The Geoffrey Castle Band in the "Oregon Desert"

By Maryo G. Ewell

Colorful, rich blends of global sound fuse into cool rhythms forging warm, percussive, upbeat tunes. This infectious musical movement is The Geoffrey Castle Band (formerly Guarneri Underground). Unwittingly defying the traditional trappings of music biz gradation, the band fuels its rise to the top of the New World Music category with incendiary chemistry. (Photo credit: Michelle Smith-Lewis ©2002)

On the one hand: The Geoffrey Castle Band. This Seattle-based band is led by a self-described "crazy death-defying stunt man electric violinist who sometimes plays music walking into the audience along the backs of seats in the auditorium." Band members, all with international reputations, hail from Ghana, Jamaica, and New York City. Among them, they speak many languages. They know, deeply, the music of cultures from Ireland to Nigeria to Turkey to Spain to Jamaica to Northern India. The percussionist uses an invented drum kit that includes conga drums, a Taiko drum, a snare drum, and "goat toenails and seed pods just hanging from things." The music is described by David List of New Age Voice Magazine as "one of the most eclectic world music ensembles." Their publicity materials call them "a tongue-tingling taste of the global music revolution that’s pushing genre-defying blends of world music, hip-hop, funk, jazz, rock and blues further into the mainstream."

On the other hand: LaGrande, Oregon, population 12,795. La Grande is one of the largest urban areas in Eastern Oregon. Called by some the "Oregon Desert," this is an area of ten immense counties and few people — averaging one person per square mile. "You might drive for two hours in some places and not meet anyone," says Bill Flood of the Oregon Arts Commission. The Eastern Oregon Regional Arts Council serves the 170,000 square miles of Eastern Oregon. Visitors to the area — most of whom simply speed through on I-84 — notice immense open spaces where wheat is grown and cattle are raised.

Bring the two together, and what happens? Dancing in the aisles.

"Of course!" says Jane Howell, Executive Director of the Arts Council. "The audience couldn’t sit still. My only regret is that we had the concert indoors! Next time, we’ll have it outdoors where everyone can dance."

"Of course!" says Geoffrey Castle, the stunt man violinist. "The audience couldn’t sit still. This is what!" really does it for me as an artist, bringing music that isn’t in the top-40 to audiences who haven’t heard anything like it before, to turn them on to a whole variety of new sounds, to establish that connection."

The idea of bringing the Geoffrey Castle Band — formerly the Guarneri Underground — to LaGrande seemed like a natural to Jane Howell and Kathy Andrew of the Regional Arts Council. It’s a part of the state where music is important to people. Recently, the Oregon Symphony performed in Burns (population 3,015), and nearly a third of the population of the county attended.

But not just symphonic music is important. Bill Flood, of the Oregon Arts Commission, speaks again: "An outsider’s stereotype would be, ‘This is cowboy country.’ But like all communities in the west, it’s culturally rich when you get to know it. There are tribal groups here — people of the Umatilla, the Burns-Payute, the Nez Perce tribes. There are Hispanics. Basque people. Japanese people. Bringing people together with music makes good sense to me, and it happens all the time. Whether it’s church music, a concert at the high school, or a fiddler, you’ll see all sorts of people in the audience."

But it was especially age diversity that the Regional Arts Council was striving for this time. They were hoping to present a musical event that would still attract their "regular" music audience, while also enticing a younger audience. And they wanted to provide a type of music perhaps never before heard live in Eastern Oregon. "We’re a fairly conservative area," says Jane. "Eastern Oregon University doesn’t even bring rock musicians to campus."

Given that their goal was diversity, they succeeded. Despite the fact that it was a "dead week" on campus - where the concert was held - there were university students who came, high school students too. There was more ethnic diversity than usually found at performances. "And, if you just glanced at the crowd, you’d see dress ranging from sarongs to really wild outfits to formal concert-going clothes," recalls Jane.

The eclectic music was the culmination of a four-day arts festival, and was performed in conjunction with the opening night of "Artists of Eastern Oregon — Connection to Place." The gallery shares a lobby with the concert hall. 150 people came to the opening of the art show — a show that was eclectic in itself — and Jane Howell noticed that many who came for the visual art stayed for the music, as she had hoped. All artists were given a pair of tickets to the concert, as well. It was a great mix of people who were excited by juxtaposition — of different styles of visual art, of different styles of music, of visual art mixed with music, of more "conservative" music audiences dancing with young people.

"I can’t believe I waited so long to experience this kind of music," Jane recalls an audience member telling her. "It’s nice to have something different" was a theme echoed by many that night. "If you missed the Geoffrey Castle Band…you missed one of the best live shows of the year," said the reviewer of the Argus. "Look for them in the future. This Seattle-based band is going to be the next big thing."

Was Geoffrey surprised by the reception? Not at all. "I expected we’d be well-received," he said. "I have taken my band to small towns in Idaho, Eastern Oregon and Eastern Washington repeatedly, and every time I do I find that the small towns are far more open-minded than people give them credit for."

No, the surprise for Geoffrey came the next day.

The Regional Arts Council had forged a fragile relationship with the Hilgard Youth Facility, a "lockdown" facility in the state juvenile corrections system where young men aged 14-18 are incarcerated. The Arts Council, which had not been able to offer Hilgard a program in over five years, suggested to the staff there that the band could do a morning of concert and conversation at the facility. The staff was, understandably, nervous about bringing a rock band inside, recalls Jane. So they mutually agreed that a single musician — Geoffrey himself — would visit Hilgard.

"I woke up the next morning after the gig," says Castle. "I felt like I had been beaten with sticks, because I was the principle sound technician for the concert as well as the lead artist. The last thing I wanted to do was to go to a jail. Barbed wire. A high fence. My heart was just sinking, and I felt awful. I had a nine-hour drive back to Seattle. I figured I would do a minimal 45 minute show and get out of there."

The surprise? "They were great. Forget the 45 minute show! I loved it! I had much, much rougher experiences with classes when I taught junior high. They were polite, honest, straightforward. I wanted to show them that music is a language, and that there’s no part of this language that couldn’t be spoken with a violin. And, even though I’ve done virtuoso solo work, even backed up by the Seattle Symphony once, I wanted them to get over the idea that a violin is a precious instrument on which a man in a tux plays music written by Europeans who have been dead for 300 years, or a violin is a country-western fiddle played by a man in a ten-gallon hat. So after I performed a little — Celtic stuff, as well as music I had composed — I asked them to sing something for me. It was electric! If I knew the song, I’d play it along with the singer. If I didn’t, he’d sing it to me, and I’d play it back to him. Whatever musical style, whether it was country or heavy metal, I could handle it. The boys and the staff were so warm. Just wonderful. And after my performance which lasted way more than 45 minutes, I must have spent an hour signing autographs. The guys scrounged up scraps of just about anything that could be signed for me to write on. I donated cd’s to the facility so that they could have my music after I was gone.

"These are boys who will be labeled for life for making a terrible mistake in their teen years. It was heartbreaking. I think I gave them something. But they gave me so much more. This was one of the highlights of the many tours I’ve done. I had more fun playing for them than anywhere else.

"The lesson I learned? Always give people the benefit of the doubt. This gave me the chance to see past the label of ‘prisoner’ to who they were, just as they were able to get past the label of ‘violinist’ to see me."

The Eastern Oregon Regional Arts Council hopes that the concert was the launch of a performing arts series. Who knows, perhaps Castle’s morning at the Hilgard Youth Facility launched an ongoing relationship between Hilgard and the Arts Council, too.

Jane Howell, remembering the concert, describes the song that most spoke to her. Five months later, she still remembers it. "It was a beautiful song of hope," she says. "About how you can’t really predict what’s going to happen. About the future and the mystery of what lies ahead."

La Grande and The Geoffrey Castle Band touched one another that day in June, 2003. Certainly, each will in some way be part of the other in the "mystery of what lies ahead."

For more information about the Eastern Oregon Regional Arts Council, contact jhowell@eou.edu. For more information about the Geoffrey Castle Band — go to www.geoffreycastleband.com or their former web site www.guarneriunderground.com.

For more information about the Western States Arts Federation, visit http://www.westaf.org

National Endowment for the Arts
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