33. BOBBY MCFERRIN‘S SPONTANEOUS INVENTIONS

I was reminded by my friend Jean Paul how much i love the spontaneous inventions of Bobby McFerrin, which I‘ve posted elsewhere.

Fuck “dont worry be happy“. These seemingly spacious comedy routines are rich with musical interaction at its most basic and effective level. Working with simple musical elements like 2-part harmonies, walking bass lines, conducting, call and response techniques, and leather-jacket percussion, Bobby creates a forum of musical interaction without presumption. It‘s just wonderful.

33. ARTHUR RUSSELL SONGBOOK

I‘m beginning to transcribe some pieces of composer/cellist Arthur Russell. I‘ll likely be putting this forward for publishing as a songbook. I‘d be interested in hearing people‘s feedback, if this is of interest.

32. SO LONG MARYANNE

Maryanne Amacher died Thursday, Oct 22nd, 2009...

While I was getting a degree in Speech and Hearing science and later working at the Hearing Center at Portland‘s Veterans Hospital I was heavily under the spell of
Maryanne‘s music, which showed me a unique approach to sound as visceral physicality and creative biology. I first found her music by googling “otoacoustic emissions“ - leading me to her Tzadik release “Sound Characters“, which blew me away. But there was and still is very little documentation or available information on Marryanne‘s work out there.

Not too long ago my friend Seth studied with her at Bard College; he would often relate to me his interactions and conversations with her. And through his connection we were lucky to be able to publish a rare 1977 paper of Maryanne‘s (on the perceputal geography of otoacoustic emissions) in FOARM Magazine no. 3 (Duals & Doubles). I never became close to her person, but her music got to know me pretty intimately.

Maryanne was an artist who had one foot in the sciences; she did graduate studies in acoustics and computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which is when she began her first large-scale spatial installations. Her primary works - City Links (1967-), Music for Sound Joined Rooms (1980-), and Mini-Sound Series (1985-) - are representative of her deepest musical engagements. Each of these series involves networking disparate spaces via telecommunications, networking separate rooms in a building through multi-speaker arrays, creating structure-born sound (e.g. placing speakers against walls to physically create rumbles and such), and often structuring narrative through the listener‘s navigation of these spaces.

Another major work was “Sound Charcacters“, mentioned above, which explores her fascination with otoacoustic emissions (the tones our inner ears produce). In these works Maryanne has composed a collection of frequencies which when combined in certain ways make the tones in our ears audible to us. The listener is left with the impression that there are tones in their head directly interacting with the tones projected in the space. When played loud enough, it is truly magical.

In 2008 Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth collaborated with Maryanne on a brief documentary of her work, Daytrip Maryanne, directed by Andrew Kesin:



Maryanne‘s work, even Sound Characters, does not translate well to cd or any other form of audio documentation. Like many site-specific works they must be experienced on-site to truly get a sense of art at work. But for those who are interested, well, you engage it anyway you can. An online archive of her work is underway here.

It can be all too easy to forget that the people you admire have a mortality. Perhaps it‘s not knowing someone personally that lends their person some kind of halo of eternity. But many are asked to reckon with Maryanne‘s passing - and this is evident by the accruing number of internet posts such as this one (the Times is slow to acknowledge). In New York this reality-check has been amplified by the recent passing of Suzanne Fiol, Artistic Director and Founder of the Issue Project Room performance space currently in located Brooklyn. May all who are resting, rest in peace, and all those awake... be awake!

31. Dona Dumitru Siminica

30. JESS HIRSCH‘S HERBS

jess hirsch

29. MANOS HATZIDAKIS

I first discovered the music of Greek composer Manos Hatzidakis (aka. Hadjidakis, Xatzdakis) in the “The Sweet Movie“ (1974) by Yugoslavian director Dusan Makavejev. The movie is pretty dated and suffers from a lot of the agit-prop techniques and ideology that the age compelled from its reactionist artists; regardless, the cinematography and the narrative is lush, provocative, and big fun. But the music is what has stayed with me the most. However with scenes of coprophilia, emetophilia (a glimpse into Vienesse Aktionist Otto Muel‘s commune), the fondling of children, and Polish Katyn massacre victims documentary footage, the movie was not well received (still banned in many countries), and so its audience has remained small.

Manos‘s output on the contrary has been prolific and well received, at least in his native Greece. He is an academy award winning composer and is credited with introducing the bouzouki (a traditional Greek instrument) into a globalizing pop-classical arena. He propounded on the Greek underworld music tradition of the rembetika and co-founded a Greek Dance Theatre Company. He championed experimental composer/architect Iannis Xenakis and was known for his unabashed political and social opinions, writing provocative commentaries in his liner notes as well as various magazines and journals. He is widely known for his popular music, and he scored numerous film soundtracks, most notably “Never On Sunday“, which won him the academy award - without his health problems, he would have been the heir to his friend Nino Rota for scoring Fellini‘s films. Manos was a master of melody, the kind that compel you to sing (even when you don‘t know the language). His arrangements never default to an easeful candy consumption, but enrich the tunes through the their beautiful subtleties.

Manos is one of those rare composers that bridges the gap between song and... something else. Accessible, but transcendent. The two tracks below are from Makavejev‘s “The Sweet Movie“. The pieces on this soundtrack are some of Manos‘ best work in my opinion. I won‘t bother contextualizing them within the movie, go watch it!

Nixterino gia dio fones (Nocturne for Two Voices)...


Ta paidia kato sto kampo (The Urchins Down in the Meadow)...




Track Listing for “The Sweet Movie“:

Music & lyrics : Manos Hadjidakis,
except 4 & 8 : lyrics by Makavejev & Ann Lonnberg

1.Ta paidia kato ston kampo/The Urchins Down in the Meadow (2:42)
2.Oi paragkes kai oi anthropoi/Shanties And People (1:30)
3.Serenata gia thn sexoualikh apousia/Serenade for Lack of Sex (3:16)
4.Is there life on the earth?(2:35)
5.H sexoualikh polyrrythmia/Polyrhythmic Sex (2:07)
6.Oi paragkes kai h kefalh toy karl marx/Karl Marx-Shanties & Karl Marx‘s Head (2:56)
7.Nyxterino/Nocturne (3:24)
8.Is there life on the earth? (1:04)
9.Ta paidia kato ston kampo/The Urchins Down in the Meadow (3:37)
10.strip tease gia tria paidia/Striptease for Three Boys (4:47)
11.nyxterino gia dyo fones/Nocturne for Two Voices (2:22)
12.o xoros ths sokolatas/The Chocolate Dance (2:39)
13.ta paidia kato ston kampo/The Urchins Down in the Meadow (2:31)
14.h sexoualikh polyrrythmia kai ta tria paidia/Polyrhythmic Sexuality & the 3 Boys (3:01)

Other works worth finding are his ‘cycle of songs in theatrical form‘ (“The Wayfarer, The Drunken Girl, and Alcibiades“) and the soundtrack to “Giaconda‘s Smile“... I‘m still discovering more myself. It‘s pretty much all I‘ve been listening to.

My life was not the life of a musician. It was more the life of a dangerous and restless youth, whom music somehow managed to calm down and make into an ostensibly ‘lawful‘ citizen. There are many that scoff at my exclusive occupation with songwriting, especially the so-called ‘serious‘ musicians. And this, because they were, and always will be, incapable of singing. They are like lovelorn people, physically impaired, who shun lovemaking and underrate its importance to justify their atrophic existence.

28. PARISPEA

Roosna Alliku and Parispea pisciculture, Estonia (postcard, 1938)

28. Sandor Veress

I mentioned the name of composer Sandor Veress in a previous post. I want to say more. Because this is someone whose work I‘ve returned to every 3 years - each time completely enamored - since I was a teenager. You wont‘ find much written about him besides his being the supposed heir to Bartok‘s fame in Hungary - though he immigrated to Switzerland during the war. But it‘s one album in particular that I come to... Hommage à Paul Klee, this recording:



Veress takes 7 paintings of Klee and composes a musical work in response to them. They highlight the unique voice of Veress, which was coming out not only from under the shadow of Bartok, but of Schoenberg and the 12-tone cult. Veress‘s voice is comparatively very tonal, often using folk-like rhythms, and spoken through an ornate counterpoint bordering on mannerism. The hommage was composed in 1951, right after he left Hungary.

According to the liner notes: “The cycle [the 7 pieces of the hommage] is clearly structured in terms of the order of its movements and their tonal centers, each of which reflects what Veress regarded as the characteristic colour of each individual painting.“

For a taste here‘s a look and listen at an excerpt from one of Veress‘ interpretations of Klee‘s Alter Klang, which he used as the third movement (adante con moto, aka slow) and set in E Phrygian:

Alter Klang (Ancient Sound)







The other tracks are quite different and equally captivating.

27. DREAMS, DRAWINGS

Now that I‘m moving, I‘ve been going through a lot of my old journals and papers and finding sundry drawings, many depicting dreams...


In the main gallery at Calarts. 20+ people lying down with domes, projecting sounds, suspended above there heads. the sounds made everyone sleep and dream collectively together. i think composer seth cluett did a piece like this once?


cherry tree in a dream


Using stones, meat, fluids, and charcoal, I was drawing a map on a large flat canvas. there was a children‘s choir singing rounds behind me. the lyrics of their song critiqued the content and quality of my map activities. but it was one of those dreams where you aren‘t yourself (my body, but another person). sometimes the children would join and/or we would pass things to one another.


i sat eye-to-eye with a turtle and we both began to cry. our tears flowed into one another. it felt absolutely wonderful and loving.


I was in a small wooden cabin with 4 “shamans“. all i remember is moaning and singing together and when we did this it was immediately as if we were one entity, and I could see out of eyes that formed above us and feel all the singing and corroboration in my belly, which we composed.



I was sitting before a wolf. to communicate I would hold my palm about her head and I could tactile-ly feel her thoughts. if i tried to communicate in any other way she would attack me. behind me there was a woman with an infant. I was communicating something to the infant for the mother. I drew it on a v-neck button-up T-shirt. wore it yesterday in fact.


I was in a skin-tight canoe. My legs felt as if they were merging with the water, but with force driving them to the depths. Tickled my feet.


I was inside the nervous system of a giant organism. All I could see were neurons that glimmered like stars, eddies of water, and tiny creatures making pulsating movements.


I was eye-to-eye with a large spider. He was communicating to me through subtle vibrations in his legs, which I would feel in my ribs. He would read vibrations in my ribs similarly. a nice chat!


Imaginary animal jaw


Imaginary hat


It happened

26. ENTYMOLOGICAL CELEBRITIES

Jason Bond, a biologist at East Carolina University, discovered a new species of trapdoor spider in Jefferson County, Alabama and chose to name it Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi after the legendary Canadian singer-songwriter, Neil Young.



"There are rather strict rules about how you name new species," Bond said in a statement, [...] “As long as these rules are followed you can give a new species just about any name you please. With regards to Neil Young, I really enjoy his music and have had a great appreciation of him as an activist for peace and justice."

On that note, Quentin Wheeler, of Arizona State University, named a beetle after Roy Orbison, the whirligig beetle, or Orectochilus orbisonorum, which appears to be wearing a tuxedo.


Apparently there are insects named after James Brown, Freddie Mercury (of Queen), Mark Knopfler (of the Dire Straits), and Elvis. Wikipedia has a list of other animalia named after human celebrities. Just an FYI...