Blogcritics Author: Michael Heumann

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

CD Reviews: LA Philharmonic - P�rt's Tabula Rasa and Andriessen's Racconto Dall'Inferno and de Staat

Michael Heumann — Sat, 1 Apr 2006 12:47:28 EST

You can go to iTunes right now and download the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra's performance of Arvo P�rt's "Tabula Rasa" and Louis Andriessen's "Racconto Dall'Inferno" and "de Staat." It's a live recording from their Minimalist Jukebox series, a real landmark series of performances featuring works by all the major minimalist artists of the past four decades (including Steve Reich, Philip Glass, John Adams, and even The Orb). What's great about this recording is the fact that it came out less than a week after the performance (the concert was on Saturday, March 25, and the recording was on iTunes Wednesday, March 29). This is what the Internet can do for music: instant recordings, immediate feedback, and access to great performances wherever you might live. And trust me when I say that there were a lot of jealous people out there -- people who didn't live in Southern California and, hence, couldn't make it to these concerts. Now, I bring all this up in part to advertise this great concert series and the recording. Really, though I'm just bragging: my wife and I attended this concert. I don't normally attend Philharmonic performances, but "Tabula Rasa" is one of my favorite modern compositions -- ethereal, pristine, delicate, and totally overwhelming. I listen to it all the time, and when I heard that the Minimalist Jukebox series would feature this work, I jumped at the chance to go. I found the experience to be very interesting and very rewarding. The Walt Disney Music Hall (despite the name) is an incredible building, beautifully designed (by Gehry) and perfectly conducive to music. I find most classical music-goers to be pretentious assholes (like the hybrid car people South Park parodied this week and about half of the people I knew in grad school), but I ignored them and focused on the music. I knew the concert was being recorded. They mentioned it in the beginning and there were signs posted all over the place to remind people to shut up and not make noise during the concert, and I was excited by the prospect of being able to hear the concert live and then listen to it at home. And that's the rub. The concert itself was great, phenomenal performances for both the P�rt and the Andriessen (an artist I'm not too familiar with but was impressed by, especially his ability to translate literary works like Dante's Inferno and Plato's Republic into music). However, as I listen to the concert live, I keep hearing people coughing and even wheezing (I don't know who but it happened). I figured the recording wouldn't pick up on that stuff, but it does, especially on "Tabula Rasa," which is as much about silence as it is about music. On the recording, I can hear every single cough and burp and other noise that I remembered hearing (and being pissed off about) at the concert (despite the signs). Now, I can't listen to the recording without focusing on those noises. Now, my inner John Cage tells me that this coughing and wheezing in a concert hall is part of the music. It's all music, and a performance with those other noises is far richer and more rewarding than a performance without that additional sound. I actually believe that, to an extent. If I hadn't been at the concert, I probably wouldn't even notice those other sounds; I'd just attribute them to the recording space. If someone brought them up, I'd say something like, "Hey, that's a moment in time captured for all eternity. Awesome." Actually, if I did say that, I'd be one of those pretentious assholes, and I know myself well enough to know that I wouldn't say that (it would be too self-conscious of me), but I'm sure I'd come up with some slightly less assholish comment about how great the music is. But the problem is that I was there and I did hear the sounds and when I listen to the recording, I can't help but hear those sounds (both my memory of the sounds and their repetition via the recording) over and above the music. There's the music and there's the noise, and they are separated in my ears and in my mind. I guess this is how musicians must feel when listening to their own recordings, especially the live recordings. They must hear every tiny imperfection, every place where the sound isn't quite right, every moment where, in their mind, the music was supposed to sound one way but it came out in a different way. No wonder so many artists have entire storerooms full of unreleased material; it's stuff that other people would probably LOVE but that they themselves can't imaging releasing because of its tiny imperfections. In some ways, I think that's how I feel about the concert recording. I didn't perform, but I was in the audience, and as a microphone merely picks up sound, everyone and everything that made sound in that studio space (the concert hall) performed on that recording. I tried to "perform" as little as possible (kept still, didn't even move my hands to scratch my nose), but I'm sure some vague fluttering of my breath filtered into those microphones at one point in the recording, and if we could examine the recording down to the nano, you'd be able to decipher my breath from everyone else's. So it's partly my fault -- and I apologize. I'll do better next time. But, still, ignore my rants and get the recording, it's fantastic music. Heck, despite what I just said, I am still listening to this recording every day (as I said, I love my P�rt). I'm working to John Nash my way out of obsessing over the coughs (they're there, but I choose to ignore them). Yep, I'm well on my way to dementia. It should be fun!

Michael Heumann received a Ph.D in English from the University of California, Riverside. He has taught college-level English at various colleges and universities for over ten years. He is currently the Distance Education Coordinator at a small community college east of San Diego. His web site, Haunted Ink, focuses on music. It includes reviews, commentaries, and analyses of a diverse array of musical styles, from traditional rock and pop to experimental electronic, dub, classical, and traditional. One interesting feature of the site is Almaty or Bust!, which fouses exclusively on the music and cultures of Central Eurasia. Heumann is married and lives with his wife and their cats in El Centro, CA.

Central Asian Music Coming to USA, CD

Michael Heumann — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 12:34:46 EST

I'm a huge fan of Central Asian music -- so much so that I created a web site exclusively to promote and review music from this region. I love the amazing confluence of cultures and musical styles that defines so much Central Asian music. I also like the tunes, which can be as catchy and as mesmerizing as any western pop music you're likely to hear on the radio. So, obviously, a big Central Asian music fan like myself was thrilled to learn about two very big developments, both primed to bring the beautiful music of Central Asia to a larger audience. First off, a concert series will be travelling across the country this month. According to the press release, the series, called "Music and Voices of Central Asia," features three groups: Tengir-Too, a traditional folk ensemble from Kyrgyzstan that features long renditions from the Manas, the ancient Kyrgyz epic that is a dozen times longer than The Illiad; Tajikistan's Academy of Shashmaq�m, an ensemble that follows in the ancient tradition of the Sufi-inspired court music of such venerable cities as Samarkand and Bukhara (a tradition that is vividly described in Theodore Levin's wonderful book, The Hundred Thousand Fools of God); and Homayun Sakhi and Taryalai Hashimi from Afghanistan (via California), who present traditional Afghani music, which combines elements of Central Asian music with music from Pakistan and other Islamic cultures.The second and (I think) more significant development is the release of volumes one through three of a ten-volume series on Central Asian music. Not surprisingly, the first three releases are by the three artists I mentioned above; I don't have any details on the other seven releases, but they are supposed to be coming out later in the year. The releases, put out by Smithsonian-Folkways, are veritable holy grails for Central Asian music fans like myself. Not only does each one include a full CD's worth of music by great Central Asian artists who are virtually unknown in the west, but each release also contains a bonus DVD with a documentary on the artist in question, an interactive guide to Central Asian musical instruments, and maps. Since I've really only HEARD these artists, I really can't wait to SEE them in action -- and learn more about the fascinating cultures from which they come.The CDs come out March 14 and are priced at about $20 each (a bargain, if you ask me). The concert series begins in Washington DC on March 15, hits New York City's Mills Theater on March 21, and then travels the country until early April (all details can be found here). If you can make it to any of these shows, then do it. You won't be disappointed.

CD Review: 5-CD Set RT: The Life and Music of Richard Thompson

Michael Heumann — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 11:05:55 EST

Richard Thompson is one of the great musicians and songwriters of the last 40 years. He's not nearly as well-known and as popular as many of his contemporaries (who include everyone from Eric Clapton and Neil Young to Beck and Jack White -- yes, he has longevity on his side), but his influence on other musicians and on contemporary folk and rock music is immeasurable. He may not be a big mainstream hit, but every musician and critic worth his or her weight owns at least a half-dozen Richard Thompson works and relishes a chance to see RT perform live (a great experience, by the way - -highly recommended). He's an incredible songwriter, able to craft characters and phrases almost effortlessly; he's also one of the best guitarists you're likely to hear, with a keen ear for adapting his guitar prowess to the tone and theme of each song he performs. While much has been made of his dark and often morbid lyrics and his penchant for dwelling on the bitterness of love and loss, his music is equally about hope, survival, and the very real balance that we must all negotiate between good times and bad. His oeuvre is indeed a rich, complex tapestry of emotions, characters, stories, and passions.Back in 1993, the 3-CD retrospective Watching the Dark was released. It was a wonderful release, filled both with Thompson's major works (many in alternate or live forms) and with tons of unreleased or rare recordings. It told RT's story with all its complexity -- his early years with Fairport Convention, the seminal British folk rock act (where he wrote some of his greatest songs, like "Genesis Hall", "Tale in Hard Time", and "Now Be Thankful"); his collaboration with then-wife Linda Thompson (including Shoot Out the Lights, one of the great albums of all time); and his major-label works from the 80s and 90s (which feature some of his greatest songs, like "1952 Vincent Black Lightning", "Hand of Kindness", "I Feel So Good", and "I Misunderstood"). It showcased RT's storytelling ability ("Al Bowlly's in Heaven"), his love songs ("Valerie"), and his awesome live performances (highlights are "Can't Win" and "The Calvary Cross"). And I haven't even mentioned the great essay by Greil Marcus in the liner notes, where he crystallizes RT's music and legacy in a way no one else ever has! In sum, Watching the Dark is a great set--and I recommend that you get it (in case you don't have it yet).But guess what? It's nothing compared to RT: The Life and Music of Richard Thompson, a mammoth 5-CD boxed set just released on Free Reed Records. While initiates to Thompson might be advised to get Watching first, the rest of us -- those of you out there who didn't need me to explain RT's impact and influence on music because you already knew it -- will be listening to and studying and celebrating RT for years to come with the same ferocity and intensity that Joyceans (like myself) study and celebrate and dissect Ulysses (or, if you want a more popular analogy, the way Trekkies study every scene in every Star Trek episode/film ever made).This collection has just about anything you can imagine: five disks of unreleased tracks, alternate takes, covers, and live performances of RT's greatest works, grouped thematically (more on this later); a mammoth, 150-plus page booklet that includes a complete biography, an interview with Thompson, and track-by-track annotations; a postcard to send in for a free bonus disk of RT music; and an extra-liner note booklet about the 1952 Vincent Black Lightning motorcycle. There are few boxed sets that are so thorough with their subjects, and the care and planning that went into this set are evident in every little detail.Disk 1 in the set is entitled "Walking the Long Miles Home -- Muswell Hill to L.A." It's meant to be a sort-of musical biography of Thompson's life. Really, though, the title is deceptive, as the focus for most of these songs is not on Thompson himself but rather on Thompson's perspective of the world around him ("The world according to Thompson," as the liner notes explain). Among the many wry observations found on this disk are some of Thompson's greatest songs, like "Genesis Hall" (about a conflict between squatters and policemen, one of whom was Thompson's father), "Shoot Out the Lights" (written specifically about the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, but so universal in its treatment of pain and death that it has been interpreted in numerous ways), and "Walking on a Wire" (a heart-wrenching song about the pain of separation, written while Thompson himself was going through a divorce with his wife and musical partner, Linda Thompson). Thompson's lyrics are (as I said before) often tinged with bitterness, and a lot of this bitterness is on display here; he's also very funny, however, as indicated by songs like "Madonna's Wedding," which is a tongue-in-cheek dig at Madonna's marriage to Guy Ritchie and her attempts to become English. In short, the first disk presents a pretty interesting look into Thompson's worldview, a view that is far more complex and interesting than casual listeners are likely to realize.Disk 2 is entitled "Finding Better Words -- The Essential Richard Thompson." This list was actually compiled by RT fans and colleagues, who were asked to list three songs they would use to introduce a novice fan to Thompson's music. Personally, my choices would be "1952 Vincent Black Lightning," "Just the Motion," and "Can't Win." What's interesting about this list is the fact that there are songs from every single part of the artist's career -- from his 1960s work with Fairport Convention ("Meet on the Ledge") to his 2003 release, The Old Kit Bag ("Gethsemane"). In fact, unlike a lot of artists who emerged in the 60s, much of Thompson's greatest music has been released in the last 10-15 years, including nearly half of the songs on this disk. To me, that's what makes Thompson such an incredible artist -- his music continues to improve. Every song on here is presented in an alternate form from the studio release (a mixture of live, demo, and alternate takes). In some cases, these alternate versions are superior to the original ("I Feel So Good" and "Wall of Death", for example); in other cases, I prefer the original (or an alternate live take from a different disk, as in the case of "Tear Stained Letter", which features RT whistling a few lines and rather annoying audience participation). Another thing to watch for is sound quality -- some of these recordings are a few decades old, meaning that there's background tape hiss and occasional distortion. These problems don't really detract from the overall experience of the album, however, as the music's greatness overcomes the "fuzzy" sounds. And, for the record, the top 5 Thompson songs are: "1952 Vincent Black Lightning", "From Galway to Graceland", "Crazy Man Michael", "Dimming of the Day," and "Beeswing". For those of you counting, three of those songs were created and released in the 1990s, including #1.Disk 3 is entitled "Shine in the Dark: Epic Live Workouts". This is a collection of live recordings of popular Thompson songs that, when played live, often outstrip their studio counterparts in length, passion, intensity, and sheer musicality. A song like "Calvary Cross" is a perfect example. It first appears on 1972's I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight as a tentative, delicate song rampant with what seemed like too-overt symbolism. In concert, however, this song is transformed into a battle between light and darkness, Thompson's guitar navigating a way through the chaos. The song often stretches to 10 or 12 minutes in length, a real journey and a great experience if you happen to see him perform it live. There's a great version of "Calvary Cross" on Watching the Dark, and there's another one on this disk. I'm not sure which one is better, but they both offer very distinct interpretations of the song. The one here features a much larger backing band, complete with an unusual organ melody that is rare for Thompson's music. In fact, what makes all eleven tracks on this disk memorable is the fact that they are all major or minor reworkings of the original songs. Some reworkings are more dramatic than others (like "For Shame of Doing Wrong", which has an awesome guitar riff towards the end that is nowhere near anything I've heard from RT on this or any other song -- it might be my favorite track in this entire collection), while others are simply extensions of the basic song. All are fascinating, though, and reveal a lot about Thompson as an improvisational artist of the highest order. What's more, the sound quality here is almost uniformly excellent.Disk 4 is called "The Songs Pour Down Like Sugar -- The Covers & Sessions". This is probably the most unusual disk in the set, as Thompson has an amazingly eclectic taste in covers. Each of which are represented here by such diverse songs as The Who's "Substitute", "Danny Boy", Squeeze's "Tempted", "You'll Never Walk Alone", Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away", the French punk song "CA Plane Pour Moi", and (of all things) Britney Spears' "Oops, I Did It Again". The last two were actually performed as part of Thompson's "1,000 Years of Pop Music" concert series, which included everything from medieval dance songs to Italian troubadour songs to 20th century pop. Every one of the works here demonstrate what an amazing artist Thompson is, managing to make even Britney Spears sound interesting when the material is placed in the right hands. More than this, however: the covers reveal Thompson as an artist able to root himself in just about any tradition, genre, or musical culture that he wants -- and perform spectacularly in each. Along with the many great covers, there are a few Thompson originals performed by other artists and featuring RT as a backup (or session) musician. Among these, the standouts are "The Angels Took My Racehorse Away" by Dave Burland and "Poseidon" by Judith Owen (which is a duet with RT). This isn't my favorite of the five disks, but it does a great job of presenting a side of Thompson's career that is almost wholly undocumented.Finally, Disk 5 is called "Something Here Worth More than Gold - -Real Rarities". This is the real treasure for die-hard Thompson fans, as it collects fifteen brand new, unreleased songs from the artist's vast collection of unreleased work. The songs range from a 1971 demo of "Albion Sunrise", a work originally written for The Albion Band (which featured many of RT's friends from Fairport Convention); to "How Many Times Do You Have to Fall", a song recorded by Fairport in 1985 but originally recorded (though not released) by Thompson in 1980; to his fun (and historically accurate) tribute to the great Scottish-American inventor, "Alexander Graham Bell"; all the way to 2004's brilliant throwaway "Dear Janet Jackson", a song about...well, here's the chorus: "if you must shove your titty in somebody's face / then shove it in a baby's." There's some really amazing music on this disk (especially that last song -- really!), stuff that is equal to anything that is on the other four.In all, this is a monumental release, certain to broaden Thompson's musical legacy -- and, considering that Thompson has never gotten his due (Aerosmith is in the rock & roll hall of fame but not RT?!), anything that will broaden his appeal is a good thing. But the real question is: should you buy it? Well, that depends upon who you are. If this article is your introduction to Richard Thompson, then hold off on getting this until you buy Shoot Out the Lights and Rumor and Sigh. If you have those works and are eager for more but you're wary of the "alternate take" or "live" label, then you might consider getting Watching the Dark, if only because it features more album tracks and fewer demos and live performances (even if the demos and live work is actually superior to the album stuff). However, if you want to hear Thompson at his best, most complete, then RT is the choice for you. Every great Thompson song is here, along with tons of undiscovered gems that reveal this artist as far more interesting and complex and nuanced than most people (even critics and fans) realize. In other words, this career retrospective actually reveals Richard Thompson as a musician who has had about seven or eight different types of careers -- each of them wildly successful. If the point of a boxed set is to provide a broad context for an artist's importance, then RT: The Life and Music of Richard Thompson is about as successful as a boxed set can possibly be.

Bittersweet Triumph: Seahawks in the Super Bowl

Michael Heumann — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 09:14:49 EST

I grew up in Southern California, near the desert. It was hot and dry and brown in my home town. I hated it. I liked cold and wet and green. My dream home was Seattle. I loved visiting the city as a kid, and I wanted my parents to move us there. Well, that didn't happen, so I did the next best thing and became a Seattle Seahawks fan. Now, this was 1976, the Hawks' expansion year. I was eight years old. I had just been introduced to sports by my dad. He had played football in high school, and he was thrilled that I wanted to watch sports with him (no one else in the family ever would). So when I became a Seahawks fan, he became a Seahawks fan, too. This was a pretty miserable team that first year; they won only twice (once to the other expansion team Tampa Bay and once to Atlanta). But they had two future stars on that team--quarterback Jim Zorn and wide receiver (and future hall of famer) Steve Largent.Over the next decade, these two and the other members of the Seahawks would have plenty of downs but also a lot of ups. They had a winning record in only their third season, going 9-7. That season was special for me because I got to see a Seahawks game in person when the team played in San Diego. My dad and I drove down there and had a great time. I even got to insult the drunken Charger fans sitting right behind us (with their gigantic tubs of beer). Seattle lost that game and didn't make the playoffs, but it was a special memory all the same. It's the only pro football game I've ever attended, actually. The Seahawks would make the playoffs in the early-'80s, when I was in high school. I remember the 1983 season well, when the Seahawks made it all the way to the AFC championship game. I was so excited and nervous before that game that I could hardly sleep. The game was in Los Angeles, and I remember that it was special because the game was a sellout, meaning I'd be able to watch it on local TV (most Raider games were not sellouts, so no local TV coverage). However, the Seahawks and then-quarterback David Krieg (along with rookie of the year Curt Warner) were overmatched and lost big, 30-14. I was so depressed after that game that I actually got sick and stayed home from school for a week. Still, big things were expected of the Seahawks in 1984, and those big things were almost dashed in the first game of the season when Curt Warner suffered a season-ending injury. The team would recover, post a 12-4 record, and make the playoffs for the second-straight season. But then they would lose to Miami in the second round of the playoffs. I didn't know it then, but that was as good as it would get for Seahawk fans for the next 20 years. Sure, there were some good moments now and again--even a few division titles. But there were no playoff victories and no standout seasons (just lots of 7-9 and 9-7 seasons, with an occasional 2-14 disasters thrown into the mix). Plus, there were the gutbusters--moments when the team would somehow manage to take an easy victory and turn it into an embarassing and humiliating defeat (against Green Bay in the playoffs a few years back, against St. Louis on three occasions last year). I continued to cheer for the team, but as losing season followed losing season, it became more and more difficult to find any hope. Even Mike Holmgren's talents and gravitas couldn't push the team out of the doldrums in the late 90s and early 2000s. Through it all, however, I stuck with the Seahawks. In part, this was because I'm a loyal person who abhors bandwagoners. If I'm going to root for a team, I'm going to root for them and no one else. But the real reason was for my dad. Football was his sport and it always had been. As I grew up, I gravitated towards other sports, like basketball and later baseball and soccer. However, I never stopped caring about the Seahawks or following football becaue it was the one thing that my dad and I could really discuss with frankness and openness (well, that and The Simpsons).I probably stuck with the Seahawks for my dad as much as for myself -- which is odd since he only started cheering for the team because I cheered for them. I guess I never wanted to let him down, to dismiss the team and (by extension) dismiss his love and committment to me. See, cheering for the Seahawks and talking to me about the Seahawks was his way of telling me how much he loved me, how much seeing me happy meant to him. I remember in 2002, moments after the Angels (my baseball team) won the World Series for the first time ever, my dad called me. The first words out of his mouth (or almost the first words) were, "Now we just have to get the Seahawks to the Super Bowl." I thought of those words tonight, watching the Seahawks beat the Carolina Panthers to reach their first Super Bowl. It's been 30 years since my dad and I started rooting for this team. Sadly, my dad could only make it through 29 of those years. He died last February, just missing out on the greatest season in Seahawks history, the one that has wiped away 30 years of frustration and mediocrity. When I called my mom and told her that the Seahawks were going to the Super Bowl, she paused, then said, "Oh, your father would have loved that." Yes, he would have. But he would have really loved to watch me, with my arms in the air as the seconds tick down to zero, waiting for the moment when the game would end and the dream would become a reality. He would have loved the game, especially the way the Seattle defense just dominated an overmatched and overhyped Panthers offense, but I know he would have loved talking about the game with me even more. So, here's to you, Dad. I wish you were here, but I'll do my best to cheer for both of us on February 5.

CD Review: Tuva, Among the Spirits - Sound, Music, and Nature in Sakha and Tuva

Michael Heumann — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 08:26:40 EST

Back in 1977 physicist and Caltech professor Richard Feynman and his friend, Ralph Leighton, became obsessed with Tuva, a remote corner of Siberia sitting on the (then) Soviet-Mongolian border. They decided to go to this isolated region because the capital, Kyzyl, was spelled without any vowels (they thought this was neat). The set about learning all they could of Tuvan culture: its language, its people, its history, and -- significantly -- its music. They formed the Friends of Tuva society, encouraging the spread of Tuvan culture into the west.But Feynman never made it. He died of cancer in 1988, right before he and Leighton were granted permission to visit this region. Leighton did go, and you can read all about it in his book, Tuva or Bust! But it's thanks to the duo's decade-long obsession with Tuva (coupled with the fall of the Soviet Union and the birth of tourism in this previously off-limits region) that Tuvan culture --or, more specifically, Tuvan music, especially throat singing -- has gained some notoriety. Throat singing is a technique that allows singers to produce two or even three notes simultaneously. It's a sound that is unheard in any other musical culture outside Central Asia.This enthusiasm for throat singing opened the door for Tuvan music groups like Huun-Huur Tu, who have gained some notoriety among world music buffs. One of those buffs was Paul Pena, the blind American bluesman who, upon hearing Tuvan throat singing, became so excited that he promptly began studying throat singing; later he organized an expedition to Tuva in order to participate in a local music festival. A documentary about his journey, called Genghis Blues, was my first introduction to Tuva. Seeing that film inspired me to learn more about this region and its music. From there, I began to explore music from Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, and other ethnic regions of the former Soviet Union. I become so fascinated by all that I'd heard and learned that I decided to create this web site (with a name borrowed from Leighton's book).What I've learned, in the course of my obsession, is that throat singing, while interesting, is only the starting point for learning about Tuvan music. More intersting is the way these people have managed to create a musical culture that is entirely at home in the natural world. Tuva is a region of herders and hunters: people who live with and among animals. The music that Tuvans create is a way to communicate with these animals and with the spirits that inhabit all natural things. The horses, the birds, the wind, the rain, the rivers, and the grass: these are the elements that shape Tuvan lives, and these are the elements recreated in Tuvan music.For outsiders, there is no better way to understand and appreciate Tuvan music than listening to Tuva, Among the Spirits, a work of unparalleled beauty, intelligence, and craft. It is an album recorded in the neighboring Tuvan and Sakhan regions of Siberia by eminent ethnomusicologist Ted Levin and engineer Joel Gordon. The field recordings they made in their travels are without peer. Trust me - I've heard a LOT of field recordings of traditional music, and none have sounded as crisp, as polished, and as authentic as these do.But that sound quality is just a vehicle. What matters about these recordings are the sounds themselves and what they tell us about the role music plays in these herding and hunting cultures. In his liner notes, Levin notes that the music created on this disk should be called "sound mimesis," for it "both reproduces and interacts with the ambient sounds of the natural world." This is exactly what you hear on this disk's nineteen tracks. Track seven, "Borbangnadyr with Stream Water," begins with the sound of a bobbing, warbling stream; soon it is joined by a single throat singer, who attempts, in his song, to connect his own voice to the stream's voice.It works: just listen to the high-pitched wail, with its warbling, stuttering effects, and notice how, for just a second, the stream sound and the man's voice converge. It's amazing, especially when you realize that this was recorded in the field, with a man sitting beside a stream and an engineer holding a microphone to capture both sounds.Each track here tries to illustrate one of the many ways that Tuvan and Sakhan musics seek communion with nature. There are tracks where you hear birds singing in the distance, communicating with one another. More birds join the conversation, and you wonder - where are the people? Then it hits you: some of those birds are people! The mimesis doesn't stop at birds, however. There are tracks featuring dog, horses, wind, echoing caves and cliffs, rivers, lakes, rain, trees, grass: just about any natural sound you can imagine. And, always, there is human accompaniment, either in the form of a jaw harp, a drum, a plucked string instrument, or a human voice, both singing and throat singing.Some fans of Tuvan music have criticized this album for not including enough throat singing, as if throat singing was the point of Tuvan music. They're way off. Tuvan music is far more than throat singing. It's music created in and through all of nature. It is music as it must have sounded thousands of years ago, when the only thing separating human beings from extinction was their ability to adapt and to create. Imitating natural sounds was a form of defense against potential dangers; it also held a religious component, for it held a prime place in animistic rituals. I knew all these things; they are central ideas in anthropology, archaeology, and ethnomusicology. But I never fully understood these things until I heard this album. That a mere album could bring even a glimpse of our shared past to life is an amazing accomplishment. That it manages to do this and still be an entertaining and exciting listening experience is a borderline miracle.Too bad Feynman didn't live to hear it.

Book Review: Theodore Levin's The Hundred Thousand Fools of God

Michael Heumann — Wed, 4 Jan 2006 05:03:32 EST

Theodore Levin is Associate Professor of Music at Dartmouth College. He has written extensively on the traditional musics of the Balkans, Siberia, Slavic Russia, and Central Asia. Moreover, he has released a number of his field recordings of these musics to wide acclaim - including the incomparable Tuva: Among the Spirits: Sound, Music, and Nature in Sakha and Tuva (I'll review this work soon) and the accompanying album for this book (which I'll discuss in yet another review). Most recently, Levin has acted as the executive director of the Silk Roads Project, a non-profit organization started by Yo-Yo Ma to showcase the arts and cultures of the people from traditional Silk Road areas (like Central Asia). The Hundred Thousand Fools of God: Musical Travels in Central Asia (and Queens, New York), then, was written by someone with a lot of knowledge about traditional music of Central Asia - or, more specifically, the music of Transoxania, the region "beyond the Oxus River" that includes parts of Turkmenistan and Tajikistan and most of Uzbekistan. Levin spent time in Tashkent as a graduate student in the 1970s, and he has returned to this region on several occasions, both during the Soviet era and after. This book is, in part, a summary of his experiences and thoughts concerning this region of the world, the people who inhabit it, and the musicians who seek to maintain their culture's music in spite of fierce opposition (first from communism, where Moslems were forced underground and music was "Europeanized," and now from capitalism, for although religion is relatively tolerated, Western culture's influence on music and life has begun to eclipse the traditional cultures of Central Asia). The point of this book can be summed up in Levin's title. A "fool of god," he notes, is a Sufi term identifying "one who has given himself to the life of the spirit and is under the special protection of God, but also a dervish or an ascetic - a person not entirely 'of this world.'" As Levin notes, he and his Uzbek companion, Otanazar Matyakubov (OM for short), began using this phrase "fool of god" to "describe a particular musician who, in both his musical activities and his personal life, seemed to embody the high ethical standards, humility, and altruistic spirit that characterized the figure of the...fool of God." Levin goes on to say, "We knew at best several dozen [fools of God] in Transoxania whose life spans overlapped, or had overlapped, with ours. But there might have been a hundred, a thousand, or even a hundred thousand who had come before. Others would surely follow" (37-38). Levin's book, then, chronicles his journeys throughout this region, as he and OM search out these "fools of God," traditional musicians who have managed to preserve and sustain their culture's beliefs and music despite the intense pressures of the modern world. Some of these people are professional musicians, such as Turgun Alimatov and Munajat Yulchieva. Levin's encounters with these professionals suggest that these artists struggle to make ends meet, largely because the music they play is typically classical maquam, or Islamic court music, and there haven't been emirs in Samarkand since the 1920s. These artists survive playing at state-sponsored concerts or at weddings and other festivals (called toys) - though, thanks to Levin and others (like Yo-Yo Ma), they are starting to gain a wider Western audience.Others are simply farmers or workers who live simple lives but possess a rare musical talent that they display to friends or at toys. One of the most interesting of these other group is a young woman, Xushvakt, the aunt of a man who Levin and OM had visited to meet and record. Levin met and recorded her two, brief performances on the chang-qobuz (Jew's harp or mouth organ). He was with her for no more than fifteen minutes, but, as Levin notes, "I felt...I'd been thrust through a time warp to a moment near the beginning of music" (156). It is moments like this that give Levin's book its depth, for he has the ability to peer inside a culture that is so different from our own and pry open things that no one in that culture, or perhaps in ours, would ever bother to notice. Women in this culture, as in many Islamic cultures, are kept in the background; this woman's appearance and performance were, perhaps, the highlight of her life, the one moment when she could demonstrate her remarkable talents to someone who would bother to pay attention. Levin's documentation of this event is just a small example of the amazing discoveries he makes in the course of his travels.This is easily one of the best books I've ever read on Central Asia, and it is the only book I've ever read on Central Asian music. It is at once a travelogue, a musical analysis, a cultural analysis, an historical analysis, and (in some weird ways) a religious journey. That Levin takes the time to bring his readers as close as possible not only to the major names in music from this region but also to the ones that no one has ever heard of (or will ever hear of) is a tribute to Levin's dedication to this culture and to his pursuit of wonderful music, wherever it might reside.

CD Review: William Basinski, The Garden of Brokenness

Michael Heumann — Mon, 2 Jan 2006 01:38:28 EST

William Basinski is one of the most important musicians working today. His The River is an amazing journey through radio static and ethereal melodies, and his four-disk work, The Disintegration Loops, is not only a transformative work on its own but also a beautiful (if accidental) elegy to 9/11. His latest work is The Garden of Brokenness, a work I first heard about in the liner notes to Basinski's collaboration with Richard Chartier (William Basinski + Richard Chartier, Spekk 2004), where the artists mentioned taking two works--Basinski's Garden and another work by Chartier--and fusing them into something totally new, a truly creepy mixture of Chartier's experimental drones and silences and Basinski's subtle, esoteric beauty. The Garden of Brokenness is certainly different from those other works. It's neither creepy nor complex. In fact, this might be the simplest work Basinski has ever released. However, buried in this simplicity is a universe of fascinating aberrations, and it is the aberrations that really make this piece memorable. In a way, it perfectly encapsulates the definition of ambient music found in David Toop's Ocean of Sound: "works which grasp at the transparency of water, seek to track the journeys of telematic nomads, bottle moods and atmospheres ... or depict impossible, imaginary environments of beauty or terror."The work consists of two parts that blend together over the course of fifty minutes. The first part is a tranquil piano melody that is played over and over again, in fits and starts, throughout. The second is an echoing, feedback-laden wall of noise that reflects the piano melody back on itself like a room of mirrors, turning the initial melody into a self-replicating monster at one moment (repeating itself over and over in sharper intensity) and dissolving into a gigantic chasm of noise at another moment. The work, then, is a series of waves of differing intensities crashing against the reader's ears. At times, the waves are utterly tranquil--the wall of noise barely penetrating the melody. At other times, the melody itself barely penetrates the noise. At still other times, the two sounds fight for bragging rights, slugging it out between our ears. And then there are times when Basinski organizes the two parts of his creation so that they remain separate from one another--the beautiful melody in the foreground, the wave of noise building and humming and breathing in the background. Taken together, the work is a little like walking through a cave with a boom box in your hand. In smaller spaces, the boom box's speakers dominate; in larger spaces, the reflection of the speakers dominate, bouncing off the cave walls and echoing in all directions until there are hundreds of different variations on the same sound all blurring together in a haze of noise. Since Basinski himself refers to this music as "dark" and "swampy," I guess you could say that the cave metaphor might be an apt description of this music--provided that the cave in question is the one you float through on the "Pirates of the Caribbean" ride at Disneyland! Basinski also refers to this music as "sad" and "elegiac," and I suppose those two words are appropriate ones to use for this music, given how the end result of many of these loops is a disintegration of a basic melody into a rumbling noise. However, I see more hope in this work than in, say, Basinski's epic Disintegration Loops. There, the music falls apart, and he records the dying. Here, the music doesn't really die; rather, it grows and expands and reverberates in the same way the sounds of nature can echo and expand across a landscape. Natural sounds die out, too, of course, but there's no sadness in it--it's just the temporal nature of sound. And that, I think, is what Basinski has created here, an illustration of the true beauty and frailty of sound itself, both as it exists in our world and as it exists in our imaginations.If you are interested in buying this work, you can find it at Forced Exposure (a very reliable source for hard-to-find music).