A visit to a musical instrument museum with her toddler son inspired El Perro del Mar’s Sarah Assbring to recalibrate her pop sensibilities and work on what would become KoKoro. It was a “please-touch” museum where they could play the instruments, and Assbring fell in love with the percussion used in Indonesian gamelan music, and with harps from Asia and Africa. KoKoro looks outward, both musically and lyrically, to the world, and rather than a tender clinch, it’s a wholehearted bear hug of global pop sounds. Assbring will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new feature on her.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDIabq10ad4
Assbring: Forough Farrokhzad was an Iranian poet and film director. Though her life ended much too soon she’s considered one of Iran’s most influential female poets of the 20th century. I came upon her film The House Is Black a few years back, and its juxtaposing of poetry and imageries from a leprosy colony is so powerful; brutal, tragic and beautiful at the same time. Her poetry was something that I kept with me while formulating my idea for KoKoro.
