Movers and Shakers: The 40 Most Exciting Soulful Artists of 2003

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Richard Flanagan
Inventor of
the Past
For many authors of both fiction and nonfiction, writing about the past has become a way of understanding our fractured present. It?s more than just contrasting a simple past that ?made sense? with messy modern times; the best writers realize that the past is ungraspable as the past?it must somehow be reinvented if it is to be retold in a way that creates meaning for us today.
Australian author Richard Flanagan?s Gould?s Book of Fish is a fascinating example. His novel rises from a footnote in the history of his native Tasmania: the life and times of William Buelow Gould, a convict sentenced in 1825 to a term on a dismal island penal colony. While he was imprisoned, Gould painted watercolors of fish, which Flanagan discovered collected in a book at the State Library of Tasmania. Flanagan has imagined himself into Gould?s head and told, from the prisoner?s perspective, the history of Tasmania. It?s a brutal tale, and Flanagan never shies away from the truth: torture, the dirty details of convict life, the inescapable ?effluvium of death.?
As his narrator unfolds this troubled history in a series of long digressions, Flanagan exhibits a prose style that is both lush and surprising. Here is Gould narrating his first glimpse of the penal colony: ?We saw that the island was both something more & something less than the marvel we had first supposed it to be, as if it was unsure whether it was to be the Commandant?s dream or the convict?s nightmare.? Even the book?s design is unusual: each section is printed in a different color to represent Gould?s various homemade inks (made of blood, powdered seashell, feces, and so on).
On yet another level, this is a book about the art
of seeing and telling. Flanagan?s Gould is a writer-philosopher who realizes what a complex business these activities are: ?At best,? he says, ?a picture, a book are only open doors inviting you into an empty house, & once inside you just have to make up the rest as well as you can.? What separates Flanagan?s novel from the average postmodern exercise in hyper-self-consciousness is his honest interest in human history in all its harsh and gentle fullness. Gould?s Book of Fish (Grove/Atlantic)
?JOSEPH HART

Silvia Nakkach vocalizing healer
Because New Age musicians make so much of the calming, healing extra-musical qualities of their work, it often seems more therapeutic than artistic. But for Silvia Nakkach, an Argentine-born, California-based vocal healer, musical sophistication is part of the recipe for feeling good. A student of the great Indian religious singer Ali Akbar Khan, Nakkach has a glistening, gliding vocal technique that adds an Asian vibrancy to music she composes and performs with talented players ranging from multi-instrumentalist Eduardo Laguilla, a mainstay of the Spanish progressive jazz scene, to New York avant-gardist and instrument designer Miguel Frasconi. All of this heavy-duty talent makes for music that at times recalls the ?mystical minimalism? of modern composers like Arvo P?rt, at other times ranges through Latin and Indian sonorities, but always feels ambitious.
Nakkach holds degrees in psychology and music therapy, gives workshops worldwide, and maintains a school?Vox Mundi?devoted to global vocal arts. But she really stands out as one of the few New Age musicians who could probably hold a tough New York club audience spellbound. Ah: The Healing Voice (Relaxation Company) ?JON SPAYDE

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