The Kansas City Star from Kansas City, Missouri • 109

i I Art Books Music Stage Movies Entertainment Travel 'Payday' in a Star's Jangling World country world has its own dynamics associated in part with the tavern the sexuality and checked violence of the crowd the down-home faces the sentimentalism the tacky lights and the smell of beer the new film about a country vocalist played by Rip Tom defines this world and taps into its energy with no little skill The movie gives a glimpse of the public self isolated in the hyped-up atmosphere of a one-night stand But more intimately it takes us into the motels back rooms and car seats where the antihero does his between-the-shows living He is cruising the highways of Alabama in a Cadillac fur- around the tent circuit preaching for the holy buck Back in the we had Face in the the Budd Schulberg-Elia Kazan drama with Andy Griffith as a redneck singer with political designs But films that center on this peculiar American type have been much fewer say than those dealing with a related phenomenon the rock star This is strange for the subject is a rich one Entertainers who work the rural tents and dance halls have a special mythic role: got to be stars and at the same time an interesting tension between the romantic idolatry and its populist demands Then too the "Payday" opening Friday at the Festival (audience rating: R) Drama with screenplay by Don Carpenter directed by Daryl Duke produced by Martin Fink and released by Cinerama with these principal players: Rip Torn Ahna Capri Elayne Heilveil Michael Gwynne Jeff Morris and Cliff Emmich By Giles Fowler Motion Picture Editor The peckerwood superstar is a unique feature of the American folkscape and I wonder why there been more movies about him There was of course about the showman-evangelist who jived his way US Ml his talent There is something vulpine about Maury with his shrewd greedy eyes and lewd grin but in back of the sharpness and bravado is a man running scared You see it in his too-sudden rages his way of meeting threats by dashing for cover behind a facile charm arrogance has a life of its own a feral magnetism Yet the trace of insecurity caught so well by portrayal is what renders the character whole A him moves a raunchy subculture drawn with precision and humor Maury visits a backwater dee-jay and the two go into a buddy-buddy routine on the air before getting down to the private business of favors and threats Women with teased hair and harlequin glasses go into raptures over act in a dance hall while the girl of the moment (Ahna Capri) blows bubblegum and scans the crowd with agate-eyed boredom Another groupie (Elayne Heilveil) is so benighted never heard of omelettes though swear ate 3000 McDonald Shortly before this astonishing confession she is seduced by Maury on the back seat of his Cad while his fat surprisingly gentle driver-bodyguard (Cliff Emmich) gets an eyeful in the rearview mirror Then the mom (Clara Dunn) who allows that been feeling awful sickly Maury gets the hint and brings her a fresh supply of speed pills All the vignettes are well-played (the casting is -fine right down to the facial bone structures) and only a few betray the calculation of sophisticated moviemakers dealing with a folk subject At their best the creators of have made the subject jump to life in a way that seems almost independent of art what realism is all about nished with groupies grass pints at bourbon amphetamines and even a firearm or two The mixture is combustible the man himself is charged with a demon spark a kind at restless ferocity that is vital and dangerous It is all too easy for such a drama to flare into melodrama which it does in time But even when the story gets out of control becomes blatant and even hackneyed the film has a kinetic power that grabs the viewer and let go In that sense is an impressive work by a director Daryl Duke and a writer Don Carpenter for whom this is the first feature film (Duke had the advantage of some prior experience with the excellent National Film Board of Canada) It is only when their zeal for theatrics gets the best of them that runs into trouble I think the film is meant to be a sort of tragic fable of the mutilation by the American value system You know the type of thing: The star suffering from amputated innocence complicated by a case of terminal hubris Well certain kinds of ego-greed and materialism do produce evil results The theme is valid But then the writer and director have to resort to melodrama tics including a homicide to whack one last slice off the American star myth These developments are none too credible they feel superimposed on a film that has long since made its point and sure bow to resolve itself (The closing scene has that easy-way-out look) While finally undercuts its own promise as drama it does offer a smashing performance by Rip Tom plus a finely detailed study of the people and places that crowd the pressurized existence Long underused in films Torn is a fascinating actor whose role as Maury the star at last gives flexing room for Ml Horse and rider Stool with caryatids From Tribal Afri Country singer (Rip Torn) with groupies Russian Music and Amity in Iowa Even so and this is the splendor of the exhibition the power of this sculpture shines through These are sacred objects holding within them vital forces which direct and affect the lives of the people to whom they once belonged peope to whom the fertility of the seed and the soil and the wisdom of ancestors and priests are matters of life and death In an easy sense we can admire the exalted role of art in daily life but in another sense we may well be glad that we are free from such magical forces The one fact characteristic of Dogon art but not of course without many parallels elsewhere is its stylization: natura istie representation of persons and creatures is not a goal or measure of excellence Given this high degree of stylization two things about Dogon art are immediately remarkable First while stylization in general can easily lead to a superficial decorative and essentially impotent art in Dogon art it has not Without the advantage of being members of the tribe and with our own cultural baggage conta ning such a strong emphasis on psychological portrayal through realistic representation we still oan sense the abiding vitality of this art Second stylization can very quickly lead to systems of geometric reduction and to a leveling out of production When that happens art becomes moribund or meretricious or both But it does not happen in Dogon art The anonymity of the artists and the limits of have stifled neither the vitality nor the imaginative range ot Dogon art Even pieces of See DOGON on Page 5E By Donald Hoffmann Art Critic Art of the at the Nelson Gallery consisting of more than 100 pieces collected by Lester Wunderman of New York is first and last a beautiful and very moving exhibition By focusing on the art of one tribe which resides along the cliffs in central West Africa the exhibition surprisingly enough seems to express more richness and variety than many scatter-shot shows in the past So accustomed have we become to the notion that tribal ritual art is anonymous and tradition-bound the pleasure in this variety is all the greater African art like any other art depends in the beginning and in the end on the object What goes on in between the first acquaintance and a more securely grounded friendship the looking the investigation the thinking and the looking again is what takes time and effort and luck First of all it is difficult possibly impossible for us to be really attuned to a tribal mind that functions without a written language To such a mind it must be presumed visual forms radiate a power beyond any measure in our own experience We are past the time I hope of propaganda to the effect that tribal societies are in comparison to ours like Shangri-La The absence of the written word to mention only one aspect is a fact which in good sense cannot be dismissed lightly The granting of life forces to inanimate objects as a matter of real belief rather than poetic metaphor is another fact that must be weighed Even the very beautiful architecture of the Dogon so suggestive of that of the cliff dwellers of say Mesa Verde must gain much of its naturalness from the fact that the natives build with what they have at hand mud and stone and wooa and within a harmonious range of types because their sort of economy simply does not call for the complexity of often conflicting building types prompted by our own ways of life Our approach to African art has become more sophisticated in the last few years (though hard not to think of modernist sculpture by Brancusi and Giacometti and others when we see these wonderful sculptures) and yet there is a frustrating lack of knowledge or agreement about much of the content of African art Knowledge transmitted only by oral traditions is clearly open to all sorts of distortions and variations Prof Roy Sie-ber of Indiana University in a lecture last Sunday at the gallery indicated what terrible diffculties even the most trained scholars face in the field Natives tell different stories the word is never contradicted simply because he is the chief many meanings have been forgotten over the years and centuries the same images evoke different meanings at different times and places sculptures are made in one tribe for trade with other tribes and so on Some natives he said invent myths and meanings rather than admit to investigators that they really know and others deliberately provide erroneous informat on to investigators they like It is an attitude we can have some sympathy for kovsky Fourth Symphony His conducting of that work was enough to overshadow an elegant performance by Oleg Kagan soloist in the Prokofieff First Violin Concerto Gennady Rozhdestvensky with platform manner and economical beat suggestive of the late Fritz Reiner produced a different Leningrad tone And then there was Neeme Jarvi with a most persuasive reading of the Rachmaninoff Third though his accompaniment of Viktor impassioned performance of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto was on the lackadaisical side There was an unusual flexibility by our standards in the orchestral seating arrangements The concertmas-ter yielded his place to his assistant (just to allow him a rest the conductor of the evening said later) at one concert Between one work and another on the same program there would be as many as half a dozen changes in the seating of first violins and so on The hospitality for which Iowa is now famous in New York Philadelphia Boston and London can be consid-ereo after last weekend to extend to Leningrad Language difficulties and weather posed some problems but they were surmounted It was a fine weekend of music and international accord certo His appearance well prepared by recordings was eagerly awaited and very well received When we send our major orchestras on tour overseas our practice is to present standard international repertoire courteously including a major work or two by composers of a host country The Russians played their own music exclusively on this visit There is nothing wrong with that for it is an uncommonly rich orchestral repertoire from Mikhail Glinka (1803-1857) to Rodion Shchedrin 1932 Yet there was a little grumbling among cognoscenti attending the concerts are great in Russian murmured one chap how would they be in Mozart or Such questions were raised by comments on the remarkable string tone of the Leningraders a superbly disciplined ensemble with a sound which at its best resembled that of a fine chamber orchestra And it was at its best at least among the massive string choirs during all four of the concerts in Stephens Auditorium One conductor brought out one thing another brought out something different from the players At the opening concert the hit of the evening was Maris Janssens and the glowing reading he gave the Tchai- By John Haskins Music Editor Ames Iowa The annual Ames International Orchestra Festival which began in 1969 with the dedication and formal opening of the 2700-seat Stephens Auditorium on the campus of Iowa State University seemed to lead a charmed life That first year brought a one-week residence of the New York Philharmonic a week of the Philadelphia Orchestra followed in 1970 the Boston Symphony came for a week in 1971 the London Symphony in 1972 and the series peaked out over last weekend with a four-day stand by the Leningrad Philharmonic One says peaked out because the chain has been broken The Orchestre de Paris had been booked for 1974 but the North American tour of the orchestra which was specially created for the late Charles Munch (now directed by Jean Martinon) was cancel 1 when the French government withdrew the substantial subsidy The projected schedule of the Orchestre de Paris in Ames next year will be filled by a series of special events to be announced sometime after January How does the oldest symphony orchestra in the Soviet founded in 1882 as the Imperial Court Orchestra in St Petersburg numbering among its early conductors a brilliant young Latvian conductor Maris Janssens two were directed by a slightly older young Estonian conductor Neeme Jarvi and the final concert last Sunday afternoon was led by Gennady Rozhdestvensky at this point probably best-known conductor The soloists at the concerts were brilliant young concert artists who have won stature in international competitions Oleg Kagan at the opening concert scored with an elegant reading of the f'rst violin concerto of Serge Prokofieff under the baton of Maris Janssens Viktor Tretyakov had a great success in the Tchaikovsky violin concerto under Neeme a success all the more appealing because of the cool way he handled an accident to his instrument just when he had begun the intricate cadenza of the first movement A chorus drawn from the students at Iowa State very well drilled by resident choral director David Rich and coached by John Oliver of Boston was featured in the third concert With Joy Davidson as soprano soloist that concert offered the Prokofieff cantata Nevsky The final concert under Rozhdestvensky last Sunday afternoon offered Alexander Slobodyanik as soloist in the Tchaikovsky first piano con such composers as Tchaikovsky Rimsky-Korsakoff Anton Rubinstein and find itself off the beaten track in Ames midway in a five-week tour of North America? Organization and good planning that is the answer Well before Stephens Auditorium opened its doors the planning began Sponsored by Iowa State University in co-operation with Columbia Artists Management the annual festivals are supported by a Festival Association composed of administrative technical and advisory staff a Festival Guild with representation in 28 Iowa cities and a substantial list of patrons and donors with wide geographic spread across the state All the university facilities and all of Ames turns out for the occasion The visitors are offered hospitality up to the limits of their free time and capacity and in the case of the visiting Leningraders some 30 Russian-speaking persons were provided to serve as translators and guides They were put to good use by the Russian musicians in trips to department stores and supermarkets The Leningrad Philharmonic with a touring complement of 115 player there are more back played four concerts at Ames to sold-out houses One was conducted by A Good Appetizer for Savoring Life South of the Border must have been A culations are correct she around for quite a white Scanning the Arts to stage directions set the scene for which our Lyric Theater offered earlier this year) as mythical kingdom called in mythical period called the 19th Or so the librettists would have us believe But behind these myths it seems lay an the heroine herself La Perichole More precisely the action is supposed to take place tc vard the middle of the last century By that time of course Peru was already an independent republic and its Spanish viceroys had given wav to a succession of presidents who were either electea or militarily imposed So the sprightly Don Andres de Ribeira never existed as such However La Perichole did Her real name was Mariquita Villegas She was it seems the most popular actress of her day in Lima That day happens to have embraced the latter half of the 18th century No matter As much because of her amorous adventures as for her histrionic talents the senorita appears to have become something of a legend even In ha own lifetime And legends have a habit eventually of disregarding dates In her legendary capacity for example the late Miss Villegas likewise figures in what is perhaps Thornton best-known novel Bridge of San Luis (Here she has to apologize for ridiculing a marquesa) my cal Green prove to be a conventional literary anthology It's devoted largely to descriptive writing translated from the Spanish or Portuguese and not otherwise accessible in English The practical value of such an enterprise seems to me readily apparent Our Latin-Ameri-can neighbors complain that we in the north continue to treat their part of the hemisphere with benign neglect said to be especially bitter about the way tended to ignore its cultural achievements They argue that still all too apt to see the whole of South and Central America mainly through the eyes of an Englishman Hudson A widely-read Latin American once told me that he had the deepest respect for works like Away and Long of the Purple and he asked many of your countrymen know that my people have a rich literary heritage of their own or off-hand could name a single Latin-American writer of major (Even though he added over the years translations of individual volumes have appeared from time to time) Obviously a book like Green calculated to fill such a gap where Latin basic fiction and poetry are concerned What it does and I believe does is to provide a general background against which that fiction and poetry may be read with much greater satisfaction To return to La Perichole for instance Porras Barrenechea explains why contemporary Peruvians still look upon her so affectionately interest the pride the indulgence of the he writes about the most enchanting of its characters: the woman of Lima la limena She embodied everything that was most typical of the period in her soul her customs even her dress Nobody incarnated as she did the wit the vivacity the malice and the shrewdness of the Creole mind And in all these attributes Mariquita Villegas was deemed I he representative Liman woman of her era In an introduction to the 590-odd pages of this anthology its editor specifically denies any propaganda motive He points out that the passages he has selected were all originally designed for domestic consumotion But here his disclaimer could be just a bit deceptive Perhaps such an approach simply by letting us listen while Latin Americans talk to other Latin Americans may constitute the most effective propaganda for his purpose After rereading Green at any rate it again strikes me that in Senor Arciniegas his compatriots south of the border have a first-rate salesman of what it means to live today south of the border Haskell Thus in one of the most charming of French comic operas we see Dona Mariquita cavorting about the stage as a young street singer presumably long after her death (Fact-bound historians say she died in 1812) Yet on the other hand a reputable American novelist would have us assume her to have been a woman of mature years considerably before her birth (According to Wilder the bridge collapsed in 1714 whereas the records indicate that she make her professional debut at the Coliseo theater until approximately 1760) A further thought occurs to me Most of us in the non-Latin world probably have heard of La Perichole if at all from these two works both by outsiders Surely there must be native Peruvian tales dealing with a lady of such varied accomplishments Should that be the case they seem never to have been circulated outside of her country But in his Past and Raul Barrenechea has this to say about her: leading Peruvian of fife 18th century is not the erudite Pedro de Peralta Bamuevo despite his brushes with the Inquisition but the saucy actress Mariquita Villegas La Perichole who stole the heart of a senile viceroy and induced him to pay for his belated passion wifi) a residence worthy of Versailles (The name of her aged Lothario being Don Antonio Amat) Excerpts from Porras book are contained in a remarkable anthology published nearly 30 years ago by Alfred A Knopf Green has been a favorite of mine ever since it was first issued and happily it turns out to be still in print As far as aware nothing like Green has been put together for any similar area What the editor did was to assemble an overview of the 20-odd republics of Latin America as seen by their leading writers The collection deals with the tumultuous history with its enormously diversified landscape with some of its principal heroes and finally with what German Arciniegas calls the of La tin-American life No fewer than 33 authors were tapped for inclusion Several of them Uke Romulo Gallegos of Venezuela Jose Pereira da Graca Aranha of Brazil and Jose Eustasio Rivera I understand are known at home primarily as novelists and-or poets of distinction But i.