Madison Smartt Bell is an American novelist best known for his stories about the Haitian Revolution and Toussaint 
During an interview with the literary website, Byliner, Bell discusses his major influences and the relation between words and music in his work.
He is also a banjo player and acknowledges that as a native of Nashville,Tennessee “a lot of people write more for the eye, but I definitely write for the ear. Sound defines my choice of words and the way I construct a sentence and paragraph, all that.
“The musicality of prose has always been extremely important to me. Then again, the physicality of playing an instrument is really nice. You can sit there and do it without any conscious thought and let your mind just drift around, which can be productive in other areas”.
I thought about such things earlier this evening while watching - and listening - to an Israeli guitarist play through his engaging repertoire at the Karmiel Conservatory. By day, ‘Hetzi’ drives for Egged, the national bus company but tonight he took us on a musical journey with stops including Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Don’t Cry for Me Argentina, Smile (Though Your Heart is Breaking) whose lyrics are by John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons, Oscar Hammerstein’s Edelweiss from The Sound of Music and as an encore the plaintive theme tune from Schindler’s List by John Williams. Hetzi’s audience may have been small. But we were smitten!
© Natalie Wood (17 February 2016)
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We were smitten!
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