From the Future Past
http://www.alansondheim.org/sanshin.jpg https://youtu.be/b4oxsZbGfqY sanshin VIDEO http://www.alansondheim.org/alpinezither.jpg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFqKpjd8k-I recorded 2009 VIDEO Alpine zither played through the Access Grid, sending the music around the world and back again, where it 'thickens.' Clearly an example of somatic ghosting, an acoustic instrument, with all that entails, in relation to digital transmission. It appears almost like an old analog video; it ran on a special Internet backbone from West Virginia University, through Sydney, among other nodes. Then in 2020 - playing an Okinawan sanshin, which raises many questions for me; the instrument is used in slow and uncannily beautiful traditional music, played mainly in the lower registers. And then I'm playing it like a madman shamisen player in a Taiko performance - well, not exactly like that at all, but closer. I found and bought the instrument years ago at Music Inn, in Manhattan, one of my favorite stores. It's quite old (I think somewhere between the 1950s and 70s) and was basically unplayable, with the wrong bridge and bad tears in the python skin on both front and back. It had been badly "modified" as well. I returned it to playable condition, repairing the skin. This kind of skin is now illegal to import, which I'm in total agreement with of course. But there are ethical questions - should I be playing this at all? The music is my own, has none of the intensity and brilliance of the music it "was designed for," but was it? I play shakuhachi, a very traditional music, I'm nowhere near that music as well. What I do have is enormous respect for instruments and the cultures that produced them; I've never been interested in what I see as a kind of cultural borrowing involved in world music, although I'm aware that's a misreading as well. Then there are people who would say whatever I do, don't call it jazz, or don't call it folk music or don't call it music, it's not music, it's noise. In any case I restored the instrument to a playable condition; it sounds duller than it would, if the skin hadn't been repaired. I love the sound, the difficulty for me playing up the neck, the feel of it. I've used it as well in improvisation with Edward Schneider, more on that when I process the files. When I play these instruments, some of which go back more than a century, I'm always aware of the presence of others, as if I live through them, as if they lived through me. That's presumption, not true at all of course. And to return to the Alpine zither, that indeed is more than a century old itself. http://www.alansondheim.org/alpinezither.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/sanshin.jpg ___ _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
