Offshore Explorer Stories

Offshore Explorer looks at culture and history through the mariner's eyes. We travel from port to port looking at the state of life today. How they got that way is part of the endless fascination of life. These articles are useful tools to understand the interpreter. My views are influenced by the experiences I have accrued over a lifetime. By understanding those points of inflection in my life the arm chair traveler can fully grasp the beauty and glory of the human endeavor. It is like walking with the artist in his canvas as he explains, shows, and experiences the subject and colors of that moment.

The uniqueness of the mariner's point of view is found on the oceans of the world. It is an experience that hasn't changed since the first man floated on a log to fish in deeper waters. Time is about distance and distance knows no past. The future is a point far off over the curve of the horizon. It is the present that booms in one's mind as the total encompassing sense of being. Just being there where you stand. Experiencing this kind of state of "being," you can begin to see the world for its presence at that moment. It is this freshness, this clarity that I will experience with you as we travel from port to port around the world.

I will always do a segment on music in the show.

I am always drawn to music. Whether I am listening to jazz, rock, blues, soul, country, hip hop, Brazilian, techno, bossa nova, fado, Scottish pibroch piping; didgeridoo music in Australia, South Indian classical Carnatic music, and Hindustani classical music, Japanese gagaku classical tradition pre-polyphonic organum vocal music of late medieval Europe, Byzantine chants, Mozart, Handel, Nigerian King Sunny Ade and Fela Anikulapo Kuti, the Senegalese Youssou N’Dour. Cameroonian-born Frenchman Francis Bebey, Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and the pop-flamenco of the French group the Gipsy Kings music is a reflection of the machinations of the culture. Music points the way understanding. In fact, all art points to a way (or path). The present tense expression reveals aspects of the soul and the heart beat of the culture. There is so much beauty we never come in touch within our lives it leaves me hungry for more.

I am no expert on music. But I live with a musician of exemplary musical talent, Paulette McWilliams. I have watched her perform her wicked interpretations of songs from the American songbook. Her upcoming new album "A Woman's Story" jazz/soul originals expresses the emotional journey of a black woman from her early work with Rufus, Quincy Jones, Sarah Vaughan, Johnny Mathis, Marvin Gaye, Luther Vandross, Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson, David Bowie, Mary J. Blige, Billy Idol, and many many more. Her solo career has been one of jazz excellence. The new album "A Woman's Story" will be seminal for her and I think for the American music world.

Paulette reinforces my point that music tells the story of the heart. In my opinion no one does it better. Of course, I am totally biased because I love her. By any objective standard, whether it is musicians, producers, or fans, she is the real deal. She has generously led me into the depths of her musical genius. Here lies my touch stone for listening to other music. No one is more generous with her insight, intuition, and musicianship than Paulette. I have learned a lot, but really I have only just learned what questions to ask. So I'm far from being an expert, but I'm eager to learn. "Eager to learn is a valuable frame of being when traveling."

Our first port will be Lisbon, Portugal. Portugal is famous for Fado.

Fado music is a form of Portuguese singing that is often associated with pubs, cafés, and restaurants. This music genre has much earlier origins but is generally placed as being originated in the 1820s in Portugal. Fado is generally known for how expressive in nature it is, as well as being profoundly melancholic. It originated from political and social oppression as a way to express discontent. It was usurped by the Junta ruling the country in the 50s and turned the music into a racist theme song. But that didn't last, the people took back the ownership.

Today the port of Lisbon is alive with another kind of music. "Dance Music," although this term is very general, the DJs who create and play this music are drawing from all the colonies of the once powerful Portuguese diaspora. Today immigrants from Mozambique, Angola, Brazil, Guinea-Bissau, and Cape Verde are net exporters of music to the world in a country that has contracted in importance and income. Nidia' Borges has bridged the racial gap from the European African Ghetto to the mainstream. Her debut album, Nídia é Má, Nídia é Fudida (Nídia Is Bad, Nídia Is Dope), was named in Rolling Stone’s 20 best electronic albums of 2017.

The musical soul of Portugal has changed.

João Branko of the Portuguese band Buraka Som Sistema said in an email that it was the contrast between harshness and light that made Ms. Borges’s music so compelling. “The most striking sonic differences for me,” he said, “are the softer, nonobvious musical textures that she fuses with the more aggressive, and—most of the time—more creative, rhythm patterns.” He summed up her sound as “spiky and dissonant,” adding that her breakthrough was just the start of wider recognition. “It feels like the beginning,” he said. “Lisbon’s club culture has hacked the music industry, and there’s no turning back.”

The musical soul of Portugal is evolving. From the Brazilian influences, to the African diaspora ghetto dance rhythms, Fado, classical Pedro De Escobar (1535) to contemporary jazz artist António Pinho Vargas the richness of the scene is hard to deny.

As a mariner touching the port for the first time or the tenth time the music floats upon the wind like a chorus of whispers, "The Portuguese live."

Paulette's new album will be released in January 2020. We can hardly wait!

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