kagablog

When Stockhausen was 20, he wasn’t sure what he was going to be. If anything, he suspected he might become a writer, and he even spent one summer break writing a novel about the life of Humayun, the Mughal Emperor. Less than two weeks into the writing process, with the set of brass balls only Stockhausen could possess, he sent some samples of his writing, including a few poems to Hesse, who had won the Nobel Prize just three years earlier. Accompanying the samples was a six-page handwritten letter which is a stunning revelation of Stockhausen’s frame of mind:

Dear Mr. Hesse,

That I finally worked up so much courage to choose this means in order to speak to you, I will perhaps come to understand one day later in life, and I believe—were I to gaze into a mirror, it would be found out—that my cheeks are burned scarlet, as though they had been whipped. It may be shame, desperate shame, or a clattering fragmentation of an unconsciously confident, trusting naivete, of a salvaged, forgivable boyish atmosphere. Forgive me nothing, not even the salutation “dear sir,” if you deem it to be immature impertinence. I cannot help but become calmer, once having taken the fatal step.

Why I wanted to write you, I have known at no point in time more exactly, to tell the truth. It may be that I could tell this unfathomable thing to my mother, but she has passed on; I do not even know whether she would have summoned up an understanding for my idle prattling—if so, it would have been for the first time: Where are the dead, who would understand us best? Though she did not relish all this, [she] must really have been very wise, as she voiced the opinion one night in the year 1933: in the loft is Heaven, in the cellar, Hell; at that time I had counted almost five yearly cycles—yet now I no longer know whether Heaven is not Hell and that time is not timelessness. However, this worries me less (I am certainly too stupid, to recognize despairingly that one cannot know anything); what torments much more is the certainty of still not being accepted, of being smiled at, of being absolutely misunderstood. And my father just didn’t understand it at all, as I believed him to know. Might it perhaps be different now, if he were not rotting in some moldy wartime hole in the ground? So there remains the sieved coagulation of people, whom I allowed to force themselves on me yesterday and aforetimes—they have all had enough of associating with each other, just as have I with any of them.

This is the letter of a boy who has lost everything and had nothing come along to fill the void. The mental distress that Stockhausen is under is starkly clear, and in August of 1949, he wasn’t so much reaching out to the Nobel laureate for writing tips as he was searching for a father figure, someone to help him finish the job of forming his personality:

forgive me, if in relation to liberty I cast you in a special role and begged something of you—it is the happiest feeling, the most beautiful experience of all mysteries: ‘that love is woven through everything,’ if one can ask a great man for something. In the distance the ‘ability’ is given to me, you have called me with your thoughts…I write down for you now some of my ungainly, most secret endeavours; please, grant me also this impossible effort and say just one word, if they withstand your examination.

Karlheinz Stockhausen
Music student in Cologne

Earlier in the letter, he explains that Hesse’s works seem to him like “thought-islands” which rise up above their author. This is an early iteration of a concept that would be so fundamental to Stockhausen’s work: that his music is greater than its composer and originates from a higher source.

We will unfold this concept in other discussions. However, as we bring this brief survey of Stockhausen’s career to a close, we are only further compelled to look at the way in which Hesse responded to the young composer.

First off, he dismissed out of hand the idea of reading Stockhausen’s writing samples. He wrote, “I am 72 years old, have had eye trouble for years, and am overloaded every day to the point of exhaustion. As for reading manuscripts, this is out of the question.”

But to this sprawling, desperate letter from a completely unknown student, he wrote a generous, deeply empathetic one-and-a-half page reply:

It will be best if I say to you in plain words how your letter has pleased me.

What has pleased me is your gift, it promises something: it is not that of a man of letters but that of a poet.

What has also pleased me is the sincerity with which you seek to make clear to yourself and to me the problems of your life and of your generation. Together with that gift, it is something positive and beautiful.

…What has not pleased me…is much about the tone of your letter which reminds me of what the foreigner imagines as “German youth”: something extravagant and enamored of pain and desperation, “Faustian” and therefore philosophically Existential, which we foreigners don’t think much of. This youth, intoxicated with tragedy and greatness, was once, when he roamed about with backpack and guitar, half comical and half charming. Soon afterwards, however, he became excellently adapted to warfare: conquering, torturing, and other activities, which we likewise do not think much of.

Something else about your letter which does not please me has more to do with the universal—that which you have in common with your generation—than with the individual. It would make me happy therefore if you would direct all your energy to shaping and bringing to maturity that which is individual, unique, and beautiful in you, and to diminishing as much as possible the other, collective thing, or at least to distrust it; it is a dowry without much value.”

With pinpoint precision, Hesse dissects not only the issues that Stockhausen faces in forging an identity in the wake of so much loss but all of post-war Germany. Hesse has little tolerance for self-pity. One of the masters in The Glass Bead Game is blacklisted from giving private lessons to pupils because he has a tendency towards melancholy (maybe even thoughts of suicide). Such indulgences must be avoided in Hesse’s world view, and certainly cannot be passed on to students!

But the real kernel of truth that shaped Stockhausen in that letter is Hesse’s urging to cast off any sense of the universal, any sense that he shares a common lot with the rest of his generation. Instead, he pushes Stockhausen to focus on what sets him apart, what makes him an individual voice, and if there is one singular trait of Stockhausen’s writing, it is the uniqueness of his voice.

For the next year, the two stayed in correspondence. Stockhausen openly referred to Hesse as his teacher at one point, and after he had submitted some of his poems to a publisher in October of 1949, Hesse sent him a remonstrance via postcard:

It does not please me that you want to earn money right away with your manuscripts. You have the good fortune to be able to do this with music and thus keep your poetical activities away from this area. If music is more sacred for you than poetry, perhaps then you can earn your bread by writing for newspapers, etc., but that means at the same time a farewell to poetry.

In 1950, the following year, the spiral of Stockhausen’s life work would begin.

The farewell to his teacher came on September 22, of that year. He apologizes for his “helpless bawling”, and he thanks Hesse for helping him to form his personality, the same personality which would be such an elemental force in shaping so much of 20th century culture.

Stockhausen uses another metaphor of organic growth to describe the transformation that Hesse cultivated. He compares his newly formed personality to a crystal, formed from the salt of his tears:

“I stumbled over it, when I stole secretly into my garden, whereas my foot stepped nimbly over the other stones…

…Very, very dear do I hold the great, crystalline stone today. You have thrown it to me, and it has blossomed like an eternal rose. Thanks be to you, and thanks be to the God of grace, who let me stumble over it.”

Karlheinz Stockhausen in the Cologne Studio

the site in quetion is at http://www.analogartsensemble.net/labels/Karlheinz%20Stockhausen.html

Mantra is a pivot between the great cycle of process-plan pieces of the sixties –
Plus- Minus, Prozession , Stop, Pole , Spiral- and the formula derived compositions Inori, Sirius and the twenty seven hours of Licht.

Karlheinz Stockhausen was early acquainted with European pioneers of cybernetics such as Raymond Ruyer, Viktor von Weisacker and Gotthard Gunther as well as the famous shape-shifted organisms of Wentworth D’arcy-Thompson.

He often spoke of writing a piece that would reproduce, mutate itself and even expire according to transformative rules – a kind of musical DNA or cellular automaton in sound.

Mantra realizes this ideal of an endlessly self-replicated , adaptive and responsive musical event fully for the first time in the history of music.

The thirteen characteristics of the Mantra ( please scan and reproduce it on the cover) are like genes which may be expressed, switched on and off, according to context . The ring modulators (which are radio derived circuits for multiplying sounds by one another) and the sine wave generators (which are the minimal expressions of tone) provide the thirteen contexts, the spectral environments and sonic landscapes which the Mantra DNA explores by means of intervallic augmentations and diminutions. The way Mantra unfolds is by recursion- the application of parts of the Mantra formula to itself.

Recursion would become the great scientific and philosophical theme of the eighties, with Douglas Hofstadter’s Godel Escher Bach showing that the limits of knowledge and the nature of consciousness were aspects of recursiveness and Steven Wolframs A New Kind of Science showing that simple recursive patterns in a few lines of programming code could model every process in the universe. Both of these vastly influential arguments could have been derived directly from Stockhausens Mantra, which founds their new picture of nature and experience a decade before on purely musical phenomena.

Mantra is a Hubble telescope of style , looking very far back and forward into Stockhausens aims. The ring modulator was an early device in the electronic music studio for enriching the pure sine tones that made up the first explorations of artificial sonic space. Stockhausen would use it to realize his ambition of uniting the precision of the studio world with the dexterity of the orchestral world in Mixtur, projecting scattered orchestral groups onto a blended electronic screen . The ring modulator would function symbolically to merge and mix traditional musics in Telemusik , a utopian model of all encompassing, non-homogenizing musical society and again as cosmopolitan gesture speculatively linking nations ,peoples ,noises and ideologies in Hymnen.

In Mantra, by contrast, the ring modulator becomes a distinguishing device, making defined harmonic planes around each note of the formula: virtual spectra containing grades of dissonance and harmonic direction , marked by the entry of the Crotales and bracketed by the hunting glissandi of the sine waves.

Procedurally, Mantra reactivates Formel- a formula composition from the early fifties which Stockhausen withdrew as naive and would later , thanks to Mantra, come to view as a precursor to Licht.

Mantra is the beginning of Stockhausens own self revision- the Klavierstucke are mined for their gesture and drama and purged of their commitment to serial variation:.the brutalism of Microphonie One and Two is framed and led by the articulate blueprint of the pianos;. the intuitive listening and reacting of Spiral and Aus den Sieben Tagen are recreated as two soloists probing the zones and turbulences of an electronic cloud gathering above them. Soon Trans would in turn revise Mantra, rewriting its electronic wall into a chromatic screen of strings and Inori would colour the formula itself with minute orchestral dynamics and spectra in place of the hallucinatory electronic multipliers.

Stockhausens legacy is hardly explored because such exploration is neither benign nor simple. Now ,as in his lifetime, his work engulfs whatever is set beside it - leading some closest to him to take refuge in a new obscurantism of plain surfaces or eclectic forays into pre-fifties modernism.

Most composers split his oeuvre into ‘their’ Stockhausen- always of the fifties and the sixties, already canonical and easily tied to the safely-spent task of culminating Modernism- and the ‘other’ Stockhausen from Mantra to Licht and Klang- usually vilified or pathologised by the pundits of his ‘classic’ works - an aberration induced by mysticism, seclusion, vulgarity or worse.

This is equal to dismissing Schonberg’s works after opus 22 as degenerate or Picasso as conservative following the break with Braque. Every performance of Mantra is indispensable to breaking the spell of these revisionists , demonstrating that Stockhausen – never young- became his own successor at forty two, emancipating the shadow of his own earlier music and that of his colleagues. This performance of Mantra is a depth charge to map some of the extent of his lengthening shadow. Many live in his enclaves, none have glimpsed his boundaries.

DISTRICT SIX MUSEUM - Buitenkant Street, Cape Town SAT 6 JUNE 2009 @ 6pm

Khoi Khonnexion (Jethro Louw - poetry, Glen Arendse and Garth Erasmus - indigenous instruments) has been performing in Cape Town for ten years, during which time they have risen to the forefront of the First Nation arts movement in South Africa. Their live performances feature trance-inducing improvisations on homemade instruments inspired by indigenous models, and dramatic recitations of original poetry by “The Ghetto Poet,” Jethro Louw.

In their workshops, they have worked with at-risk youth and adults from all backgrounds to find a source of healing in the musical heritage of Southern Africa. Now, with their first full-length album release, Kalahari Waits, they explore new creative territory while raising funds for the Basarwa San in the Kalahari Desert, who were trampled and pushed aside when diamonds were found in their government-sanctioned homeland in Botswana.

The self-released album, a collaboration with American producer Nate May, follows the sun across the sky with indigenous sounds, loops, field recordings, and poetry that wrestles with Khoisan identity in the modern world.

The release party, on Saturday, 6 June at 18h00 in the District Six Museum in Cape Town, will feature a performance by the group and a guest artist. CDs will be on sale [R100], as will handmade T-Shirts by the prominent visual artist and Khoi Khonnexion member Garth Erasmus.

Angelo Gobbato

When I emigrated to South Africa with my family from Milano in 1950, I was seven years old and already determined to pursue a career as an opera singer. The following account of operatic developments in my adopted country over the past fifty years is thus based on personal experience and recollections and should not be read as either an academic document or as exhaustive historical research.

Although a formal Opera House had existed in Cape Town, the oldest city in South Africa, since the late nineteenth century, by 1950 the new general post office building stood where it used to stand. Any large scale theatrical spectacles such as operas and variety shows were staged in a series of cinema houses of seating capacity around 2,500 which had been designed with sufficient stage and pit facilities to permit their performance. These theatres were given fanciful names such as ‘The Alhambra’ and ‘The Playhouse’ and they had the additional peculiarity of having been designed with stucco moldings that tried to imitate the salient features of their original namesakes. Thus when one walked into the Cape Town ‘Alhambra’ one looked up to discover the jet-blue sky and twinkling stars of an Andalusian night, with stucco cypress trees growing behind the twisting columns of the boxes which lined the walls; the Playhouse in Durban tried to recapture its English tudour counterpart with its stucco wooden beams and diamond paned leaded windows.

It was in the Cape Town Alhambra Theatre that I had my first operatic experiences, both as audience member and as performer. The performances in the early post-war years were given by touring companies of mainly Italian or Italianised singers and I recall the – to me – mythical enchantment of Rigoletto’s with Tito Gobbi, Traviata’s with Virginia Zeani and Barbiere’s with Luigi Infantino under the baton of conductors such as Francesco Patané.

Naturally there were considerable numbers of South African singers who wished to perform and develop their careers, but no they had no realistic expectation of being able to do so unless they went overseas. Many excellent private singing teachers, both from Italian and German extraction, had made their homes in South Africa, especially after World War II, and they organized staged operatic performances and operatic concerts in smaller theatrical venues around the country, often appearing themselves in the leading roles. But the major source of operatic training and operatic performances with South African casts was the Opera School at the South African college of Music at the University of Cape Town. The University of Cape Town (UCT) Opera School had been founded in the early 1920’s under the direction of the Italian tenor Giuseppe Paganelli. In the early 1950’s, under the musical direction of the Scottish composer Erik Chisholm and the stage direction of the Italian baritone Gregorio Fiasconaro, the UCT Opera company mounted regular performances of operas at UCT’s Little Theatre as well as undertaking onerous tours of South Africa and the then Rhodesia with operas such as Don Giovanni, Tosca, Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Falstaff. Although the National Party had already become the ruling party in South Africa and had begun its strict enforcement of Verwoerd’s Apartheid Policy, the University of Cape Town had firmly and publically expressed its opposition to this system and, although individual permits had to be obtained with great difficulty, singers of all races were being trained at its Opera School.

Through his links of Italian nationality and personal friendship with the voice teachers Alessandro Rota and Olga Magnoni the head of the UCT Opera School, Gregorio Fiasconaro, became the stage director for many operas which were mounted by a group of exceptionally gifted amateur singers under the musical leadership of Dr Joseph Manca. This group of singers reflected the distressing political reality of those times by being made up of members of the so-called ‘coloured community’. Under the name of The Eoan Group, these indefatigable workers mounted several seasons of opera at the Cape Town City Hall – a venue which was not only more economical to rent but which was also practically the only theatrical venue in CT for which permits could be obtained allowing mixed races both on stage and in the auditorium. I was thrilled and inspired to hear the many exceptional voices performing in these productions and came to the obvious and logical conclusion that not only was a fine operatic voice a gift granted to all South Africans, irrespective of their racial origin, but that the love and appreciation of traditional European operas could also inform the soul of all our people.

In the early 1960’s the many and insistent demands made over a period of many years by South African performing artists to obtain official recognition and national funding for the formation of South African performing companies was heard and accepted at government level. This led to the formation of four so-called Performing Arts Councils (or Boards), one for each of the then existing South African provinces (Transvaal, Natal, Orange Free State and Cape Province). Although these Peforming Arts Councils took their name and were loosely modeled on their British counterpart, they had their own particular South African characteristics, the principal one being that they had to conform with and operate within the Apartheid laws then in force.

Each of the provincial Arts Councils was given an annual budget by central government, and within this budget each council had to operate departments which would be responsible for the production of Drama, Opera and Ballet. That these Performing Councils were ideated by the Apartheid Government solely for the benefit of white performers and white audiences was amply demonstrated by the fact that when the Nico Malan, the first multi-venue performing arts complex including an opera house built as a performing home for the Performing Arts Councils, opened its doors in Cape Town in 1971, it was declared a ‘whites only’ building. The wave of boycotts and protest that ensued soon caused the Government to revoke this policy and in a futile gesture the Opera House was declared open to all races. But this was clearly an example of far too little and far too late, particularly in view of the forced removals of the long term inhabitants from and the eventual demolition of the historical ‘coloured’ Cape Town area of District Six which was going on at the same time.

In vain did the artistic managements of and the performing artists working for the Performing Arts Councils try to use the existing legal loopholes to open performing doors in the operatic, balletic and dramatic fields to South African performers of all races. The era of protest theatre and international artistic black-listing was upon us, and those all too few black and coloured performers whose inner artistic compulsion drove them to accept to work for the Councils were branded as sell outs and traitors by their own communities. Opera, already considered by many as an elitistic and unnecessarily expensive artistic waste of time, had become synonymous with the Apartheid Government’s attempt to establish international credibility for itself and it was predicted that the advent of a new democratic regime would see the well deserved end of all operatic endevour in the country.

It was under this regime that my operatic career developed and altered from singer in 1964,(the year in which my debut in the Alhambra Theatre singing Keçal in Smetana’s Bartered Bride, the first opera mounted by CAPAB [Cape Performing Arts Board], through Staff Stage Director for CAPAB Opera in 1976, to teacher (I was appointed as Director of the UCT Opera School in 1982) to Artistic Director of CAPAB Opera in 1989. Of course I had had to wrestle long and hard with the option of leaving a country whose political system was so abhorrent to me or that of remaining in an attempt to change the system from within. So I accepted the opportunity given to me by my appointment as Capab Opera’s Artistic Director and tried to find collaborators who shared my vision and would work tirelessly to fill our stages with casts which would be truly representative of our nation’s demographics. I was blessed to be able to appoint Vetta Wise as our Chorus Master and Michael Williams as our Staff Stage Director. Vetta had done serious academic research in and had established cordial relations with leading members of several excellent black community choirs. Micheal had pioneered the writing of children’s operas based on South African indigenous stories and had succeeded in building the kind of community trust required to permit our operatic performers to enter the black community schools and perform under the banner of CAPAB Opera without physical danger and interruptions by protesters. It was for me a moment of great pride to be able to reflect the changing political situation around us by being able to present on the occasion of Rossini’s two hundredth anniversary in 1992 a concert version of Guglielmo Tell at the Nico Opera House with the choruses of men from Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden in Act II being sung by three separate black community choirs.

Our steady perseverance in tilling the vocal fields in the black communities was clearly successful, for, with the advent of our new democracy in 1994, we were rewarded with a flood of exceptional black vocal talent wishing to be admitted to the UCT Opera School. The gifts of some of the young singers who auditioned were such that I was led to propose the creation of a Studio Programme for CAPAB Opera, which would not only provide the funding necessary to cover the UCT Opera School tuition and basic living expenses for eight young singers, whatever their race, but also provide them with performing opportunities as soloists, understudies or choristers in CAPAB Opera productions.

In addition, our chorus master Vetta Wise and staff director Michael Williams agreed to undertake the additional onus of training a group of twelve young singers who had received no kind of previous musical or stage training and were taken from severely disadvantaged black communities. This project, which became formalized as the CAPAB Opera Choral Training Programme, expanded to the training of twenty-four singers in the next year and proved on of the most successful projects undertaken by our company because it created an exponential ‘ripple effect’. The CTP singers brought their passion for all the operatic music they had learned back to their community choirs and in only a few short years, opera, the art form which so many had sworn went against the very nature of our black communities, was in the throats and on the lips of thousands of glorious black voices, becoming the centerpiece of our national choral events and creating special competitions for young singers still at school.

The very special aptitude of the participants in these early programmes and their dedication was such that at the end of 1994, barely one year after the formation of the Studio and CTP programmes, it was possible for CAPAB Opera to mount the world première of ‘Enoch, Prophet of God’ and opera with libretto by Michael Williams and music by Roelof Temmingh, with all the black solo roles in the opera being sung by members of the opera Studio and with the CTP members singing as the black chorus required.

The existence of large numbers of exceptional operatic vocal talent among the black community could no longer be denied. What became a pressing artistic issue, however, was the creation of a suitable operatic repertoire for these singers and the possible adaptation of the production styles of the standard repertoire to create novel dramatic possibilities and credibilities, given the sudden transformation of operatic casts from being 98% white to casts being 98% black.

My immediate choice (1995) fell on Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, an opera of extreme complexity and technical difficulty, which had both a large cast and the copyright requirement of having all the black roles (and there are only two small white speaking roles in the opera) being cast by black singers. I felt this would provide an excellent challange for our newly formed training programmes and was fortunate in being able to invite several American specialists to participate either as conductor, director or soloists in the production. It gives me great joy that in this current Berlin season of the opera we have Willie Waters, who conducted our 1995 production, at the musical helm while many of the singers originally in the Studio and the CTP are either singing principal roles or are members of the Voice of the Nation Chorus.

Later examples of operas from the standard Western repertoire which were adapted to reflect particular South African cultural values and performed by our company (also in collaboration with UCT Opera school) were Bohème Noir, a version of Puccini’s opera which left the music intact but the libretto of which had been completely re-written by Hal shaper to set the story in Johannesburg in the midst of the student riots in 1976; a condensed version of Verdi’s Macbeth, focusing the musical and dramatic action on the two Macbeths and the Witches and setting the action in a completely African context (musical adaptation: Pieter van Dyk, Stage Direction Brett Bailey); Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, setting the Carthaginian action in a clearly African climate and alternating the original music with dance divertissements in authentic African idiom (African music by Dizyu Plaatjies and Amampondo, Stage Direction by Paul Stern).

Original operas were created to librettos provided by the passionate and indefatigable Michael Williams – Orphans of Qumbu, Buchuland, Love and Green Onions – with music by South African composers both black and white, but the key problem of what constitutes authentic and original South African opera remains as yet unsolved and will no doubt prove a point of major debate for some time to come, until we are fortunate enough to give birth to the equivalent of an African Verdi.

Regrettably, and predictably, our success in finding and developing operatic vocal talent was not matched by a sudden political change of heart as to the non-democratic nature of the Performing Arts Councils as originally created by the Apartheid Regime. This led to the New Democratic Government’s gradual but rapid and complete removal of any form of national funding for their arts companies. Any of the companies that wished to continue their work would have to re-group and find alternative sources of funding.

While the opera companies attached to the Arts Councils operating in Pretoria, Durban and Bloemfontein simply disappeared, in Cape Town we were fortunate that our efforts in the transformation of opera had been welcomed and backed by a number of opera loving and sympathetic businessmen. Under the determined chairmanship of Jan Kaminski, a Board of Directors was canvassed and the entire staff and functions of CAPAB Opera were re-registered as CAPE TOWN OPERA, a section 21 company not for gain

With the Government’s declining to increase the total amount of funding available for the performing arts and assigning the entire budget for this funding to a body known as the National Arts Council while permitting any and all performing groups to apply for a tranche of the funding, it hardly came as a surprise that Cape Town opera was at first refused any form of funding from this national source. Even now, after many applications and evidence of job creation for underprivileged communities, Cape Town Opera receives an amount of less than 5% of its total annual budget from national sources.

Obtaining funding from private and business sources proved and continues to prove extremely difficult, since the South African government provides no tax incentive for arts donations. Cape Town Opera was, however, fortunate in obtaining some additional financial support from the Regional Government of the Western Cape, as well as establishing a fruitful working relation with Artscape, the re-named subsidized company that operates the CT Operahouse, now known as the Artscape Operahouse.

More recently, the individual style and talents of the company have been recognized by a number of European opera managements and CTO has toured its productions of Showboat and Porgy and Bess to theatres in Nürnberg, Oslo, Umea and Malmö. The production of Porgy and Bess that is currently playing in Berlin has been conceived not only to reflect the particular intensity and energy of our South African singers, for whom the daily reality of their lives and simply going back home after a night’s work are more dangerous and more fraught with melodrama than any of the operas in which they perform, but also to set the action in the period of Apartheid’s highest arrogance and worst excesses, with forced removals and demolitions of ancestral dwellings competing with natural disasters to make life all too expendable and all too miserable for the many so conveniently forgotten by the few who live in comfort and security.

ANGELO GOBBATO

this article first appeared on capetownopera.co.za

aryan kaganof: tell me more about how you worked on this one

mandelbrut: most of the compositions focus on natural sounds, such as scraping, crunching, breaking, tearing, etc, in conjunction with resonating sounds from various makeshift instruments (junk-metal chimes, or spring boxes using found cookware and springs taken from lamps, box matresses, washing machines, etc). for some of the tracks I also use samples from SFX records and junk records. miscellaneous rock music, for example. these samples are often heavily processed to the point of blurry unintelligibility. I wanted to make something that could have been made 50 years ago with the available technology, but wasn’t .

how I made “mandelbrut physically assaults isabelle schiltz” : I went to all of isabelle’s (youtube ?) videos, and played them back, one by one, recording all of the audio from them onto a cassette tape. after filling the tape up with all of my “isabelle raw materials”, I proceeded to manipulate those raws with my audio effects (pedals, homemade devices, junk,etc) , and recorded that process onto another cassette tape. then I re-processed that cassette tape with additional effects, manipulations. so its all made 100% out of isabelle’s performances, I didn’t add any additional instruments or materials, only isabelle feeding back on isabelle feeding back on isabelle.

kagablog wishes cherry bomb a very happy birthday!

Sixty years ago Edgar Varèse shocked the musical Establishment by proclaiming, “Music must sound!” Today such a statement no longer astonishes or upsets anyone, for an immense variety of sounds — some heard in nature, others produced by touching, hitting, and blowing into all kinds of manmade substances and objects — have been put together and presented as music. An objective yet concerned listener therefore might ask, “When do sounds combined in sequences and/or simultaneities constitute musically significant melodies, chords, and on a larger scale musical compositions? Can any sound be part of what can be significantly and validly called music — and if not, what indeed constitutes music?

An apparently basic distinction can be made between noises, recognizable natural sounds (like animal cries, the sound of a running brook or waves breaking on a sandy beach), and, strictly speaking, musical sounds. In the past, musical sounds were produced by the human voice and musical instruments — musical because their use normally was restricted to the production of musical sounds. Noises did not belong to the field of music; nature’s sounds were used very rarely and only episodically, but recently their use has increased. What then decides whether a sound can be considered musical? The answer is, the culture of a particular group of human beings.

The term culture may be interpreted at several levels of meaning. In this case It refers to the expectation which people conditioned by a particular culture have of hearing certain sounds or not hearing others. It refers to what has become customary or traditional in a number of definable circumstances — for example, attending a church service, listening to a troubadour returning from the Holy Land, or crowding a modern concert hall to hear a specially trained virtuoso or an orchestra. The specific circumstances in which music is heard are very important because, at least originally, they have much to do with the “musical” character of the sounds heard and the psychic or personal responses of those hearing them. As these cultural circumstances alter, the possibility arises of a corresponding change in what constitutes a musical sound. Sooner or later not only the musicality of various types of sounds, but also the expected character of combinations of these sounds (that is, musical “form”) changes in order to satisfy a new kind of desire — the desire to meet psychological needs aroused by new social circumstances, particularly a new type of family life, education, and daily work.

This new desire may have a general collective character, but as there are several social classes and various types of human personalities, different kinds of psychological needs and levels of feeling-response inevitably coexist. Thus several types of music are produced and heard. In a society largely controlled by the media and featuring an individualistic kind of egalitarianism, all these types are given some chance of being heard. If a new kind of circumstance in which sounds reach the human ears becomes generalized, new sounds should replace or at least theoretically be added to the category of musical (because expectable and psychically satisfying) sounds. This is the situation which musicians and especially music lovers are experiencing today. Similar situations in the past brought about an enlargement of the category of musical elements. These periods of transition in the past can help us better understand what is happening now.

When Varèse asserted that music must sound, it was not only because he felt it necessary to give the qualification musical to many recently produced manmade sounds (factory and street noises and, later, electronically generated vibrations). He was challenging something more fundamental: the idea that the music itself resides in the written score, thus in a complex and evolving formula of relationship between musical notes, rather than in actually heard sounds. According to the classical European tradition, the score is the music; the musical composition exists as a complete and significant entity in the written score, whether or not any sound is actually heard by human ears. These sounds could be — and for trained musicians they had to be — heard in the musician’s mind. Here the term hearing refers to what probably can best be interpreted as an especially vivid type of imagining process producing the illusion of sound. What Varèse tried to say was that looking, however intently, at a symphonic score does not constitute a real or full musical experience. The actual sounds represented in the score by little black symbols (the musical notes) have to be actually heard by ears; the physical and auditory sensation cannot be ignored or given only a nonessential, subsidiary importance.

At least this should not be the case in this century when the traditional cultured way of experiencing music — the circumstances in which music is heard and the need or personal desire it is expected to satisfy — is rapidly changing. It is changing because technology has altered not only the general way of living but also the inner feeling of being an experiencing person — a person having meaning and essential importance in oneself and not merely as a component part in a set system of social relationships. In European music, this system was tonality. The musical urge to deal with complex tones having meaning and power in themselves as single, separate entities indeed parallels the intense emotional desire to operate, and to be valued by others, as an individual person whose beingness essentially and irrevocably matters. The development and growth of the potential of being inherent at birth in such persons turns out to be very important. Likewise in music, the production of new and rich sounds which may stir, exalt, or shock the individual’s sense of being has also become a matter of supreme significance. In the 1920s Varèse expected and foresaw the development of an electronic technology which would theoretically make possible the production of any composite sound, any rhythmic or melodic sequence. (1)

When anything is possible, serious psychological problems arise in the development of the individual person. Too many options are confusing and may produce psychological paralysis. Too much permissiveness leads not only to anarchy and unfocused experiences, but to an overloading of the mind and of the capacity to give a totally significant response to the multiplicity of possible choices. The inevitable result is an almost compulsive return to an ancestral system of relationship. Thus a “new consonance” has become the foundation of most minimal music, while the repetition of sounds provides a sense of relaxed stability and non-intellectual simplicity. The obsessive rush of modern city life and the rat race of business and professions, which once moved at a calm pace making possible intuitive and empathetic responses, demanded an antidote. Many people, more or less fascinated by Oriental traditions and the apparent calm and composure of gurus, found this antidote in subjective states of introversion and in “meditation music.”

The artificiality and extreme intellectualism of the system which Schöenberg and his School imposed upon a disintegrating sense of tonality paralleled the development of totalitarian police States. The alternative presented by most ancient Asian traditions has featured traditional procedures that induce would-be individuals to conform to a collective, theological approach to the meaning of human life and of the whole scheme of cosmic existence. Nevertheless there have been attempts to modernize ancestral traditions which brought inner security at the cost of a binding allegiance to exotic theological systems. However, the basic issue in music as well as philosophy and psychology is whether we consider our Western civilization to be in a period of accelerated growth leading to a glorious future of peace and prosperity for all, or in a state of transition between a disintegrating culture and one whose actual birth is perhaps still in a distant future.

A new music develops, if not out of a totally new sociopolitical situation or religion, at least out of radically changed circumstances, as a definitely new phase of the culture and new conditions of performance supersede what had been experienced until then. Plainchant took form when a Catholic culture developed in monasteries and, soon after, in Romanesque churches and Gothic cathedrals. The “New Music” of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries resulted from the troubadours’ experience of the Crusades and the remarkable rise of a new ideal of womanhood; instrumental sounds and profane words were mixed with the sacred use of voices intoning scriptural texts, and as increasing trade and travel spawned the rise of a new class, the bourgeoisie, secular music adopted the structure of devotional motets, the structure acquiring a more personal, and eventually tonal character.

The early tonality system was still imbued with religious concepts and the theocentricism of the perfect triad. Then came the growth of Court-music, the aristocratic opera, and the synchronous development of a rationalistic and formalistic classical music through the eighteenth century. The Industrial Revolution led to the rise of the wealthy bourgeoisie and the dominant power of money, and with Romanticism to the dramatization of the efforts of tense, rebellious individuals to find a prestigious place in the new social order, as “virtuosi” — and a person can act as a virtuoso or a “star” (famous and well paid) in any field.

A new situation, however, is now developing as magnetic tapes, electronic instruments, radio and computer technology are bringing to nearly every home not only sounds of all kinds (whether or not they assume the character of music), but the possibility of producing theoretically as yet unheard combinations of vibrations perceptible to human ears. The individualization of music and the fragmentation of the musical consciousness of the people of a particular culture — and this now means almost the whole of mankind — may be reaching an extreme state. Human beings may live much of the time in a world filled with sounds, yet lose the sense of music.

As I understand and use the word, music implies culture. Are we today expanding to the point of the nearly total disintegration of what Europe developed during the last 2,500 years, allowing every technical procedure which profit-conscious and culturally irresponsible intellects are impelled to invent — or are we already feeling the need to conform to stabilizing principles of musical organization? And if so are these principles derived from a new type of mind calling for a new religion and culture?

The word religion is used here in its broadest sense; it refers to the collective desires and thinking capacity (usually in symbolic terms) of a relatively large collectivity of human beings who are, to some extent, integrated as a “people.” More specifically it implies what I have defined as a “collective psychism” which unites the psyches of the people almost as strongly as the life-force integrates the activities of the material cells of a living organism. Music, I believe, is the most direct language that can be used to stabilize and communicate the psychism of a culture. The answer to the question posed by the title of this article is therefore sounds become music when the particular life-circumstances in which a culture is formed impel intuitive leaders to select those sounds (and their means of production) which best identify and communicate the developing psychism of the people integrated by the culture.

The problem our present society has to face is the fragmented character of the people it only superficially correlates in terms of material productivity, the need to survive, and the expectation of personal comfort and success. Several factors have contributed to the situation: the kind of education and school system which resulted from the permissive and individualistic approach promoted by educators and psychologists early in this century; the pressure exerted by the ubiquitous media; the spread of sound-technology; and the possibility for a mostly middle-class and relatively affluent youth to travel. Insofar as the raucous sounds of rock music gave a characteristic identity and substance to a new youth culture (or subculture) and came to express a particular kind of psychism, these sounds have to be considered music; but their extreme character very soon produced a compensatory reaction: a relaxing, introverted, and soothing music for meditation, and in general minimal music. The creators of such music, however, found their inspiration in Oriental gurus and in the music of old and now mostly disintegrating cultures, rather than in some possibly emerging new religion. A still larger number of young and middle-aged people today are seeking renewal, stability, and security in the most traditional forms of Christianity, whose ability to inspire a new type of music seems to have vanished long ago.

A truly new music needs a new faith, which in turn requires a new vision of reality, a new mind and collectively aroused group-feelings evoked by the vivid awareness that humanity is entering a totally different realm of possibilities. Are these possibilities revealed by a new kind of knowledge toward which the most progressive and unconventional scientists are groping, overburdened as they are still by the basic empirical restrictions of seventeenth-century European science? Are they to be actualized by an uncontrolled technology geared to monetary profit and the uncreative desire to make every activity of mind and body easier and faster? Is a truly new music to be created that would give to the immense variety of possible sounds generated by modern technology the character of music? It might be a “cosmic” kind of music whose principles of organization would transcend the tonality system and the various kinds of “musical forms” derived from its dualistic character (the tonic-dominant and theme-countertheme polarities). Similarly, the development of non-Aristotelian and non-European types of logic has been attempted; for instance, a Zen kind of logic based on a five-fold sequence of propositions.

At any level of mental activity new possibilities of relationship between the components of an organized system can be actualized; a music may be created embodying revolutionary principles of integration operating at a level deeper than that of musical formalism, because only such principles can produce the consistency and purpose needed to structure, identify, and communicate a new kind (or quality) of collective psychism. Where there is no active psychism to give collective living a basic “tone” or essential quality, music has lost its power, and the livingness of culture has become formalism. A repudiation of all forms may also act as a negative kind of formalism. It may do so unless music, freed from these traditional forms, can impart a tension able to dynamize in a definite direction a process of psychic or spiritual transformation — the transformation of the listeners’ innermost feeling-responses and mental awareness. These feelings and mental images are what is meant when music is said to be an expression of “the soul.” This soul is essentially that of a collectivity of persons — a people, a culture.

However, the ambiguous term, soul, need not be given a transcendent meaning. Rock music reveals the soul of a collectivity of human egos desiring to act and be counted as an integrated group within a confused society which engenders them, yet has no significant place and function for them. Minimal music and “space music” reveal another aspect of the generational soul. These are aspects of a collective psychism whose incoherence and tensions — and often despair — tell vividly but tragically that the new faith and world-view needed for the development of a new culture and a new music are, at best, still in an embryonic state. Until this future collective organism of humanity reaches a substantial condition of being at the level of an integrating as well as inspiring psychism, the multitude of sounds technology is making possible cannot find their proper function in a truly new and vital music. Moreover, the varied ways of listening to them in circumstances imposed by a social system featuring at the same time an ideal of extreme individualism and an actual subservience to peer-groups or social class, cannot provide the initial “sacred” environment that could adequately nuture this “music of the future” of which Wagner, Liszt, and Scriabin could only dream.

Varèse proclaimed “Music must sound!”; but the Pandora’s box he and sound engineers opened under the pressure of a Western civilization, which may be slowly collapsing amidst the musical remains of ancient cultures, has released an incoherent multitude of sounds the likes of which no culture has ever accepted as elements of music. The great issue now is how and when these sounds can be integrated in a music able to assimilate as significant factors an immense variety of composite vibrations, because its scope is no longer determined by local conditions, but has become global and possibly cosmic. The issue can hardly be met by composers compelled to function as sound engineers. It requires the embryonic growth of a new mind and a consecrated will to psychic and intellectual transformation — a new philosophy of existence, intense enough to assume the character of a new faith, and a new vision of the character and meaning of being human.

1. Editor’s Note: Rudhyar is able to speak authoritatively regarding Varèse ideas and vision because the two men were close friends, especially during WWI and the 1920s. Return

this article first published on khaldea.com

1. Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes (Sub Pop) / Sun Giant EP (Sub Pop)

- though the Beach Boys and CSN&Y have provided many listeners with convenient reference points for this young folk-into-rock-and-back-again Seattle band (as they always do when a new outfit leans heavily on the vocal harmony, and Fleet Foxes’ is as glorious and reverberant as any you’ll have heard), it’s the introspective sense and texture of later Beach Boys songs like Surf’s Up, and maybe a suggestion of that elusive first David Crosby solo album, that really provide the touchstones – there’s ethereal magic, too, and a widescreen rural vastness and majesty about songs like the gorgeous White Winter Hymnal and Tiger Mountain Peasant Song (and, in fact, the whole album) that precisely demonstrates one advantage a young band with decent ideas will have over its influences – all possible strands and brands of rock may, on the face of it, already have been invented, but they certainly haven’t been used up, and there’s a synthesis of all that classicism now available to those with imagination that may not have been in years gone by - the “Sun Giant” EP that immediately preceded the group’s full length debut is mentioned because it’s hardly any less impressive, and because a new version of the album now includes its tracks

2. Portishead – Third (Island)

- Portishead overcame the difficult third album syndrome by simply not making one for eleven years – yet, when your debut becomes as sonically pervasive as Portishead’s did, and your singer is consequently as identifiable as Beth Gibbons is, the recognition factor can’t be helped, even after such a long break, and even if your album is as calculated an attempt to move on as “Third” clearly is – of course, instant recognition is not necessarily a good thing, but Portishead make it work for them while apparently deliberately eschewing any and everything, besides their musical imagination, that will have had their fans longing for their return – that way they hang on to their crucial strengths, completely avoid any sense of basking in outdated glory and produce a record that sounds like it might have done had they progressed naturally through a series of intervening albums to this point – so “Third” is almost surely an intrinsically better album than “Dummy” or its unfairly underrated successor (it’s certainly musically more widely ranging), and that makes it better than just about anything else around as well

3. Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago (Jagjaguwar)

- following the break-up of his band and his relationship with his girlfriend, Justin Vernon took up residence all alone in a remote cabin in the Wisconsin woods where he remained sequestered for three or four months, writing, recording and, so the story goes, hunting his own food - and that’s exactly how “For Emma” sounds … stark, desolate, solitary (the occasional assistance that later added external instrumental colour is itself almost spectral), breathtakingly beautiful and timelessly in tune with the concept of its title

4. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!! (Mute)

- whether leading his Grinderman project through a maelstrom of about the most red-blooded, raucous rock ‘n’ roll even he has tried since the halcyon days of the Birthday Party, composing with conviction and an impressive sense of style for the Western movies, or fronting the long serving and perhaps long suffering Bad Seeds (it seems the album may be the last original member, Mick Harvey’s, swansong) through his more formal releases, Nick Cave is in a rich vein of form; so much so that, were I to give the matter proper thought, I might even conclude that my gut reaction is correct and that the new and erratically punctuated album (even its artwork sports three different arrangements of the title) is my favourite since “The Boatman’s Call”, and the most gleefully irreverent since “Murder Ballads” – from the lurching title track all the way to the insistently pessimistic closing title, More News From Nowhere (with special mention going to We Call Upon The Author, in which Cave seems to combine literary criticism with a full-throated castigation of the Creator and which, like the previous albums by Okkervil River and the Hold Steady, references poet John Berryman), it’s nothing but the good stuff

5. Bill Frisell – History, Mystery (Nonesuch)

- I’ve never met a Bill Frisell album I didn’t like, but this part live, part instrumental radio ballad double disc, constructed as a kind of 30-part suite where five or six shorter pieces act as repeated and developing themes and motifs holding the work in place, and strongly reminiscent of the superb “This Land” and “Quartet”, is surely among the best by arguably the jazz world’s most sonically distinctive guitarist in an octet of tried, trusted and almost miraculously sympathetic musical compadres, including two horns and three strings – it feels, without standing back or keeping still to do so, like a long view career stock take by an artist who continues effortlessly to push, shift and blur musical boundaries everywhere he goes

6. Deerhunter – Microcastle/Weird Era Cont. (Kranky/4AD)

- with their third and, I suppose, their fourth albums (since the fact that the two impressively evenly high quality parts of this double disc have different names and at least superficially if not fundamentally a different feel - and were recorded several months apart - suggests that the band might have made each to stand up on its own) the wide variety of indie rock influences informing the sound of Atlanta’s experimental noise-rockers/avant poppers (the point is to give you some clue of the sonic territory you’re in – the band refers to itself as ambient punk) has coalesced into a whole where you can still spot the touchstones that give the albums their internal variety, but will nevertheless be seduced and eventually captured by Deerhunter’s originality

7. Toumani Diabaté – The Mande Variations (World Circuit) / Rajery, Ballaké Sissoko & Driss El Maloumi – 3MA (Contré-Jour)

- the Diabaté is absolutely solo, a breathtaking kora recital almost classical in nature, on which the virtuoso star of such more obviously crowd pleasing endeavours as Songhai, the phenomenal Symmetric Orchestra and the Ali Farka Touré alliance, so steeped in not only the music of his chosen instrument but its musicality as well, draws you in, reassures you with his touch and tone, and then slays you with his brilliance – the title of the “3MA” collaboration refers to the native countries of the protagonists … Madagascar, Mali and Morocco (in French), and these masters, respectively, of the rippling valiha, the shimmering kora and the sturdily exotic oud, each so musically fundamental to its homeland, encourage, cajole and intuitively support each other while creating a cross-cultural product of elegance, charm and sometimes dazzling beauty

8. Alejandro Escovedo – Real Animal (Back Porch/Manhattan)

- in the hands of veteran producer Tony Visconti and the songwriting and guitaring company of fellow unsung hero Chuck Prophet, Escovedo, who more or less epitomises Texan music for me, has finally made a record whose sound and feel transcend his home state, though without in any way diluting his string-driven, roots-based strengths – there’s a noticeable increase in punch and drive at rocking tempos, while the improved clarity of those gorgeously melancholic ballads makes them even more heartrendingly poignant, the songs harking back to early days as a glam rock loving punk and cowpunk and even recalling a California upbringing passing himself off as a Hawaiian surfer when his Mexican heritage might have ostracised him - there are only two possibilities with Escovedo, either you love him or else you’ve never heard him

9. Blitzen Trapper – Furr (Sub Pop)

- Blitzen Trapper sounds like one of those mix tapes I (and, no doubt, you) used to make for friends (you know, the ones the industry used to claim were killing music, despite the fact that your friends often then went out and bought albums they otherwise would never have heard); where the young Oregon band’s acclaimed previous release “Wild Mountain Nation” occasionally ranged too widely for its own good, there’s nothing about this absolutely unpretentious record I don’t like as it traverses a stylistic scope where acoustically picked folk and pedal steel swooning country rock rubs shoulders with and is sometimes sparked by riffing, jamming classic rock, soaring ‘60s influenced power pop, indie squonk and even electronic noise – it might be my year’s least expected favourite

10. Dave Douglas & Keystone – Moonshine (Leaf)

- “Keystone”, the 2005 album that gave this band its name (only the keyboards have changed, with Fender Rhodes lending more of an electro-jazz shiver to the sound), was designed to accompany a silent movie, and it worked wonderfully, as the Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle DVD that accompanied the album demonstrated – this time the sense and even the sensibilities are similar (Buster Keaton’s photo is a focal point of the artwork and the band is pictured accompanying the Arbuckle movie), but the music is more flexible, inspired by silent film rather than providing it with a soundtrack, reflecting, in the words of the brilliant trumpeter/leader, “the atmosphere of those innocent/zany black and white images, refracted through 21st century jazz sensibility, interpreted by an eclectic collection of gifted musicians” – exactly!

11. The Hold Steady – Stay Positive (Vagrant)

- if the constant comparisons with Springsteen and Thin Lizzy haven’t yet persuaded you to at least try the Hold Steady, maybe the guest appearances on this, their fourth album, by members of Dinosaur Jr (J Mascis, of all people, on banjo), the Drive-By Truckers and Guided By Voices will do so, suggesting, as they do, serious indie cred to go with all that rock classicism and lyrical Catholicism – “Stay Positive” sounds more closely produced than its predecessors, and that has caused some anxiety in certain critical circles – to these ears, though, all it does is move the band up a level – they were clearly headed this way, so be thankful they got here with integrity intact and without artistic or intellectual sacrifice

12. Rokia Traoré – Tchamantché (Nonesuch)

- one of the constants of just about any musical year is the amount of great music generated by the remarkable Mali, whether from within the country or via expatriates like the increasingly adventurous Rokia Traoré – “Tchamantché” is all the more welcome given the fact that it seemed at one point as if the so-called sophistication Western influence and her multi-cultural background was lending her music might cause a drop off in the arguably more critical (depending what you’re aiming for, I suppose) elements of excitement and soul; this has the lot, from the muscular drive of the traditional n’goni and use of the classical harp rather than its cousin the kora to the rolling guitar of the northern deserts and even Gershwin (with n’goni accompaniment) - Traoré’s quite bewitching vocals, intimate and personal as usual rather than powerful and declamatory like so many of her countrywomen, set the seal on a fabulous performance

13. Dub Colossus – A Town Called Addis (Real World)

- the idea of marrying Ethiopian singing and playing to Jamaica’s reggae rhythms and overlaying the result with dub production methods might seem obvious given the way Rastafarianism has connected the two countries, yet the trick has been tried so seldom (if ever) that this album came as one of the year’s nicest surprises – Dub Colossus (Nick Page of Transglobal Underground, an important champion of cross-cultural collaboration) finds the fit in such a way that this remains a dub album with Ethiopian music rather than the other way round, somewhere between, say, Bill Laswell and Adrian Sherwood, both operating near the peak of their form

14. Okkervil River – The Stand Ins (Jagjaguwar) / Shearwater – Rook (Matador)

- it seems that Okkervil River’s fabulous 2007 album, “The Stage Names”, was initially intended to be a double, and that this may have been the other disc, at least conceptually – well, that’s as may be, but, while this clearly sounds like Okkervil River, it feels essentially different from its predecessor … quieter, perhaps, even though there’s still rock, and volume, to be had, and more downbeat (the album ends, like its forerunner, with a tribute to a tragic artist - then poet John Berryman, now singer Jobriath, but this time without the familiar Sloop John B chorus to lift the spirits - and a suggestion that Sheff might be headed into Scott Walker territory) – it took longer to get into as well, but Will Sheff is such a fine songwriter, and the band such an intuitively great vehicle for his songs, that, as soon as I had stopped making those comparisons, “The Stand Ins” soon revealed itself to be a more than worthy addition to, and broadening of, what is turning out to be a seriously impressive catalogue – and so, on the evidence of their two latest albums, is Shearwater’s, where Okkervil River’s Jonathan Meiburg (Sheff was also once a member) gets to exercise his own substantial songwriting ability as the angel-voiced leader of a band less earthy, perhaps, and more arty, and more precious, but no less precocious, than the Okkervils – it seems that, with both bands starting to make a few commercial waves, he’s chosen Shearwater, where the bleaker, more wintry sound is a perfect fit for his soaring vocals and ravishing songs

15. Dave Holland Sextet – Pass It On (Dare2)

- the magisterial bass player’s ability (yes, bass players like this are always magisterial) to keep putting together ensembles that never dip below magnificent, and then to write material worthy of them, continues to inspire – this time Holland and long serving trombonist Robin Eubanks, who wrote the opening Sum Of All Parts, which perfectly describes the group and its synergistic chemistry, are joined by Russian trumpeter Alex Sipiagin and such stars of the modern mainstream as altoist Antonio Hart, pianist Mulgrew Miller and drummer Eric Harland, the latter two new to Holland recordings though Miller and Hart are well acquainted with each other – as ever, there was hardly anything obviously more impressive in the jazz year

16. Umalali - The Garifuna Women’s Project (Cumbancha/Stonetree)

- Garifuna is an Afro-Caribbean culture, descended from slaves and marginalised for centuries, whose music suddenly came to international notice in 2007 on the heels of Belizean Andy Palacio’s wonderful “Watina” album - Umalali, which means voice, is a collective of Garifuna women singers and their album, produced, like “Watina”, by Palacio compatriot Ivan Duran, makes a terrific successor to that record (sadly Palacio himself died early last year) – it seems that women are the principal bearers of Garifuna culture, so the album is more traditional sounding than “Watina” (though it does include contemporary songs too), with some of the singers, who come from Honduras and Guatemala as well as Belize, strongly reminiscent in style and timbre of their West African ancestors, while the musical backing, which pretty much covers the Caribbean waterfront, brings the sound right up to date

17. Bellowhead – Matachin (Navigator) / Spiers & Boden – Vagabond (Navigator)

- if the second full length release by the remarkable folk big band is not as startling as the first (it could not realistically have been), it’s hardly less worthy of your love and attention - Jon Boden’s wonderful rendition of Fakenham Fair, learned from his hero, the vocally singular Peter Bellamy whose setting of Kipling’s Cholera Camp is here as well, sets the perfect mood for a set that roves imaginatively, eccentrically and sometimes inspirationally across an English folk music landscape that accommodates stirring balladry and bloody murder as naturally as raucous sea shanties and The Flight Of The Folk Mutants – the fiddle and intrinsically English guitar playing Boden’s other project, aside from a burgeoning solo career, is the duo he forms with Bellowhead’s outstanding squeeze box man, John Spiers, and their “Vagabond”, an outlet for a somewhat more conventional, if no less exciting, approach to traditional English music, could hardly have been bettered – it’s all a question of taste, but acquiring both will dramatically improve your world

18. Issa Bagayogo – Mali Koura (Six Degrees)

- known in his native Mali as Techno Issa because of the way he, mostly seamlessly, incorporates electronic sound and rhythm into his traditional, kora-centric West Afropop, Bagayogo has moved up a gear for this album, subtly incorporating horns and slightly more overt jazz influences into the always reliable marriage of ancient and modern elements that sets him apart from most of his colleagues – it’s a difficult balance to achieve, but he achieves it more often than not

19. Robert Forster – The Evangelist (Yep Roc)

- it’s inevitable, of course, that the memory of Forster’s tragically departed fellow Go-Between Grant McLennan will pervade this album (three of the songs are McLennan co-writes) and, trusting Forster’s ability and taste as I have for about 25 years, that would have been fine on its own – yet he manages, against all odds, and without avoiding either that memory or the pain that must have been present throughout, to fashion something that is neither just a wistful, wishful Go- Betweens epilogue (though there are, inescapably, elements of that) nor a maudlin tribute, but probably the best Robert Forster album to date - I’m even tempted to suggest that it might be the best solo offering to emanate from either of the brilliant Brisbanites but my love for McLennan’s “Horsebreaker Star” keeps getting in the way

20. Marcin Wasilewski Trio – January (ECM)

- though this is only the second album released under its name, the trio has been together since they were teenagers making music for film projects, and, as three quarters of the outstanding Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko’s band, is now widely considered one of the finest groups in jazz; and “January” is likely to remain a piano trio staple of a label whose love for and care of the form is impressive - Wasilewski’s The Young And The Cinema and Ennio Morricone’s lovely Cinema Paradiso reference their roots, and they pay homage by revisiting Stanko’s Balladyna – Prince may be a less obvious source, but their Diamonds And Pearls is gorgeous, and no less confidently essayed than the album’s Gary Peacock and Carla Bley pieces or the five outstanding originals

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21. Drive-By Truckers – Brighter Than Creation’s Dark (New West)

- despite the loss to his own career of Jason Isbell, one of their outstanding trio of singer/songwriter/guitarists, the Deep South’s finest have produced arguably their best album since the wonderful “Decoration Day”, on which Isbell had in fact debuted – his place as singer/songwriter goes to his ex-wife, the group’s bass player Shonna Tucker, and as guitarist to John Neff, whose guest steel had previously contributed importantly anyway, and both rise impressively to the task – this is clearly, in general approach, still the intelligently Southern rocking Truckers we have grown to know and love so well, but these moves do create a little more welcome variety, especially given the band’s penchant for making long albums – most significant, though, are the huge songwriting strides made by Mike Cooley, whose nine songs (out of nineteen) make him easily the record’s individual star

22. Randy Newman – Harps And Angels (Nonesuch)

- this may be the first Randy Newman album of new songs in nearly a decade, but he’s just as clear eyed, sharp tongued and acid penned as he ever was, and he hits the target with the same pinpoint accuracy (see, just by way of example, A Few Words In Defense Of Our Country) – sardonic, fiercely intelligent and often devastatingly funny, it’s closer to vintage Newman than we have a right to expect from a 65 year old who mainly writes for film these days, even one with his songwriting track record

23. Calexico – Carried To Dust (Quarterstick/City Slang)

- returning, but without labouring it, to the wide-land, desert-steeped mariachi-accented folk-rock that got them to a point when I thought, just for a moment, that they might be the best band in the world (my cellphone ringtone is the intro from Across The Wire, so you know I care), Calexico, with important Spanish contributions from members of once roots fashionable Spaniards Amparanoia, especially on the lovely tribute to Pinochet murdered Chilean activist poet and singer Victor Jara, has delivered what looks like a keeper – other, less obvious contributors include members, just to establish the album’s sonic territory, of Tortoise and Iron & Wine, Willie Nelson’s harmonica player and Greg Brown’s guitarist Bo and daughter Pieta

24. Trygve Seim & Frode Haltli – Yeraz (ECM) / Dans Les Arbres – Dans Les Arbres (ECM)

- Dans Les Arbres is a Norwegian improv ensemble featuring Christian Wallumrød on piano and the French clarinet/harmonica of Xavier Charles, with guitarist Ivar Grydeland’s banjo contributing unusual tonal colour and a sruti box providing the drone - the album closely interrogates the sonic possibilities offered by the unconventional lineup, arriving at conclusions and suggesting new areas for exploration that might bewilder at first but that will continue to surprise and delight throughout further listens with just a little patience and an open musical mind – Seim and Haltli are Norwegian, too, the former arguably the heir to Jan Garbarek’s glacial saxophonic throne, the latter a visionary accordionist - using the space around the notes as much as the instruments’ natural sonic, if not necessarily cultural, synergy, they deliver a beautiful, partially composed, partially improvised set incorporating Armenian folk song, pieces by Armenian mystic G. I. Gurdjieff, Seim’s search for the tones and spirit of the Armenian duduk, Bob Marley’s by now nearly sacred Redemption Song and several outstanding originals

25. TV On The Radio – Dear Science (DGC/Interscope)

- it shows how out of touch I am with the commercial reality of the record business – there I was convinced that this must be a number one album, given the fuss made over what was, in what I considered broadly mainstream rock terms, its extraordinary predecessor, and the fact that TV On The Radio was now under the wing of a major label, but I see “Dear Science”, with its general advance on “Return To Cookie Mountain”, its fabulous array of pop, rock and funk tropes and its fierce musical intelligence, didn’t even make the US Top Ten (the predecessor only reached No 41) – more fool them, I say; personally, I’m glad to remain out of touch

26. Crooked Still – Still Crooked (Signature Sounds)

- if self-styled alternative bluegrass group Crooked Still has a fault, it may be a tendency towards scholarly earnestness, causing its absolutely gorgeous exercises in what might be termed old-timey chamber music (well, what would you call a cello driven banjo and fiddle band with vocals this exquisite?) to spill over into preciousness – the thing, though, is that it’s so good when it works (and it works more often than not) that you need the occasional misstep, which is never less than pretty anyway, to balance the books – and I don’t think that this impression is caused by the fact that Greg Liszt, whom they share with Springsteen’s Seeger Sessions band, is a doctor of molecular biology - he’s not the first doctoral banjoist, either, all those jokes notwithstanding … Pete Wernick of Hot Rize has a doctorate in sociology

27. Emmylou Harris – All I Intended To Be (Nonesuch)

- having just turned sixty and five years on from her last excursion into Daniel Lanois influenced sonic territory Emmylou looks back in order to look ahead, with former husband Brian Ahern returning to produce a work of considerable elegance and grace that will re-attract the “Blue Kentucky Girl” crowd without losing those who prefer “Red Dirt Girl” – a number of trusted musical friends come along for the ride and, as usual, she totally inhabits the songs, by one time Johnny Cash stepson-in-law Jack Routh, craggy Texan Billy Joe Shaver, Patty Griffin, former trucker Mark Germino, even Tracy Chapman, but mainly her three originals and two co-writes with the McGarrigle sisters, with the folky How She Could Sing The Wildwood Flower and the heartbreaking Not Enough especially poignant

28. Samamidon – All Is Well (Bedroom Community) / Lissa Schneckenburger – Song (Footprint) / Cath & Phil Tyler – Dumb Supper (No Fi)

– American traditional music is alive and well, and still played, at least on this evidence, without fuss or flamboyance, or any sense of historical chic, and in such a way that all resistance is rendered quite hopeless – to set the record straight, Samamidon is a duo of which Sam Amidon is a member, and they play quiet and often lovely versions of the kind of thing that can be found in its more rugged form on the Harry Smith collection, but, crucially, without losing that essential mystery that so characterises traditional music; the husband and wife Tylers, she an American singer out of the splendid Cordelia’s Dad, he a fine guitarist from Newcastle in the English style, are a little more raw and earthy, especially on those wonderfully spooky harmonies; but the jewel in this particular crown is fiddle playing New England singer Schneckenburger, who sings and plays with such natural ease and fluency you’d almost think the songs were somehow handed down directly to her

29. Eliza Carthy – Dreams Of Breathing Underwater (Topic)

- undoubtedly the star of a new generation of British traditional folk music revivalists (how could she not be with the parents she has, you ask – well, in truth her talent stands up way beyond and apart from a musically steeped upbringing and a famous name), Carthy reveals, on her second album of original songs (far better in every way than on 2000’s somewhat disappointing major label “Angels & Cigarettes”), that she has songwriting skills to burn, too, as she acknowledges and then demonstrates, much more clearly, in material and arrangement, the way the music of that upbringing can be given a contemporary focus

30. Etran Finatawa – Desert Crossroads (Riverboat) / Terakaft – Akh Issudar (IRL)

- the concept of desert blues is now almost a marketing brand, thanks to the adoption by the hip and trendy of the Tuareg group Tinariwen, who have managed to remain musically wonderful despite it all, but whose 2008 output was confined to a live DVD – so, into the breach, with considerable class and without a hint of hype, stepped Etran Finatawa, from Niger rather than Mali, only partly Tuareg, and, when not essaying that by now archetypal call and response of mesmerising rolling guitar and eerie vocal chant, musically quite a bit harsher and vocally more shrill, and Terakaft, who sound (unsurprising, given the presence of two former Tinariwens in their ranks) exactly like I hope Tinariwen are going to once the mainstream media loses interest and moves on to the next big cross-cultural thing

These artists who insert their own work into that of others contribute to the eradication of the traditional distinction between production and consumption, creation and copy, readymade and original work. The material they manipulate is no longer primary. It is no longer a matter of elaborating a form on the basis of a raw material but working with objects that are already in circulation on the cultural market, which is to say, objects already informed by other objects. Notions of originality (being at the origin of) and even of creation (making something from nothing) are slowly blurred in this new cultural landscape marked by the twin figures of the DJ and the programmer, both of whom have the task of selecting cultural objects and inserting them into new contexts.

Nicolas Bourriaud

“Hier skud ek die nipples van Afrika/ Met Afrikaanse lyrics op die maksimum/ Hie’s vir jou aanlokkend!/ Staan op en wapper soos/ My rhyme storm as ek die Kaapse Dokter personify”.
-Jitsvinger, Kaapse Dokter

At the thought of Afrikaans music, what imagery comes to mind? I would assume you are thinking of Patricia Lewis and her hair implants, Bokjol Treffers Sewe, or Johan Stemmet’s multi-coloured waistcoats wiggling on our screens on SABC 2. With the recent creation of the Afrikaans indie rock subculture a la Fokofpolisiekar, you may be thinking of skinny jeans, hipster haircuts and slick videos. However, there is a side to the Afrikaans language, the creole birth and coloured connection that has been overlooked in our collective South African consciousness. Out of this side of Afrikaans has grown a new genre, Afrikaans hip hop. From the early days of Prophets of da City’s first album to Brasse Vannie Kaap’s boundary breaking shows, to exciting artists like Jitsvinger today; Afrikaans hip hop is making its mark on South Africa’s musical scene. But is it being given the coverage it deserves? Where does Afrikaans hip hop fit into our complex cultural landscape? The role of the Khoi, the Malay and other native populations in forging the language has been systematically excluded from our history books. Similarly, Afrikaans hip hop has traditionally been excluded from the mainstream Afrikaans Music scene.

The history of Afrikaans goes back to the 18th century. Cape Town’s port- city status made it a melting pot of people and influences, thanks to the inter-continental slave trade and the Dutch East India Company. Afrikaans developed as a bridging language to ease communication between the indigenous people, imported slaves and their masters. But contempt was expressed for this new language by both the Boers (who spoke “High” Afrikaans and Dutch) and the English upper classes who referred to Afrikaans as ‘Bastard Dutch’ and as a ‘mongrel language’ reserved for communicating with the slaves and lower classes.

So what makes an Afrikaner? We know now that in the mid 19th century, emancipated slaves, and slaves born in the Cape Colony were known as Afrikaners, whereas the settlers of Dutch descent referred to themselves as ‘Boere’, ‘Christene’ and ‘Nederlanders’. The myth that Afrikaans is a West European language was born in 1875 with the forced Europeanization of Afrikaans that started as an ideological project by the group “Die Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners” (The association of True Afrikaners). This group sought to nationalize the language after it was found that fewer people of Dutch descent were speaking pure Dutch, and were speaking Afrikaans in increasing numbers.

While Afrikaans’ Dutch heritage cannot be denied, it must be acknowledged that it was shaped and molded away from Dutch by the Khoi and Malay slaves. Words central to the Afrikaans language like ‘eitsa’, ‘eina’, ‘ai’, ‘kamtig’, and ‘arrie’ are Khoi-derived words, while ‘nooi’, ‘baadjie’, ‘bladsy’, ‘baklei’ and ‘kapok’ are derived from Malay languages. Perhaps most significantly, the ‘dubbele nie’ or the double negative, a language rule distinct to Afrikaans, is inherited from the Khoi.

The nationalisation of Afrikaans in 1875 meant that history books omitted the Creole formation of the language, and the Creole Afrikaner identity was stolen and altered to mean something different. The term Afrikaner soon became a name for the “white” Afrikaans speaking people of Dutch descent. Soon Afrikaans, originally a language of the free slaves and the Khoi inhabitants of the Cape, became a tool used by the oppressor.

Fastforward to 1976: youths were massacred during the Soweto Uprising, after protests against the Nationalist Government policy which demanded that all black pupils were to receive compulsory instruction in Afrikaans for all subjects, despite it rarely being the first language of black families. The language had by then become a symbol of Apartheid’s white rule and oppression. The irony is that while black students in Soweto were protesting against the use of Afrikaans as the language of instruction, Afrikaans-speaking coloured youth joined in the fight against the government, and used their Afrikaans to mobilize communities to fight against the injustices of the day. Members of the UDF, Ashley Kriel, Allan Boesak and Cheryl Carolus come to mind as some of the youth who were at the forefront of resistance politics in Cape Town in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Today in 2009 there are not many signs of the coloured Afrikaans in mainstream media with the exception of patronizing TV commercials or articles in the local Cape Town tabloid - ‘Die Son’. It seems that the version of Afrikaans spoken in the coloured community is seen as a colloquial version of ‘pure’ Afrikaans and is almost always represented as being comical and never taken seriously. Afrikaans Hip hop is a genre challenging these misconceptions, and the main players in the movement are actively trying to reclaim and evolve the language and its identity.

Hip hop, like Afrikaans, was born of a creole, mixed history. Hip hop in the United States is influenced by the griot music and storytelling traditions of West Africa. Other influences include African American blues and jazz music while a Jamaican DJ, Kool Herc is credited with being the godfather of hip hop.

Hip hoppers in Cape Town have been active in the movement since 1982, when B-boying (break dancing) and graffiti became popular after films like Break and Beatstreet became popular. The first recorded Afrikaans hip hop song, Dallah Flet, was recorded in 1990 by hip hop pioneers Prophets of da City, including in its line- up, the enigmatic DJ Ready D. The album was named Our World, and while the rest of the songs were in English, it was a first for South Africa nonetheless; being the first South African hip hop album ever recorded and released.

Prophets of da City thus paved the way for many others to come, including Brasse Vannie Kaap (BVK), the seminal Afrikaans hip hop group (also including Ready D), that would cross the colour divide and perform at rock (and thus “white”) festivals such as Oppikoppi during the 2000 to 2002 period. They would perform to predominantly white audiences, gaining instant popularity and generating interest from a generation of Afrikaners who were rethinking what it meant to be white, Afrikaans, and South African. BVK thus became the poster child for a “coloured” identity that white people could identify with. Their ability to cross boundaries through Afrikaans also spilled onto the small screen, on SABC 2’s flagship Afrikaans soap opera, Sewende Laan. We must keep in mind that it would be short-sighted to suggest that this was merely crossing boundaries. BVK used Afrikaans as a tool, as a way to publicly reclaim Afrikaans back from its national reputation as the language of systemic oppression, to the language of the people, of all who spoke it, and created it.

BVK were starting to scratch at the surface of Afrikaner identity itself. Was there now a space for coloured people to be considered as Afrikaners, or was this just too presumptuous? Jitsvinger says this about Afrikaans and identity: “Language forms part of an individual’s cultural heritage which, in my case, also forms part of our oral tradition. For me language calculates a cultural society’s position in the entire universe through sound formulation and vibration…oppression divides.” When thinking along these lines, is it not absurd to divide “white” Afrikaners and coloured Afrikaans speakers? In his essay on Cape Town as a creolised city, Creole Cape Town, Jeremy Cronin mentions what modern science is now confirming: that we are all “coloured”. We are all the carriers of a mixed masala genetic code; everyone is essentially “mixed race”. He also muses on the impact of Thabo Mbeki changing the title of his historic I am an African speech to I am a coloured.

Today, Afrikaans hip hop has gone from strength to strength. MC’s are popping up from Manenberg to Muizenberg, from Kuilsriver to Kraaifontein. MC’s such as Jitsvinger, Terror MC, Jaak, Lee-Ursus, and the Cape Awake collective have put their Afrikaans identity and heritage before any Americanisation or Afro American ebonics, and thus are “keeping it real” in the truest sense. Jitsvinger in particular mentions the Khoi influence on Afrikaans at his shows. He has worked with a group focused on Khoi culture through music, The Khoi Khollektif, and has toured with the Official Khoisan praise poet Jethro Louw aka Tanneman !Xam. At his shows, Jits makes a point of educating the audience on the history of Afrikaans and of “coloured” people as the descendants of the Khoi; and as a result, the “first nation of people” of the continent. In this sense he is practicing one of the oldest of African traditions: Oral storytelling.

Under the wing of hip hop, one can’t help but feel that Afrikaans is in good hands. At a recent parkjam on a basketball court in Gugulethu, one of Cape Town’s oldest townships and where the audience was predominantly black and mostly Xhosa, Jits was on the bill. The line- up of rappers was a long one, and as the sun started to set behind Table Mountain, visitors from outside the neighbourhood slowly started to filter out. The MC of the event, Koriander, called up the next act. “Put your hands together for Jitsvinger!” As he finished, a lanky coloured man made his way through the crowd, his head and shoulders sticking out above the people surrounding him. He grabbed the mic, and like the captain of a ship addressing his crew, he told the audience: “Guys, I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to rap in Afrikaans. When I say daai’s die move, you say maak ‘it aan. Make it on. Make it happen.” Soon everyone in the audience was rapping along in unison. “Daai’s die move, maak ‘it aan!” After his 30 minute set was done and he had handed the mic back, the MC exclaimed: “Damn! He makes Afrikaans sound like it was invented by a black man!”