September always seems like the season of new beginnings. Probably because I was in school (as student or teacher) from age 6 through age 33, September, as the start of a new school year, always seems like a time of possibility, cleaning and decluttering, re-focus and starting new projects.
This September there has been a lot of leaving of bands, for a number of us. My guitar teacher, after 16 years, decided to stop performing every weekend with his cover band who is reknowned all over the state, because he was finding that when he performed, he no longer got the ego and artistic gratification he used to, and instead just felt the pain of not being with his two small kids. He was supposed to play the last local concert mid-summer, at the spot where he officially proposed to his wife during a break in a concert by that same band, so it's a special spot for them, but it got rained out (I don't remember another one ever getting rained out, and this band has hardly cancelled a show in its 20+many years of existence). The show was rescheduled to last Thursday, the last spot in the summer calendar for the venue, and then as it turns out it would be he second-last show ever with this band. And it got rained out as well. So his actual last show was way out of town somewhere north of Portage, and we didn't go, but the photos were on Facebook this morning, and it looks like it was an appropriate finale for his tenure. I'm sorry I didn't get to see him one more time, but I can treasure the memories of the very many times I saw him with them over the years. I'm proud that he had the self-insight to know that this was the right thing to do and this was the right time to do it.
I've also left or disbanded several ensembles that I've been playing with for a long time. We made the decision not to continue in the Community Gamelan group. There were many things that made it a tough decision - a professional group from Bali will be in residence this month and the group is doing workshops with them; the group is spending a weekend at Bjorklunden in Door County, a retreat space owned by the university, where I've always wanted to go; the daughter of the group's leaders, who I remember being just a bump in her mother's belly, learned some traditional Balinese dances over the summer and will be performing them with the group at this year's concert. But on balance, we felt we weren't getting anything new out of playing, had reached the limit of our expertise on the instruments, and could do something else with the very awkwardly scheduled hours each week. So we're not renewing for this Fall, and will be taking a break after being there at or nearly from the very founding of the group.
And then I've taken a hiatus from the monthly Music Making group that I started, what, five years ago? It would meet on about the third Sunday of each month, at my house, and people would bring photocopied tabs and we would all play and sing together. Many people have come over the years, some only once, but the core group was all beginners who one way or another came to the group via my guitar teacher. It was a Beginner Jam. We had the basic rule of three chords maximum, and it is amazing the amount of repertoire you can find that fits that rule, but over the years we've all improved and so could tackle more complicated chords and rhythms. I can't express all the group gave me - it made me a better and more confident guitarist (really reinforcing the lesson my teacher told me, that nobody cares if you make a mistake as long as you keep the rhythm going, because the rhythm is your contract with the audience, who is dancing), I feel like I found my voice as a singer (who thought I could ever do a decent job at something so soulfull as "Feelin' Alright"?), and it made me a better band leader, able to throw solos in time that the soloist could be ready by the downbeat. I will use all these things going forward, and couldn't have learned them any other way than by playing regularly with other people. But lately, the repertoire hasn't resonated with me, and I felt unprepared when the day rolled around and didn't keep the jam going at a good pace, and I have a better idea of the songs I really do want to learn and play, which don't fit this model. And it was a Beginners Jam and none of us are beginners any more. So I'm going to extend the hiatus indefinitely, although I still need to write to everyone and let them know.
What am I keeping? I still plan to sing in the church choir, because it's a chance to harmonize vocally with other people, which is one of the best things in life. That starts up again next Sunday. And then there's an electric, blues-and-country-and-freeform jam I've been doing with my dear other half and another former student of my guitar teacher, in which I've been exploring others roles like lead singer, rhythm guitarist, bass player, and percussionist, which my ego used to prevent me from being happy about. This group can play very complicated chords and rhythms, and the songs are closer to the center of what I want to learn right now. So this one is still going, aiming for every two weeks but actually ending up about once a month.
And I'm toying with re-joining a community Orchestra which I tried for about 10 weeks a few years ago, playing cello for the first time in 30 years but delightedly still remembering how. That meets once a week, way on the north side of town, super far from work, and so may end up being too much right now, but we'll see.
But mainly, and centrally, we have a whole list of songs, my other half and I, that mean a lot of both of us, that we've been working on as just guitar and vocal duos. None of them are quite up to speed, but could easily be so with a few nights of practice, and we have ideas of a concert of an evening of these things, or a recording project, or maybe some guerilla appearances at various open mike nights, not sure what will become of them, but this project is very central to my musical interests, and so satisfying to my musical expression, and so it's the current spiritual focus.
So, many of us are leaving bands this September, but it will make room for new bands and new things to learn and new self-expression.
Sunday, September 8, 2019
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
Gamelan concert
It's been a slice of summer this weekend in Appleton. We had a three-day weekend for Memorial Day, and the first two days were so perfect that it felt like I had travelled to a different city several thousand miles away and was on vacation. There were blue skies, green grass, blossoms on the trees, and room-temperature air with very little wind. Oh, and no mosquitoes yet!
The surreally bright colors might have been because I started the day on Saturday with a migraine, and I always get visual effects from them, but maybe not, because everywhere I went, everyone remarked on how beautiful the day was.
We spent a fair bit of the afternoon outside, in the final rehearsal for the Community Gamelan group. Gamelan is a Balinese percussion ensemble that is taught by repetition, no written music (although many of us have developed our own cryptic way of taking notes), and we're lucky to have a beautiful set of instruments and an instructor resident at Lawrence University. Our Community group, the LU student group, and the childrens' Gamelan all had our concert on Monday afternoon, after rehearsing our pieces since last September.
Although it was our last rehearsal, our instructor pulled the instruments outside anyway, even though it was different and a bit disconcerting because the sounds and cues were different, because Gamelan is traditionally played outside in Bali, for festivals and important life events. When you play it inside you need to wear ear protection, that's how much it's made to be played outside. But it was lovely and green and peaceful, playing out on the lawn in front of the university house in which we normally rehearse. Everyone who passed by, on bike or on foot or in a car, was smiling. The sound is a pretty joyful sound, and the instruments are lovely and gold, so it's no wonder, but it made an impression to see all those smiles without exception. Some people stopped to listen and watch. Our pieces were pretty close, and we didn't stop and start very much, so it was close to a show.
The next day, my sister was helping my Mom plant some flowers in the border of my parents' new condo, which they moved to in July last year, so this is their first spring. I went up to see their progress, and Dad and I stood and surveyed their work. Then we sat out on their little porch underneath their new umbrella for their table, and then Mom had the great idea of going for a swim in their community pool, two houses down.
The three girls had the pool to ourselves. We had white clouds in blue sky above us (which cleared to just blue by the end of our swim). We had the clear, rippling water, slightly warmer than the outside temperature. We felt the freedom of gliding up and down the pool, turning somersaults, holding the pool's side and kicking, dragging arms underwater, all these motions and feelings we hadn't felt in so long, during the long, iced-in winter. All around the pool there were birds active doing bird business - a father Mallard duck perched at the very crest of a neighbor's garage roof, neck craned up with authority, surveying the scene. A busy chickadee darting in and out of a spot in the back of an evergreen, where we thought he might have some chicks. Two sparrows getting busy with each other. A seagull, flown over from the dump but still lyrical and white in the sky. It was the kind of day even a dump seagull looked beautiful and perfect.
From starting the weekend with a stress migraine, the end of the day Sunday was a full contrast. I felt fully relaxed, light in my body, bouyant with the water and sun. Pure bliss. The next day, the day of the concert, the actual Memorial Day holiday, the temperature had dropped about 25 degrees and it poured rain all afternoon, so I felt bad for people who had that as their only day off, and for those paying respects to fallen loved ones in the spirit of the day, and for those who have family traditions like camping and cooking out. We were inside, performing the concert in a traditional proscenium theater, and barely noticed the weather, playing the music of a sunny outdoors place with a healthy glow still on our skin from the perfect weekend weather.
Sunday, March 24, 2019
Mike and the Moonpies in Wittenberg, Wisconsin
It was a birthday weekend in Appleton and parts to the north. My sister turned an unnotable age, nothing with a zero at the end or even a five, but we celebrated still.
We had tickets to the Symphony on Saturday night, and dinner beforehand is always rushed, so she decided she wanted a Birthday Brunch at our parents’ place. She requested an egg dish that’s called “Stunning Brunch” for family historical reasons; it has cubes of bread and cheese and green chilies and is baked in a 9x12 pan. We ate in the sunroom which has lemon yellow walls. My parents’ place is open and very light, and always very orderly and welcoming and peaceful, so my mental picture of this brunch, with its yellow walls and eggs and light, was of a springlike golden burst of sunshine. It’s fitting, because I feel the same way about my sister.
Because we had Symphony tickets, she had to miss the performance in town of one of her favorite bands in the world, Mike and the Moonpies, who hail from Austin, Texas. A tip had made us see them on the stage in Houdini Plaza one early evening during the Mile of Music, three or four years ago, and she went out and immediately bought all their albums which have been on heavy rotation ever since, but they have not been back to town until tonight, almost her birthday, when they were playing a local bar but she couldn’t go. Like a miracle, though, a friend saw another show on Sunday afternoon at 4 pm, on her actual birthday. Mike and the Moonpies, from Austin, Texas, we’re playing in the auditorium at the high school in Wittenberg, Wisconsin, about an hour and a half’s drive away.
Originally four of us were going to go, but one pulled out at the last minute due to studying for final exams – she’s a student at nearby Lawrence University – so in the end my sister, her friend and colleage from the PAC ticket office, and me planned to go.
We’d had a brutal few weeks of weather. Rain, which turned to three inches of ice, then snow, then historic cold that reached minus 24F degrees over two days, then warm and melt and rain again, then more ice and more snow. The last shoveling out was the last straw for my sister, who had to move the ice chunks that the plow left at the end of our driveway, with the help of several neighbors, as I was away. During that same storm, white-out conditions on the highway had caused a 131 car chain-reaction crash that left one day and many seriously injured, and all the cars totaled. It had been a few days since that snow, but another one was predicted for her birthday weekend, which caused some trepidation. We all agreed that it was not worth risking life to see this band, so if the roads were icy or blocked with drifting snow or in low visibility fog, we would stay home, and she planned an alternative peaceful day just in case.
But, joy of joys, the snow ended early in the morning, and the roads were all dry and clear, and so the conditions were great for our drive. We saw some patches of blue sky, and the snowy fields and gentle hills to the north of town, setting off the red barns, were beautiful, like paintings or photographs in a calendar. I had to carry the mental pictures because I was too slow with the camera – by the time I got my phone out the scene had changed.
We got to Wittenberg about an hour before the show was due to start. We found the high school where it would be, and there were about three cars in the parking lot and not much movement evident, so we decided to drive back down the street and get gas for the trip back, but just as we were leaving the school parking lot, we saw a camper van towing a trailer, and just knew that must be the band.
We stopped at a very well-stocked gas station which also had a little gift shop, with pretty nice clothing, jewelry, leather purses and home decorations, painted signs with sayings on them about wine and coffee and things. We didn’t buy any gift shop items, just snacks and drinks. We also sussed out options for dinner after the show, which were pretty limited in a town that doesn’t even have a stoplight.
Back at the school, the doors were open and a few people were sitting around. There was a long lunch table set up with merchandise, and another one with a small sign advertising the three shows in the series, of which this was the first one. We showed our tickets to a girl near a money box, and she kind of shrugged and said, yeah, go in, and didn’t need to scan or collect or tear our tickets, so we retain them as souvenirs. We were able to buy raffle tickets for the high school dance team, who was having a 50/50 raffle which are usually a good deal.
While the entry into the show was very humbly just a high school cafeteria, the auditorium itself was actually pretty nice, with comfortable seats and a proper PA system aside the stage. A very kind middle-aged brown-haired man greeted us and showed us to our seats – he turned out to be the promoter who had organized the concert series. We were about half-way back. The front rows were starting to fill in. Most of the other patrons were older, white haired, clad in warm coats.
(During the first part of the show, Beth and I received messages from our Mom, to let us know that our cousin had passed away, after a long battle with ALS, but that’s a story for another entry.)
At the appointed time, the kindly promoter took the stage, thanked us all for being there, announced the next two shows (The Bellamy Brothers, and I can’t remember the second one, both in April), and then invited the dance team members up to the stage to draw the winners from the raffle. They gave away three CDs, one each from the artists in the series, and then the 50/50 pot which was just over $200. It was the cutest, but most normal and matter of fact, opening of a show that I’ve seen in years.
The band then took the stage – without the keyboardist who’d been with them in Appleton, with a new bass player since we saw them last, but same drummer, lead guitarist, and most importantly pedal steel guitarist who is my sister’s favorite. My sister will remember what they opened with, but I remember the sound – perfectly realized, unabashedly traditional country. They played for several hours, covering material from all of their albums, plus one George Strait, one Willy Nelson and one Freddy Fender song that were more familiar to the crowd. Mike’s voice sounded a little beat up from the road, but the energy and performance was great. There was silence between many of the songs, because the crowd applauded politely but not for long enough. At the end of the show, though, they stood and hollered and called the band back for a multiple-song encore. But didn’t buy much merchandise – I could walk right up to the table, where I got two CDs, a shirt and threw in a beer coozy so the manager didn’t have to make any change.
We ended up dining at the local Subway, which also contained a pizza place. We drove home just at twilight, rapturously recalling the show, hearing my sister’s friends story of her family connections to the towns we drove through, and watching the warm sunset light on the snow.
Monday, March 4, 2019
Jamie Kent and Wild Adriatic at the Appleton Beer Factory, March 3 2019
It’s been a cold week in Appleton. The past few weeks have been brutal in their various forms of winter - snow, ice, gloom, subzero temperatures. Three weeks ago, a polar vortex made the temperature drop to 24F degrees below zero for two days - days when I couldn’t stay home from work because we had an important live video conference, so my sister and I were both out in it. After that we had several big snowfalls, adding up to a record for any February. Then, we were saying today that it was just one week ago that whiteout conditions caused a 131-car accident on a stretch of highway that all of us drive all the time. It seems much longer than one week ago that it happened, and sort of cruel that today only a week later was sunny and brilliant blue, although still crazily cold and icy in patches.
It was a great day for doing comforting work with fabric with your Mom, and that’s what I did all afternoon. My Mom and Dad moved here in July, and in her old home Mom was very involved in the rug-braiding community. She has made probably more than 100 rugs of wool strips, following the techniques laid out by her teacher Norma Sturgis in her instructional book. Dad always says that Mom has one of the best senses of color in her rugs. So, convincing her to move here to be closer to her daughters meant tearing her away from all of that, and we haven’t replaced that community, but I am learning to braid, and I hope to go with her this summer to the annual braid-in in Salida, Colorado. She is taking me through the steps - choosing colors, tearing strips, making the “T”, starting to braid. Today we worked on lacing, and splicing the lacing cord, and how to add a new color. We worked for about two hours, and were both weary at the end. The wool is a bit hard on your hands. It irritated my sister’s skin, so she prefers quilting with cotton fabric. It can be hard keeping the sides of each strip folded in just so. I felt like I was wrestling with the fabric for every loop. But braiding is one of the most forgiving crafts. Bumps and twists will work themselves out as you walk on the rug, and the process doesn’t change the materials so you could in principle take apart and redo anything without any loss but time (and with the gain of practice).
We sat in Mom’s sun room, with the blinds tipped a little because the sun was so bright off the snow piles outside. She was working on a round rug with light blue, grey, and a grey-purplish plaid, a gift for a cousin. Mine is dark forest green, tan, and green-and-cream plaid. Neither of us exactly has a plan for what colors we’ll use as we go along. I asked Mom how you decide, thinking she would quote some principle like that you always start with light and then do a dark band, but she answered with a question, “How much of that green plaid do you have left?” Not that much. That’s how you decide, or at least one way.
I had to leave before dinner to go to a show at a bar and occasional music venue downtown. My sister and her friend had seen it and got tickets, and I got one for me and one for my significant other. The show was early, since it’s Sunday night, and featured two bands who became familiar to our town through the Mile of Music Festival, a summer celebration of original Americana music that will be in its sixth year this summer. Appleton in a music town, with a Conservatory at one end of the main street and a big performing arts center and bars featuring live music at the other. So we know how to pay attention to a musical performance and how to listen, and we’re not shy about whooping and dancing and singing along. So the bands that come to play the Mile notice this about us and express their appreciation for us from the stage, and many have starting returning between festivals to play single gigs.
Tonight was one of those, with two acts - Jamie Kent and Wild Adriatic. We got to the venue not long before it started. We got very good parking spots in the next block, and I was rugged up in my big calf-length down coat and lots of wool, but it was still fiercely cold walking from the car to the bar. There was the slightest little breeze but it was enough to drop the four degrees down to a chill I could feel through the sleeve of my coat.
The bar was busy when we got there, packed but not uncomfortable. Jamie went on first, a solo acoustic set and then joined by a second guitarist. He sings catchy and sincere songs that are right in the Americana genre of the Mile of Music. The crowd gave a warm reaction, and it was so nice to be out among other people. It felt normal, and fun, after weeks of extreme and treacherous weather, when even the simplest things like walking out your own door felt dangerous (wind chill, icy steps, crazy big icicles overhead).
The rest of the group I was with hadn’t seen Wild Adriatic before. The crowd filled in a bit when they took the stage. They play in the nexus of rock, blues-rock and soul, and they’re not a band whose records I would put on at home to listen to, personally, but they are a very good live act. Very loud, but strong, not blarey. Strong beats, and a good drummer, but so relaxed. They are all completely confident on stage, and seem not to take themselves too seriously. We stayed for about five songs, including one they said was written about Appleton, which then morphed into a medley of a number of different soul hits, and then back, with a rhythmic riff played on guitar and bass in unison that got the crowd jumping up and down, and when it stopped we let out a roar, a sound you only hear from a crowd when band and crowd have joined together.
It was a little bit of summer in our winter. A gig you would walk to in sandles during the fest in August, which a big room full of us struggled through the cold to get to tonight. I feel grateful to the performers to have come play for us. We’ve had a few difficult weeks, and really needed this show.
Thursday, November 12, 2015
My Place in Music History
So, I've been listening to several different lecture series on the history of Western Classical Music, and this view of the grand sweep of music and culture since about 1100 to about 1916 has given me some ideas about my own place in music history.
I. Collaboration vs Auteur
First, I can play a part in returning music to a state it hasn't been in since Medieval times. A recent lecture I listened to from a series about Opera made a contrast between the earliest Gregorian chants, which were monophonic (had one melody line), that pretty much followed the words, and early polyphony, in which more than one line was sung at once. With this fact, that more than one note would be sung at the some time, came the obligation for someone to make choices about which notes those would be, and a requirement for the skill to know which notes would be better than others. It required a composer, and with that we had a distinction between the composer, the performers, and the audience, whose role was to sit and listen.
The lecturer pointed out that we still live in that world today, which we certainly do, but I have noticed in my own life more and more opportunities for communal music-making. Community groups like Gamelan Sekar Gemuda bring people of all different ages and musical abilities together to play in an ensemble - ensemble is totally the most important thing about Gamelan, and through playing together we are bonded into a community. Community education events at the Mile of Music Festival often provide opportunities for music-making to anyone. The education leaders lead people in rhythm exercises, group sings, drumming circles, and again, Gamelan. Anyone can do it, and it's an occasion for everyone to do it together. And my monthly jam sessions are designed to give adult musicians a chance to play together, regardless of expertise or level. They have ended up being jam sessions for beginner women, but that's fine. It's a chance for all of us to make music together. And then church, of course, is a time when the whole congregation sings together, and Episcopalians are known for always singing in four parts.
So I'm doing my part to restore the communal, participative nature of music, which is a move away from the expert-audience divide that has dominated since those polyphonic chants.
II. Craft to glorify God vs Ego
I listened to a whole set of lectures on JS Bach, and a whole other set on WA Mozart. Both of them were working before the Romantic period. By the time you got to post-Beethoven, the point of composing was individual expression by the composer. The compositions were supposed to be about the composer's inner life, either his (usually his) thoughts and dreams, or his emotions, or his memories. This shift led to a cult of personality, in which composers were treated like rock stars in their own time period, and then the attendant bad behavior - overindulgence, manipulation of groupies of the opposite sex, extravagent lifestyles, etc. But Bach and Mozart were working back when composing was a craft. You got hired by either the church or the local government, and you were expected to provide music for all the occasions those institutions demanded. Plus direct the choir, plus teach the children and direct their choir, plus provide piece to honor royalty, and whatever else your bosses decided to call upon you to do. The lecturer played two fragments of pieces written by Mozart on the week that his father died. The first one, yes, sounded dark. Did it truly reflect Mozart's grief and anguish, which he never expressly reflected in his letters to anyone? But then the lecturer played another piece, composed that same week, which was light and buoyant and not dark at all. Neither piece can be concluded to express the inner emotional state of the composer, because that's not what music was for back at that time. Composing was a craft, at which both Bach and Mozart were very good and accomplished, and they did it because they were paid to do it, and they did it well to glorify God.
Everything always turns out better if you do it out of generosity rather than out of Ego. Viewing composition as a craft, and a gift to be used to illuminate to others the wonder of creation, that point of view takes a lot of pressure off. Composition isn't being done to prove what a big deal you are. You are just one of millions of composers, and your songs are just part of the uncountable multitude of songs. You are like one of the composers of the many, many Gregorian chants that survive. You can't listen to one and pick out the composer's particular style, because it wasn't about expressing a particular style. All those hundreds of composers were working within a single genre, to follow those musical rules and create something that could be sung as part of a formal ritual, inside a church. Many times per week.
We have lived in the age of the musical Ego ourselves. Think of the rock stars of the 1960's. But that era is done now. The fragmentation of the music industry that everyone bemoans has prevented the possibility of a star of that 1960's magnitude. No one artist can have such universal cultural domination. The means of consumption have fragmented - with iPods, streaming, YouTube, random discoveries on Bandcamp. We are not all listening to the same thing any more, which leads to very specialized niches and subcultures.
More importantly, the means of production are fragmented and have been democratized. Any person can cut a multi-track album, at home. Mix it on their computer, load it up online, boom, you are in the music business. You are a recorded artist. Anyone can do it. There are no gatekeepers - record company A&R men (usually men), radio programmers, concert promoters. The star system is gone. Which means pursuing music for Ego reasons is going to be unsuccessful anyway. So you might as well take the more Renaissance approach. Compose and play and record your songs as a craft. Compose and play and record as many of them as you can! It doesn't matter if the marketplace is crowded - in fact, it's supposed to be. Your obligation is to make a sound in your own voice. You need to be you, as fully as possible, and so does everyone else, and there is plenty of room for all of this. This stance takes away the competition, and the rank ordering. Who cares if I'll never be as good a guitar player as Stevie Ray Vaughn? Or even Joan Jett? That's not what the project is here. My project is to make the music that I would make. These sounds that are inside me (because of who I am and when I grew up and who I loved and who knows what else?), my job is to get them out, just to do it, not to get rich or famous or be better than anyone else.
We are already living in this world. The Ego era is over now, and we can go back to being craftspersons of glory.
III. Spirit -> Mind -> Body
Those Medieval chants have a pure, clear tone, and a peace about them, because they are meant to sound angelic, they are messages to Heaven, and they were written to form a part of formal worship practices.
In the transition to the Enlightenment, the same transition that made composition about the composer, there was also a transition from spirit to mind. There was a belief in Reason, and in the human ability to put our minds to problems and figure them out. The human mind made the world perfectable. The focus came down from God and onto human achievement, leading to progress.
Okay, so if that's true, then where are we now? What is the focus of 20th century music? And of course the answer is simple - it is the body.
The most popular music, world-wide, of the last century, is highly repetitive dance music - Rock and Roll (and its permutations - Rock, Pop, Rap/Hip Hop, Disco, Dance, etc). It wouldn't even sound like music to earlier composers, because it doesn't have the kind of melody lines or harmonization that they would be used to. It doesn't develop along a path, it just repeats back around, over and over. That is music that speaks to the hips, and the feet, not the mind or the heart.
The 20th century's music was about the body, and the 21st century's is as well - expanding into World Music, rhythms and sounds from places outside of Western Europe.
So, my place in music history is to write music based on simple, repetitive rhythms, and then play it together with other people, while also playing their compositions too.
Note: This blog post relies extremely heavily on the wonderful lectures of Professor Robert Greenberg.
I. Collaboration vs Auteur
First, I can play a part in returning music to a state it hasn't been in since Medieval times. A recent lecture I listened to from a series about Opera made a contrast between the earliest Gregorian chants, which were monophonic (had one melody line), that pretty much followed the words, and early polyphony, in which more than one line was sung at once. With this fact, that more than one note would be sung at the some time, came the obligation for someone to make choices about which notes those would be, and a requirement for the skill to know which notes would be better than others. It required a composer, and with that we had a distinction between the composer, the performers, and the audience, whose role was to sit and listen.
The lecturer pointed out that we still live in that world today, which we certainly do, but I have noticed in my own life more and more opportunities for communal music-making. Community groups like Gamelan Sekar Gemuda bring people of all different ages and musical abilities together to play in an ensemble - ensemble is totally the most important thing about Gamelan, and through playing together we are bonded into a community. Community education events at the Mile of Music Festival often provide opportunities for music-making to anyone. The education leaders lead people in rhythm exercises, group sings, drumming circles, and again, Gamelan. Anyone can do it, and it's an occasion for everyone to do it together. And my monthly jam sessions are designed to give adult musicians a chance to play together, regardless of expertise or level. They have ended up being jam sessions for beginner women, but that's fine. It's a chance for all of us to make music together. And then church, of course, is a time when the whole congregation sings together, and Episcopalians are known for always singing in four parts.
So I'm doing my part to restore the communal, participative nature of music, which is a move away from the expert-audience divide that has dominated since those polyphonic chants.
II. Craft to glorify God vs Ego
I listened to a whole set of lectures on JS Bach, and a whole other set on WA Mozart. Both of them were working before the Romantic period. By the time you got to post-Beethoven, the point of composing was individual expression by the composer. The compositions were supposed to be about the composer's inner life, either his (usually his) thoughts and dreams, or his emotions, or his memories. This shift led to a cult of personality, in which composers were treated like rock stars in their own time period, and then the attendant bad behavior - overindulgence, manipulation of groupies of the opposite sex, extravagent lifestyles, etc. But Bach and Mozart were working back when composing was a craft. You got hired by either the church or the local government, and you were expected to provide music for all the occasions those institutions demanded. Plus direct the choir, plus teach the children and direct their choir, plus provide piece to honor royalty, and whatever else your bosses decided to call upon you to do. The lecturer played two fragments of pieces written by Mozart on the week that his father died. The first one, yes, sounded dark. Did it truly reflect Mozart's grief and anguish, which he never expressly reflected in his letters to anyone? But then the lecturer played another piece, composed that same week, which was light and buoyant and not dark at all. Neither piece can be concluded to express the inner emotional state of the composer, because that's not what music was for back at that time. Composing was a craft, at which both Bach and Mozart were very good and accomplished, and they did it because they were paid to do it, and they did it well to glorify God.
Everything always turns out better if you do it out of generosity rather than out of Ego. Viewing composition as a craft, and a gift to be used to illuminate to others the wonder of creation, that point of view takes a lot of pressure off. Composition isn't being done to prove what a big deal you are. You are just one of millions of composers, and your songs are just part of the uncountable multitude of songs. You are like one of the composers of the many, many Gregorian chants that survive. You can't listen to one and pick out the composer's particular style, because it wasn't about expressing a particular style. All those hundreds of composers were working within a single genre, to follow those musical rules and create something that could be sung as part of a formal ritual, inside a church. Many times per week.
We have lived in the age of the musical Ego ourselves. Think of the rock stars of the 1960's. But that era is done now. The fragmentation of the music industry that everyone bemoans has prevented the possibility of a star of that 1960's magnitude. No one artist can have such universal cultural domination. The means of consumption have fragmented - with iPods, streaming, YouTube, random discoveries on Bandcamp. We are not all listening to the same thing any more, which leads to very specialized niches and subcultures.
More importantly, the means of production are fragmented and have been democratized. Any person can cut a multi-track album, at home. Mix it on their computer, load it up online, boom, you are in the music business. You are a recorded artist. Anyone can do it. There are no gatekeepers - record company A&R men (usually men), radio programmers, concert promoters. The star system is gone. Which means pursuing music for Ego reasons is going to be unsuccessful anyway. So you might as well take the more Renaissance approach. Compose and play and record your songs as a craft. Compose and play and record as many of them as you can! It doesn't matter if the marketplace is crowded - in fact, it's supposed to be. Your obligation is to make a sound in your own voice. You need to be you, as fully as possible, and so does everyone else, and there is plenty of room for all of this. This stance takes away the competition, and the rank ordering. Who cares if I'll never be as good a guitar player as Stevie Ray Vaughn? Or even Joan Jett? That's not what the project is here. My project is to make the music that I would make. These sounds that are inside me (because of who I am and when I grew up and who I loved and who knows what else?), my job is to get them out, just to do it, not to get rich or famous or be better than anyone else.
We are already living in this world. The Ego era is over now, and we can go back to being craftspersons of glory.
III. Spirit -> Mind -> Body
Those Medieval chants have a pure, clear tone, and a peace about them, because they are meant to sound angelic, they are messages to Heaven, and they were written to form a part of formal worship practices.
In the transition to the Enlightenment, the same transition that made composition about the composer, there was also a transition from spirit to mind. There was a belief in Reason, and in the human ability to put our minds to problems and figure them out. The human mind made the world perfectable. The focus came down from God and onto human achievement, leading to progress.
Okay, so if that's true, then where are we now? What is the focus of 20th century music? And of course the answer is simple - it is the body.
The most popular music, world-wide, of the last century, is highly repetitive dance music - Rock and Roll (and its permutations - Rock, Pop, Rap/Hip Hop, Disco, Dance, etc). It wouldn't even sound like music to earlier composers, because it doesn't have the kind of melody lines or harmonization that they would be used to. It doesn't develop along a path, it just repeats back around, over and over. That is music that speaks to the hips, and the feet, not the mind or the heart.
The 20th century's music was about the body, and the 21st century's is as well - expanding into World Music, rhythms and sounds from places outside of Western Europe.
So, my place in music history is to write music based on simple, repetitive rhythms, and then play it together with other people, while also playing their compositions too.
Note: This blog post relies extremely heavily on the wonderful lectures of Professor Robert Greenberg.
Saturday, August 29, 2015
DIY - Celebrate Diversity
So, I've been listening to a series of lectures on the history of European Concert Music, and the lecturer does a great job of describing the cultural context and how it shaped the music of various periods.
He pointed out how Enlightenment values led to the Baroque era music of Bach and Corelli and all of them. It was the time of scientific and intellectual advancement, and of Martin Luther, and so the focus of the culture was off of God and onto human experience. The rise of the Middle Class meant that more people could attend concerts in the concert hall, and it led to a homgenization of concert music, driving all compositions to the common denominator. There was a demand for music that everyone would like. He pointed out that all national character was driven out of composition, and illustrated the point by playing sections of three sonatas of the time and asked us, the listeners, to try to identify the nationality of their composers. I guessed, maybe German, maybe French, maybe English? But it turns out all three composers were Czech. It was a powerful demonstration that all music sounded basically the same, and it was driven there by a desire to reach everyone and have everyone be equal - all compositions became equal as well.
In contrast, by the time you get to Beethoven, and then even more so during the Romantic era that followed, the emphasis was on the composer's individual expression. The lecturer played a section of a Baroque chamber music piece, and then played a section of the first movement of Beethoven's 5th Symphony. He described how we would identify the first piece - Continuo instruments, sonata form, regular tempo, theme expressed in polyphonic lines - Baroque era. It turns out it was composed by Corelli, but unless you were a Corelli specialist and were directly familiar with the piece already, nothing about it would tell you that. In contrast, the 5th Symphony is recognizably not just a piece from its era, not just from Germany, not just a Beethoven piece, but as that specific work. It sounds like nothing else but itself.
So, music history moved from compositions designed to appeal to everyone that ended up all sounding the same, to compositions designed to express the individual experience of the composer that have complete originality.
But that Romantic period was also the era of stars. To his point, we can now listen to Baroque pieces by any composer and appreciate them as works from their time, but even though there were probably just as many people composing during Beethoven's time, their work hasn't survived down to us, because Beethoven, the star, takes all the cultural bandwidth.
So, where are we today? We know that we are again in a period that emphasizes individual expression. That grand Communist impulse to form us into one big culture and one big political entity and have everything equal by being exactly the same, that fell when the Berlin Wall fell and is over and done (I remember running across that vision when I read the book "The Motorcycle Diaries", and hearing that the young Che Guevara had a dream of united all of South America into one big unified country, celebrating what they all had in common. It was so strange, an idea I not only had never heard of but just seemed completely unfathomable, given the era of revolution and nationalism and restoring of old boundaries out of the formerly large countries - the old Yugoslavia, the old Soviet Union, East Timor separating from Timor, South Sudan separating from Sudan). Here in the US, we have moved past the "Melting Pot" era, where we consider all Americans as Americans first, and encourage assimilation and casting off of one's home language and culture. Can you imagine that was ever the idea? Now we celebrate our patchwork identity. "Tossed Salad" is the new metaphor. We celebrate diversity. Every person is encouraged to express their authentic identify, and not be worried about conforming to old paradigms.
And, at the same time, the means of creative production have fallen into individual hands. The tools for making a film, taking an artful high-quality photograph, recording a multi-track record, using "Paint" to make an original image - and, of course, not to forget, self-referentially, free access to tools for writing and publishing your writings, yes, like this right here that I'm doing right now - the means of creative production are easily available and (almost) freely available to to (almost) all.
That new access, sure, has led to fragmentation. We're no longer in a "Hey Jude" era where everyone is listening to the same song at the same time. The magnitude and duration of our stars has declined. It has profoundly changed the industry and the means for making a living from artistic pursuits, However, it has enabled individual creative expression on a profoundly more broad scale.
So, that's my prediction, that we are in the culture era of fragmented, local, diverse composition. No one composer, no one performer, no one band, no one song may define our cultural moment. This moment is defined by all of us, each of us, finding our compositional voice.
The aspiration, then, should not be to become rich and famous like a 1960's rock star (the 1960's was the last hurrah of Romanticism, wasn't it, with debauched and overemotional heroes like Jim Morrison? I remember reading a piece about Dylan Thomas, who confronted his writer's block by drinking himself to death, and contrasted it with professional authors of today, one of whom said when he gets blocked, "Usually I go for a run."), because famous rock star is no longer a viable career. The aspiration, the aim, is to find your own sounds, and put them down (outside yourself and outside your own head), not so that the masses ever listen to them, but just as an indication that you are here.
He pointed out how Enlightenment values led to the Baroque era music of Bach and Corelli and all of them. It was the time of scientific and intellectual advancement, and of Martin Luther, and so the focus of the culture was off of God and onto human experience. The rise of the Middle Class meant that more people could attend concerts in the concert hall, and it led to a homgenization of concert music, driving all compositions to the common denominator. There was a demand for music that everyone would like. He pointed out that all national character was driven out of composition, and illustrated the point by playing sections of three sonatas of the time and asked us, the listeners, to try to identify the nationality of their composers. I guessed, maybe German, maybe French, maybe English? But it turns out all three composers were Czech. It was a powerful demonstration that all music sounded basically the same, and it was driven there by a desire to reach everyone and have everyone be equal - all compositions became equal as well.
In contrast, by the time you get to Beethoven, and then even more so during the Romantic era that followed, the emphasis was on the composer's individual expression. The lecturer played a section of a Baroque chamber music piece, and then played a section of the first movement of Beethoven's 5th Symphony. He described how we would identify the first piece - Continuo instruments, sonata form, regular tempo, theme expressed in polyphonic lines - Baroque era. It turns out it was composed by Corelli, but unless you were a Corelli specialist and were directly familiar with the piece already, nothing about it would tell you that. In contrast, the 5th Symphony is recognizably not just a piece from its era, not just from Germany, not just a Beethoven piece, but as that specific work. It sounds like nothing else but itself.
So, music history moved from compositions designed to appeal to everyone that ended up all sounding the same, to compositions designed to express the individual experience of the composer that have complete originality.
But that Romantic period was also the era of stars. To his point, we can now listen to Baroque pieces by any composer and appreciate them as works from their time, but even though there were probably just as many people composing during Beethoven's time, their work hasn't survived down to us, because Beethoven, the star, takes all the cultural bandwidth.
So, where are we today? We know that we are again in a period that emphasizes individual expression. That grand Communist impulse to form us into one big culture and one big political entity and have everything equal by being exactly the same, that fell when the Berlin Wall fell and is over and done (I remember running across that vision when I read the book "The Motorcycle Diaries", and hearing that the young Che Guevara had a dream of united all of South America into one big unified country, celebrating what they all had in common. It was so strange, an idea I not only had never heard of but just seemed completely unfathomable, given the era of revolution and nationalism and restoring of old boundaries out of the formerly large countries - the old Yugoslavia, the old Soviet Union, East Timor separating from Timor, South Sudan separating from Sudan). Here in the US, we have moved past the "Melting Pot" era, where we consider all Americans as Americans first, and encourage assimilation and casting off of one's home language and culture. Can you imagine that was ever the idea? Now we celebrate our patchwork identity. "Tossed Salad" is the new metaphor. We celebrate diversity. Every person is encouraged to express their authentic identify, and not be worried about conforming to old paradigms.
And, at the same time, the means of creative production have fallen into individual hands. The tools for making a film, taking an artful high-quality photograph, recording a multi-track record, using "Paint" to make an original image - and, of course, not to forget, self-referentially, free access to tools for writing and publishing your writings, yes, like this right here that I'm doing right now - the means of creative production are easily available and (almost) freely available to to (almost) all.
That new access, sure, has led to fragmentation. We're no longer in a "Hey Jude" era where everyone is listening to the same song at the same time. The magnitude and duration of our stars has declined. It has profoundly changed the industry and the means for making a living from artistic pursuits, However, it has enabled individual creative expression on a profoundly more broad scale.
So, that's my prediction, that we are in the culture era of fragmented, local, diverse composition. No one composer, no one performer, no one band, no one song may define our cultural moment. This moment is defined by all of us, each of us, finding our compositional voice.
The aspiration, then, should not be to become rich and famous like a 1960's rock star (the 1960's was the last hurrah of Romanticism, wasn't it, with debauched and overemotional heroes like Jim Morrison? I remember reading a piece about Dylan Thomas, who confronted his writer's block by drinking himself to death, and contrasted it with professional authors of today, one of whom said when he gets blocked, "Usually I go for a run."), because famous rock star is no longer a viable career. The aspiration, the aim, is to find your own sounds, and put them down (outside yourself and outside your own head), not so that the masses ever listen to them, but just as an indication that you are here.
Sunday, July 5, 2015
Silly Love Songs
In the most recent issue of The New Yorker, my favorite staff writer Adam Gopnik wrote a review of a number of books, but mainly this one book, "Love Songs: The Hidden History" by Ted Gioia.
The article traces the history of love poetry from troubadour poets through modern pop songs, but spends a great deal of time on Shakespeare's Sonnets.
I read this article at a time when I have been pondering the Love Song generally.
I remember noticing back in college when I was making mix tapes that most love songs are songs about love unrequited. Longing and lack and frustration drive people to write songs. Heartbreak and loss and disappointment drive people to write songs. Hardly anyone ever writes a song when they are happy, and in a fulfilling and mutual relationship. Probably they don't have time, was the theory I developed at the time. Or they have nothing to say - happiness just kind of sits inarticulately, centered within itself, but pain and loss and longing generate a storm of words in the mind.
This week we have been immersed in the musical tradition of the American South, between about 1905 and 1950, the rise and dispersion of Blues music, through the migration of Black (African-American) people to rural areas in the South, and then on to urban areas in South and North.
The tradition develops alongside a Gospel tradition, but in parallel and separate - one voice in a documentary on Blind Willie McTell says that when his sister brought Blind Willie home to meet her family, he, her brother, was afraid they were all going to Hell from knowing this man. Blues music was not accepted by those who used Gospel music to glorify God (although the story went on to tell how McTell learned Gospel songs as well, which ingratiated him into his wife's family, and made him one of the rare musicians of the time to play in both traditions).
If you listen to lots of recordings of Blues music from this period, there are no love songs. There are lots of descriptions of life itself, and locations, and travelling, and work. There are descriptions of fights and disagreements and misunderstandings. There are testaments of hard luck and loss of hope and weariness. There are a lot of songs about sex. But nothing that would sound like a Romantic Poet's words to the object of his affection. No descriptions of otherworldly beauty, comparing one's love to the stars or the sun or to Heaven, no threats that one will die without the return of his beloved's affections.
There isn't even this same kind of tenor in the Gospel music. The stories they pick from the Bible to turn into songs, the ones that come to mind to me most quickly although I'll be the first to admit I haven't studied this tradition at all, but to the outsider the first ones that come to mind are all about places, and journeys - the River Jordan, Jacob's Ladder. Journeying, getting to a good place, going Home. Not having your soul rapt in transcendent euphoria. That is a white, European tradition.
It's the one I grew up with, though. The theme through all the sad songs of longing on those mix tapes. I grew up immersed in a particular cultural understand of Love, and attraction (and longing and need and lust and all the rest).
I understand that, and understand that not everyone grew up in the same one, in fact almost no one really, except maybe other girls who grew up about that same time, which doesn't help me at all.
But the act of interacting outside that culture, and expecting more matter of fact approaches to living and to each other, I can get my brain to go along with it as a project, but my heart is lagging behind.
June, moon, spoon.
The article traces the history of love poetry from troubadour poets through modern pop songs, but spends a great deal of time on Shakespeare's Sonnets.
I read this article at a time when I have been pondering the Love Song generally.
I remember noticing back in college when I was making mix tapes that most love songs are songs about love unrequited. Longing and lack and frustration drive people to write songs. Heartbreak and loss and disappointment drive people to write songs. Hardly anyone ever writes a song when they are happy, and in a fulfilling and mutual relationship. Probably they don't have time, was the theory I developed at the time. Or they have nothing to say - happiness just kind of sits inarticulately, centered within itself, but pain and loss and longing generate a storm of words in the mind.
This week we have been immersed in the musical tradition of the American South, between about 1905 and 1950, the rise and dispersion of Blues music, through the migration of Black (African-American) people to rural areas in the South, and then on to urban areas in South and North.
The tradition develops alongside a Gospel tradition, but in parallel and separate - one voice in a documentary on Blind Willie McTell says that when his sister brought Blind Willie home to meet her family, he, her brother, was afraid they were all going to Hell from knowing this man. Blues music was not accepted by those who used Gospel music to glorify God (although the story went on to tell how McTell learned Gospel songs as well, which ingratiated him into his wife's family, and made him one of the rare musicians of the time to play in both traditions).
If you listen to lots of recordings of Blues music from this period, there are no love songs. There are lots of descriptions of life itself, and locations, and travelling, and work. There are descriptions of fights and disagreements and misunderstandings. There are testaments of hard luck and loss of hope and weariness. There are a lot of songs about sex. But nothing that would sound like a Romantic Poet's words to the object of his affection. No descriptions of otherworldly beauty, comparing one's love to the stars or the sun or to Heaven, no threats that one will die without the return of his beloved's affections.
There isn't even this same kind of tenor in the Gospel music. The stories they pick from the Bible to turn into songs, the ones that come to mind to me most quickly although I'll be the first to admit I haven't studied this tradition at all, but to the outsider the first ones that come to mind are all about places, and journeys - the River Jordan, Jacob's Ladder. Journeying, getting to a good place, going Home. Not having your soul rapt in transcendent euphoria. That is a white, European tradition.
It's the one I grew up with, though. The theme through all the sad songs of longing on those mix tapes. I grew up immersed in a particular cultural understand of Love, and attraction (and longing and need and lust and all the rest).
I understand that, and understand that not everyone grew up in the same one, in fact almost no one really, except maybe other girls who grew up about that same time, which doesn't help me at all.
But the act of interacting outside that culture, and expecting more matter of fact approaches to living and to each other, I can get my brain to go along with it as a project, but my heart is lagging behind.
June, moon, spoon.
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