Pink Martini: Old Friends, New Music

Pink Martini photographed at the NPR West studios.

Bettina Wiesenthal-Birch, NPR

I had a lovely night tonight catching up with old friends and meeting new ones.

We at News & Notes spoke with Pink Martini about their concerts at the Hollywood Bowl; what it's like to sell millions of records (numbers they don't track but WE do); and how their intercultural/multicultural backgrounds affect their multi-lingual music.

Bandleader and pianist Thomas Lauderdale is Asian, and adopted, and his siblings include a black brother and sister. Chanteuse China Forbes' mother is a pioneering black financier. Most of their fans may not know about their family backgrounds, but I asked about their family composition to see if it had influenced their music... and they said it had.

I bring Thomas and China up not only because I interviewed them, but because I went to college with both of them. They were part of a crew that made Harvard's Adams House a place of my rapidly accelerated personal growth. At Harvard, you generally stay in one dorm, or "House," from sophomore through senior years. Rooming groups go as units, and when I was there (the rooming policy has changed) each House had its own flavor.

We Adamsians were the artsy rebels, as much as one can be a rebel at Harvard. There was an annual drag ball, skinny dipping in the indoor Venetian pool, an improv group (of which I was a part), a printing press, rock shows in the dining room, hip hop/house dance parties in the dorm rooms, and poet Seamus Heaney wandering up to get a bowl of cereal while you were eating breakfast.

I hadn't seen Thomas and China in years, but when we got together, there was that click: yes, we are still connected somehow, over the years. They invited me to dinner tonight, which I thought was going to be, well, a meal. Instead it turned out to be an event... a private party at a restaurant called Simon/LA (which is run by a celebrity chef that I hadn't heard of until I went online for directions).

The party filled an outdoor "room" with walls but no ceiling, rows of tables, and those propane-fired heaters to take the edge off the night chill. The crowd was filmmakers, fashionistas, photographers, documentarians... and people willing to engage in a good argument.

At my table, over ahi tuna and gazpacho, we debated the impact of slavery, colonialism, and communism on different countries. We talked about genaeology and the quest for family. And then, when the signature dessert tray came out with huge bowls of cotton candy, we took the candy (cubic feet of it!) and molded hats, bunny rabbits, Gumby-style figures and bunny ears out of the sticky stuff. It was like Romper Room meets The News Hour with Jim Lehrer.

And I loved every second of it.

One of the great privileges of doing what I do is cycling back to reconnect with acquaintances, often by accident. When I spoke to Veronica Webb this week, she remembered that we had met long ago during, as she put it "those crazy hip-hop days" of the '90s. Even Barack Obama and I have a connection -- though certainly not a friendship -- as I had a work-study job at the Harvard Law Review while he was the Law Review's first black president.

As often as I get to interview people that I know somehow (I have been in this business for nearly 20 years!), it's rare that I interview people who are friends. We just don't do what the now defunct Spy Magazine used to call "logrolling in our time," or sycophantic "you scratch my back/I'll scratch yours" journalism. But moments like this are a happy confluence of work and play ... and more than play, a chance to remember old moments of connection, and make new ones.

Farai Chideya

3:24 AM ET | 09-14-2007 | permalink

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