Re: [microsound] toplap_manifesto

["tobias c. van Veen" <tobias@xxxxxxxxx>]

Off the cuff -- 

Oh yes, points I would all agree with.

The Shipp quote was sampled -- I was juxtaposing it; he wasn't directly
talking about Xenakis but about Wynton Marsalis, in fact. He calls Marsalis
a musical fascist, for reasons of trying to delimit and purify jazz in a
movement of nostalgia for a pure & perfect era. Again I wouldn't sign that,
just noting it, dropping it in.

And I agree that neither would I wish to frame this as a "simple opposition
of written and oral cultures," etc etc and all that entails. Hence the bit
in there .. well check it out what I wrote, one more pass of the eyes,
you'll get it, that :

<quote>

"...they exhibit a relation to a differential system of inscription (one of
the "griot," the storyteller, of collective ownership sans identifiable
property or possessor, to bring in a term from Dj Spooky's recent book,
_Rhythm Science_)."

</quote>

Etc, so I'm not trying to oppositionize / binarize West to Africa as you
checked, just to note that, as I also say, not "exclusive" as you claim but
"often engage in...". The same can  be said for notational music systems
too, however, it is funny that even in Visconti--who is a FILM maker, which
is very much "outside music," far beyond Xenakis, and thus his position here
in any consideration becomes exoteric--who is a brilliant period piece
maker, and here I am thinking of _Death in Venice_, the way in which he
captures the ritual of Europe, the mannerisms etc -- the death of this to be
found, in many authors but most eloquently in Proust. Fin de siecle.

That is, that Happenings are very much a social coda. If a dance, then it's
a codified dance, in very strict fashion, like ballroom dancing, like the
horrible square dancing I had to learn in highschool, so utterly useless
when I figured out how to really dance- - to get mushed at an insane thrill
of moving bodies, that is, a rave, which bears in no small way a relation to
the (I believe Nigerian?) Ngobe.

Hell, one gets this from watching _Swing Kids_ .. both swing and rock n roll
were devil's dance music.

Perhaps a simple formula: it could be shown that participatory dance, of a
ritual of "Afrologic," is very much characterised as "devil music" in
Western culture, or has been, including and right up to rap and hip-hop.

Anyway, I'm picking a bit on Xenakis, and the interesting way in which
Xenakis' quote was dropped after posing a question to Kim (Cascone). That
is, it became more clear to me that Kim's essay ("Post-Digital") was very
much toting Xenakis' line, or at least it appears that way.

And that Happenings and Xenakis have more in common, at least in the Kaprow
form, then we think. It's all about the orders.

Which isn't bad; my whole point is that any systematic of music should end
the ridiculous, metaphysical, colonial power-grab of trying to assert one
form over the other. That's what's really "obscurantist" and "dangerous."

As you quote, it leads back to a circle. Which given that the circle seems
to be incorporated within time itself, isn't necessarily all that
surprising. It's just that everytime we come around, we find someone to beat
on. And it always seems to be this "we:" the dominant (white) (male)
culture.

- tV

ps. As for Spooky's love of Xenakis, check his response to Shipp when Shipp
calls Marsalis a "musical fascist:"

Paul: And ther great thing that's happening now is this idealistic sense of,
how should I put it? Ummm.... If we had Wynton Marsalis sitting here ...

Shipp: That guy is such a blockhead. Probably if you took that guy's brain
out of his head, it'd be shaped like a block. He definitely must suffer from
some kind of serious disease or something. I just don't understand how
people can get that way, these people who walk around saying 'this is right,
this is wrong'. The universe just isn't closed like that, I mean, if you
look at nature, they would see how fluid things really are. How fluid
language is, how you can't try and define things like that. And these people
are like dictators, or fascists, trying to control language and the
definition of jazz because that's how these people make money.

Paul: Well, to me, there's room for everything. If someone wants to have
such a closed, fixed view of something, then I guess that's interesting
thing. The Lower East side has its share of people who think experimental
music should only be one thing too... But don't apply it to me! I'm not
going to apply my rule system to them. It's that '80's squeaky sound scene
who can't deal with beats etc etc they have a lock on alot of the downtown
experimental scene, but yeah, I'm working on breaking that. So much of that
stuff sounds the same... There's alot of friction between me and the '80's
"establishment" (laughs...).


--> for Miller at least, "there's room for everything,"--that is it seems he
agrees somewhat with Shipp's "fascist" quote-- either way, his ambiguity is
somewhat emblematic of the horizon of neoliberalism.

http://djspooky.com/articles/shipp.html


> Tobias-
> 
> I'll admit to intrigue as well and certainly am cognisant of the
> authorial potential for this type of presentation.  But I'm hesitant to
> frame the issue in a simple opposition of written and oral cultures.
> 
> I'm not sure that a participatory relation to music is an exclusive of
> oral cultures; the final hour of Lucino Visconti's _Il Gattopardo_
> locates dance/ritual/movement/social as central to the modern era.  And
> I'm not sure that the toplap guys are thinking "participatory" in the
> same way that you or I would consider it.
> 
> There are some nuts to crack in the Xenakis quote and I wonder what he
> must have meant by happenings.  It's not clear to me he would have been
> aware of Alan Kaprow's work or whether he might have been thinking of
> Fluxus activity or even some other manifestation.  But the quote is
> taken from an essay that is involved with universalizing "outside time
> structures" so that they might also include the contribution of musics
> beyond the european canon.
> 
> I couldn't find the Shipp quote about Xenakis, but a quick search of
> Spooky's site turned up this:
> 
> "I view Xenakis as the first composer to consciously build linkages
> between multi-culturalism, architecture, high end Western scientific
> culture, and an idealistic sense of trying to create dialog between
> different ethnic groups and generations. A phenomenon that one sees all
> too rarely in the literary, art, and classical music realms. He was a
> big hero to me, and I think that with his passing away in the 21st
> century, the world lost a great voice in the struggle to create a more
> progressive culture in music."
> 
> DJ Spooky, <http://www.djspooky.com/articles/xenakis.html>
> 
> Are you sure you weren't thinking about Shipp's comment on Boulez?
> 
> Xenakis' point about "imprecision" is admitted by one of the toplap
> people, Frederik Olofsson:
> 
> "It was a big event and I screwed up totally. I did not rehearse
> properly due to my redesign of the framework up until the last minute.
> And during the set my brain went into chimpanzee mode as so often when
> performing. I could not keep all things in my head controlling video and
> music simultaneously so both stagnated for long periods of time while I
> tried to think clearly. Add to that that the projector was horrible and
> my video effects possibly a little too brutal so the mess was totally
> unreadable. Me still shivers when thinking about it. So I figured I
> needed to start rehearsing livecoding on a daily basis, as any
> instrument, and also fully automate certain things (like the video part)
> and that is where I am still at."
> 
> <http://toplap.org/?Read_Me_Paper>
> 
> I especially like his promise to "fully automate" portions of his
> performance, which seems to take us full circle.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Tad
> 
> 
> 
> <vze26m98@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> 
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tobias c. van Veen -----------++++
http://www.quadrantcrossing.org --
http://www.thisistheonlyart.com --
McGill Communication + Philosophy
--- New School Philosophy --------
ICQ: 18766209 | AIM: thesaibot +++