filled with texture and colour, emotive and sometimes even spiritual, it counters and revibrates the high pitched buzz that often fills me. i find myself drawn to the subtleties of ambient music, becoming more aware of its nuances, and it isn’t uncommon for me to listen to a piece that i have spun many times, to hear or feel something i haven’t noticed before.
musicians such as brian eno, o yuki conjugate, steve roach, robert fripp, harold budd, robin guthrie, david sylvian, lisa gerrard, robert rich, james johnson, jeff pearce and others create music that isn’t so much soothing as it is suggestive of contemplation. of a moment. of an experience. of something without time. fripp in particular has written about the notion of timelessness in some forms of music. i’ll bring that up in another entry.
the effect is to draw me from passively hearing into actively listening. to lower my walls and allow the subtleties of sensitivity to my experiencing to re-emerge.
a few years ago i came across a beautiful, mesmerizing disc of music by a musician i had never heard of before named al gromer khan. go here to see his paintings, read his writings, and learn about his music:
http://www.algromerkhan.com/
the disc also featured the vocals of amelia cuni.
go here to learn more about amelia.
http://www.ameliacuni.de/f_home.php?lang=0
together they created a disc of music in the dhrupad tradition. at one and the same time contemplative and yet technically and aurally stunning. i remember it stayed on my player for weeks . the disc was entitled "monsoon point".
dhrupad is the oldest vocal and instrumental style, and the form from which Indian classical music originated. the leading dhrupad musicians remark that rather than to entertain the audience, dhrupad's purpose is aradhana (worship). the nature of dhrupad music is spiritual, seeking not to entertain but to induce deep feelings of peace and contemplation in the listener.
to learn more about the dhrupad tradition, go here:
http://www.raga.com/text/221dhrupad_text.html
i came across a recent piece of writing by khan and thought that it might appeal to people who are sensitive to ambience. not exclusively as it is applied to music, but to the broader spectrum of ambience as being more to do with the interiors of the soul.
Ambient Religion
by Al Gromer Khan
I understand an ambience to be a defined space containing a specific atmosphere. In which kind of ambiences was I happiest in the past? What were the important components? Perhaps when the apartment lingered in an improvised, unfinished state with a feeling of nonchalance about it? Let us include one or two beautiful objects de art, antique perhaps, and patinaed. An old chair, a drinking glass for less than a dollar from the flea-market to a piece of Ming porcelain. They want space to breathe. And despite its hermetic condition, an ambience also needs a view, even if its only a tree and a bit of open sky.
Even though ´spiritual´ terms are tabooed in Ambient, a spiritual effect is sought, one that is not very different from the old-fashioned silent prayer. This gift – wonderfully present in Eno´s work, by the way – can neither be obtained nor copied – it has to be inherent from birth. It is at the artist´s discretion whether he/she can raise not only interest in the listener, but also gratitude.
How do you create this magnetic pull with only minimalist means? What is the secret involved? Could it be the balance between female and male components, as in electricity? In terms of attitude it seems important that a conscious choice is made about what kind of sonic tapestry one surrounds oneself with in a given situation –
and that this makes a lot of difference in terms of one´s well being. While this may be said about any type of music, I would point out that Ambient is a lot more subtle and - like homeopathy – its influence, therefore, is more far-reaching.
In many cases painful experiences stemming from environmental noise: cars, mechanical tools, blaring TV-sets, background music in shops and restaurants, the boom-boom sound of the adolescent car-owner are the origin of this kind of longing for a benign kind of sonic background.
Ambient´s other distinction is on the structural level. Where ´classical music´, pop, jazz, folk etc. seek entertainment, more and obvious harmonic changes, drama and wit, Ambient uses minimalist continuity with a few ambiguous and subtle highlights in order to avoid the former. This continuity, ideally, should not, in the course of repetition, wear off, but rather should it gain an energetic charge. How this is achieved is up to the artist´s discretion and his intuition. Unlike other areas of life, education and practise play less of a role in Ambient-music. Ambient looks for sublime and abstract forms. Ambient prefers to remain in the realm of the subtle, the lyrical, the ambiguous. For me this corresponds with the painter Wassily Kandinsky´s step into abstract painting around 1910.
Since Ambient is about interiors – interiors of the soul - , one should be familiar with the feeling of relief at the removal of cluttering from rooms and the tabula rasa-position where one is able to think about new arrangements and designs in places where one spends one´s life. Accordingly you don´t make Ambient-music, you merely remove the uncongenial components while organising the rest in an inspiring way. A person enters a room and feels comfort in terms of feng shui, in terms of less is more - the Bauhaus principle. Virtues of neglect come to bear. The brain finds pleasure in completing intimations and fragments, small musical quotations open up rooms for the soul to dwell in. What is there is not blanketed but made conscious: the wind in the trees, the cooing of the pigeons under the roof, the big city hum in the distance.
Then why listen to music at all, in this noise-weary time? Wouldn't the enjoyment of silence be the adequate answer? Ambient-music does offer the possibility of addressing and activating certain emotional frequencies - some of exquisite charm – just off your normal everyday ones, while creating a continuing, distant, futuristic, a ´cool´ atmosphere. Without Ambient-music such emotional frequencies, while being available in most people - might be easily undervalued or even outright overlooked. In my own work there is often a sitar phrase that serves as a bait in order for the subconscious to open up and become active. Feelings are focussed and subsequently lead into a neutral field. Sometimes I work with a structural fragment that lends itself to an ostinato or a cyclic movement. Very often this work process starts long before a new piece of music actually comes into existence; I observe the seed to find out whether or not something will sprout from it or not. In this phase I merely observe while at the same time it needs my exclusive attention. As I regularly and keenly observe – even worship - nature, it is possible that my work contains more feminine than masculine components. But this could also be a kind of protest against the overwhelming masculinity of this day and age.
During the work process I am on a constant lookout for the miraculous and that this new piece may want something from me, something new, something unusual. In that case I follow the inspiration - discarding any premeditated route - and observe with interest what happens to me and the music. As Vilayat Khan used to say: after a little time of playing I become the listener... in a kind of music that makes sense while watching clouds, birds, trees in the wind.
Sensible tasks for human beings.
Al Gromer Khan
(2006)
No comments:
Post a Comment