Hey Everyone, I recently resubscribed after having left the list shortly after 9/11. I have posted a couple of times in the last few days, but my posts haven't showed up on digest due to some mysterious technical difficulty -- so I am revamping the 2 posts and combining them and reposting them, so my apologies for any redundancy if you got my other emails...
I had mixed feelings about leaving b/c on one hand, being part of the community during hard times can be a great thing, but I was feeling so completely overwhelmed by life, that I just didn't see how I could possibly keep up with it. There are many of you who wrote really nice things to me in the immediate aftermath, and many of those never got a response from me -- I apologize for not writing back, please know that I deeply appreciated receiving notes from you. I'm a lame correspondent as it is, and I was just a total zombie for months. I recently visited Alison (thanks again, Alison!) in Utah for a week, and we traipsed around the desert, and man, was that ever exactly what I needed. I'm finally waking up and feeling human again. I'm so excited that Bob Muller, my Ganja Line compadre, is coming to town. Bob, if you trumpet like an elephant, I promise to cackle maniacally, just like a good rastah. So, where's the party? :-) I'm getting excited about JoniFest! Especially so because by the time it rolls around, I will have pre-release rough mix CDs available to sell to all of you -- and I'm prepared to twist some arms! :-D No, seriously, I am working on my first full-length CD project now, and I am totally psyched, dude! It will be a mix of full band arranged songs and spare, acoustic songs. I've got the wonderful David Pilgrim on bass (a Barbados-born reggae/R&B man who would put our Ganja Line to shame), the amazing James Fernandez Yarish (of the David Pilgrim Band) on electric guitar, and hip groove master Bill Dobrow on drums. So, if I suck, at least the band won't! :-D Anyway, the CD (called "Overripeness") will be released in the fall, but I'll have some homegrown CDs available at the Fest. Hey, are any of you web designers? I'm a graphic designer and have had this notion that I must do everything myself, but my web experience is limited to one Dreamweaver class over a year ago... and I've realized it's time for me to delegate. So, if any of you can give me some leads on a reasonably priced website design/maintenance thingy, it would be much appreciated. I've already purchased my domain name (kayashley.com), but haven't taken action beyond that... The other email that didn't seem to make it through (though Kakki responded to me personally -- so perhaps people who get every email received it, but not those on digest??? ANYWAY...) was my contribution to the "is early Joni more melodic debate," which may be hopelessly irrelevant now; but for posterity's sake, here is my 2 cents' worth of musical analysis: I don't pretend to have the musical background of David Lahm, whose musical prowess I have witnessed and delighted in first hand; and I'm sure that despite my musical training, there are people involved in the debate who are more advanced than I... but I have to object to the objections to Joni's statement about her later work being more melodic and more harmonically complex. For me, the major distinguishing characteristic between her "early" and "later" work (for me, the sea change begins to occur with C&S/HOSL, and is firmly in place by Hejira) is that her early work has the overt, overarching melodic lines one would associate with European music, particularly 19th century art songs, as well as the American "folk" sensibility; and that her later work deals more with internal melody, or internal tensions -- internal dissonances and internal resolutions -- which is, in fact, much more African than her earlier work. Her earlier work could only be described as African in her! occasional use of bluesy bent notes, etc. -- a superficial African attribute (though her early use of the open G tuning could arguably be blues.) The end result is that we may hear in her later work an increase in "texture," but in my view, "texture" is code for more complex melodic structures. The prevalence of major and minor seconds, both in the tunings themselves and in her chords, as well as in her melodies and harmonies increases drastically; the result is more complex colorations and thus more complex emotional response, despite the comparative reduction in "vertically" challenging melodies. I would argue that people consider her later work less melodic because they focus on the relative absence of soaring melodies of the "Song to a Seagull" ilk; in addition, the emotional complexity of her structures can produce subconscious ambivalence or even confusion, but this is only because we are not used to having our ears taxed in that way. A quick listen to some key tr! aditions in world music will illustrate how comparatively des! titute th aural palette is, apart from true blues & jazz (this comparative destitution can largely be blamed on the dominance of equal tempered tuning systems adopted in the 18th and 19th centuries, and western music's consequent abandonment of just intonation); and to me, one of her great triumphs in music is helping to create an increased tolerance and appreciation of dissonance and complex colors in western POP music (obviously these characteristics are encouraged in Jazz, but Jazz is much less accessible for most people.) We all know that she should be more openly celebrated than she is (if I have to watch Dylan get worshipped for caterwauling nonsense on one more televised awards ceremony, I will pull out my hair), but I think that we are not clear on WHY. Yes, she is a brilliant poet and a brilliant composer; she has sung the soundtrack to our lives; and she has always been ahead of her time; but I think that the actual, core reasons WHY she is ahead of her time are not clear! ly understood. My contention is that she HAS become more melodically complex with time, and that it is her evolving harmonic and melodic complexity that is her major contribution and her legacy -- not her confessional lyrics, nor her "female" point of view. I think my contention is borne out by the number of "musician's musicians" who have tremendous influence and who also name her as a major influence: Sting, Prince, Peter Gabriel, Michael Hedges, and yes, even Jimmy Page, among many others; these are all artists who have produced sonically complex and innovative work, and guess what: they're men! I think Joni's influence is far deeper, more far reaching and far more profound than critics like the ones at Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly, etc., would ever guess. Joni was right to disdain the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame award, because those people DON'T get it; they think coquettish, more precious-than-thou Jewel and the whole Lilith Fair phenomenon is the only evide! nce of her legacy -- and they would never want to be perceive! d as bein " and miss a bandwagon, no matter what the bandwagon is. Thankfully those savvy Swedes get it, though, and gave her a truly meaningful award with the Polar Music Prize. Glad to be back! :-) Kay Ashley P.S. Thanks, Les!! :-) -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ .
