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A review by justabean_reads
Curious Sounds: A Dialogue in Three Movements by francesca ekwuyasi, Roger Mooking
3.0
This book's a bit of an odd duck, and I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. The core of it is multi-genre artist Roger Mooking making a micro-album playing with the idea that we now have attention spans shorter than goldfish. Each song is between eight seconds and a minute and a half, and is paired with a story between twenty and a hundred words long, and a piece of art; they collectively talk about youth, life and death. That's the second half of the book.
The first half of the book is a conversation between Roger Mooking and author francesca ekwuyasi (who I pretty much only know from Butter, Honey, Pig, Bread, and indeed the two met when Mooking was defending that book on Canada Reads). The album/stories/art give direction to the conversation, but it ends up being mostly about different forms of creativity, family, history and art. ekwuyasi is a woman who loves a footnote, and also ties the project into other discussions about trauma and culture and art happening in the Black community.
I got more out of the first part, especially in regards to why people create, and the emotions around creativity. Maybe I'd appreciate the album more on listening to it again, but I've gotta say it was a lot all at once. It's very dense, and happens very fast (in nineteen minutes and twenty seconds), and though I generally liked Mooking's music and art (not as sold on the prose), it's just... a lot. Which is the point! It's just that I hit the thing with modern art where I get that it's making a point, but I don't always enjoy the ride? Or find the message itself buried by the medium? Art for artists, or something?
It's a beautiful book though, and I'm glad they got to make it together.
The first half of the book is a conversation between Roger Mooking and author francesca ekwuyasi (who I pretty much only know from Butter, Honey, Pig, Bread, and indeed the two met when Mooking was defending that book on Canada Reads). The album/stories/art give direction to the conversation, but it ends up being mostly about different forms of creativity, family, history and art. ekwuyasi is a woman who loves a footnote, and also ties the project into other discussions about trauma and culture and art happening in the Black community.
I got more out of the first part, especially in regards to why people create, and the emotions around creativity. Maybe I'd appreciate the album more on listening to it again, but I've gotta say it was a lot all at once. It's very dense, and happens very fast (in nineteen minutes and twenty seconds), and though I generally liked Mooking's music and art (not as sold on the prose), it's just... a lot. Which is the point! It's just that I hit the thing with modern art where I get that it's making a point, but I don't always enjoy the ride? Or find the message itself buried by the medium? Art for artists, or something?
It's a beautiful book though, and I'm glad they got to make it together.