Video premiere: Haroula Rose, ‘The River’ (Drifting)

Kevin Bronson on December 6th, 2016

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In March, singer-songwriter-filmmaker Haroula Rose released her second album, “Here the Blue River,” a collection of filmic folk finery in which each song somehow feels greater than the sum of its parts. The album’s collaborators include Southern gothic folk luminary Jim White, multi-instrumentalist/producer/svengali Zac Rae and Luke Top (Fool’s Gold), among others. The album’s title lifts a phrase from an Emerson poem, and the song “The River (Drifting)” is one of its thematic cores. Its lyrics were penned by White, sung dreamily over an improvisational composition by the Minnesota’s Spaghetti Western String Company. “To me, the song is about going down the river Styx, being led by Charon, into another world,” Rose says. “I think of it as death but also death in becoming another form of life that is the great mystery to all of us mortals.”

That mystical feel is transferred to the Los Angeles River in the video for “The River (Drifting).” It’s the work of filmmakers Terence Nance and Naima Ramos-Chapman and LA Dance Project choreographer/dancer Nathan Makolandra. “The idea was to make it feel vibey down by the L.A. River at night,” Rose says, and mission accomplished. It begins with Rose singing hauntingly, a cappella, as she descends one of the tunnels into the river channel. There, she is joined by dancers Spencer Ramirez, Joseph Kudra, Jamila Glass, Genna Moroni and Makoloandra … and by the way, do you how hard it is to dance in moving water? At the finish, there is the brief illusion that Rose herself is walking on water. Listening to the album, you might think she can.

||| Watch: The video for “The River (Drifting)”