The Times Quotidian

Persepolis (1971), Iannis Xenakis
“Nous Portons La Lumiere de la terre”
“We Bear the Light of the Earth”
by Aram Yardumian

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was fomented by the unusual pairing of ultra-conservative Islamists, reacting against the so-called “cultural contamination” of Iran by the West, and by various leftist elements, long outraged by the nation’s history of injustice, brutality and extravagance under the rule of the Shah. Left and right together filled the streets for months of protest. They marched on and sometimes burned cinemas, casinos, banks, hotels and other ostensibly un-Islamic institutions and luxuries, paving the way for the return of the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Symbolic of the extravagance perpetrated by the regime of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi that outraged both conservative and leftist was the Jashnhaa-ye 2500 Saaleh, or 2500th anniversary celebration of Iran’s founding by Cyrus the Great, held in 1971. This four-day event, held in an elaborate, glittering air conditioned tent city at the ancient Persian capital of Persepolis, and in conjunction with the Third Annual Shiraz Arts Festival, is possibly the grandest celebration ever staged. According to no less of an authority than The Guiness Book of World Records, it was also the most “well attended” international event in history, inasmuch as it attracted some sixty-five heads of state, legates and their entourages—including Sultan Qaboos of Oman, Imelda Marcos, Pres. Joseph Mobutu of Zaire, Emperor Haile Selassie I, Vice Pres. Spiro Agnew (representing Richard Nixon), and Tito—and their spouses—a total of six hundred dignitaries, in addition to some 150 chefs, bakers and waiters, hundreds of security personnel, teams of desert vermin exterminators, Parisian hairdressers and make-up artists, Italian drapers, florists, musicians, and chauffeurs for the 250 custom-ordered red Mercedes-Benzes. As well, some 4000 (or 6000, estimates vary) period-costumed soldiers paraded a spectacularly choreographed review of two and a half millennia of Persian imperial glory—the Achaemenid, Parthian, Sassanian, Safavid, Afsharid, Qajar, and Pahlavi dynasties—in order to impress upon the guests what Iran had been in the past, was in 1971, and would be in the future.

 

Parisian Master Hotelier Max Blouet, came out of retirement to oversee the wait staff for the welcome banquet, an event catered by Maxim’s de Paris, which shut its Paris location for almost a fortnight in order to focus on the event. The menu, which was a carefully guarded secret, included roast peacocks with foie gras-stuffed tails, quails’ eggs stuffed with golden Caspian caviar, mousse of crayfish tails with Nantua sauce, and the finest ports and champagnes, including a 1945 Chateau Lafitte-Rothschild—hardly, many were quick to note, traditional Persian cuisine.

Following the banquet was son et lumière show and fireworks. The voice of Darius the Great spoke in the dark—in French—recounting the glories of Xerxes. This was followed by Greek composer Iannis Xenakis’s monumental fifty-six minute, eight-track electro-acoustic work Persepolis, which was commissioned by the Shah to simultaneously exalt ancient Persia’s aristocratic pre-Islamic religious culture, and define a new, specifically secular moment in the nation’s history. Persepolis, subtitled ‘We Bear the Light of the Earth’, was a massive multimedia spectacle (which Xenakis referred to as a ‘polytope’) employing lasers, spotlights, and hillside bonfires to evoke the Zoroastrian belief that light is eternal life. For the event, the eight independent tracks were broadcast by 48 (or 59, or 100, accounts vary) high-end speakers spread around the ruins of the ancient Palace of Darius. The audience circulated freely between six listening zones, listening as they watched laser lights scan the night sky and the ruins of the city, and the mountains. During the event, 150 Shiraz schoolboys ran with torches from the ravine, through the audience, into the columns of the ruins.

Beginning minutes of Persepolis, Composer Iannis Xennakis
Pour bande magnétique 8 pistes. Band réalisée au Studio Acousti, Paris. Creation: 20.08.1971, Persépolis, Festival de Shiraz (Iran)

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The work itself is the ebb, flow and overlap of eleven basic waves of texture, ranging from what sound like wind instrument polyphonics, rubbed glass, treated air, and the scraping together of large steel sheets. Listened to in stereo, one or another of these entities appears to dominate the encroaching and juxtaposing layers, but it is important to remember that in experiencing the work as a polytope, it would have no linear motion, only elliptical shifts in texture and “mass”—a concept Xenakis strove to introduce to the world of musical composition. The textures are often at odds, acoustically, yet they do not fight; they, in their opposition somehow strike a balance—exactly as the Zoroastrian contest between Light and Darkness. The sounds themselves burrow up like the elements in times of geologic turmoil, from unimaginable depths, oxidizing and crystallizing on the surface into forms that in turn decay and return to the earth, like civilizations. Even in stereo, Persepolis has no harmonic structure, no breaks or movements, and, like history, no beginning or end.

Xenakis spoke of Persepolis as “… [N]either a theatrical spectacle, nor a ballet, nor a happening. It is visual symbolism, parallel to and dominated by sound”. Though decidedly untheatrical, the event was certainly dramatic, even sublime as a feat of architecture rather than a history lesson, or perhaps the poverty of history consumed by the glissandi of the spheres. It was, Xenakis wrote in his notes, a “symbol of history’s noises; unassailable rocks facing the assault of the waves of civilization. Childhood’s awakening must be maintained because it represents active knowledge, perpetual questioning which forges the becoming of man. To invent light trajectories, to create signs, destinies on stone: on mountain and ruins, through sound, through fire, through light …. This music corresponds to a rock tablet on which hieroglyph or cuneiform messages are engraved in a compact, hermetic way, delivering their secrets only to those who want and know how to read them. The history of Iran, fragment of the world’s history, is thus elliptically and abstractly represented by underground currents of sound. The listener must pay for his penetration into the knowledge of the signs with great effort pain and the suffering of his own birth.”

Xenakis, born in unified Romania in 1922 to Greek parents, is remembered not only for his innovations in computer music, but specifically for the application of mathematics (specifically Peano axioms, set theory and stochastic processes) to musical composition. Unlike some of his drier and more abstruse 20th century contemporaries, his compositions are both emotional and metaphoric, immediate and cumulative in their search for a language to express the most basic and elusive philosophical forms: knowledge, life, power, and tragedy.

That the Shah would select Xenakis, a Greek living in France, for the task of firing the warning shot for an Iran both old and new reflects, I would argue, the Shah’s mystical view of history. The pendulum of history had swung once from Iran to the West and, Inshallah, it would soon swing back. Commissioning a piece so utterly European to represent Iran’s past and future suggests Perepolis and the celebration at large were a metaphor for the Shah’s ambitions for his country: a profound break from history, a reinvigoration of the distant past—a secular phoenix rising from the flames, and the rebirth of the great pre-Islamic Persian civilization as, said the Shah, the world’s “fifth most powerful nation”.

Instead, Iran’s 2500th anniversary celebration was, I would argue, the major polarizing event during the proto-Revolutionary days. Thereafter, the public was either pro- or anti-Shah, and violently so. In the months leading up to the celebration, the liberal press grew very critical, and very lazy, in their diatribes, resorting to crypto-Socialist cant about the celebration being at the expense of the “starving Iranian people”. (Exactly, or even approximately, how much it all cost remains an inflamed partisan issue with critics claiming upwards of $200 million and supporters as low as $17 million. Abdolreza Ansari, one of the organizers, in an interview, put the figure at $22 million). University students, many of whom would soon join the street protests, were caught denouncing the Persepolis celebration on the walls of bathrooms and courtyards. Of course, the most ominous, and portentous, words came from the Ayatollah Khomeini himself, then in exile in Iraq, who condemned the “evil celebrations”.

“I say these things because an even darker future, God forbid, lies ahead of you,” he warned the Shah.

The Iranian public’s reaction was marbled. There were those who saw the celebration as a diplomatic success, a rite of passage for Iran from developing to civilized nation, and a project that had employed hundreds of poor Iranians, as well as securing a major tourist infrastructure in Persepolis. Moreover, Iran’s oil revenue jumped from $2.5 billion to $18 billion in the years between the event and the Revolution. And there were those, mostly leftist, who dubbed the celebration a “ridiculous farce” and pointed to the absence of the Iranian public at the actual ceremonies as the acme of imperial arrogance. Conservative Islamists came to it as proof that the Shah was too secular, anti-Islamic, and a puppet of the west, and was westernizing Iran in an attempt to attract attention. Never mind that the mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini cost an estimated two billion dollars.

On the final day of the Jashnhaa-ye 2500 Saaleh, the Shah inaugurated the Shahyad Tower (now known as the Azadi Tower), in which was displayed the Cyrus Cylinder (borrowed from the British Museum for the event). The Shah declared it to be “the first human rights charter in history” and rededicated the freedom that it had promised two and a half millennia before, to the Iranian people. Nine years later he and his family would be stateless wanderers, wanted by nobody, and Iranian history would take a hard right turn. Would that Xenakis’s Persepolis, perhaps the paragon of his repertoire, serve not to represent the pinnacle of Iranian monarchical history, but instead be its swan song.

Notes_______________________________________________________________

The audio portion of Persepolis is available in three formats:

1) the original LP version released in 1972 on the prestigious (and highly collectable) Prospective 21e Siècle label. This version features the original analog eight-channel stereo INA-GRM mix. http://www.discogs.com/Iannis-Xenakis-Persepolis/release/655556

2) the CD version released in 2000 on Fractal Records. This version is remastered for continuous play by João Rafael from the original INA-GRM master tapes.
*http://www.discogs.com/Iannis-Xenakis-Persepolis/release/131823

3) a second CD version released in 2002 on Asphodel. This edition contains a second disc of shorter remixes of Persepolis by Zbigniew Karkowski, Merzbow, Otomo Yoshihide, and other electronic music artists. The version of Persepolis is, to my ears, indistinguishable from the remastered Fractal edition.*http://www.discogs.com/Iannis-Xenakis-Persepolis-Remixes-Edition-1/release/197685

* Audiophile note: since the master tapes were mixed for eight channels, but the publically available versions are mastered for stereo, Eric Falardeau of Montreal recommends a 7.1 setup with a receiver supporting Neural THX 7.1 as the surround algorithm. Unlike Dolby PLII and PLIIx, or Neo:6, Neural THX 7.1 shifts channels to the rear speakers, evidently due to a natural compatibility with the tools used to create the mix. The effect is as close to the eight-channel experience as possible.

– “Flames of Persia”, a documentary film of the event, narrated by Orson Welles, is available on DVD. It does not, however, contain any significant mention of Xenakis’s Persepolis).

The Ring Festival Los Angeles April 15 -June 30, 2010
by Nancy Cantwell

For ten weeks this spring more than 115 cultural partners and Institutions have gathered round the Los Angeles Opera’a first complete Ring Cycle and mounted in support an amazing array of events, symposia, art exhibitions, lectures, theatrical performances and film presentation. This is a great time to experience the depth, breath and enthusiasm of this city’s artistic community. Not only are all committed to the cooperative ideal of festival, but they are wholeheartedly embracing the labyrinth of material that The Ring poses for critical study: Political Allegory, Epic mythological archetypes, philosophical inquiry ranging from classical Greek to contemporary French, in depth Psychological debate and most of all the musical explorations into influences preceding Wagner and those on whose Wagner’s musical genius left its indelible mark.

Two such exemplary venues I was privileged to attend were the Prussian Blues program staged at Jacaranda and the Myth, Wagner and the Human Brain, lecture featuring Antonio Damasio, Peter Sellars and Bill Viola, hosted at REDCAT. While Prussian Blues tackled, through the music of Hindemith, Schubert, Wagner and Mahler, histories including Hitler’s Entartete Kunst (degenerate art), the origins Wagner’s anti-semetic predisposition and the emergence, after the 18th century era of Enlightenment, of “Romanticism” embedded with “hero seeking authenticity”*, Myth, Wagner and the Human Brain concentrated on the story behind the Ring, examining the nature of Myth, memory and sentience.

The concept behind Jacaranda’s Prussian Blues was to explore the musical and historical context of the Wagnerian experience. The first selection, Paul Hindemith’s (1895-1963) Septet for Wind (1948) was a backwards look at the composer’s struggles to find an artist home in the Third Reich and the aftermath of “the grim consequences of a re-imagined Twilight of the Gods, a final conflagration conceived by the biggest German ego to follow Richard Wagner.”* Second on the bill was a selection of Franz Schubert (1797-1828) songs, a Wagnerian prelude that explored the Romantic Zeitgeist and it’s contribution “to creating the language of German music drama.”* After intermission Richard Wagner’s (1813-1883) own Siegfried Idle (1870) was performed and gave cause to examine the personal and tumultuous life Wagner shared with the then Cosima von Bulow. Well known for her Anti-Semetic leanings Cosima’s views on “racial purity” was said to influence Adolph Hitler who conscripted Wagner’s music in service of the ideals National Socialist Germany. Coming full circle, the final performance of the evening was Gustav Mahler’s (1860-1911) Adagio from Symphony No. 10 (arr. Hans Stadlmair 1911/1970). Mahler had adopted Wagner’s love of Carl Maria von Weber as his own, completing Weber’s unfinished opera The Three Pintos whose premiere established Mahler as both a critical and financial success. And not unlike Wager he shared a profound, but far more tortured relationship with the femme fatale Alma Schindler who was twenty-three, pregnant, and two decades younger than Mahler when they married in 1902.

There is quite a difference between hearing certain pieces in concert settings and experiencing them in environments devoted to other worldly concerns. Jacaranda resides at the First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica where the acoustics allow the music to ascend. Certainly there were no religious intentions behind in the programming of Prussian Blues, but listening to the Schubert performed by an all male choir with accompaniment, and sitting in the balcony, where the voices scaled perfectly, I was taken back to the St. Augustin Church in Vienna, hearing Anton Bruckner’s Grosse Messe in F-Moll, to the Eglise Saint Germain des Pres hearing Charles Gound’s Messe Solennelle en l’honneur de Sainte-Cecile and to the Eglise de La Madeline hearing Puccini’s Messa de Gloria. Divine.

Across town at REDCAT where the atmosphere couldn’t be more secular Wagner was getting the thrice over. Antonio Damasio from USC’s Brain and Creativity Institute acted as an emcee of sorts and started the discussions by setting the ground work with his understanding of what myths are and how they behave in the culture. His ability to distill and relate the basic precepts was professorial and put me in a mood to learn. He began by quoting Paul Ricouer, whose anthropological inquiries and philosophies, lead Ricouer to conclude “there is no self-understanding that is not mediated by signs, symbols, and texts; in the final analysis self-understanding coincides with the interpretation given to these mediating terms.” Wagnerian indeed. To which Mr. Damasio added a few more simple tenets such as “[myths] are about Beings, Events and have no verification, substantiation nor proof” or “[myths] are Brain ingredients” and “[myths] are autobiographical, personal histories.” These prompted our gray matter to commence synapsing and acted as guides for the “Pictorial” and “Theatrical” contributors to follow.

Bill Viola, representing the Pictorial, was next at the microphone and seemed a bit uncomfortable at the table. Adding to the basics concepts of Mr. Damasio, Viola spoke of  “root systems”, “events outside of time” and taking up the technical baton (clearly a comfort zone), “[myths] function like a computer’s operating system – below the horizon, as infrastructure.” Another metaphor Viola explored was that of myth functioning as an intake form; a tablet where life’s primary informations are stored. He advanced his thought process further by stating that within the context of form vs content – the last century’s art being preoccupied with form, his hope for the 21st century was to lead us to a new content driven humanism. A welcome postulate.

By now the audience was pretty pumped for some substantive Wagnerian insight, and although Peter Sellars’ delivery was hyper-emotional and divaesque, he did eventually wipe his tears and bear down on the subject at hand. Bottomline, the story line of Der Ring Des Nibelungen is a cure for Optimism, where, in worlds of conflagration, transcendence equivocates to inaction. Characters, charged with great questions to answer and dauntless tasks preform, dramatically fail, unable to bridge the gap between their beliefs and actions. Gods and man alike require superior talents, impeccable moral fortitude, pure ambitions and heroic determination to police, not just world order, but inner rectitude. And while, the dialog and plot lines of the Ring are infused with character flaws, greed, avarice and delusions that ultimately undermine Nietzsche’s “Will to Power” the music that Wagner creates is seminal, valorous, and the consummate force that infuses the Ring with its preternatural power.

Still with Mr. Sellars, but now returning to myth and memory. If myths are a repository for explanations of origination, good and evil, power, governance catastrophe, love, war and death, and as each new generation experiences new encounters with these old informations, they in turn re-inhabit the collective memory pool to create a their own future. Wagner’s generous use of leitmotif throughout the Ring is a powerful memory tenant, a musical manifestation of each occupant. Each leitmotif is replayed, woven in and out of every opera, expanded upon over and over. Every leitmotif becomes its own language that builds and sustains the collective mythologies of the Ring.

When the discussion opened to the floor, Mr. Damasio seized the chance to comment on the science of how the brain actually functions with memory’s recall. He states that memories are repeated constructions, images are rebuilt and used to re-connect within the current syntax. Memories can degrade and/or the brain can introduce novelty into the process thus the memory can be re-modeled. The brain can make real, that which has not occurred; a persistent impediment for establishing the veracity of forensic testimony.

For a discourse on Wagner, the evening was oddly bereft of music. However the finale, Bill Viola’s Three Women, supplied visuals worthy of the Wagner mantle. An exquisite film, Three Women is a meditation on the states of being, unborn (inert), living, the dead or infinite. Viola has been collecting video cameras since 1970 and one of his prized possessions is an early B&W surveillance camera that creates a barely recognizable image somewhat akin to listening to a scratched up 78. Three Women juxtaposes this technology, with which Viola identifies preconsciousness, with the hyper-real quality of HD. Soundless and moving three women, representing the three stages of life slowly come into view. As they materialize they cross over emerging through a curtain of water, become colorized, highly defined and “born” only to return from where they came. For this attendee, the Three Women was an fitting conclusion to this mosaic of an evening. It’s investigation of origin, archetypes, the prolonged, deliberate tempo and grand scale touched on many a Wagnerian moment.

*Patrick Scott, Artistic Director, Jacaranda – Program notes for Prussian Blues

Exquisite Corpse, Photography by Naomi Pitcairn
by Nancy Cantwell

On this the 55th day of BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, as tens of thousands of gallons of oil continue to pour into the Gulf of Mexico, the heartbreaking vandalism of the sentient ocean’s population is unimaginable. According to the Center for Public Integrity, BP accounted for “97 percent of all flagrant violations found in the refining industry by government inspectors.” This willful and egregious trespass against wildlife of the Gulf Coast of Mexico amassed in the name of high speed gross profit is truly unconscionable.

I have been holding on to these Exquisite Corpse photographs by Naomi Pitcairn, waiting for larger meditation to take shape in my mind, but I keep returning to these portraits of prematurely deceased animals for their simple beauty and sympathetic tone. They are a fitting elegy to all those who will fall prey to the waste of this heedless corporate catastrophe.

There are further associations that come to mind as I examine Pitcarins’s work, that feel appropriate in light of the Deepwater Horizon tragedy. The Exquisite Corpse series closely resonates with the Schiller poem and subsequent Brahms choral work Nänie Op. 82, 1881, whose opening line reads, “Auch das Schöne muß sterben!, Even Beauty must perish!” Brahms set to music Schiller’s text to honor the death his friend, artist Anselm Feuerbach, a painter of classical antiquity. The title derives from the ancient Latin term noenia, a funeral song traditionally sung by the surviving parents of the deceased, implying that the lamented dead were not only beautiful, but most likely young. This Brahms is no torpid dirge, it is, in fact, most remarkable for its loveliness. The opening solo oboe affects a calling to another world, a fearless crossing over. The music of Nänie invites the listener to contemplate ceaslessness, with acceptance.

Please find the Schiller poem and Brahms Nänie .mp3 directly below the Exquisite Corpse presentation.

Exquisite Corspes

© Naomi Pitcairn

Johannes Brahms
Nänie for Choir and Orchestra Op. 82, Bamberger Symphoniker – Bayerische Staatsphilharmonie, with the Bavarian Radio Chorus, Conducted by Robin Tocciati

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Nänie, poem by Friedrich Schiller

The beautiful, too, must die! that which subjugates men and gods
Does not stir the brazen heart of the Stygian Zeus
Only once did love melt the Lord of shadows,
And just at the threshold, he strictly yanked back his gift.
Aphrodite does not heal the beautiful boy’s wound,
Which the boar ripped cruelly in that delicate body.
Neither does the immortal mother save the dive hero
When, falling at the Scaean Gate, he fulfills his fate.
She ascends from the sea with all the daughters of Nereus,
And lifts up a lament for her glorious son.
Behold! the gods weep; all the goddesses weep,
That the beautiful perish, that perfection dies.
But to be a dirge on the lips if loved ones can be a marvelous thing;
For that which is common goes down to Orcus in silence.

Auch das Schöne muß sterben! Das Menschen und Götter bezwinget,
Nicht die eherne Brust rührt es dem stygischen Zeus.
Einmal nur erweichte die Liebe den Schattenbeherrscher,
Und an der Schwelle noch, streng, rief er zurück sein Geschenk.
Nicht stillt Aphrodite dem schönen Knaben die Wunde,
Die in den zierlichen Leib grausam der Eber geritzt.
Nicht errettet den göttlichen Held die unsterbliche Mutter,
Wann er am skäischen Tor fallend sein Schicksal erfüllt.
Aber sie steigt aus dem Meer mit allen Töchtern des Nereus,
Und die Klage hebt an um den verherrlichten Sohn.
Siehe! Da weinen die Götter, es weinen die Göttinnen alle,
Daß das Schöne vergeht, daß das Vollkommene stirbt.
Auch ein Klagelied zu sein im Mund der Geliebten ist herrlich;
Denn das Gemeine geht klanglos zum Orkus hinab.

The Insane Box
By Aram Yardumian

Alain Neffe launched his first tape label at home in Belgium in 1981. He called it Insane Music Contact and his first installment was called Insane Music for Insane People. Thus began a nearly thirty year foray into home-made, visionary and utterly unfashionable electronic music that has hardly made anyone involved a household name.

Insane Music released 55 titles in its most prolific years (1981-87). Five of these were vinyl records and the rest were cassettes tapes. Why cassettes tapes? Magnetic tape was the obvious solution to the problem facing many artists working without record contracts in those days. Cassettes could be recorded at home, produced at home, dubbed at home, and sold or traded by mail. No need for tasteless outside producers and marketing mojo—one needed only leave home to buy more tapes. Says Neffe, “I could copy the tapes on demand. Releasing an LP required that you print 500 copies and 1000 copies of the cover sleeve, and everything had to be paid up front … if the buyer didn’t like the music, he or she could wipe it out and record something else on it.”

Mr. Neffe was not the only one out there recording, selling and trading tapes by mail. On both sides of the Atlantic, home cassette technology was permitting the release of much groundbreaking and breathlessly beautiful work, as well as some noxious and otherwise self-indulgent wanking—that coat of many colors we call the DIY (do-it-yourself) Revolution. As early as 1974, Albrecht/d. self-released a cassette entitled Amsterdam Op De Dam in Germany. In 1976, Throbbing Gristle was distributing tapes of their infamous live recordings, and in 1977, the French electro-industrial unit Die Form began releasing tapes on their own Bain Total label. 1980 saw the release of two monumental self-released cassettes, The Storm Bugs’ A Safe Substitute and Colin Potter’s The Ghost Office. In Japan, 1980 saw the release of Merzbow’s first two cassettes, Remblandt Assemblage and Fuckexercise. And in the USA, 1981 saw John Bender’s Plaster: The Prototypes, a laconic and mysterious series of tone and vocal poems. Home taping was not limited to electronic music. R. Stevie Moore, one of the elder living ancestors of the lo-fi rock aesthetic, began releasing distributing home-made tapes via the R. Stevie Moore Cassette Club sometime in the 1970s. And tapes of live punk shows from the era continue to trade hands.

Soon, cassettes were coming from everywhere: mysterious PO boxes in the Midwest, to which you sent a blank tape and three dollars and received the tape back with something on it. The Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine was a Fluxus-inspired subscription audio-journal dedicated to music as well as poetry and drama and other forms of audio-art.  Zines like Factsheet Five and Unsound devoted entire columns to the material they received from bands on home-made cassette, and demo tapes began leaking to radio stations prior to official record release dates.  It was a grassroots movement that marched in association with the self-publication of zines, comics, chapbooks, and other media. The medium had begun to become the message.

Insane Music for Insane People (which eventually reached 25 volumes) was a series compiling all home-made electronic music made by artists from across the globe. By including in the liner notes the contact address for each artist featured, Neffe helped pioneer a snail-mail network for those interested in more of what they heard. Artists from all over Europe and the USA, from Japan, New Zealand, and beyond contributed over the years. One could send a few dollars to Insane Music Contact, receive tapes in the mail, write to artists involved and receive more cassettes.

Insane Music Contact (now known as Insane Music) has always been a vehicle for Mr. Neffe’s own electronic music projects as well, many of which are periodically active to this day. Though he now makes liberal use of the CD format, Neffe’s artistic approach remains undiluted by years of underexposure. He expects very little acknowledgment of or remuneration for his efforts, which, for him, are emotional articulation, continued experimentation, and purity. It seems nothing but nothing could possibly catapult such heavily uncommercial sounds into the public consciousness–not even this thirty-year retrospective box-set entitled The Insane Box released (ironically, on vinyl) by the venerable Frank Maier of Vinyl-on-Demand Records, an outfit devoted to preserving the precious gems of cassette culture before the evidence disintegrates.

For this retrospective (4 LPs + a 7” 45), Mr. Neffe has reached into dusty attic boxes, wherein lay unreleased (or hardly available) material by five projects of which he has been a part: BeNe GeSSeRiT, Human Flesh, Pseudo Code, I Scream and Subject. Each has a unique cerebral orientation and emotional vibe made possible by the combined efforts of invited guests; each runs the high fever of a man very much committed to a personal vision of artistic purity without virtuosity, and each is distinctly French.

BeNe GeSSeRiT was not the first of Mr. Neffe’s projects to be recorded and distributed, but is, to my understanding, the genesis of his approach to music as “texts” or “photographs”, or as he puts it, “potlatch music”. On these early tracks we also detect a burgeoning interest in the endless expressive properties of the human voice, both explicitly human and as heavily-treated sound sculpture, both French and English At times, voices shout like besotted Celine parlor workers at each other from tenement windows; at other times a high-pitched female voice wails up and down like Catherine Ribeiro alone in her bathroom. In these tracks, one can also detect the half-digested influence of electro-rock luminaries Silver Apples, the avant-lashings a la Yoko Ono, and occasionally the thunder-beat of early Laibach. Primitive Casio electronics, stage whispers, delay echoes, tape loops, and a certain absurdist humor redolent of Erik Satie, neither dampen the fabric with melodrama, nor detract from the integrity of the grist, nor from the topical seriousness of the text’s subjects. BeNe GeSSeRiT is difficult music, even in the moments that risk elegy, yet it is still more accessible than some of the other Francophone avant-dada outfits of the day, such as DDAA and Étant Donnés, or Nurse with Wound in the UK.

Human Flesh is decidedly more structurally cohesive and song-oriented than BeNe GeSSeRiT, and its predecessors and influences are less clear. Still there is a clear interest in the human voice, its textures and timbers when removed of sign value by backwards-masking, and the new textures that emerge when disassembled and reassembled. Even rock-oriented at times, Human Flesh chases a more delirious climax, for the hounds of the carnival are snapping at their heels as they run. This is also a project of varied angles and pursuits, sliding as it does into poetic electro-pop (the supple and Chicago-accented voice of the late Lydia Tomkiw, of Algebra Suicide, appears on two tracks), and moments of Half Japanese-style primitivism. The side-long track “Langsam” is more reminiscent of Piper-era Pink Floyd and Brainticket, as well as other Krautrock, yet is still distinctly French. These early and rare tracks are, in contrast to the more ambitious Pseudo Code and the more intimate recordings by I Scream, more oblique for being a mix-down of materials sent to Neffe from artists around the globe. The track “Sons of God?” is also notable for what is perhaps the first recorded sample of the American fire-and-brimstone preacher Ferrell Griswold, whose voice has appeared in music by Front 242, Phallus Dei, Pragha Khan, et cetera.

The cassette medium, for all its benefits to individual artistic expression and culture, is for the selfsame reasons impermanent. Magnetic tape has a thirty year lifespan if properly archived, which means both that preserving their contents in other formats is important, and that paying hundreds of dollars for the original artifacts is a questionable collectors’ pursuit (nevertheless, you can watch it happen daily). With the advent of the mp3 and the efforts of Vinyl-on-Demand and other labels, Insane Music’s CD-r reissue program included, some of this exquisite material has been rescued from oblivion.

The Lian and Chirgilchin Ensembles Collaborate
by Nancy Cantwell and Aram Yardumian

On April 9th, a Friday night at California Institute of the Arts, there took place an intimate and profound collaboration from a far away part of the world. The Herb Alpert School of music hosted The Lian Ensemble and Chirgilchin in their The Wild Beast music pavilion (aptly named after composer Morton Feldman’s metaphor for the untamable in music) and a new sound emerged. The Lian Ensemble, a Los Angeles based group whose roots lie in the Persian classical and mystical Sufi traditions are no strangers to the idea of fusion. Each of their nine albums  incorporates such diverse different musical styles as jazz, Flamenco, and Hindustani. The addition of Chirgilchin, the Tuvan throat singers, whose music emanates from Buddhism and Shamanism practices, was a seamless and inspired choice. The resultant recording “The Window“, which will be released in May 2010, explores this passionate blending.

The Wild Beast was the ideal environment to experience this synthesis of musical styles. Designed by architects Hodgetts + Fung in consultation with a team of acoustical engineers, the resonance of every Tuvan harmonic overtone produced an elixir of aural delight. We were lucky to find a seat in the 3,200-square foot structure that merely seats 100 people when closed and 750 when in its open-air “bandshell” configuration. Fresh faced students took advantage of the floor seating and their dogs were welcomed as the animal spirit representatives. The musicians were arranged in a u-shape, the four Tuvans in full costume occupied the left hand side of the stage while the Lian Enselmble sat stage right. Not all the talent present was on stage. A convergence of other musical notables present in the audience including composer, percussionist John Bergamo and tabla master Swapan Chauduri, made the night feel ripe for generating alchemy.

The music of the evening began with three performances by Chirgilchin of pure Tuvan origins, and progressed to the collective concert by Lian and Chirgilchin of the music of “The Window.”

Tuvan throat singing is said to have originated less as an aesthetic form and more as a form of landscape-specific communication. This part of Siberia is and remains quite open and unpopulated and therefore, the frequencies of these overtones may have developed as a way to transfer information over long distances. The deep history of this tradition may be seen in its striking resemblance to other a cappella musical forms of the Eurasian steppe, such as the yoik of the Sámi and the Shamanic traditions of northeastern Siberia and Korea. Some of the tones may indeed hark back to animistic rituals that involved communication with (or mimicry of) animals. Even today some Siberian vocal music is sung to animals. That the tradition has lately been filed under the rubric of entertainment has not diminished its power in the slightest.

The Persian classical tradition has perhaps a more complex history—also for reasons of geography—by virtue of the Persian heartland’s situation between east and west. Very little is known about the music of Iran and Greater Persia until the Medieval period—a time in which people, goods and ideas were flowing freely across the steppe from China to Europe and back. That octave and scale are arguably concepts foreign to Persian classical music distinguish it from European modes, while the idiosyncratic rhythms present in Persian music may be related to poetic forms of the East. Yet the use of lute, harp and bagpipe in the Persian court probably originated further west, in Egypt or Anatolia. That improvisation has long been a feature of Persian music gives the Lian Ensemble’s tilts into free jazz, and their stitching-in of other traditions and modes, such as Tuvan throat-singing, seem natural.

Listeners to “The Window” should realize that the experience of the collaboration belongs strictly in the realm of the senses and trust in nuance, since few people are fluent communicators in both Farsi and Tuvan. Moreover, since the styles of music have distinct formal and functional histories, such a collaboration might at first seem as incongruous as, say, a didgeridoo player performing with the Berlin Philharmonic. But this cosmic untranslatability and miscegenation make the results all the more dynamic, since the emotive power of the vocals transcend, in a sense, whatever their message may be, and speak directly to the universality of music as a language.

From “The Window”, The Basis of Creation

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In 2008 Lian Ensemble’s Houman Pourmehdi was asked by Judy Mitoma, the director of the UCLA Center for Intercultural Performance, to arrange a composition for the World Festival of Sacred Music’s opening gala concert. Houman arranged a traditional Sufi piece to be performed by Lian Ensemble and Chirgilchin along with several other musical groups.  The musicians had one rehearsal the night before the performance. Houman said the resulting union “provided a night of sound so varied, unique, and seamless that it was as if a window had been established. To listen that night was to be transcendent.” – from the Liner Notes by Richard Barton

Reflections on Götterdämmerung, Los Angeles Opera
by Nancy Cantwell

Conceived of first and executed last Götterdämmerung, brings to a conclusion the weighty and consummate Der Ring des Nibelungen by Richard Wagner. Last week I had the extraordinary happenstance to attend two performances of this Los Angeles Opera’s production featuring the baton of James Conlon with sets and direction by Achim Freyer. This is a really big show that attracts opera pilgrims from far and wide and I jumped at the chance for a second go around. Thrilled to settle into my splendid founders seat, I was set to experience a most satisfying, up close reprise.

First impressions were allowed to settle down and reformulate with a second viewing, but there are certain things that you just can’t escape with this production. First and most impressive is what a sad fate becomes the child hero Siegfried, sung by John Treleaven, whose voice did not really seem up to the task at hand, but whose performance was pitch perfect. While Siegfried’s music soars, his actions speak to a heroism forged not by some God wisdom, but more that of an ignoble spoiled lesser avatar. As one audience member put it, “what can you expect when you look at the gene pool.” Ill begotten chromosomes aside, Siegfried’s clown like hair, cartoon body and slouchy demeanor all serve to heighten the buffoonish behavior that make him such an easy target for the far more wily Hagen (portrayed deliciously by Eric Halverson). Even the Tarnhelm, the magic helmet that Siegfried procures as part of the booty having slain the Giant turned Dragon Fafner, references more Harpo’s top-hat than a transformative device worthy of such acts of courage. Of course the most treasured procession garnered from Fafner’s hoard is the ring itself and it is at the beginning of act three when the Rheinmaidens try to convince Siegfried to return the stolen gold that we hear him at his most fallen from grace:

“In water and on land
I am now learning women’s ways:
if their cajolery does not convince,
they scare with threats;
and if one dares to defy these,
they start to scold.

And yet,
had I not given Gutrune my word,
I would cheerfully have chosen for myself
one of these pretty women!”

Hardly noble truths to be spoken even under the influence! But such is the curse of the ring. Following his final demise at the hands of Hagen, Wagner gives our woeful protagonist the most regal and valiant funeral march sublimely performed by the opera orchestra as lead by Conlon. Clearly the composer’s sympathies lie with Siegfried, whose hero identity in the time when the Gods reign no more, is assimilated and subjugated to the frailties man.

We are talking about the end-of-time here and Achim Freyer pulls out all the stops to delight and amaze. Every retelling is accompanied by its according symbols. The set is resplendent with Wotan eyeballs, light saber swords, an ever present inverted Loge, incendiary scrim projections and cardboard costumes that behave badly. There is a outright sense of humor expressed as well. Cute bear heads pop up, affectionate taps on the noggin are exchanged, as well as a very Groucho like performance given by Richard Paul Fink as Alberich complete with cigar and tuxedo. Freyer also gave the lighting a character of its own, spotlighting different props repeatedly like a backdrop drone accompaniment to a melodious raga. The final disarray spectacular was worthy of the apocalyptic demise of the Gods. A simultaneous rising and drowning finishing with a literal blinding light. I find it paradoxical that Freyer, a master of German expressionist angst, utilized the Las Vegas based production group Stage Technologies to accomplish this Wagnerian feat, but I’m in favor of what ever works at the end of the universe… and this truly did.

Ultimately it is Brünnhilde who awakens to the enormity, the global endemic scourge of the ring. My favorite production magic takes place in the final act when Brünnhilde sends Wotan’s vigilant ravens back to Valhalla with word of the ring’s return to the Rheinmaidens. The cardboard bird cutouts that have been acting as a shield for the prompters throughout the production are lifted as the ravens are projected onto the scrim and gloriously take flight. It is here in the “Immolation” scene, that closely parallels Isolde’s Liebestod, when cleansed by fire and inspired by compassion, Brünnhilde plants the seeds of a new world order and Wagner becomes transcendent. Having been witness to to this arising twice and having had a opportunity to sort out the staging I was able to concentrate fully on Linda Watson’s masterful delivery in service of this final transformation. It is the kind of stuff that makes converts of even the most ardent opera atheists.

A few final ponderings. Götterdämmerung feels like two operas in one due to all the back fill story telling that goes on and on even into the final aria. Just as Freyer shows us the rise and fall of Valhalla in the final scene so does Wagner seem to wrap up the backward and forwards plotting. The crossing of the Nothung sword and Hagens spear was a gratuitous poke at spirituality. Gratuitous too was the send up in the background of some time stamped computer code. Was he trying make a stab at seeming up to date with digital relevance? Michelle DeYoung was absolutely superb as Waltraute and in the first evening’s performance far out shined compatriots with more stage time. At the start of act two you can hear the beginnings of Parsifal that make you thirst for more. One never really becomes emotionally attached nor drained due to the lack of human physiognomy in the costuming and makeup. Which brings me to a final observation. There was a twinge of misogyny all around. Pendulous breasts painted on like targets were the predominant choice for the portrayal of womanhood. And all the while the congenitally unhappy Hagen sits atop his dead mother whose headless pink body, red teats and heeled shoes face the flooring in submission? Which set my mind off in another direction, in memory of another designer who has also been thought misogynist on occasion and that is the late, brilliant and troubled fashion designer, Alexander McQueen. So here from McQueen’s fall 2009 Ready to Wear collection a strange confluence or coincidence of thought processes at work. So eerily similar are these creations to that of Achim and Amanda Fryer, they fatefully share the same iconography. Please click on images to enlarge.

Swapan Chaudhuri, Aashish Khan and the CalArts Tabla Ensemble, REDCAT April 3, 2010
By Marla Apt

My first exposure to classical Indian music was an unforgettable Ravi Shankar concert. The meditative focus of the musicians to which the presence of the audience contributed required throughout the mostly improvisational intricacies of raga struck me as spiritually uplifting and physically revitalizing. I found myself soon thereafter in India hunting for a set of tablas.

It is said that each note on the Indian scale corresponds to the human subtle anatomy (chakras and nadis that govern the flow of prana or energy in the body). With roots in ancient vedic religion, Indian classical raga music is viewed by many as a spiritual discipline that can lead the individual to the direct perception of the true nature of reality. However, after a couple of years of less than intensive study of the tabla, I discovered that the joy of pure artistic transmission only comes from a lifelong single-pointed dedication to the subject, As Ravi Shankar says “It is only after many long and extensive years of ‘sadhana’ (dedicated practice and discipline) under the guidance of one’s guru and his blessings, that the artist is empowered to put ‘prana’ (the breath of life) into a raga. This is accomplished by employing the secrets imparted by one’s teacher…. The result is that each note pulsates with life and the raga becomes vibrant and incandescent.”

Content with not being able to experience bliss in front of my own tablas, I’m happy for an opportunity to listen to the practiced masters of Indian music, most of whom became initiated into the art before the age of ten. Last week, one of India’s most recognized tabla players, Swapan Chauduri accompanied Aashish Khan at REDCAT. The evening began with the Cal Arts Tabla Ensemble, seven tabla players (all men) playing a composition written by Swapan Chauduri. Hearing what is normally an accompanying instrument in a largely improvisational form performed in a rehearsed mini orchestra subtracted much of the potential beauty and subtlety from the tabla. While all of the musicians were technically proficient, (certainly more fluent than my two years of tabla studies ever delivered), their playing, most of the time in unison with only a brief solo allotted to each individual, lacked the artistry and expression that I think a half hour tabla spotlight demanded.

However the depth of sound elicited from Swapan Chauduri’s hand, even during the tuning reminded us of the richness possible when a lifetime of disciplined mastery meets with a hand drum.

My last classical Indian music listening experience was a 3-day music festival in India. The audience of thousands wandered under the music tent, sprawled in the sun or picnicked on the ground from morning to late night listening to extended sets by vocal artists and masters of various instruments from all over India. The stark contrast to the short set performed by Khan and Chauduri in the clean black box of REDCAT was apparently a difficult transition for Khan’s instrument. Adapting to having just returned from the humid climes of India, the sarod refused to remain in tune and required continual and extended adjustments.

The introspective and weighty sound of the sarod extracts a soulful depth evocative of the blues guitar. A lute-like instrument, the sarod can have anywhere from 17-25 strings. Only 4 or 5 main strings are used to play the melody while the other strings are used for drone and resonance.

Aashish Kan, practically a member of classical Indian music royalty was trained by his father, the great Sarod master, Ali Akbar Khan and was initiated into the study of music by his Grandfather, the famous Sarod guru and innovator, Allaudin Khan, one of the twentieth centuries most influential classical Indian music artists, His Aunt, Annapurna Devi, also a teacher to a long list of India’s most recognized classical musicians was married to Sitar maestro Ravi Shankar.

The concert followed the traditional Indian recital that begins with an emotional and introspective unaccompanied exploration and coaxing of the chosen raga that leads into a rhythmic section followed by drum accompaniment in the melodic raga composition that becomes the point of departure and return for innumerable improvisations. When he did finally harness the cooperation of his instrument, Khan delivered a lovely, slow tempo raga composed specifically for the time of day. Chauduri whose instrument required very little tuning honored the mood of the raga while expertly following (with technical, artistic and mathematical skill) Khan’s extemporization.

Being a largely improvisational melodic form based on a prescribed number of beats that holds the musicians together, a raga takes time to build and unfold. After the opening act, intermission and extended tunings, the short two ragas beginning late in the evening whet my appetite and left me tired but wanting for more.

Michiko Hirayama, Giacinto Scelsi, Canti Del Capricorno (1962-1972), REDCAT April 2, 2010
by Nancy Cantwell

“They are songs that explode classical convention: their vocal expressionism is ignited by the phonemes, not by any semantic content. Language seems to be atomized for all time. then an electrifying flow of sound is heard again, almost an archaic rite of evocation” – Jügen Kangold

As Michiko Hirayama took to the stage at REDCAT on April 2nd I could tell that we were in for penny, in for a pound. This was no garden variety solo recital, for as she entered the darkened hall Hirayama beat the gong that hung around her neck as if a call to prayer. Theatricality aside, it was time to listen up.

Canti Del Capricorno is Hirayama’s signature work. It was written specifically for her voice and spirit by outsider composer Giacinto Scelsi. Largely self taught, the Roman aristocrat Scelsi, forged his own idiosyncratic music one note at a time, even beyond the avant-gardism of the day. Forgoing a brief dally with serialism Scelsi focused on his own naïveté and peculiar passion for microtonality, believing that he was indeed more of a medium than master composer creator.

70 minutes of straight vocal performance for any singer is an undertaking, but for 87 year old Hirayama, I realized that we were witness to something beyond prowess, this was a chance to experience a direct embodiment necessitated by the composer. “…Scelsi liberated me in my head so that I could produce any sound with my voice. He pushed me to explore my vocal possibilities to work in ways that any classical vocal school had forbidden.” Written over a ten year period, Hirayama collaborated with Scelsi, at first laboriously improvising one or two of the compositions and finally, with the composer’s authorization, Hirayama penned Canti to completion of the 20 piece song cycle.

Song may be misleading to the uninitiated listener. These pieces are ritualistic, fierce and at time agonizing forms of human expression. Wordless, they take on a language of their own. I felt the sense of becoming a participant in the decoding of autistic yearnings for understanding. There is a child like intensity and curiosity for the exploration of new meaning to the creation of sound.  Michiko Hirayama pours all her strength into her performance, channeling each note of this life’s work. Each song conjures afresh an archaic rite of passage, a world of intimate interpretation and mysterious communication.

The staging of Canti Del Capricorno at REDCAT included four stations each carefully arranged to facilitate the petite Hirayama and accommodate the prodigious score. Hirayana administered over the fragile document, greatly considering each turn of the page and coddling with loving kindness as she motored from setup to setup to sing.

Canti Del Capricorno achieves a particular resonance and reaches some satisfying resolution when Hirayama is accompanied by an instrument. Aniela Perry’s soulful turn at contrabass underscored the feeling of lament. Ulrich Krieger on saxophone provided a sizzling embellishment, while California Ear Unit veteran percussionist Amy Knowles was joined by newcomer Lydia Martin to provide a strong heartfelt pulse to the piece, much to the visible delight of Hirayama whose fisted hands pumped and gestured with glee.

Canti Del Capricorno, Canto No. 5

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Canti Del Capricorno, Canto No. 14

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Canti Del Capricorno, Canto No. 19

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Sicilian Folk Music and Luciano Berio
By Nancy Cantwell

The immediate appeal of Luciano Berio’s (October 24, 1925 – May 27, 2003) music is it’s ability to be conspicuously theatrical and unflinchingly intimate at the same time. There is no better place to explore this dichotomy than in the ECM New Series recording based on Sicilian folk music, Voci.  Berio’s dramatic compositions for viola and orchestra, Voci, and viola and percussion, Naturale, are sandwiched between a series of aural documents from the Ethnomusicology Archives of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Rome. These Sicilian songs form the starting points and the nuclei of a score lasting half an hour, six “core pieces” that the music heads toward and moves away from.* Berio ruminates on these vivid underpinnings, “I am not an ethomusicologist, just a pragmatic egoist: so I tend to be interested only in those folk techniques and means of expression that I can in one way or another assimilate without a stylistic break, and that allow me to take a few steps forward in the search for a unity underlying musical worlds that are apparently alien to one another”.

It is this kind of juxtaposition that makes the Berio dynamic so seductive. It is his inquiry into the relationship between a single line of melody, an intimate “logo” of a song, distinctive, particular and the sweeping staged and orchestrated concert pieces that completely captures our attention. Berio refers to the conundrum as the “impossible utopia”. These pieces are a call and response from past to present, from individual to congregation for composer and audiences alike and it is this complicit agreement that lends the music its power.

In Walter Brunetto’s liner notes, On Sicilian folk music, he remarks, “The lacerated vocal expression gives these songs incredible intensity”. It is the fundamental act of the singing that indeed cuts deeply. Space allocation unfortunately does not allow us a taste comparison between Berio’s compositions for Voci and their folk inspirations, but we can attend to two of the archived Sicilian songs.

Grido del venditore di pesce, Cry of the Fish Seller

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One of the archaic styles is the “abbanniatine”, the cries of the street vendors. Generally descending in pitch, these were meant to win the attention of passers-by. Melodic and ornamental elements made up the “logo” (distinctive cry) of each “imbonitore” (barker). On Grido del venditore di pesce, the basic tetracord is made ambiguous by the alternation of major and minor seconds between the fundamental not and the second degree.**

Novena di Natale, Christmas Novena

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Another common form of popular devotion is the “novena”. This reciting of prayers or songs for nine consecutive days is a preparation for certain religious feast. These performances are sometimes associated with “la questua” (the collection), an act involving taking the song from house to house in exchange for donations. On Novena de Natale,, in which the voice joins halfway through, unusual chromatic structures and conflicts can be heard between the notes played on the two melodic reeds of the “zampogna” (reed-pipe). This is a common instrument in Sicily in the “a paro” type. It has this name because of the two melodic reed of equal length, in addition to the two or three reeds producing a single fixed sound, the drone. The leather bag is made from goatskin turned inside out.**

*Luciano Berio’s Native Language, by Jurg Stenzl

**On Sicilian folk music, by Walter Brunetto