Layered memories #1

Yesterday I listened to St. James Infirmary played by the Silkroad Ensemble on my headphones while running along the Hudson River in New York City. I first learned about this song by playing it in an amateur band in Philadelphia a few years after moving to the United States. We were weirdly called "Sea Teeth" (another story).
The 1933 animation of that song by Max Fleischer, featuring Cab Calloway, feels so modern and, in a very different way, so does Silkroad's adaptation, with its unique ability to combine different music styles from remote places and eras into a coherent whole under the charismatic Yo-Yo Ma. Witnessing such creativity and the embrace of diversity to build something new and unique is a wonderful feeling and one reason I stayed.