Re: [microsound] Re: Alternative performance devices

[vze26m98 <vze26m98@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 5/30/03 at 11:39 PM, The pHarmanaut <pharmanaut@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

> Live musical performance of any sort serving as a vehicle for
> mind-expansion, potentially to the point of attaining
> collective consciousness experiences. It's not necessarily
> about tuning the audience into the performer's "musical
> aesthetic" but using the musical aesthetic among other factors
> to engineer cosmic or trance experiences. This can happen via
> any musical genre.

Go Trace!!

> But really interesting performers upset context and
> genre-definitions.

That's true, but there are also a lot of "interesting" performers that
don't. Concerning your references to trance above, I think you'll find
the ceremonial music that accompanies these experiences is carefully
preserved from generation to generation. One doesn't mess around with a
sacred context.

Surely you've read Rouget?

> Well, what I'm hearing is a laptopper disappointed that a show
> in a blues bar didn't get the adequate reception. But did that
> performer do anything to play off of the atmosphere of the
> space? Or were things too pre-programmed? It would be

True, but what you're suggesting is more the strategy of an entertainer
than an artist. The aesthetic values that the performer is committed to
still don't reach the audience, although they may go home a bit more
satisfied...

> ever been contextualized? Did Coltrane lecture before laying
> new jazz structures on folks? I doubt it. He was (apparently)
> filing his teeth and then blowing like a motherfucker for the
> hippest cats to dig. And if they didn't, he kept blowing.

(I'll have to remember that the word "lecture" is a hot button around
here!)

Actually, Coltrane expressed conflict about his musical direction toward
the end of his life:

"When the Coltrane band played at the Front Room in Newark, New Jersey,
also in late 1966, the audience and manager became hostile and insisted
that he play some of his old standards. Byard Lancaster clearlt heard
Coltrane respond that he was sorry, but that he had to do something with
his music and he could not go back."

"In August 1965, he told _Melody Maker_, 'Whenever I make a change, I'm
a little worried that it may puzzle people. And sometimes I deliberately
delay things for this reason. But after a while I find that there is
nothing else I can do but go ahead.' And he would ask people around him
for their responses. [saxophonist] John Glenn remembers that Coltrane
asked him, 'What do you think?'"

Porter, p. 275

Best,

Tad

<tad@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

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