Interview with Halim el Dabh and Pauline Oliveros:
1. Objects
2. Mathematics
3. Prime Sound
4. "I find my healing"
5. Pauline's story
6. Transformation
7. Transformation, experimentation
8. The Source, Art Objects
9. Opening up, bringing out
10. History
11. Pauline - history
12. Ritual
13. The Western Canon
14. Passion
15. Agriculture
16. Beginnings
17. Free reeds
18. Tuningsystems, environment
19. Environment
20. (Sound)snapshots
21. Vibrations
In September 2005 I
attended the Unyazi
festival for electronic music in South Africa, the first festival of
its kind to be held in Africa at all. The organizers had assembled an
inmpressive line up of guests and along with the attentive audience
there was a sense of presence often missing at European gatherings.
In fact I attended the festival partly with the purpose of making a short radio programme for Danmarks Radio with the aim of finding out just how electronics featured in South African musical life. While the use of electronics in a European context may seem 'natural', it is not necessarily the first thing that springs to mind when thinking of African music!
Two particularly inspiring guests that I met were Halim El Dabh and Pauline Oliveros, two musicians/composers with a lifetime's experience of listening attentively and knowing the power of vibrations on the mind and body. Halim points out that electronic music lends itself to a focus on vibration - both the transforming of sound and using sound as a means of transformation. He argues that this focus on the transformative aspect has been present in traditional African music for thousands of years. That many so called 'primitive' societies have a highly developed sense and use of sound as a means of transformation.
Pauline begins her book Deep Listening with a wonderful quote:
"The first concern of all music in one way or another is to shatter the indifference of hearing, the callousness of sensibility, to create that moment of solution we call poetry, our rigidity dissolved when we occur reborn - in a sense hearing for the first time" - Lucia Dlugoszweski
Speaking to composers from my own generation such as Yannis Kyriaides and Francisco Lopez it became apparent that it was precisely this aspect of electronic music that made it so appealing to younger composers. It can offer a ladder of escape from being caught up with the traditons and 'languages' that one has to deal with when composing for ensembles and orchestras made up only of traditional instruments. For Yannis it might provide the means of realising complicated aural visions that enable the sense of 'hovering' that he likes to create in his music. A state of mind that might also have something to do with his sense of existing 'in-between' different cultures. Francisco Lopez uses electronic means to place as much focus as possible on, as he put it, "sound as transformation, radical transformation.
In fact I attended the festival partly with the purpose of making a short radio programme for Danmarks Radio with the aim of finding out just how electronics featured in South African musical life. While the use of electronics in a European context may seem 'natural', it is not necessarily the first thing that springs to mind when thinking of African music!
Two particularly inspiring guests that I met were Halim El Dabh and Pauline Oliveros, two musicians/composers with a lifetime's experience of listening attentively and knowing the power of vibrations on the mind and body. Halim points out that electronic music lends itself to a focus on vibration - both the transforming of sound and using sound as a means of transformation. He argues that this focus on the transformative aspect has been present in traditional African music for thousands of years. That many so called 'primitive' societies have a highly developed sense and use of sound as a means of transformation.
Pauline begins her book Deep Listening with a wonderful quote:
"The first concern of all music in one way or another is to shatter the indifference of hearing, the callousness of sensibility, to create that moment of solution we call poetry, our rigidity dissolved when we occur reborn - in a sense hearing for the first time" - Lucia Dlugoszweski
Speaking to composers from my own generation such as Yannis Kyriaides and Francisco Lopez it became apparent that it was precisely this aspect of electronic music that made it so appealing to younger composers. It can offer a ladder of escape from being caught up with the traditons and 'languages' that one has to deal with when composing for ensembles and orchestras made up only of traditional instruments. For Yannis it might provide the means of realising complicated aural visions that enable the sense of 'hovering' that he likes to create in his music. A state of mind that might also have something to do with his sense of existing 'in-between' different cultures. Francisco Lopez uses electronic means to place as much focus as possible on, as he put it, "sound as transformation, radical transformation.