Our love’s a complex vintage wine / all rotten leaves and lemon rind / I’d spit you out but now you’re mine
In a world of unoriginal, manufactured sounds, the Tiny Desk Contest is a breath of fresh air. Artists such as T-Pain, The Cranberries, Wilco, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes and Sylvan Esso have made memorable appearances on the Tiny Desk channel. Each year Tiny Desk, in association with National Public Radio, holds a competition, inviting performers to send in a clip of themselves performing in the hopes of winning a concert of their own. This year’s winner, Gaelynn Lea, is one to remember.
If you’re anything like me, a duplicate of an existing sound is definitely not exciting. What truly sparks my interest is a creation that feels authentic, unique and engages me from the first or second note. In the clip of this year’s winner, after the introductory credits, we see Gaelynn Lea playing the violin as though it is a cello! She uses her bow to create long, rich sounds using multiple strings at a time, as well as plucking an interesting riff as she goes along. She begins to sing, and reveals a unique, distinctly folky voice with the grit of someone who has lived an interesting life. She blesses the audience with a raw rendition of her original composition, Someday We’ll Linger in the Sun, a gloriously bittersweet ballad, made all the more moving by the presence of the strings.
As I’ve mentioned before, it is not overly sweet or traditionally romantic music that stirs my emotions, but that which seems to reflect what is real. There is something incredibly vulnerable about this performance. A richness, a realness, that is difficult find in the oversaturated market that the music industry has become. This is an artist to watch. Well done, NPR and Tiny Desk, on making her discovery.
