Never underestimate the power of art
There is something extraordinarily special about artists who have the ability to ignite passion in their audience – that moment where everything else falls at the wayside and the audience is left in awe. AroarA had this affect on the audience throughout their performance Wednesday, Oct. 30 at Silence. The talent this duo possesses goes so deep. Their harmonies were infectious. The duo is made up of Andrew Whiteman (Broken Social Scene/Apostle of Hustle) and wife Ariel Engle, who both have unique elements to share. In an interview with Whiteman, he said, “Ariel and I, we were involved romantically before the band, the band came second… we knew the band was going to happen but didn’t know what form it would take. We both like a lot of different kinds of music; there are lots of different things to do. When we started we started using crazy instruments – a goatskin West African banjo – what we were making in the beginning had that kind of flavor, like Arabic disco. In the Pines kind of presented itself as this is the thing you should focus on right now.”
Raw talent and passion emanated from the duo in what seemed like an effortless manner. Avant-garde poet, Alice Notley’s, inspired AroarA’s debut album, In the Pines. The collection of poetry, which goes by the same name, is filled with sorrow and struggle, based on a woman who is undergoing hepatitis C treatment and dealing with bouts of confusion and depression while struggling through this change. Each song on the album is numbered (not in chronological order) to match a particular poem from Notley’s book.
Whiteman expressed in the interview that “I’m just a worker, that’s what I do, I make culture…a little tiny sliver of it, I make it with my wife and I think what we are doing is really freaky fresh.” When asked why AroarA chose to use Notley’s work, Whiteman said, “I’m a poetry fanatic and a poetry snob, and I have a lot of opinions on what I think is good and isn’t, it’s a huge part of my life. Alice is one of the great practitioners going today; that idea was very sporadic. I was brushing my teeth and thinking, ‘We could use this.’”
A fusion of all artistic elements went into the production of their album and their performance. Whiteman said that, “[they] love the interdisciplinary approach,” and AroarA’s feel is exactly that – it has something for everyone to appreciate.
Both Whiteman and Engle have collaborated with other artists in their musical careers, but the formation of AroarA was unique for them, as it was not only working together with another artist, but with each other. Whiteman expressed, “When we are trying to make music together, it’s more helpful, more effective to treat the other person like a collaborator, not like your wife or husband.” There are benefits to working together in this way, “The fact that we are always together is great, because if you come up with an idea then they are there to share with and tell them,” Whiteman said, explaining that this allows for a constant flow of experimentation and new artistic creation. Whiteman also expressed that when there are downfalls, “you go along, and figure this little things out and then fix them.”
When asked about the message they wanted to get out to the public about In the Pines, he shared:
“We absolutely have a message, In the Pines…it’s about leanness. We made this record on a laptop in a house for very cheap…when we play live, we play our guitars and we put our sounds in a cheap sampler that we push with our fingers to get it started. We aren’t on a sequence; we aren’t trying to recreate the album for the audience without them secretly knowing. We just want them to get the skeleton of the thing.”
When their vinyl comes out, if a person wanted to go into the narrative of the story of the poetry of In the Pines, they’d see “there is something going on there with her use of language and her topic is a reflection of how we play live.” Whiteman went on to say, “I [guess I] can’t tell you what the message is, but I know that I feel it every time I play, I put on my suit, I know what I’m doing, I know what I deliver. It’s a very subjective thing. Poetry…often can be an interior pursuit…people can feel what we do.”
Whiteman believes that “everything in [his] life has led to this” and that they “love playing live; I think we really have our live legs down now.”
The feelings evoked at AroarA’s concert are almost indescribable; to leave a performance feeling elevated and full of passion, it is known that what had been witnessed was a true gift of artistic embodiment. AroarA is a force to be reckoned with.