I don’t know what to think about this
 

So I ran across an article today. Somebody I’ve never heard of played James Madison’s 1813 Crystal flute in a concert the other day.

First, I didn’t know James Madison had a flute, let alone a crystal one. I’ve never heard of crystal flutes but, then again, I’m not a flute player. It turns out the library of Congress owns the flute and further reading told me that they own the worlds largest flute collection. Who knew?

So I figured this person was a famous flute player and googled her name. Turns out, she’s a hip-hop artist. Well, maybe she plays the flute on the side. So I watched a brief clip of her flute performance at her concert and no, she doesn’t appear to be a flute player. At least not a good one, judging from that brief performance. I could have played what she squeaked out, given five minutes practice. Maybe not even that much. It was literally, almost nothing.

So then I’m wondering why she bothered to play this flute, because she’s apparently not any sort of classical flute player and it has nothing to do with her concert. Next question was, why on earth would the library of Congress loan her this flute for this stupid little stunt? I would imagine that, apart from its extreme rarity and historical interest, it’s also probably pretty damn fragile.

At the conclusion of her few seconds of flute playing, she commented:

“ B,***h, I just twerked and played James Madison's crystal flute from the 1800s."

How did we get here to this place, that I clearly do not understand?

Google “Lizzo flute” and you come up with endless coverage of the event. Here’s one, picked at random:

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/09/28/entertainment/lizzo-plays-james-madison-crystal-flute-cec/index.html

I was a bit surprised by that too. At least someone handed it to her then carefully received it back. So Lizzo didn't get the chance to accidently sit on it.

NBC Morning News had the story about it this morning.
Yeah...she's a plus size.

I skipped the concert, but this is more than I could belt out after 5 mins.

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This may be a better demonstration of her ability

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Should have been Ian Anderson.

While I know that Lizzo is a talented classically trained flute player, and for a black woman to play this specific instrument is an interesting historical note (as James Madison was a slave owner), my preference would have been for one of more of these people to play it:

Heck, maybe some of them did.

James Galway
Jeanne Baxtresser
Herbie Mann
Jean-Pierre Rampal
Ian Anderson
Bobbi Humphrey
Theobald Boehm (although he is long gone, he could have played it "back in the day")
Yusef Lateef
Emmanuel Pahud
Jasmine Choi

And since several people who posted here seem to have (quite surprisingly) never heard of Lizzo, here is some background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizzo

James Madison had a famous quote you may have missed.

“Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of twerking.”

Me, personally, big Tim Weisberg fan.

Plus size? :eek:

To this day I suspect that Ian Anderson had more than one tongue!

If I was ever offered a chance to play a Stradivarius cello I'd be nervous as hell.

Well, after she sorted out where her fingers would go, she blew one note. Then, more finger sorting, followed by approximately three seconds of trilling a couple notes.

That was it, that was the entire flute performance.

I didn’t even notice the twerking, not that I was looking for that. I think twerking is perhaps the dumbest thing ever invented and why you would do that while playing the flute to achieve some sort of notoriety, I just don’t get.

If that’s where the music is headed, I don’t want to go there.

Nope, never heard of her before this thread.

I think you missed the beginning of the video that I posted which was her in what I assume was the library of congress playing the flute in a large room that was full of marble and old white folks. She seemed to do a bit more in that instance, and the video picked up as she was mid-song, I guess.

You forgot Zamfir! Master of the Pan Flute!

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maybe it was the same decision makers who let the world's richest porn star wear Marilyn Monroe's sequenced dress(I know it's not from the library of Congress, but still)

:confused:

I feel like I probably don't want to know what this is in reference to. It doesn't sound like a good idea.

Yeah, I watched a bit of that but that wasn’t the performance I was referring to.

I think that was something earlier in the day; the main performance was the roughly 5 seconds that is included in the video that you can watch on any of the links that you pick when you Google it.

From what I gathered about her concert, she just did it so that she could have a few seconds of making some noise and twerking at the same time. It seems to be irrelevant to her music, which apparently is hip-hop.

When I first read the article, I had no idea who she was, I just assumed they would loan up to it like that out to a classical flutist who would play at least an entire song with it, if not an entire concert.

But no, this was a circus stunt, at best.

I would really like to know what the thinking was and why the library of Congress even got involved in this crap. The library of Congress is a pretty serious institution, last I checked.

I’ve never hear of her before. Not any more, unfortunately.

She didn't just blow a couple notes, she can obviously play the flute. But why would James Madison's flute be considered a national treasure?

Because he was the President, back when that meant something.

I would like to know who's idea this was and why they thought it was reasonable.

Someone wore Ms Monroe's dress to the academy awards or something, Kim Kardashian maybe, does she count as a porn star?

That's no plus size, that's a death star!

Again, you’re watching the wrong performance. I wasn’t referring to what she did earlier in the day, I was referring to her concert that evening.


About the flute, from a news article:

Last night, in Washington, D.C., Lizzo declared that she became the first person to play a historic crystal flute made for the U.S. president James Madison in 1813. (Rob Turner has played the flute in the past.) Lent to Lizzo by the Library of Congress, the flute was crafted by the Parisian watchmaker and mechanic Claude Laurent, before making its way to Madison and changing hands within his family—and eventually beyond—for generations. The Library of Congress cites speculation that Dolley Madison fled the White House with the flute in August 1814, shortly before the British descended in the War of 1812.

I had to look this up. Turns out it was the fattest of the Kardashians and she couldn’t even zip the thing up, after losing 16 pounds beforehand. Yes, she damaged the dress, much to the dismay of those that had anything to do with it.

You should read the article about it:

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2022-06-14/kim-kardashian-marilyn-monroe-dress-damage-met-gala

Back to the original topic, after the performance, Twitter blew up with tributes from other idiots I haven’t ever heard of. Like this clown:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1664405324.jpg


AMAZING PERFORMANCE!!!

This country is screwed.

Why be upset about the flute being played.

I support driving a rare car. I support a special flute being played. Damn sure nothing to get bent out of shape about.

Tell you didn’t watch the “performance” I am referencing without actually telling me.

You missed the whole point…

Next month someone get's to play Bill Clinton's cigar.....

I liked this response from Sean Davis. “Know what else is cool? Exercise and portion control.”

Maybe she was supposed to play the skin flute?

I have no idea who she is or what she does.

I did. It was a poor decision all around, and yes KK is the most successful porn actress and general piece of trash in history

Who cares about some slave owners flute and who plays it? I know I don’t.

Sorry, but my eyes couldn't take in the what ever she presents!!!

Excellent choice. You are obviously a person with good taste.

"The Power of Gold" is an underrated classic of a flute performance and his work with Dave Mason is great stuff. It is a shame he and Folgelberg had a falling out.

It seems like the worst possible thing one could do with it. But its a stunt to get the younger crowd to talk about history. Which is the best possible thing to do with it really. Otherwise it would sit in a box in the back room of a museum until its fades into obscurity

I watched it. There is nothing to get upset about. She didn't damage or steal it.

If you were to drive a Le Man's winning GT40 you would probably come here and talk about the experience. Even though the video you supply shows you "driving " the vehicle only a total of 20 feet everyone here would be going nuts and saying how lucky you are.

The non car folks would be asking what the big deal was. You didn't actually drive the car. You only wriggled the steering wheel and moved it 20 feet. What a joke.

There are plenty of thing to question. This ain't one of them.

Have a great day and an even better tomorrow!

I'm not a musician, music teacher, or music critic, but she seems like a pretty accomplished flutist to my ears.

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That's what I was thinking. It seems silly. I'm sure the directive was that she shouldn't play it too long. Also, her fans probably wouldn't have been interested in hearing a several minute long song on flute.

It might get more folks looking at or talking about history, which is cool.

Going back to items left from the rich and influential in the early days of the US is probably going to find that most of them were slave owners, so if we are going to throw out anything that was slave owners, we're mostly only going to be left with stuff that is mundane.

And, to me, from a certain point of view, for a young black woman to be playing the flute in the LoC and in a concert in front of thousands that was once owned by a former President that was a slave owner is in my eyes an example of how far we've come since that time.

Oh Lawd, girl get some clothes on, ain't nobody want to see dat!!!

Never heard of her.

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I don’t know what to think about this
 

I have a question. Has anyone ever heard of this flute before this? I know I never have heard of it. I never heard about this whole ridiculous controversy until I read it here. Also what is the beef? That Lizzo played it? So if they would have put it in the hands of a more renowned CLASSICAL flutist that would have been acceptable? Let’s get to the point as to why this bugs you Javadog? Is it the music genre or is it the person?

I felt that twerk in NJ. It definitely registered on the Richter Scale.

I had never heard of this flute either. I found it interesting to learn that the library of Congress holds the largest repository of historical flutes in the world.

I’m not bothered by who they gave it to, and I’ve never heard of her. I don’t care about her music, either, I can’t stand hip-hop. That isn’t the point.

They made a big production of pulling this thing out of storage so she can shake her fat ass and play three seconds of something I can teach my dog to play. If she was going to play it, she should’ve at least played one song. It was a publicity stunt, and a stupid one, at that. I gathered that it was more about the twerking than anything else, I suspect it’s something she’s known for. And don’t get me started on that, I think that twerking is generally disgusting and a sign of low intelligence.

And a bunch of other people of apparently equally low intelligence thought this was some monumental event.

I’d be really curious who approved this whole thing on the library of Congress end, and why..

I’m of the opinion that historical artifacts need to be used for higher and better purposes than that crap.