10/23 - Minimalism

Usually this is a music blog, but I will take this post to talk about a subject that includes music, even though that's not its main focus.

I used to collect everything when I was a kid. I would keep all of my A papers, and all of the little things I wrote, and even recently, I kept all of the letters anyone wrote, concerts I went to, and things I did, and proudly displayed them for anyone who wanted to see.

These things showed how awesome I was, and gave my life meaning; I was worth something because I saw the Who live, or went to Patrick Roy's 1,000th game, or got a letter from the coolest teacher ever on my birthday, or was accepted by the Berklee School of Music. I could pull out things from when I was a little kid when I was feeling down and see not only how cool I was back then, but how much better I am at stuff now, which is definitely uplifting.

Popular society nowadays is very materialistic. People buy nice cars that aren't necessary for their lifestyle, or houses that are beyond necessary. I don't really have to explain it, I'm sure, but it makes me sad to think that there are people that go out and spend a bunch of money just because it makes them feel good.

I have decided to start passively rebelling against that whole notion, since it is one of my least favorite notions. I have been considering it for a while, but today I cleaned out my room... well, started to anyways. So far, I have taken down most of the things from my wall and filed it away, put ads up on Craigslist for things I don't need (don't worry Mom and Dad, only reasonable offers), and already have a clothes hamper full of clothes to give away or resale.

I guess the rebelling against materialism thing is cool, but for me it's not really all about being angry about something, it's quite the opposite actually. If I have less stuff, I have less stuff to worry about, less stuff taking up space, less things I can't find, and less eyesores to keep in my room.

I will have a couple of complications though. Percussionists, and timpanists in general, are pretty notorious for hoarding mallets, drums, music, etc. So I won't keep myself from having proper equipment, since it's my job, but I won't keep things that I don't have a use for either.

I'm also a student, so I have to keep plenty of papers and notebooks and things, and it can get pretty cluttered sometimes. I haven't had a desk since I've moved in, so I work on my bed or the couch in the living room, and the surrounding areas get pretty disastrous after a few days, but I'm getting better at it.

Soon, I will take to the kitchen to get rid of extra utensils, dishes, and things, because the fewer kitchen things you have, the better you are at washing them. And I'll do my best with the rest of the house without making everyone else weirded out by not having art and decorations and stuff in them.

M

10/11 - Today in Ethno

Pretty cool, right?

Yup. We watched West African videos all day, and even though I was pretty sleepy, I stayed awake and loved every minute of class today.

That's Bassekou Kouyate, one of the finest ngoni players in West Africa. Ngoni, as well as akonting and and instrument called xalam, are all multi-stringed instruments that are thought to be predecessors of the American banjo. Music really makes its way around the world.

A few of you might know of my admiration of Bela Fleck, the banjo player; he started as a bluegrass guy, and made his way over to the funky side of things, started his own group called the Flecktones, and has played with Victor Wooten, Chris Thile, Zakir Hussain, Edgar Meyer, Tony Trischka and all sorts of cool people. He's one of my favorite musicians of all time.

Not only is he an outstanding player, but he appealed to my ethnomusicologist side by going to Africa and producing a documentary called "Throw Down Your Heart." His mission was to find the roots of the banjo, and on his way he jams with all sorts of African musicians... mothers at work, a blind kalimba player, an ensemble centered around a huge marimba built into the ground, and some ensembles that had ngoni and akonting in them, and, well, they were very similar.

In Mali, and West Africa in general, there are musicians called griots, that are almost always families, where the tradition of music is passed down from generation to generation. In the past, griots would accompany higher, warrior-class families, and the two were inseperable; every emperor or warrior family must have a griot, and every griot must have an emperor. So they were pretty high-class, and for good reason, because the griot were not only musicians, but they were poets, translators, spokesmen, and storytellers too.

These griots produced some pretty amazing musicians, on all sorts of interesting instruments, and I'd like to share a couple with you.



Toumani Diabate is playing an instrument called the kora, which is pretty similar to a harp. It has 21 strings that can be tuned by sliding the rings around the "neck" higher and lower. It is played with two fingers on each hand, the thumb of the left hand for the bass, the thumb of the right for the melody, and the two index fingers for improvisation. Good kora players should be able to carry the bass line and the melody while improvising on top of that, and I think that's amazing.

I talked about the gyil much earlier in this blog, but that specific instrument falls in the balafon category of idiophones. Balafons are similar to marimbas, but the resonators are made with gourds, and the gourds have spider's eggs attached to them.



Notice that it doesn't have any accidentals, which would make playing easier, but in relation to a western mallet instrument, it's backwards. The higher notes are on the left side, perhaps to give the bass line more importance? I really don't know. What amazes me is the speed of some of his runs and his ability to keep two different rhythms and ideas going at the same time so fluidly.

Let's not about the spider's eggs, either. They produce a rattle in the resonators that is characteristic of African sound. The keyboard instruments do it, kora usually have beads attached to the strings to make them rattle and buzz, and some African influenced musicians have found ways to get the buzz in their sound:



There is a very strong vocal tradition in West Africa, as there is in all of Africa, and my favorite African singer is Oumou Sangare, who was in Bela's documentary:



West African vocal music is interspersed with plain-spoken thoughts, ideas, or messages a musician would like to add to a song. A singer could say that they are happy that they are singing today, or make a dedication, or state their opinion about politics in any song, and it would be just fine. I like that.

This is the best example I've shown you that has a hint of Islamic music culture in it, and there's a reason why. Spain, Morocco and much of West Africa was influenced by Islam much earlier than it was influenced by Christianity, and there's been enough time for Islamic music traditions to work their way into West African music. Notice in Ms. Sangare's singing and in the vocals of the Ngoni Ba, there are ornaments and melisma that are very reminiscent of Islamic prayer chant, and the kora and balafon have found ways to add these ornaments into their music as well. The Islam-influenced music accompanies danced celebrating Islamic gods, and West Africans often read the Qu'ran. That's definitely not what I thought of when I first heard anything about West Africa.

I want to make all of these instruments. I'm going to look into how much it would cost to find the parts.

M

An Excerpt from John Cage's "Composition in Retrospect"

NONINTENTION (THE ACCEPTANCE OF SILENCE) LEADING TO NATURE; RENUNCIATION OF CONTROL; LET SOUNDS BE SOUNDS.


EACH ACTIVITY IS CENTERED IN ITSELF, I.E., COMPOSITION, PERFORMANCE, AND LISTENING ARE DIFFERENT ACTIVITIES.


(MUSIC IS) INSTANTANEOUS AND UNPREDICTABLE; NOTHING IS ACCOMPLISHED BY WRITING, HEARING, OR PLAYING A PIECE OF MUSIC; OUR EARS ARE NOW IN EXCELLENT CONDITION.



A NEED FOR POETRY.

JOYCE: "COMEDY IS THE GREATEST OF ARTS BECAUSE THE JOY OF COMEDY IS FREEST FROM DESIRE AND LOATHING."

AFFIRMATION OF LIFE.


PURPOSEFUL PURPOSELESSNESS.


ART = IMITATION OF NATURE IN HER MANNER OF OPERATION.


COEXISTENCE OF DISSIMILARS; MULTIPLICITY; PLURALITY OF CENTERS; "SPLIT THE STICK, AND THERE IS JESUS."



ANONYMITY OR SELFLESSNESS OF WORK (I.E., NOT SELF-EXPRESSION).

A WORK SHOULD INCLUDE ITS ENVIRONMENT, IS ALWAYS EXPERIMENTAL (UNKNOWN IN ADVANCE).


FLUENT, PREGNANT, RELATED, OBSCURE (NATURE OF SOUND).



EMPTY MIND.



NO IDEAS OF ORDER.


NO BEGINNING, MIDDLE, OR END (PROCESS, NOT OBJECT).


UNIMPEDEDNESS AND INTERPENETRATION; NO CAUSE AND EFFECT.


INDETERMINACY.



OPPOSITES = PARTS OF ONENESS.



TO THICKEN THE PLOT (RAMAKRISHNA); HIS ANSWER TO THE QUESTION: WHY, IF GOD IS GOOD, IS THERE EVIL IN THE WORLD?



AVENTURE (NEWNESS) NECESSARY TO CREATIVE ACTION.



THE MIND IS DISCIPLINED (BODY TOO), THE HEART TURNS QUICKLY FROM FEAR TOWARDS LOVE (ECKHART).



ANYTHING CAN FOLLOW ANYTHING ELSE (PROVIDING NOTHING IS TAKEN AS THE BASIS).



INFLUENCE DERIVES FROM ONE S OWN WORK (NOT FROM OUTSIDE IT).



CHANCE OPERATIONS ARE A USEFUL MEANS; MOKSHA.



BEING LED BY A PERSON, NOT A BOOK; ARTHA.



LOVE.



RIGHT AND WRONG.



NON-MEASURED TIME.



PROCESS INSTEAD OF OBJECT.



AMERICA HAS A CLIMATE FOR EXPERIMENTATION.



WORLD IS ONE WORLD.



HISTORY IS THE STORY OF ORIGINAL ACTIONS.



MOVE FROM ZERO.



ALL AUDIBLE PHENOMENA = MATERIAL FOR MUSIC.



IMPOSSIBILITY OF ERRORLESS WORK.



SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER (CREATION, PRESERVATION, DESTRUCTION, QUIESCENCE).



POSSIBILITY OF HELPING BY DOING NOTHING.



MUSIC IS NOT MUSIC UNTIL IT IS HEARD.



MUSIC AND DANCE TOGETHER (AND THEN OTHER TOGETHERS).


MEN ARE MEN; MOUNTAINS ARE MOUNTAINS BEFORE STUDYING ZEN. WHILE STUDYING ZEN, THINGS BECOME CONFUSED. AFTER STUDYING ZEN, MEN ARE MEN; MOUNTAINS ARE MOUNTAINS. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEFORE AND AFTER? NO DIFFERENCE. JUST THE FEET ARE A LITTLE OFF THE GROUND (SUZUKI).



IF STRUCTURE, RHYTHMIC STRUCTURE.



BOREDOM PLUS ATTENTION = BECOMING INTERESTED.



PRINCIPLE UNDERLYING ALL OF THE SOLUTIONS = QUESTION WE ASK.


ACTIVITY, NOT COMMUNICATION.



THE NINE PERMANENT EMOTIONS (THE HEROIC, THE MIRTHFUL, THE WONDROUS, THE EROTIC; TRANQUILLITY; SORROW, FEAR, ANGER, THE ODIOUS).



THE PRACTICALITY OF CHANGING SOCIETY DERIVES FROM THE POSSIBILITY OF CHANGING THE MIND.



THE GIVER OF GIFTS (RETURNING TO THE VILLAGE HAVING EXPERIENCED NO-MINDEDNESS).



STUDYING BEING INTERRUPTED.



NOTHING-IN-BETWEEN.



OBJECT IS FACT NOT SYMBOL (NO IDEAS).



POETRY IS HAVING NOTHING TO SAY AND SAYING IT; WE POSSESS NOTHING.



UNCERTAINTY OF FUTURE.



NOISES (UNDERDOG); CHANGING MUSIC AND SOCIETY.



NOT WORKING = KNOWING. WORKING = NOT KNOWING.



DISTRUST OF EFFECTIVENESS OF EDUCATION.



HCE (here comes everybody)

IT IS, IS CAUSE FOR JOY.

EARTH HAS NO ESCAPE FROM HEAVEN (ECKHART).

10/3 - I'm composing again!

So it's a new month, and this weekend I found some inspiration to do more things than I usually do, which is really awesome. I cleaned all sorts of dishes, and decorated my room a little bit, and didn't sleep all day. But most importantly, I came up with some new musical ideas, and I'm pretty excited about them.

Yesterday I was reading all of John Cage's writings when I found a journal that he wrote a year before he died in 1992. It contains a list of blurbs and thoughts about music, quotes from authors and philosophers, and simple ideas. I tried all day Sunday to think of ways to communicate each line correctly through music, probably a multi-percussion set-up that includes marimba, maybe another keyboard instrument and then a bunch of percussive noises, none of which really need to be any specific sound. I'll post the list in a separate post.

I had a dream last night where everyone I knew "sent" me a sound and I could just pull it out of the sky and put wherever I wanted it to be, and I could use all of my friends sounds and make something awesome out of them. So I asked a bunch of people to send me their favorite sound, and you can too, if you want; just record something and email it to mklynass93@aol.com. Please, keep it short, clean, and simple, but I would love your input.

Snarky Puppy is playing here in Denton tonight, and I am very excited.

M