Piece Comment

Review of From Sagebrush to Steppe


At first I thought the premise sounded too simple, almost cheesy - cowboys encountering each other across a cultural divide and discovering their similarities through the simple joys of music. That's been done before, I thought. Well to my delight I was wonderfully, remarkably wrong. This piece has definitely NEVER been done before and the narrator has a true gift for tackling complex issues like cultural difference from a simple (but not simplistic), genuine perspective. Unlike many public radio pieces which have a distant narrator, this piece has a warm involved, thoughtful narrator who pulls us inside the story without making the story about him. (That's a hard balance to pull off). I've been thinking all day about the questions raised by this story - what role does art/should art play in our society? how is the art we produce connected to the landscape we live in? what are the different languages we use to communicate with other people?
And, most importantly, you haven't lived until you've heard a rendition of John Denver's "take me home country road" involving tuvan throat singers!