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that
    should be guiding all this stage business? Well, it seems the juxtaposition
    of music and image guides our minds and hearts so that, in the end, which
    came first doesn’t matter as much as one might think. A lighting or staging
    idea (using household fixtures—a floor lamp, for instance) is paired with a
    song (“This Must Be the Place”) and one automatically assumes there’s a
    connection. Paired with another lighting effect the song might have seemed
    equally suited, but maybe more ominous or even threatening (though that
    might have worked, too). We sometimes think we discern cause and effect
    simply because things are taking place at the same moment in time, and this
    extends beyond the stage. We read into things, find emotional links between
    what we see and hear, and to me, these connections are no less true and
    honest for not being conceived and developed ahead of time.
    This show was the most ambitious thing I’d done. Although the idea was
    simple, the fact that every piece of gear had to come on stage for tech check in the afternoon and then be removed again before the show was a lot of work for the crew. But the show was a success; the transparency and conceptual
    nature of its structure took away nothing from the emotional impact. It was
    tremendously gratifying.
    I didn’t perform for a while after that. It was hard to top that experience. I directed a feature film, married and had a child, and I wanted to be around for as much of my daughter’s early years as I could. I continued to make records and launch other creative endeavors, but I didn’t perform.
    In 1989 I made a record, Rei Momo , with a lot of Latin musicians. The joy of following the record with a tour accompanied by a large Latin band, playing DAV I D BY R N E | 59

    salsa, samba, merengue, cumbias, and other grooves, was too much to resist.
    There was a lot to handle musically on that outing, so the stage business
    wouldn’t be as elaborate as on the tour that was filmed for Stop Making Sense , though I did bring in movie-production designer Barbara Ling, who suggested
    a tiered set of risers with translucent fiberglass facing that would light up from within. (We used the same material for the stage set of my film True Stories .) The semicircular layer-cake design of the riser was based on a picture on an old Tito Rodriguez album cover, though I don’t think his risers lit up.
    The band wore all white this time, and the fact that there were so many
    of them meant that their outfits would allow them to pop out from the back-
    ground. The outfits also alluded to the African-based religions of Candom-
    blé and Santería, whose adherents wear white during ceremonies. There was
    more than one Santero in the group, so the reference wasn’t for naught.M
    I had referenced religious trance and ritual in earlier performances and
    recordings, and I never lost interest in that facet of music. I made a documentary, Ile Aiye (The House of Life ), in Salvador, Bahia (Brazil) partly to indulge my continued interest in these religious traditions. Santería, the Afro-Cuban branch of West African religious practice, and Voudoun, the Haitian manifestation, are both very present in New York music and culture. But it was the
    M
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    Brazilian branch, Candomblé, that seemed the least repressed by either secular or church authorities in recent decades, and therefore the most open, so when I was given the opportunity to do a film, that’s where I chose to go.
    As with gospel music, religion seems to be at the root of much Brazilian
    pop music and creativity, and as with the Asian ritual and theatrical forms, costumes and trance and dance are completely formalized but incredibly moving. And similar to what I felt in Bali, the practice is completely integrated into people’s lives. It’s not just something one does on Sunday mornings or
    Saturday nights. There are evening ceremonies, to be sure, but their influence is deeply felt in