listening. I'll meet you back here next time.

 

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