Summerfest in Milwaukee is the best music festival that I’ve attended.  Music and Nature are our reliable sources for life and renewal.  Summerfest on the Milwaukee lakefront is the apotheosis of devotion for those of us who love music, who find in music the rhythm of life itself.

I am informed that this is the 50th anniversary of Summerfest.  For 50 years the festival has endured, improving in execution, in numbers in attendance, and in quality of experience.  Did the ancient world have any annual event of comparable magnificence?  Maybe the Festival of Dionysus, the god of wine, held in Athens to celebrate the beginning of spring?  That festival of theatrical performances was held over three days.  Summerfest lasts for eleven days .

Our purpose for this years visit to Henry Maier Festival Park was to attend the Pat Benatar-Neil Giraldo concert at the BMO Harris Pavilion in the evening.  We arrived at the entry gate under a downpour.  Having experienced summer thunderstorms before we slipped into our plastic rain jackets.  With our tickets passing through the gate, we headed over the Leinenkugel Beer concession.  Soon we were walking along the lakefront, our Summer Shandy Beer in hand with a smile on our faces in the diminishing shower.  The rain not with standing, any day at Summerfest is a good day.

It is always difficult to find words to describe an experience that is transcendent.  The sensation of deep meaning, the absolute envelopment of beauty, the “tap on the shoulder” telling you that life is more broad and more deep that your concerns, your worries–was true of the evening at the BMO Harris pavilion listening to Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo perform hit after hit.  A few of the song lyrics I knew by heart.  The sensation was that of a familiar liturgy of worship invoking good fortune from whatever gods there may be.  Benatar’s mezzo-soprano voice soared, at times a slashing, aggressive knife-edge of protest, that of a very strong woman, a survivor.  Must not each of us be a survivor in this life?

Her husband of many years, Neil Giraldo is a well-respected virtuoso with a six string guitar.  On stage, song after song, Giraldo became one with his 68 Guild Starfire axe.  I’ve seen

this happen before.  A guitar in the hands of a master musician becomes the voice of god.  Every note and chord is a liquid tributary flowing from the great river of being.

I heard for the first time Shine a new song composed by Benatar in support of the Womans March on Washington, January 21st of 2017.  Music and Rock in particular is often a vehicle of protest and of assertion of human rights for victims of the status quo.

Here are a few photos that I managed to capture at the concert.  The youtube video of the tune We Belong is a paen to universal human experience.  The challenge of composing an enduring male-female relationship is as old as humanity.  Pat Benatar and Niel Giraldo know whereof they speak.

WE BELONG

Many times I tried to tell you
Many times I cried alone
Always I’m surprised how well you cut my feelings to the bone
Don’t want to leave you really
I’ve invested too much time to give you up that easy
To the doubts that complicate your mind

We belong to the light, we belong to the thunder
We belong to the sound of the words we’ve both fallen under
Whatever we deny or embrace for worse or for better
We belong, we belong, we belong together

Maybe it’s a sign of weakness when I don’t know what to say
Maybe I just wouldn’t know what to do with my strength anyway
Have we become a habit? Do we distort the facts?
Now there’s no looking forward
Now there’s no turning back
When you say

We belong to the light, we belong to the thunder
We belong to the sound of the words we’ve both fallen under
Whatever we deny or embrace for worse or for better
We belong, we belong, we belong together

Close your eyes and try to sleep now
Close your eyes and try to dream
Clear your mind and do your best to try and wash the palette clean
We can’t begin to know it, how much we really care
I hear your voice inside me, I see your face everywhere
Still you say

We belong to the light, we belong to the thunder
We belong to the sound of the words we’ve both fallen under
Whatever we deny or embrace for worse or for better
We belong, we belong, we belong together

We belong to the light, we belong to the thunder
We belong to the sound of the words we’ve both fallen under
Whatever we deny or embrace for worse or for better
We belong, we belong, we belong together
We belong to the light, we belong to the thunder

Songwriters: Daniel Anthony Navarro / David Eric Lowen