October, 1988 -- -- - • -' - • ®

BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL SPONSORED BY PHILIP MORRIS COMPANIES INC. --- -·-·-

Brooklyn Academy of Music NEXT WAVE Festival Sponsored by Philip Morris Companies, Inc. October, 1988 Volume 6, No. I

CONTENTS

Knee-deep in Reality: Lee Breuer and His Trouble by James Leverett ...... 3

Susan Marshall's World of Quiet Eloquence by Susan Reiter ...... 8

Outside the Mainstream by Tim Page ...... II

The Heroic Vision of Gilgamesh by Elizabeth Williams ...... 13

David Byrne's Musical World by Robert Farris Thompson ...... 16

Trying to Play Life: The Music of M-Base by Suzanne McElfresh ...... 20

A Language of Images ...... 23

Cover: Photographs of artists who have The NEXT WAVE Festival is produced by the participated in the NEXT WAVE Festival Brooklyn Academy of Music, 30 Lafayette by Betty Freeman. These photographs, and Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, 11217 many others, will be part of an exhibit of Ms . Freeman's photographs, Music People ON THE NEXT WAVE is published by and Others, that will be on display in the the Humanities Program of the BAM BAM lobby from October 28 through NEXT WAVE Festival. December 18. Betty Freeman is one of America's Editor: Roger W. Oliver foremost supporters and promoters Associate Editor: Rory MacPherson of contemporary art and music. She is the founder/secretary of the contemporary Design: Jon Crow/Advance Graphic Art Council of the Los Angeles County NEXT WAVE logo design: Museum and a longtime patron of such Valerie Pettis + DOUBLESPACE contemporary artists as john Cage, Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Robert Wilson . She © 1988 by the Brooklyn Academy of Music began taking photographs in 1972 while she was producing a prize-winning docu­ mentary film on composer Harry Partch. Music People and Others was exhibited at the Decolage Gallery in Milan, Italy in 1987 and at the Los Angeles Music Center earlier this year. The catalog of the exhibi­ tion will be available in the BAM lobby. • Knee-deep in Reality:

I want not one impossible thing, but two Out of not one impossible need, but two Called not one impossible name, but two I am not one impossible me, but two Breuer, Hajj

"Brazil! Trinidad! You who have your theatres rolling and dancing through the streets. In our mausoleums at the Kennedy and Lincoln Centers we hear you faintly. Breuer, "The Theatre and Its Trouble"

What I really wanna be is the fool who rushed in. Breuer, in the Village Voice

Bob Telson (left) and Lee Breuer, the creators of The Warrior Ant. 3 Lee Breuer and His Trouble by James Leverett

This summer, the only way to talk was rehearsing the company in a under her wing. Its members thought with Lee Breuer was to ride with him. production of Lear-Shakespeare's play, they were about to spend their penuri­ The reaction of friends anxious for my yes, but with Maleczech in the title role ous summer near Mabou Mines, Nova safety was an instant, "They gave him a and all of the other parts gender­ Scotia, and they liked the sound of it. license1" As a driver he's actually fine, reversed as well. They ended up instead in nearby Mar­ but neither of us is an ace at finding the No wonder a Mabou Mines gathering garee Harbor. Lee has never even been shortest distance between two points. had collectively blanched when I inno­ to Mabou Mines, although founding We began late one July morning as cently remarked that I needed a few members JoAnne Akalaitis and Philip the heat was rolling in to soak New hours of Breuer's time to talk about his Glass, who were then married, still have York in a vitriolic summer-long broth. grandiose epic while he was rehearsing summer places in the vicinity. After a couple of my jittery has-he-left­ their great tragedy. They knew, some Now nearing its twentieth anniver­ yet calls to the Mabou Mines office, after decades of experience, that at the sary, Mabou has been admired for its Breuer's rented compact pulled up in heart of his creativity is a maniacal collaborative longevity and diverse front of the Cafe Dante on Macdougal compulsion to switch roles, thought productivity in spite of the encroach­ Street just as a damp, roseate Wally systems, art forms, lovers, area codes, ments of poverty, philistinism and mid­ Shawn struggled past from the other races, genders, classes, nationalities, in dle age-a rather rosey mythology for direction, dragging a collection of bags midstream, mid-conversation, mid­ an often raspingly opinionated and per­ and parcels, on his way out of town to metaphor, mid-word. They also knew versely weird collection of sensibilities. shoot a movie. Breuer joyously rolled his sometimes calamitous proclivity for The need among these intransigent down his window and offered him a juggling several mammoth projects at individuals to operate collectively, and part in The Warrior Ant. Also delighted, once. Hadn't he tried, with disastrous of this stalwartly persevering collective but disoriented, Shawn wrote his phone effect, to direct a section of Gospel at to strike off individually, sets up polar number on the bag of iced cappucino I Co/onus at the Avignon Festival and tensions and ironic contradictions that had brought from the Dante. oversee the Los Angeles company of animate the group as a whole and its The next stop was Breuer's mother's his doo-wop opera Sister Suzy Cinema individual members. apartment in Chelsea to leave her some over the phone while he was rehearsing According to Breuer, The B. Beaver money. On the way he explained that The Tempest in Central Park for Joseph took a year to make because everyone he had been dreaming of Wally for the Papp-a Tempest with eleven Ariels, was arguing all the time, but the first role of a kind of rabbinical commenta­ including a Sumo wrestler and several external sign of internal stress came in tor to comment on a kind of Rasta small children/ 1978 with the production of the final commentator who would comment on Breuer has never taken an easy path. animation, The Shaggy Dog. By that what was going on in his mock heroic Via negativa is a favorite phrase in his time, his place as the company's de epic about a Samurai ant whose father eclectic lexicon. After wanderjahre, facto artistic director, indeed artistic was really a termite. He also mused first on the West Coast in the interval conceiver, was under total siege, most about supporting his many dependents, between Beatniks and Flower Children, pressingly by Akalaitis. As Mabou irony including his mother, two children by his then in Europe and adjacent parts of would have it, she was also the principal wife Ruth Maleczech, two more from A sia and Africa, his career merged with animator of Rose, the central figure in other provenances, and a fifteen-year­ that of Mabou Mines. Just as he-in Breuer's text and a contemporary old Siberian husky named Little, who spite of his gum-chewing deal-making woman's nightmare of identity. Rose had been the inspiration for another mythology-was not born in California was a puppet (Akalaitis' exact double in epic, The Shaggy Dog. Little, incidentally, but in Philadelphia, Mabou Mines was miniature) and the obsessive, masochis­ now lay on a towel in the backseat and not born in Canada but out of a group tic lover of a macho human master­ would remain there, silent and in seem­ that formed in Paris in the late sixties. the titular shaggy dog herself. ing bliss, during the whole trip, sweetly It returned here to experience avant­ Breuer and Akalaitis have not worked incontinent in her dotage. garde adulation and scraping poverty together again. She plunged ahead with We were off up the river, our desti­ while performing Beckett's Play, Come her first two successes, Beckett's Cas­ nation Cornwall-on-Hudson where and Go and The Lost Ones, and the first cando and her own creation, Dressed Mabou Mines was in residence for a of the Breuer "animations," The Red Like an Egg, based on Colette. He, month at The Theatre Institute at Horse and The B. Beaver, in galleries though experiencing a writing break­ Storm King. Between summer presenta­ and museums. through with Shaggy Dog ("I had found tions of chunks of The Warrior Ant at Mabou Mines began formally in 1970 my own style and was not writing a Spoleto in South Carolina and the when it actually went inside a theater. derivative or influenced style"), American Music Theater Festival in La Mama's Ellen Stewart needed a name drowned for a time in an identity crisis Philadelphia, and its opening at BAM 's in order to tell her funders about the and felt in danger of "vanishing." Both 4 NEX T WAVE Festival in the fall, Breuer new collective she was briefly taking he and Akalaitis now do separate • projects within the framework of the company (Lear and her upcoming "Mor­ mon Project") and outside it (Warrior Ant and her Green Card, seen this sum­ mer at the Joyce Theatre). As Breuer described the Mabou situa­ tion to Ross Wetzsteon in his compre­ hensive 1987 Village Voice interview, "The two poles are ardent feminists and the macho pig." Getting into trou­ ble is Lee Breuer's trouble, and his art. Little, the original Shaggy Dog, sleeps quietly in the back as we miss our turn and continue up the Hudson. Breuer is well into a two-hour aria, punctuated only by occasional murmurs from me­ vain efforts to enter the stream. The interview is only a pretense to work through The Warrior Ant again, to relive A scene from Part I of The Warrior Ant. its genesis, review its problems, reshuf­ fle its influences, wonder about its fate. He spins a skein of free association would become the world into which humanist position, a parade is an epit­ which whips out to ensnare ideas, toss the Warrior Ant is born. The twenty­ ome of all those mad enticements of them up to see if they catch the wind, foot queen ant comes from the festival romance, of events, of life. It says, race on before they can fly or fall. It is parade, as do the truck-floats. 'Come to me, I am the answer. My a typical Breuer performance, so Breuer is not the first artist whom song is the song. My cock is the cock. extreme in its swoops from Kafka to pre-Lenten carnival-part orgy, part My face is the face. Love me. Here I Carnival, Dante to the Quantum sacrament-has inspired. But its ability am. Bye.' Then the next one says, 'It's Theory, Bunraku to socio-biology, that to encompass a range of human me!' The parade is so deeply metaphysi­ it might be taken as hallucinated rant or response from the sentimentally popu­ cal and so magnificently erotic at the calculated flim-flam. Intimations of both lar to the passionately spiritual suits the same time. What could be a more per­ madness and con-artistry are part of his creator of Gospel at Co/onus particularly fect metaphor for the birth of this legend, as are hybris and megalomania. well. It's on his scale: "A metaphor for mystical ant1" Yet, these ingredients, distressing to the entire world, a 'macromudra', " he To see a phenomenon like a parade most of us mortals, are standards on calls it, typically crossbreeding poetry from two points of view, the scientific the visionary bill of fare. In order to and religion, East and West. "It can be and the humanistic, is echt Breuer. As create, Breuer must provide for himself very Las Vegas-y or very mystical. It's Gerald Rabkin pointed out in his 1983 an imaginative playing field that can con­ existence manifested in song and dance, essay, "Lee Breuer and His Double," tain everything and its opposite. His a ritual of romance and ultimately con­ written in these pages on the occasion power lies in irony and paradox. He ception. It's knee-deep in reality." of the premiere of Gospel at Co/onus at thrives on doubt and subversion. Some Carnival provides not just boundless BAM, "... his total vision was and say he wants to produce the world. He content but infinite form: "Since I first remains dialectical, a synthesis of oppo­ at least wants to make it sing his song. saw Carnival in Brazil, I've wanted to sites and oppositions." One side of the In 1986 Breuer, his composer/collabo­ stage a play as a parade. A parade is dialectic is always science, and Breuer's rator Bob Telson and designer Alison one of the most mystical and mysteri­ discourse on The Warrior Ant is filled Yerxa went to Trinidad for carnival. ous images that can be perceived. If with references to O.E. Wilson's writ­ They stayed with the family of a you perceive it as a theater stage, you ings on socio-biology, Arthur Koestler woman who had worked for Telson's see that it's relative in the Einsteinian on animal behavior, Max Planck's Quan­ parents since he was a child. Their sense. The image, the event, time­ tum Theory and the latest about the house was next to the pan yard, the present, moves in space. Time equals Unified Field. meeting place for the steel drum space. It's not time that moves, it's Behind his mock heroic beast epic players who drive the pulse of the space, because they do the same play are some long-contemplated specula­ feast. Everyone slept on the floor and on First Street, then Fifth Street, then tions on t he relationship of biological ate in the big kitchen which kept open Ninth Street- do you know what I and cultural evolution and the embattled day and night. Telson learned pan and mean? It's very serial. You have fifteen place of the individual in society. To him, ended up playing with a band. Breuer different representations of the same a masculine warrior ant escaping a female­ pushed the pan carts. He had seen the dramatic idea moving along this time­ dominated, anti-individualist society to carnival in Brazil years before, but the space continuum through the whole lose himself in the erotic embrace of Trinidad experience connected with the parade, like a vibration. Death is no idle choice of subject. Nor epic poem he was then writing. It "Or, if you want to look at it from a is filling a theater with the sounds and 5 One of the featured dancers in The Warrior Ant.

sights of cultures that manifestly are they can let loose with their own, not dominant white male a matter of equally valid art." mere showbiz. Beginning with Sister Suzie, and to a Breuer's reply came implicitly in his Deep exploration of these areas is much greater extent in Gospel at Colo­ refusal to accept a Tony nomination for not necessary to savor the immediate nus, Breuer gave the tables a complete his libretto (printed in the Village Voice delights of this piece and a full exegesis turn by making the outside-the last May 24th) when both performers will have to be left to future investiga­ devalued, "non'!culture-into the inside. and the composer were overlooked: tors, in the hope that such art will still He senses with an artist's antenna what " Black culture opened its doors a little command interest in the future. But it the op-ed pages have been telling us for bit and changed our [his and his white must be said that, for all of his years, that our culture is radically collaborators'] lives. Unhappily, despite obstreperous con-man ways, all of his changing to parallel our demographics. the fact that Gospel has come to be maddening compulsion to stretch the He posits a "new classicism" whose loved by white audiences throughout theater's resources beyond capacity and traditional forms, such as tragedy and America, the white cultural establish­ overextend everyone's energies in the the epic, are reinvigorated by the infu­ ment ... [seems un ]able to return process-his own included, Breuer's sion of other cultures, other races, the favor." ability to set establishment teeth on other sexualities. Indeed, it is a matter For all of its real stresses and flaws, edge-including those of that dentulous of the First World opening doors to all which Rich and others pointed out with fiefdom, the avant-garde-comes from of these other worlds or quite simply some accuracy, Breuer-the white, the sexual and cultural implications of dying; for the inexorable evolutionary male, Jew- had dared to attempt some­ what he puts on stage. There he really forces which govern us biologically, in thing beyond a mere "Black tap show," gets into trouble. some not as yet understood way govern his phrase for a type of entertainment The members of Mabou Mines have us culturally. In Breuer's metaphor­ he considers to embody the true racist always been outsiders in society and, jungled mind, The Warrior Ant is an condescension of the Broadway estab­ like all exemplary artists of this century, allegory of that change: " Down in the lishment. And he had become caught their alienation dictates how their art DNA they're burning the midnight oil" between cultural continents as they looks and how their lives are led. In (The B. Beaver Animation). ground together-ironically the victim their early years they found their As they did in Brooklyn in 1983, of those very evolutionary forces that refuge in postwar European culture, the most audiences in this country and in so fascinate him. Need one elaborate terrain of Existentialism and the Absurd. Europe welcomed Gospefs fusion of on the sheer bravura it takes now to It is paradoxical that Breuer's career, Black Pentecostal church music and combine Trinidadian pan, Brazilian and now coming to a twenty-year fruition Greek tragedy with the joy it seemed Puerto Rican samba, reggae, Arabic with epics of extravagant compass and irresistably to deserve. In 1988, Broad­ music, Osaka Bunraku, West African exotic variety, began with exquisite ren­ way resisted. Frank Rich praised Bob Griot and a string quartet? Those are derings of high modernism's perfect Telson's music and the extraordinary some of the ingredients now contem­ master of subtraction, Samuel Beckett. artists who performed it, but was plated for the complete Warrior Ant. Beginning with Shaggy Dog, his work scornful of Breuer's germinal concept, Then there is sex, which didn't figure has become more and more extrava­ calling Sophocles " shoehorned into a particularly in Gospel, but does mightily gant, voluptuous, funky and the out­ church service" an idea with a "superfi­ in Warrior Ant. In an era when feminism sider more likely embodied in the cial Ivy League bull-session cleverness." is arguably the most vital, transforma­ non-white, non-European, non-Christian, Most devastating was his allegation, and tive force molding intellectual and artis­ non-Jew and non-male. In the case of that of others, of colonialist co-option tic discourse, what is one to make of Warrior Ant, however, the paradox turns of gospel music, shotgun-marrying it to an epic which celebrates the exploits of again with an insouciance almost suicidal Greek tragedy and "gratuitously requir­ a warring male ego in a female in this day and time, and the "other" is ing that Afro-American artists worship (feminized?) society? The only reply is 6 the non-female . at a shrine of Western culture before that Breuer, invariably, compulsively, • goes straight to the points in contem­ He creates what he calls "answer Then there is the crowning Breuer­ porary life that are most inflamed and books": contemporary counterstate­ trouble of whether the poetry, with all inflammatory and reacts to them with ments to Kafka, to Huxley, to Dante. of its complexities of art and science, his entire pregnable, unprecautioned He even answers himself. The true will be intelligible at all when set in his being. It is the difficult way of the reply to the rogue-maleness of Warrior own spectacular production to Bob Tel­ visionary. To the extent that Warrior Ant is the radical femaleness of the son's irrepressible music. Perhaps this is Ant can be considered a metaphorical upcoming /.ear. But that is an answer the ultimate of so many ironies: a poet autobiography of its author, it is also book not yet written and, because of bowing to a theater director, and a meant as an allegory of maleness in a its insolence with Shakespeare's master­ director who transforms the theater world in which basic concepts of mas­ piece, one of high culture's most sacred into an ecstatic, participatory place, full culinity, and masculine individuality, are icons, it might be Breuer's biggest trou­ of new sights and sounds, more parade embattled. We are back to the "ardent ble of all. or rock concert or church than stage, feminists" versus the " macho pig" in in order to present his poetry. It is a Mabou Mines historiography. We are dilemma that cleaves the being of one back to a sexual puppet, in this case a who insists on probing so deeply into Bunraku Samurai ant instead of a dog his own individuality. who looks like joAnne Akalaitis. We The Warrior Ant is a puppet, an are back to Lee Breuer in trouble. abiding image in the Breuer canon, dat­ And back to everything and its oppo­ ing back to the puppet it "answers," its site, to doubt and subversion. Breuer female countepart in Shaggy Dog. The finds no home in his own being. His Bunraku puppet, its master in full view, career as an artist is a paradoxical, is surely the consumate embodiment of dialectical attempt at once to remake Breuer himself-the self with all of its the world in his image and to replace manipulations visible: "The entire himself with that in the world which is metaphysic of theater, and extrapolated not him: not white, not male, not from it, life, is so perfectly realized by middle-class, not Western, not part of a the idea of wood and string that imi­ society of masters, not rational. At tates life. One assumes that one has once to dominate and to self-destruct. free will, because one's imitation of it is Both to unify everything scientifically­ so perfect. One assumes that one is an to see culture as explainable biologically, individual, because one's imitation of to regard art as would a physicist-and being an individual is so perfect. But in to surrender to the erotic, foreign, reality, when you take the breath out transient, heterogeneous, ecstatic, of a puppet, it collapses. The metaphor mysterious, mystical- the world's is much more clear than it would be carnival, its parade. Morgan Freeman as the preacher in the BAM enacted by human beings." The critic Roger Shattuck describes production of The Gospel at Co/onus. Lost in his stream of consciousness, Artaud as "an egomaniac of his own Lee Breuer has briefly lost his way up cleft condition." Breuer equals the the Hudson, but he instinctively knows French seer's self-obsession but, unlike When confronted with the number where the river is all the time. A quick him, can oppose ego with a highly of times the word parody appears in his U-turn sets us right and we are soon developed sense of irony, self-doubt, conversation, he retorts impishly, "I headed down the opposite side. The and comedy. His mighty epic is really a can't convince myself that it's real." jolt sends Little, the original Shaggy "mock" epic, subverting itself at every The "it" could be many things in Dog, thudding to the floor of the car, turn and jittering with anxiety before Breuer's contrary world, one of which but she never loses her elderly com­ its antecedents, which on standard is his status as a poet. His subverted, posure. It is her last trip, I later learn, Breuer-scale include much of Western parodistic text itself reveals his anxiety and she now rests on Storm King and a good bit of Eastern culture: " I on the subject. His considerable ability mountain. thought, 'Wouldn't it be nice to write a to delight and unveil with a punning kind of answer to Kafka's Metamorpho­ banter, which can echo the lyric of sis, to write about a wonderful little the most mundane popular song until golden insect, an individual like the Lit­ it becomes an epiphany, is offset tle Prince of Saint-Exupery'. So out of by an alarming capacity for bathos James Leverett has written about the thea­ that evolved the idea that I could make so pompously laid on that it only ter for many publications. He has just this socio-biological parable, this Dan­ puzzles and repels. Perhaps this is completed nine years as Director of Liter­ tean mix of pop science, pop classicism, just the undigested mockery of a ary Services at Theater Communications pop Hebreo-Christian metaphor. And mock epic, the travesty side of the Group, the national organization for non­ come from a position of pop ignorance carnival. It certainly was a problem profit professional theater and publisher of that was [William] Burroughs-ian into not yet puzzled out at the stage Lee Breuer's Sister Suzie Cinema: The this joke-classical world. To make a of the work-in-progress I saw earlier Collected Poems and Performances joke-classical work." this summer. 1976-1986. 7 Susan Marshall's World of Quiet Eloquence by Susan Reiter

Jackie Goodrich (left) and Eileen Thomas in 8 The Aerialist. • During the past five years Susan up that all of the other characters are and feels she did gain valuable knowl­ Marshall has established herself as a figures in his own interior. I think this edge there about how to construct a master of the miniature-a skilled new work is a little more abstract than dance from her composition classes, shaper of concise, beautifully honed the works I created last year." she had already begun choreographing dances, often for two or three per­ Marshall 's dances have been consis­ before then. She continued to work on formers, in which economy of means tently striking for the range of emo­ her own dances while performing in and subtle nuance open up a world of tional suggestion she unearths through a works by other independent quiet eloquence. The first of her works very specific range of movements care­ choreographers. "I think a very large to attract attention in New York was fully selected for each work. At a time part of what I've learned comes from Ward, a 1983 duet commissioned and when choreographers often overcrowd the work itself-just from working," performed by the enterprising reper­ their works, attempting to encompass she says. "I kept choreographing tory ensemble CoDanceCo. In this an ambitious array of ideas and because my idea was that you didn't gently devastating work, two seated approaches within one piece, Marshall just stop doing it and then after you'd dancers used methodical, precise, displays a keen sense of where to begin made it as a dancer, you started extremely limited movement phrases to and where to end, and how to make choreographing. I felt I'd better get on suggest a complex relationship of pro­ the journey between the two points, with it, figure out how it's done." found despair and dependency. however brief or long, an engrossing She works with a small ensemble of The works that have followed Ward, experience. She establishes each dancer versatile and personable dancers, most showcased during several highly success­ as a distinct person, and through her of whom have been performing her ful seasons at Dance Theater Work­ spare approach and intuitive ability to dances for a number of years. She also shop, were equally impressive, revealing locate and reiterate key movements is had the opportunity, during 1986 and a choreographer with a unique sense of able to communicate a wide range of 1987, to choreograph on several larger character and emotional nuance as well human experience-jealousy, competi­ groups, as the artistic directors of vari­ as a keen grasp of choreographic struc­ tion, exuberance, isolation, disappoint­ ous ballet companies began to seek her ture. Many were duets and trios­ ment. She works as confidently with a out and commission pieces. Within a works such as Arms (1984) and Kin humorous touch-the rough-and-tumble year, she choreographed works for the (1985)-that presented riveting yet siblings of Opening Gambits (1985) and Dallas Ballet, Boston Ballet and the ambiguous relationships, fascinating for the witty, knowing examination of cou­ GRCOP (Groupe de Recherche the clarity of their encounters and their ples in last year's Companion Pieces-as Choregraphique de I'Opera de Paris), range of implications. she does when exploring more poignant the Paris Opera Ballet's experimental Now, the NEXT WAVE Festival has or disturbing material. And it is always wing. Overture, the richly textured work commissioned Marshall 's first full­ through the movement itself, not for fifteen dancers that she made for evening work, entitled Interior with Seven through any additional or extraneous the Boston Ballet, was performed at Figures. She is collaborating with com­ elements, that the work asserts its the 1987 Bessie Awards ceremony. poser Luis Resto, who has provided the powerful hold. Working in these situations required electronic scores for a number of her "The fact that I use a lot of repeti­ a different approach from the one she recent works, and is incorporating a set tion is probably a key aspect of the takes with her own dancers, Marshall (designed by Tom Kamm) for the first work," Marshall reflects. "Part of how soon discovered. After that initial spate time. The project is a challenge the the pieces function dramatically is due of outside activity she has resisted sub­ twenty-nine-year-old choreographer is to the structure of the work and the sequent similar offers. It was not only relishing, as she opens up her work to a fact that there are themes that are the matter of time constraints, although new scale of possibilities and a more repeated and developed. I wouldn't the three weeks usually allotted for expansive time frame. know how to do a dramatic work with­ her to work with unfamiliar dancers "''m working in small sections; I think out first creating a theme that you can who were not used to her approach the work will be in almost self­ understand and identify with a certain did enforce limitations on her work- contained pieces but that they all will person. It's the structure that gives it ing process. accumulate toward one end," she that look of order. "It tends to be a frustrating explained during a breakfast interview in "I think the beauty of dance is that it experience for me, although it has its early August. "A number of characters can occupy an ambiguous place where rewards. Inevitably, I'm not able to take are introduced in one section, and they you can see the relationships and what the work as far as I imagine it, which remain the same. The relationships is happening there, but you don't know leaves me dissatisfied. It never quite gels between the people don't vary during who these people are, and you're really with the image I have in my mind of the evening. It's not a real strict narra­ not sure what's happening because it's where I'd like the work to go, because tive; it's more of a layered narrative. It not spelled out in words. That's the there is no time." Marshall finds that jumps around in time and viewpoint, wonderful thing, that it walks this line. communicating her ideas to dancers she but it all involves the same group of You've got people out there, and they're is facing for the first time is a much people. Through this, an individual pres­ doing things to one another, so you more lengthy process than she is used ence does emerge, and you do have a have a lot of meaning in that sense, and to with her regular ensemble, who can main figure; that becomes clearer as yet you can't nail it down." carry out an idea she sketches and take the dance progresses. And it also ends Although Marshall attended Juilliard it to fruition. "It might take me an 9 the thread of the work. "We're trying to make it some type of archetypal interior. I thought that for an evening­ length work, with all these different segments and unrelated parts, that it would need to have a set to make sure that it was all one work and that the people all did have a relationship with one another." For all the inherent drama of Mar­ shall's choreography, she has not been tempted to incorporate text into her pieces. "I have a lot of respect for the written word, and I know that that's not my skill, so I stay away from it," she remarks. "It's not easy to make dances that have some kind of narrative or dramatic content. I feel that the more a dance is carried by the movement- not by music, sets, text or costumes-to that extent it's better dance. That's just my prejudice." Music, however, has played an impor­ tant role in enhancing her works. The scores have always been unintrusive but carefully supportive of the movement. Marshall has formed a particularly productive working process with Luis Arthur Armijo and Susan Marshall in Arms. Resto, whose music she feels "adds hour to get a simple idea out on a incredibly to the work." Their collabo­ company I'm not familiar with, and then rations are marked by intensive 24-hour I'm wedded to it, because there only stints of continuous work, as she arrives are so many hours. So I have to keep in Detroit, where Resto is based, armed it, like it or not. with videotapes of sketched-out move­ "It's very different with my own ment and they proceed to bounce ideas company. I can give a description and off each other. "I give very vague kind of sculpt them as they're moving, instructions and he is able to interpret and they're able to fulfill it. The work I them. I describe what I'd like to hear, come up with for them has a lot more and let him know if I think it's develop­ risk to it; it just keeps going places where ing in the right direction." I didn't expect it to go that are excit­ Their collaboration, which has ing. It keeps redoubling and feeding back encompassed Ward, Arms, Opening to me, and that will give me another Gambits and The Aerialist, will be led idea. It just keeps opening and opening." into new and intriguing territory by the Discussing her overall body of work, scope of Interior with Seven Figures. With Marshall allows that it is "dramatic in this latest project, Marshall will balance that it's not about dancers or dance. It the intimacy that her rigorously shaped has at its center men and women. I dances have portrayed so effectively can't come up with movement very with the new possibilities offered by a well if I don't see the ideas in terms of lengthier time frame and a series of people. That seems to be a motivating more extended episodes. The opportu­ source, so it's hard to imagine doing a nity presented by this NEXT WAVE completely non-dramatic work. Even if I project is certain to reveal newly fas­ did an abstract work, it would have dra­ cinating aspects of this highly individual matic undertones." choreographer's impressive talents. She is clearly wrestling with the bal­ ance between the abstract and more dramatic aspects of Interior with Seven Figures, deciding how the presence of a Susan Reiter writes about dance and thea­ 10 set wi ll fit in and how it will help carry ter for a wide variety of publications . • Outside the Mainstream by Tim Page

A little provincialism can be good for ing to live up to a glorious heritage, the soul. If I were to chart the areas these countries are beginning to bear where the most interesting European their own fascinating, individual music is being made today, the map mutations. would encompass the Scandinavian On October 28 and 29, Dennis countries-Denmark, Norway, Sweden Russell Davies will conduct a program and particularly Finland-and the nations devoted to new works from Eastern of Eastern Europe, including those Europe, Germany and Austria at the which have been forcibly incorporated Brooklyn Academy of Music, as part of into the Union of Soviet Socialist the 1988 NEXT WAVE festival. A high­ Republics: Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and light will be the New York premiere of the Ukraine. Soviet composer Alfred Schnittke's Now all of these lands fall outside Violin Concerto No.4, with Gidon the boundaries of the traditional Euro­ Kremer as soloist. pean "Classical" musical mainstream, The programs will also include two and this is, to a large extent, what has works by the Estonian composer Arvo saved them from the confusion and Part and the local premieres of "Starck­ self-consciousness that have gripped deutsche Lieder und Tanze" by Kurt many of their neighbors. Many Italian Schwertsik and "Denk lch An Haydn" composers have foresaken the coun­ by Heinz Winbeck. (The latter two are, try's traditional lyricism for academic respectively, an Austrian and a German Modernism. Conservative Vienna often composer who have elected to work seems content to pat itself on the back outside their national traditions.) for having allowed Franz Schubert to Schnittke may be the Soviet Union's live there ISO years ago, while a lot of most celebrated avant-gardist. He has Conductor Dennis Russell Davies. the younger French composers have rejected the socialist realism that has adopted Pierre Boulez's theories of long typified official Soviet composition musical organization (which are negligi­ and managed to get away with it. His ble) while ignoring his substantial contri­ works combine atonality, chance music, butions toward a poetry of timbres. prepared pianos and other Western However, the Scandinavian and East­ inventions with a distinct and personal ern European countries have fewer idiom. While Schnittke's compositions strictures, fewer traditions, fewer Great may be eclectic in their syntax, one is Men to live up to. They cannot coast, always aware of a unified conception nor rest on their laurels. Nobody behind them. speaks of a "Finnish sound" and there The violinist Gidon Kremer has long are no monolithic musical icons in been a champion of Schnittke's music. latvia fro m whom it has somehow The two men have been friends for a been decreed that all serious work long time, and Kremer not only plays must henceforth derive. Schnittke's compositions but also his Not that these lands are starving for cadenzas for Beethoven's violin con­ musical culture. Far from it. All of them certo. I remember a performance of have had strong, thriving folk traditions that concerto in 1985. The first move­ for centuries, and they have incorpo­ ment chugged along bli thely and then, rated and made contributions to the just as the orchestra reached the 6/4 classical mainstream as well. But it has chord-traditionally the resting spot been an outsider's understanding, one from which semi-improvised pyrotech­ earned on the periphery of that main­ nics begin to emerge, allowing the artist stream, rather than in its central flow. to display his virtuosity (usually via a While this may seem exclusionary, it is collection of scales and arpeggios) also liberating. For, rather than attempt- Kremer took off on a wild, dissonant II and rhapsodic flight of fancy-a succes­ vince people in my music that a lot of sion of sound effects, overtones, simple things are possible. The only in­ squeaks and squawks. teresting thing a composer can contrib­ Art or shock therapy? One couldn't ute is emotion, a special way of looking tell. It was clearly not an example of at something. I write and feel simply." echt Romantic style but, in its own way, Simplicity is a key element in the this seemed an apt and telling revisionist music of both Part and Schwertsik, as comment on the music and, indeed, on well as in the work of such spiritual the whole concerto tradition. Kremer compatriots as Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki has summed up Schnittke's aim as one (whose third symphony impresses me as of musical confrontation. "We suddenly one of the most affecting works to find ourselves within the Beethoven emerge from Poland since the second Violin Concerto but also within our world war) and in the compositions of own century," he told Alan Rich in the best American minimalists. Here 1986. "That builds up a tension, not to we find a simplicity that is not sim­ destroy Beethoven's music but to show pleminded but elegant and economical, that we are far away from this beauty." with nothing extraneous, or decorative, The outsider, once again. no needless complexity. Schnittke and Kremer joined forces Heinz Winbeck, born in 1946, is the on a beautiful ECM album several years youngest of our composers. He studied ago entitled "Tabula Rasa," which in Munich, and has created a handful of served to introduce the music of Arvo works which have won him an interna­ Part to Western audiences. Part had tional reputation, including composit ions been a prominent film composer in the for piano and string trio, a string quar­ Soviet Union before defecting in the tet, a concerto for cello and chamber mid-1970s. After his repatriation, he orchestra and the featured " Denk lch began writing sparse, austere, mostly An Haydn," which is described as consonant music which combined "three fragments for orchestra," a minimalism with a cloistered medieval­ meditation on the great and prolific ism. It was music that could have come 18th century symphonist. Dennis Russell from any century but which seemed Davies has been an impassioned advo­ Violinist Gidon Kremer. absolutely of our time. cate of Winbeck's work and recently Part's second album, "Arbos," the observed that "the impact of his music t itle piece of which will be played in the on the audience is overwhelming." Brooklyn Philharmonic's concert, often And so, once again, the Brooklyn calls to mind the chaste purity of such Philharmonic Orchestra will be bringing composers as Frescobaldi and Machaut, a program of unusual music to New yet there is something disturbing about York. We owe the orchestra a debt of it as well, something haunted, which gratitude for, after all , even our most marks it clearly as a product of the revered classics were "new music" 20th century. ('Tabula Rasa," with its once. It is valuable to hear the works twisting, turning filigree for two violins of Handel, Faure, Rachmaninoff, Verdi, and its harrowing intensity always Puccini, Tchaikovsky and company, and reminds me of Vivaldi with a scream.) these composers will be well-represented Schwertsik began his career as a disci­ on this year's other BPO programs. But ple of John Cage, Mauricio Kagel, and leave room for Schnittke, Part, Schwertsik Karlheinz Stockhausen. But he was and Winbeck. There is something very always most comfortable working special happening here. within a tonal framework. It is said that one of his early pieces, entitled "Lie­ bestraume," prompted Stockhausen to give the young man a sugar cube-harsh criticism indeed in the heyday of angst­ Tim Page is the chief music critic for ridden Modernism! N ewsday and the host of a program But this did not change Schwertsik's devoted to new and unusual music on mind. Since then, he has managed to WNYC-FM . Three times a winner of combine a certain experimentalism with ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award, his books a direct and even gentle musical language. include The Glenn Gould Reader (1985) • " I try not to be too complicated," the and Selected Letters of Virgil Thomson 12 composer said recently. " I try to con- (1988). The Heroic Vision of by Elizabeth Williams The Epic of Gilgamesh, used by Robert Wilson and David Byrne as the mythical parallel for the Industrial Revo­ Gilgamesh lution in their music-theater work The Forest, is one of the most ancient liter­ ary creations known to us, dating to the second and first millenniums B.C.E. (c. 2000-2600 B.C.E.) in ancient Mesopotamia, roughly present-day Iraq. This extensive and beautiful epic poem recounts the adventures of the semi­ divine Gilgamesh, in reality an early king-and kingship itself as an institution is first known in Mesopotamia-of the city-state of Uruk, modern Warka in Iraq, called Erech in the Old Testament (c. 2700 B.C.E.). Historically Gilgamesh is known to have erected the first city walls of Uruk and to have been wor­ shipped as a god after his death. Ver­ sions of the text, written on clay tablets in the cuneiform (wedge-shaped) script of ancient Mesopotamia and, in its latest and most complete scribal ren­ dering from the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh (c. 7th century B.C.E.), in the semitic Akkadian language, were found in 19th-century excavations at major archaeological sites throughout Mesopotamia. The epic interweaves history with legendary and mythical events, for example making Gilgamesh the son of a goddess and a priest, and is united by Mesopotamian cylinder seal thought to one central theme: the search for represent a scene from The Epic of Gilgamesh. immortality and the inevitability of death. Although this unifying thread runs through the whole epic, other profound human issues such as love and friendship, the relationship of nature and culture, the power and meaning of dreams, loss and mourning are also explored. And these together with the power of the poetry itself still elicit a response from our post-post-modern hearts. At the beginning of the Epic Gil­ gamesh is a great king of Uruk, une­ qualed in strength, beauty, and energy. His reign, however, is so oppressive (seemingly involving forced labor, con­ stant confrontations with the citizenry, and first intercourse with every bride) that his subjects make a plea to the gods to spare them from his tyranny. The gods respond; they create a rival, an equal, a distraction, Enkidu. This wild man roams the steppe with the animals 15 and is like them. He eats grass, is The demon Humbaba in a clay Following the slaying of Humbaba, flings it as an insult in lnanna's face. covered with hair and is superhumanly figure of Assyria and Babylonia. Gilgamesh and Enkidu receive heroes' Gilgamesh and Enkidu then wash in strong, freeing wild animals from welcomes in Uruk. Seeing the splendor the Euphrates, embrace each other, and their traps. of the victorious king, the goddess ride triumphantly through the streets of Gilgamesh, who learns of Enkidu's lnanna (the greatest of Mesopotamian Uruk, proclaiming, "Who is most splen­ existence from several dreams and from goddesses, of both fertility and war in did among the heroes? Gilgamesh is the tale of a frightened hunter, sends a her later manifestions as lshtar) offers most splendid among the heroes." prostitute to the wilds to tempt Enkidu, to become his lover and wife. Gil­ Here, the heroes exhibit hubris, the to tame and to humanize him through gamesh, reminding her of the unfor­ overweening pride of the Greeks, and love-making. After seven days and nights tunate fates of all her previous lovers, disaster follows. In a dream, Enkidu of lying with the courtesan, Enkidu insultingly turns her down: "Thou art learns that he must die for killing the returns to the steppe but finds he but a brazier which goes out in the Bull of Heaven and Humbaba (and for frightens the beasts and has lost at least cold, A back door which does not keep insulting lnanna). Following a vision of some of his animal-like strength. The out blast and windstorm, A shoe which death and the underworld, Enkidu prostitute then brings him to the city, . pinches the foot of its owner! Which becomes ill and dies. Gilgamesh, heart­ to Uruk, where he learns "to eat lover didst thou love forever? " Scorned broken, mourns his friend for "seven bread" and "to drink strong drink," and infuriated, lnanna turns for help to days and seven nights." becoming civilized. He meets Gilgamesh her father, the Sky-God Anu , in gaining Robert Wilson's mastery of dream­ at the threshold of a bride's bed­ her revenge. Although at first reluctant, like imagery finds a worthy parallel in chamber, challenges him, and engages Anu comes to her aid and sends the the Gilgamesh Epic. Ancient Near East­ him in a ferocious struggle. Though Bull of Heaven to wreak drought and ern cylinder seals often depict nightmar­ Enkidu loses the battle, the pair are destruction on the city of Uruk and on ish struggles between humans, hybrid evenly matched and, in the last passage Gilgamesh. Again the heroes prevail, creatures, and monsters that probably of this first portion of the epic, slaying the Bull of Heaven, tearing out derive from the battles of Gilgamesh become fast friends and companions. its heart, and laying it before the Sun­ and Enkidu against Humbaba and the According to several scholars, this ini­ God Shamash as an offering. When Bull of Heaven. The Mesopotamian text tial encounter of Gilgamesh and Enkidu lnanna, bemoaning the Bull's death, also uses dreams, especially in the sec­ represents the clash of culture and threatens Gilgamesh once again, Enkidu tion dealing with the death of Enkidu, nature, of an urban versus a nomadic tears away the bull's right thigh and to expand on reality (portraying other life, of the "raw versus the cooked." portray again and again over thousands dimensions, the realms of the gods or For the ancient Mesopotamians, this of years a heroic nude figure and a the dead) to foretell the future, and, in struggle was the central fact of their semi-human accomplice grappling with the case of the epic, to propel the nar­ existence, since only through constant wild animals that some would interpret rative. And although the poem con­ upkeep of irrigation canals could their as Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Unfortu­ tinues, chronicling Gilgamesh's search desert land alongside the rivers be ren­ nately, Mesopotamian art, unlike for immortality, it is fitting that this sec­ dered fertile and the cities fed. In other Egyptian or later Greek art, bears no tion, dealing with the most mysterious words, it was "civilization''-a new, and labeling inscriptions alongside its aspects of man's life-dreams and rather tenuous development at that scenes; thus this identification must Ancient Near Eastern cylinder seal from the death-should serve as the mythical time, as writing and urban communities remain conjectural. period of Gilgamesh. focus for a visionary work like had just come into existence- that was The epic also deals with Gilgamesh's The Forest. threatened by nature; the balance has recognition of his own mortality and clearly shifted in our day and began quest to establi sh enduring fame for his definitely to do so during the Industrial name through undertaking a great task: Revolution, the setting of The Forest. slaying the evil ogre Humbaba who lives Also familiar to us today is Gilgamesh's in the distant Cedar Forest. Here Gil­ Elizabeth Williams received her Ph.D. in love of competition. According to one gamesh says to Enkidu, "Who, my Ancient Near Eastern Art and Archaeology of the greatest Sumerologists, Samuel friend, can scale heaven? Only the gods from Columbia University. She has pub­ Noah Kramer, this demonstrates the live forever under the sun. As for man­ lished numerous catalogues and articles on "ambitious, competitive, aggressive and kind, numbered are their days, What­ the relationship of art and text in the seemingly far from ethical drive for ever they achieve is but the wind." Ancient Near East and has taught at pre-eminence and prestige, for victory Armed with magic weapons, Gilgamesh Columbia, Berkeley, and UCLA. Presently and success" pervading Sumerian (early and Enkidu then set out on their heroic she with her partner Karen Goodwin have Mesopotamian) life. We have little adventure, journeying to the mountains, formed Fifth Avenue Productions, an direct evidence, however, concerning slaying the gate keeper, and making independent production and financing the epic's use in Sumerian culture. Its their way to the forest guarded by company, involved with Broadway shows poetic form suggests oral transmission Humbaba. Upon chopping down a great like Les Miserables, Phantom of the and it may have been recited or per­ cedar, Humbaba appears, terrifying Gil­ Opera and Into the Woods. This past formed at prescribed times, at religious gamesh with the fearsomeness of his spring Fifth Avenue Productions helped festivals, or as part of cult practices. countenance, and a struggle between bring The Gospel at Colonus to 14 Artistic repres~ntation s on cylinder seals the three ensues. Broadway. 15 David Byrne's Musical World From Rolling Stone, April 21 , 1988. By Straight Arrow Publishers, Inc. © /988. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by Permission.

by Robert Farris Thompson

In 1980 a reporter for a Los Angeles newspaper called to tell me that Talking Heads had mentioned my book African Art in Motion in the press kit for their album Remain in Light. She wanted to know my reaction. Since I had already been tuned in to the Heads' innovative takes on rock music, I told her I was intrigued. And I was. I began to track the group's music more closely. I was especially impressed by the Afro­ Atlantic excursions-My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (with Brian Eno) and The Catherine Wheel-by the band's singer and chief songwriter, David Byrne. In the spring of 1987, I met Byrne for the first time. Jonathan D emme, who had directed Stop Making Sense, Talking Heads' concert film, invited us both to dinner at a cafe on Manhattan's Upper West Side. David came dressed immaculately in white, appropriately evoking the image of an American initi­ ate into the Yoruba religion. Through­ out that first conversation, Demme and I did most of the talking: we were wax­ ing poetic about Haitian vodun (vodun, not voodoo, is the respectful way to refer to this much-maligned African­ rooted religion). But I could see that David genuinely dug Haiti and her arts. Several weeks later, I invited him to accompany me to a Haitian vodun initia­ tion ceremony. It was a canzo, a cer­ emony in which two blacks and two whites (one was an administrative assis­ tant for a major magazine) would pass the fire test, holding their hands briefly in a scalding-hot mixture without feeling anything, as proof of self-control and one­ ness with the spirit. The successful com­ pletion of the canzo would be cele-­ brated with dancing and spirit possessions. The dancing was scheduled for five in the afternoon in a basement hounfor ("shrine") in the Morrisania area of the 16 David Byrne (left) and Robert Wilson, creators of The Forest . Bronx, not far from the George • Washington Bridge. We arrived on famous by the Cuban mambo king who deny the trend probably don't time, but the ceremony didn't get Perez Prado; it cleverly complements know a computer sample from the under way until nearly four hours later. the Afro-Cuban sounds and rhythms proverbial hole in the ground. David passed this impromptu initiation that percolate throughout the rest of "Mr. Jones," on Naked, is a kind of test. Instead of stirring restlessly or the record. declaration of independence for all pointedly glancing at his wristwatch, he I've also learned that David's love these tendencies and rT)Ore. It's an simply plunked himself down in a chair affair with these cultures is not only sin­ answer back to Bob Dylan's "Ballad of and watched a television that someone cere, it's pervasive. The conversations a Thin Man," which has the immortal had left on. Around nine, the drum­ from which this interview is taken lines about Mr. Jones. That song made a mers finally came and set up, and the would usually start at a New York res­ fetish of being snobbish toward out-of-it rhythms for the gods resounded. taurant and wind up at Byrne's home, a elders and beer-drinking, football-loving Several women and one man became loft in SoHo, where he lives with his America. Now Byrne is saying that Mr. possessed by the gods and goddesses of wife, Adelle Lutz, a Eurasian designer. Jones is back, and he's okay. Which is ancient Dahomey, in Africa. Ghede, The loft's outside corridor is guarded good news for us "office buffaloes" one of the most powerful deities, came by two drapeaux de vodun (" vodun (one frie nd's term for the straight and down in the flesh of a woman and­ flags"), which salute the deities Bossu gainfully employed) who love reggae wham!-fell right into David's lap and Erzulie. In the living room, the sofa and soucous and salsa as much as we before lunging ecstatically to the altar. is draped with a multicolored Akan love rock. David hardly blinked an eye. It was as if kente cloth. To the side of a state-of­ Let those who never thought culture the intense non sequiturs of his song­ the-art television is a table set with stopped at the Hudson, who never writing-not to mention the unpredic­ several miniature wedding couples fro­ thought it was only happening in Eng­ tability of rock stardom-had prepared zen in a dance of love over a bogolanfini lish , cast the first stone at David Byrne him well for this kind of experience. cloth from western Africa. There is and mock his work as patronizing. Other outings with David in Afro­ also a wooden Nimba statue, a striking They're missing the point. There is Latin New York have confirmed, for feminine image from the Baga people something happening out there, and it's me, that he has an abiding connection of Guinea, and an amazing fusion Senor Jones (Willie Colon, Ray Ba­ with the arts of the black Atlantic sculpture-with David doing the rretto, Roberto Roena). Senora Jones world. At a New York jazz club called fusing-made of a cake studded with (Celia Cruz) and, in Portuguese, Sen­ Carlos I, for example, I've seen David red power figures purchased in a bota­ hera Jones (Denise Delapenha, Gal in the audience, righteously rocking nica, a Yoruba-American herbal store. Costa, Alcione). It's also Monsieur along with Ayizan, a New York Haitian Of course, not all of the accents are Jones and his Haitian colleagues (Ayizan, band that plays the one-note bamboo African or Afro-American. The bed­ Troupe Makanda!, Coupe Cloue). who trumpets of Haiti over rock and jazz. room area, with its translucent sliding will one day be to New York what the I've also realized from these encounters walls, is Japanesque. And although Mississippi Delta bluesmen were to that David is always "on." He knows Byrne has very hip, up-to-date catalogs Chicago. The showdown music for the how to dress, move, sit, gaze-how to of African, Afro-Brazilian and North showdown decade of the 1990s is augment, with gesture and attitude, any American visionary art on his coffee already here. And David Byrne not only given creative context. I would guess table, his current john literature is an hears it, he makes it. He's keeping up that when he switched from studying important work on film theory by with the Joneses-the right ones. art to performing music, he carried the Jay Leyda. insights of line, form and color to the So one could say that David Byrne is When were you first turned on to African world of grooves and silences. But also, nowadays as much ethnographer as he music? wherever he is, whatever he is doing, is rock artist. All of these interests I think it must have been around he is on in the ethnographic sense of propel him more and more into the 1978. I heard a South African jive being a participant-observer. making of film . (The vodun sequence in instrumental record, something I picked One night at S.O.B.'s, the New York his first film effort, True Stories, fore­ up in a record store. I had no idea what nightclub specializing in African, Brazilian shadows his next big project, a film on it was. and Caribbean black music, Celia Cruz, the Yoruba religion in Brazil). All his What was it about that record that the queen of salsa, invited David on­ imperatives seem to be blurring, one turned you on? stage to play guitar for her. It was, of into the other, and probably just in It was that I heard elements of course, an exciting minievent for the time. The continuing upsurge of black­ sounds that I was sort of familiar with. I performers and the audience. But based popular musics-such as reggae, heard a little bit of Cajun, a little bit of David Byrne, the musician-ethnographer, compos direct, mambo, merengue, Caribbean - gosh, what else? It was just was also there, and he was on. That cadence, zydeco- which is being rein­ something different. I guess I might've night he met Angel Fernandez, Cruz's forced by hyper-tech, means that we heard Fela before that. But the South trumpet player, and commissioned his are going into a new era. Put it this African jive and Fela's Afro-beat were talents as an arranger. Consequently, way: I think David Byrne points the way close to the R&B that I was already "Mr. Jones," a brilliant cut on the new to the future, when rock masters will familiar with, so it was kind of an Talking Heads album, Naked, swings be noted for extraordinary acquisitions easy entry. with the kind of classic horn lines made of multiple cultures in sound. Those It seems you and Brian Eno opened up 17 that area of exploration for other rock say in a couple of words and hit the nail all the time. artists, like Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon. right on the head. Like his general atti­ A lot has been made of your preacupa- - Well, I'd rather not get into who did tude of playing with other musicians: tion with alienation. What do you think what first. I know Peter Gabriel was you know, listening to what the others of that? doing something around about the are playing and leaving spaces for each I certainly find it kind of exaggerated. same time, but it had a different flavor. other, instead of everybody getting in I think it's probably true in some of my What moved you to incorporate these their own seat of the car and then driv­ material. To me, songs like " Road to new elements into your own music? ing off. Nowhere" are about surrender, not At first, it was probably just instinct. I You made your first African-influenced alienation. Maybe people are taking the liked it. Later on, when I started break­ music with Brian Eno. What was the words apart from the music. That's a ing the beats down and putting them nature of that relationship? Was he both possibility. Or they isolate my body lan­ back together again, I saw how African mentor and collaborator? guage or the tone of my voice without and Afro-American songs were put We first met him in London, and looking at it as a whole. It's like, in together in similar ways. I saw there we'd hang out with him whenever we terms of African sculpture, most peo­ were social parallels to the music and a were there. This was all before we'd ple look at a sculpture that's got 100 kind of sensibility and philosophy and made any records together. So it kind nails driven into it, and they go, "Oh, even metaphysics that's inherent in the of evolved in a very organic way, in the my God, what a horrible demon." way the music's constructed and the same way that when Talking Heads first What can you say? It's a reflection of attitude in which it's played. Then I got together, we vveren't getting their own sensibility. The thing is acting started to understand why I liked it. together because any of us were vir­ as a mirror. And it seemed to me a way out of the tuoso musicians. We just kind of got dead end, the one-sided philosophical along as people, and music was the way binder,that Western culture has gotten we could work together. Then we itself into. started getting into some stuff that had There are Asian as well African Back in '79 and '80, when we were other beats in it, that kind of thing. influences in your work, and you con­ doing that, a lot of people thought, I know, for him [Eno] and me, it was a tributed music to the soundtrack for " Oh, did you go to Africa?" And they shared interest and enthusiasm. We Bernardo Bertolucci's film "The Last vvere surprised to find out that we vvere friends, and vve'd exchange tapes. Emperor': Was your wife instrumental hadn't-and I hadn't-and still haven't I'd have a tape of something from in any of this? really. I'd love to, but I just haven't. But Africa, and so would he, without any She turned me on more to the vari­ I think what happened was we'd found idea of doing something with it but just ous theatrical forms over there, but I that the same sensibility existed right saying, "Have a listen to this; you might was pretty much already on my way. next door. There were American musi­ like it", or vice versa. And pretty soon, Appropriately enough, the big suit for cians playing from the same foundation. you know, we realized that something's Stop Making Sense came from a drawing As different as the styles are in Paris, happening here. I did on a napkin in Japan. We were for instance,there's still a lot happening Do you think that this openness-with having dinner with a clothing designer, here. Eno and all the guest musicians-is the and I was thinking out loud, saying, Paris is where you recorded most of the source of strength that's kept Talking "We're going to tour again," and won­ new album, 'Naked; working with a host Heads together for more than a decade? dering what king of clothing to wear of African musicians. What kind of rela­ That's a big part of it. Once we onstage. And he said, "Well, you know tionship did you have with them? established that we weren't gonna what they say about the theater: It was very relaxed. It didn't seem always stick to one thing-although we Onstage everything has to be bigger." I exotic. It was very natural and comfort­ always kept it more or less within a said, "Okay, that's perfect" So, to me, able. In 1979, 1980 or whenever, when song framework-it was wide-open; it the implied story of that whole show vve were first playing around and trying was almost like you could do anything. was of this man who frees himself from to learn some other kinds of things, I So it's pretty hard to get bored. Yeah, his demons and finds release and salva­ think we really felt like students then, that would be a good reason we could tion in his big suit. He lives in the uni­ although we were often feeling our way continue. form of his job. And just like Mr. Jones, on our own. But now I think that You're obviously very protective of your he manages to not let that constrain there's less of that relationship and privacy. Are you also attracted to the him. He can cut loose in this house more of a direct interplay. Everybody romantic image of the lone artist, or do made of a business suit. learns from everybody else and you prefer being part of the extended "Mr. Jones"! Now that song struck whatnot. family of a band like Talking Heads? me as the mambo revenge of Dylan's What about the Afro-Americans you've Well, I really love working with other Mr. Jones. worked with? people, whether it's the band or Yes, I'm doing it the other way Bernie Worrell and Alex Weir and whether I'm working on a film or a around. He's a traveling businessman, Steve Scales, all those guys, we were video or whatever. In my creative who's usually depicted in songs by peo­ learning a lot from them. Bernie's a endeavors, it's the most enjoyable. But I ple of my generation as not knowing kind of philosopher; something that don't know-1 just don't hang out with what's going on. A lot of people would 18 would take me a page to say, he can a whole entourage or anything like that stare at Mr. Jones and declare him the • ultimate square. I'm saying, "Okay, now I guess I get obsessed by whatever this guy's breakin' out of that, and he's project I'm doing. In retrospect, one havin' a good time." can see a common thread, that maybe You know, I think the whole there's a common obsession or subject generation-gap thing is unique in West­ I'm not always aware of at the time. ern culture. In Japan, the generation gap Big break? is there, but it 's very small. Here, we Oh, boy. Well, there's probably quite often just accept t hat the generations a few. One would be the first time you don't mix as much. Which is a big write a song and perform it with a mistake. musician or collaborate on a song and But how would one mount an inter­ play it and it really works. I think the generational Woodstock? first song was "Psycho Killer". So that I don't know. Maybe that's what's was a big breakthrough, like "Yes, we coming in the Nineties. can do this". Another one was when There's a song called "The Big Country" we went from being a four-piece to on 'More Songs About Buildings and Food; however many it was-eight or nine. and you wore a big suit in 'Stop Making The first gig we played like that was in Sense: How about some big questions: Toronto. That was something com­ What is your big goal? pletely new for us. Everybody was One thing would be to do stuff that energized, of course, and the audience has serious underpinnings but is fun at was totally behind us. They could see the same time. that we were taking this huge risk, and Big dreams? they supported us in it. I don't know. I don't have big, long­ Big Lave? range ones. I don't know. You put some words Big demon? together, and you look at it, and it 's I suppose that one is kind of outside this new thing, and then it starts speak­ of myself: dealing with business people ing back to you. and business stuff and that kind of thing, which I pride myself in being able to understand and deal with. I'm proud that I can, you know, that I have some Robert Farris Thompson is a professor of measure of understanding of it, and yet African and Afro-American art at Yale I find that it always seems to be taking University. He reported on the Brazilian too much of my time. martial art of capoeira in RS 522. Big regret? Not that big. I regret that with True Stories we didn't put out a record with the cast singing the songs instead of me. They were written with other voices in mind, and to me t he other people, like Pop Staples, did it much better than I did. I regret it never worked out to happen that way. Big idol? Yeah, but they would change all the time. Every few years there would be someone else. I never felt like one per­ son had all the answers. They may have done some beautiful things, but it's that old Zen proverb: It's easy to mistake the person for the beautiful gifts they bring, or something like that. Can you remember one or two your idols? I thinks the sequence would be fascinating. Hmmm. Gosh. I'd need a big listing. No, there's too many, and they really kept changing all the time. Big obsession? 19 Trying to Play Life: The Music of M-Base by Suzanne McElfresh

In the city of New York lives a group of young musicians who are working steadfastly in the present to insure the future of American music. Mixing ele­ ments of black American musical traditions- jazz, blues, soul, rock, funk and rap- along with various world musics, these artists are working to cre­ ate a sound and a canon that stem from their own, contemporary expres­ sions of a wide musical heritage. Named M-Base by its members, fifteen musicians from its ranks will perform as part of the 1988 NEXT WAVE Festival, providing a glimpse of their progress to this point. First, let it be clear that M-Base is more than a band. Set up within the last few years as a cooperative organi­ zation to encourage the sharing and development of ideas, the objective is, according to alto saxophonist, composer and computer whiz Steve Coleman, "to create a modern, con­ temporary musical language that all of us can use to communicate with each other." The group chose the title M­ Base ("before someone else picked a name for us") because, as Coleman says: "Base stands for Basic Array of Structured Extemporizations. And M stands for Macro, meaning Macro-Base, a large base. We're trying to establish a foundation, a musical base. And it's not just for us, it's not a cliquish thing. We would like it to extend far beyond what we put into it. In the past, there have been languages, like during Charlie Par­ ker's era, that musicians have been able to communicate with, and the language was bigger than any one person. "But that's not happening today. There's so much diversity now that a guy like Wynton Marsalis could play in one of our bands and have no idea what we're doing. We're trying to cure all that. We're using the same elements, the same balance of rhythm, melody and spirituality as in Parker's time. But funk of Motown, James Brown, the those musicians lived in a different time. Ohio Players, Parliament/Funkadelics They used a different slang, everything, and others-and, later, a strong educa­ and their music sounded like life at tion in the many styles of jazz and an that time." interest in African, Brazilian, Japanese Perhaps their music speaks strongest and European musics. Rather than aban­ in this regard, in its sense of community doning any of these sounds, they have and as the language of a group of been incorporated into the dialect they artists interpreting modern times. As are creating. These elements stand as rap is the voice of young urbanites, as assurance that the tradition of black heavy metal speaks for suburban youth, American music is moving on. as bebop reflected the tenor of its "For example," says Allen, "I see time, so does M-Base present a musical Stevie Wonder as the Duke Ellington of picture of a particular place and time. our time. He's not thought of in those M-Base began forming several years terms because his music is so accessible ago when Coleman, saxophonist/com­ to so many people. But Stevie, James poser Greg Osby, keyboardist/com­ Brown, Motown, all of that connects poser Geri Allen, trumpeter Graham us. There's a certain language, a certain Haynes, vocalist Cassandra Wilson and social environment, certain thought others started rehearsing together, try­ processes that connect us." And as gui­ ing out ideas on each other, sharing tarist Vernon Reid explains, "We're try­ music. The origins of this group are not ing to break down the artificial barriers so different from the musical collabora­ between the different styles of creative tion that took place in the 1940s, black music." which spawned bebop, and the move­ This shared language can be heard as ment in the 1960s that developed into a foundation for improvisation, but the experimental or avant-garde era most members also compose music­ that focused on improvisation and Afri­ several contributed works for this can and American musical traditions. performance-and it is in this capacity During the early eighties, this young that the most striking differentiations group of musicians-new on the New are heard, on recordings and in perfor­ York scene, many new to the city­ mance. Coleman's band Five Elements is "shared the fact that we were out­ distinguished by a danceable funk base casts," according to W ilson. Traditional, and an emphasis on layered rhythmic mainstream and bebop players were and melodic patterns; Osby's music for garnering most of the attention and "it his band Sound Theater is colored by bothered us. There was no community, his study of Asian melodic concepts. no exchange of ideas among young Vocalist ~assandra Wilson's composi­ musicians. We wanted to develop a tions reflect her familiarity with jazz comraderie, because that's where you standards, while her style balances a get inspiration, from your peers." love for Joni Mitchell and jazz singers Out of this collective, which grew to ranging from Billie Holiday to Betty include other musicians, the M-Base lan­ Carter and Abbey Lincoln. Pianist and guage evolved. And as the ideas and keyboardist Geri Allen draws upon a music have strengthened over time, so wide palette of rhythms, whether per­ has the artistic diversity within the forming solo, trio, or writing for her group. " Everybody involved in this has large ensemble with horns and vocals; their own musical concepts. M-Base is a Reid leads a rock band, Living Colour, base of different people with different that is gaining commercial fame, and approaches and presentations; it's a col­ continues to work on an opera, laboration of those ideas," says Osby. "Afrerica." And Allen adds, "There are certain Others participating in the Next consistencies between people and also Wave performance, and who are real diversities. We each have a differ­ known for their own projects as well, ent way of approaching composing and include guitarist David Gilmore, multi- improvising, but there's also a line that connects everybody." That line includes common denomi­ Six members of M-Base: (left) Jimmy Cozier, nators such as an early love of black Geri Allen, (center) Greg Osby, Steve Coleman, American popular music- the soul and (right) Kevin Harris, Cassandra Wilson. 21 reedist Gary Thomas, baritone sax­ genres or styles; it has to do with tim­ writing love songs," Wilson says. "A lot ophonist Jimmy Cozier, trombonist ing, the feel. I've heard Brazilian music of the lyrics-mine, Steve's, Geri's-are Kevin Eubanks, trumpeter Graham that swings, funk that swings. I'm always a sort of social commentary, and even Haynes, electric bassist Kevin Bruce striving for that feeling of naturalness, when they're love songs, it's often Harris, acoustic bassist Bob Hurst, which comes out of the tradition of more about obsession than the usual drummers Marvin "Smitty" Smith and Count Basie, Duke Ellington and music kind of love." Tani Tabbal, and percussionist Sadiq Bey. like that. But it's more honest for me Still, for all the restructuring of age­ As the musicians perform in various to use the rhythms that come from me old musical components, tradition combinations and ensemble sizes during naturally. I try to build my style on remains a strong bond for each of the the BAM concert, their individual, those rhythms." musicians. Most of the members of M­ somewhat unorthodox, approaches to Yet another aspect of the M-Base Base have performed with jazz veterans rhythm and meter will become evident. language is the interplay of technology, of various genres, and many, including As Coleman explains, "I look at time in in the use of synthesizers, MIDI (Musical Coleman, Allen and Osby, drummer music in the same way that I look at Instrument Digital Interface) setups and Smith, trombonist Eubanks, and sax­ time in life, as real time. There are cer­ computers (Coleman and Osby have ophinist Thomas, still gig with their tain rhythms that people speak with collaborated on compositions by using a musical forefathers. and walk with. I study that and use it in computer modem to send works in " It's important for me to look at tra­ my music-the rhythm of Gale Sayers progress back and forth for revisions). dition,'' Allen says. "Tradition is like the running or Muhammed Ali or Sugar Ray The M-Base language, both verbal and lifeblood of what we do. Studying that leonard boxing. Or in the way that musical , reflects this modern influence, tradition-whether it's Lovie Auston, birds fly. I once saw a sparrow chasing a yet it is an idiom where Osby's musical who was a pianist and composer in dragonfly. It was amazing-birds usually approach to composing and improvising, Chicago in the 1920s, or tap dancers fly in a swoop pattern, but this sparrow called Shifting Melodic Order, and Cole­ who I worked with in Detroit-has flew in a zig-zaggy motion, and that man's, which he defines with terms always been important to me. It materi­ inspired my music. For the song such as Symmetry and the Golden Sec­ alizes in my music in different ways 'Change the Guard,' I heard a couple of tion, stand alongside Wilson's more stylistically. But that's the nature of Chinese guys talking in a restaurant in instinctive methods, which she names music. There's nothing new, everything Chinatown and I was inspired by the somnocreativity or, only half-jokingly, comes from something else, and we rhythms in their language. The life flow Plasma Music, because she often hears develop from our experiences." that you hear in speech-1 try to get lyrics or entire songs in her dreams. To each of these young musicians, that in my music." "Steve has his science, and this is my these experiences are the essence of Coleman often writes rhythm as pat­ science. It's more free-association. Out their music. Allen adds, " When you terns to be played by particular instru­ of the whole M-Base group, I have less hear [pianist] Tommy Flanagan or [tenor ments, with the bass playing one figure, of a theoretical background. My knowl­ saxophonist] Joe Henderson play their the drummer anchoring a juxtaposed edge of music is not as developed as music, there's nothing like it. It's so "drum chant" and the other instru­ the rest of them so my approach is strong because they've lived what ments superimposing a melodic line more intuitive," she says. they're playing and there's a beautiful with yet another rhythmic feel. " I focus "I don't like to deny myself any avail­ honesty about it. We're trying to bring on layers of melodies and on the rela­ able resource," Osby says about his use all the elements of our experience tionships between different rhythmic of electronics. " I'm not a jazz crusader. together to come up with something patterns. We're always playing over a The sound I want is more organic, and I that's honest as to who we are. I'm not form, and I don't mean AABA. It could can simulate that with synthesizers, claiming to be an innovator. I'm just try­ be the sound of the drum chant or that which can give me drums, bells, gourds, ing to create music that comes out of there are certain rhythmic changes that all kinds of sounds. The members of M­ my experiences." take place in the song." The result is a Base want to escape the perils of nor­ Or, as Wilson says, "As black people, layered, textured, orderly groove. mality, to use different improvisational we need to develop a knowledge of Rhythm is also an essential element and compositional devices." ourselves, our culture. My music is a to Allen. 'The drum is the most impor­ Not even harmony or song lyrics are celebration of that essence, that life. tant thing. The feeling, timing, rhythm exempt from this reexamination of The music is your life; it comes from is everything. Without that, no notes, musical structure. "When dealing with your life." no melody, no harmony can come. I this kind of music, you throw the rules And from Coleman: "I always say can't listen to music unless it feels out the window," Wilson explains, we're trying to play life. Not just music. good." That feeling, that "swing,'' as it "especially with harmony and time. You That's how I sum it up." has been called in the jazz tradition, is a can't bring European harmonies to this strong part of these composers' music. music. It forces you to create a differ­ And though their idea of swing is not ent way of improvising inside of it. It's the persistent walking bass line of big had a lot to do with the development Suzanne McElfresh is an editor for the band jazz or bepop, the intent remains. of t he way I learned to compose and New York-based Music & Sound Output "Swing is a feeling, not a particular improvise." Nor do the same lyrical magazine and writes about music for 22 rhythm," Allen adds. "It goes across topics hold interest. "We aren't just several other publications. • A Language of Imnges

Kit Fitzgerald (left) and Peter Gordon preparing for The Return of the Native.

Composers Robert Ashley and "Blue" Gene Tyranny and video artist Kit Fitzgerald are sitting around a table. Kit's collaboration with composer Peter Gordon, The Return of the Native, will premiere in the Opera House on November 3, as part of the NEXT WAVE Festival. During the conversation Kit's videotapes are playing on the television, with the sound turned down.

RA: This imagery is extraordinarily RA: It's extraordinarily beautiful just in dark and other times joyfully colorful. beautiful and if people could just turn its coloration. If you stopped this at any They express the loves, fears, and the on the television 24 hours a day and point you'd have a pretty good painting. predicament of living in our society. In see pieces like this, it would become a There's thirty points a second. You could performance a large video screen is my language of television. People would get have thirty paintings and sell those. "canvas" and I paint on it live, with very attached to this kind of imagery KF: I have shown them as individual music. It's fascinating to see the process and would start attaching their own of a painting take shape, from the first images and as a matter of fact painting meanings to it. What is this imagery? was my first medium. Through it I mark to completed image. I've developed Would you tell me that? learned to see. In the past few years a a certain rhythm that is a performance KF: Well, I am a visual artist who has lot of my work has been video paint­ rhythm. This is painting quite fast, much been seduced by the glowing box of ings, in which I paint with light on the faster than I might paint in my studio. television, by its power to transmit light video paintbox. In this I bring to video This is a merging of painting and perfor­ and color at a rate of 30 frames a sec­ the touch of the hand and the sense of mance. It is called " live video painting". ond. To me it's a rich visual medium the human gesture. And I create a link BGT: What is amazing is that you do a that I use to create experiences. I cre­ between the cool, electronic art of painting and it builds up and is a com­ ate imagery of all sorts: video footage video and the warmer naturalist arts of plete painting, and then suddenly there recorded with a camera, video paintings painting and music. My images range is another painting with a radically made on a paintbox, computer graphics, from the figurative to the abstract. different idea on top of that. The and digital effects. Then I combine all They are a blend of innocence and impression is extremely strong. You of these in multiple visual rhythms. sophistication, sometimes ominously create an image and you draw associa- 23 tions with that image that are extremely detect things that humans don't, of the Animals. It was set outdoors, on personal and that profoundly deepen because we are distracted by our top of one of the hills surrounding the meanng of the original, and then own human constructions. But there is Turin, next to a 16th-century castle. you do it again. Although I have those a larger design that can be read in the We brought eight Tibetan mountain experiences in music a lot, I've never natural forms. The land is old. And man goats and one donkey on stage. Peter seen it in a visual context before. And I is fleeting on this earth. This sense played saxophone and clarinet and am always amazed at how fast you are permeates Thomas Hardy and The "Blue" Gene was on grand piano and at making images, how quickly they Rewrn of the Native. synthesizer. They began the perfor­ happen and how different they are mance in animal masks. I had made BGT: Your use of time is very emo­ from one another. It's like listening to a tapes of landscapes and animals that tional, like in music. For example in the good piano improviser. played on two video monitors on stage. Polish section (of The Return of the I designed lighting that integrated the Sometimes I say "oh my god" KF: (Laughter.) Well, I do feel close to Native). coloration of the musicians, the animals, because of the beautiful image, but also music and my approach to making and the video, and ran the board live because of your trick, your changing of video is similar to a composer writing during the show. The animals were timings. That change of time really music. I'm struck by the musicality of totally "simpatico", and created an changes the emotional state. The mood images. Kandinsky did it beautifully. So empathic field with the musicians and is very much a part of the product and did Paul Klee and many other painters. the whole setting. There's a musicality in their images that it carries with it its own sense of timing is difficult to define, but definitely that plays emotionally. For example, the RA: I was at that concert. When it first there. I approach video composition as synagogue suddenly turns to light. started I was really impressed, even music-with melodies, harmonies, and Because of the way you shot there, the shocked by the distance between the repetitions. You could call mine a musi­ architecture becomes a product of video imagery and the music. For me, cal video. Music is to be experienced. It light. You seem to be creating a feeling in the audience, it was as though two is not primarily narration or informa­ about these objects as ideas of light things were just running at the same tion. People have their own experiences rather than objects per se. You're not time and they didn't have much to do of musical works and attach personal just taking a picture of a building. with one another. And the longer we meanings to them. My video is the It's there but everything is changing were into it, the more I liked it. The same. I am dealing with the stuff of the into light-it's beautiful. Why do you most successful part is that I was human condition. I use the sensuous­ do that? watching the video, and I was watching ness of the image to draw the viewer live people, and I was watching animals, KF: It's my way of seeing. It's how I see I was watching video about animals and in. Now, "sensuous" is not exactly a the world. Through video I articulate word that comes to mind with televi­ I was watching live people. It was all these perceptions. I frame an image so very loose; I liked that a lot. sion, but video is a medium capable of that it can really be experienced, and beautiful coloration, light, and rhythm. not just read as information. For me, BG: People were so fascinated that they And now it has a malleablility, an ability video is a means of exploring and wouldn't stay in their seats. They would to create in real time- like music-that articulating the world. I travelled to stand up in the aisles and on the stage. I is wonderfully freeing and powerful. Poland and captured everyday images could see them being drawn toward the stage, utterly fascinated and amused BGT: While working with you on and sounds. I brought them back and now I can share with you what I saw because you had the live animals there Spectaccalo (La Mama Theatre, 1987), I and also the video. It was a totally sin­ said that you make images that are and felt. I use video to get to the essence of things. The camera doesn't gular experience. I've never seen, any­ really like what I see in my inner mind thing like it. There were no references when I'm playing music. And-they're lie. You've probably heard of the belief about the power of the camera to steal whatsoever and yet it completely brought almost not describable to another per­ out very wonderful human feelings. son, the logic of them, because they're the soul. Well, in a way, it's true. You spontaneous. It's not imagery that's tied can't steal the soul, but you can capture KF: It was a beautiful piece. But I was to any narrative or social style. And it. It's a beautiful way to capture and frustrated by the lack of interaction you are in love with the landscape and express reality. that I could have. Sculpting with light the animals for their kind of intelli­ RA: How did your work in video per­ was wonderful, but I had no way of working the pre-recorded video in the gence, which is other than human. formance come about? live moment to interact with the music, KF: For me animals have a kind of KF: It all really started in 1984 when the animals, and the setting. I wanted dumb intelligence. Their undistracted Peter Gordon asked me to collaborate to be making images as the musicians view of things allows for an uncon­ with him on a performance in Turin, were playing music. Why couldn't video scious wisdom. There is an instinct in Italy. Before then, I had created video be as malleable as music? The 80s had their connectedness to nature. And backdrops for several of Peter's con­ brought great advances in digital tech­ landscape has such character and certs, but this was really the first "spec­ nology. Somewhere in there, I thought, beauty. In "To Sorrow ..." (one section tacle". Peter has a strong visual sense in there must be a way to free the video, of The RetJ.Jrn of the Native) the animals his music, and a good imagination for to make it work fast enough and be 24 have a premonition of cataclysm. They theater. The piece was called The Rewrn versatile enough that I could actually • play it live, in real time. So upon return to New York I thought a lot about this, and in late 1984 I learned about a video instrument that might be able to approach what I was looking for. I got my hands on it, adapted it a bit for my purposes and in June, 1985, Peter Gordon and I brought out a video/ music-theater piece The Passion of Passion. In The Return of the Animals there were many elements happening sympathetically but independently of each other. Now in The Passion of Passion we went for a marriage of the two. I could "play" video as the musi­ cians " played" music. We toured the piece in Europe. Each installation of the work was unique to the space. The staging included Peter's music played by 5 musicians, about a dozen sheep or goats, 2 video projections, and, depend­ ing upon the site, 30 to I 00 large video monitors, interwoven with flowers and branches. One idea behind The Passion of Passion was the co-existence between the natural and the technological. This piece introduced my live video painting and the live digital interaction between the music and the video, in which I put a camera on the musicians, grabbed their images digitally and composed and re­ composed it. I could combine the camera images, video paintings, and digital effects live, fluidly. It was the beginning of something new and exciting. Video had broken out of the studio. This was a totally new form: video which was created live, spontaneous. This freed the medium, and restored to it a sense of the gesture, the hand, the physical, which was getting lost as we Max Roach and Kit Fitzgerald in performance at La Mama etc. moved through the sleek and slick cor­ porate 80s. It gave the form a new expressiveness. Physicality first drew me to video. Now I was finding a way back to it with the live performance video. After The Passion of Passion tour I was invited by Sony/Japan to do a live per­ formance on a 14-story-high television, the Sony JumboTRON-the largest TV ever built. It was made up of 450,000 small CRT's (cathode-ray tubes- your TV at home has one). I collaborated with the composer Ryuichi Sakamoto and the video artist Paul Garrin. Sony later released a tape of our collabora­ tion for the home video market (Adelic Penguins, 1986). In the fall of '85 I did a piece with Max Roach at La Mama Theatre in a 25 production which was directed by travelled to Poland and visited the vil­ George Ferencz. It featured Max on lages that our grandfathers had left at solo drums and myself on live video the turn of the century. The land is flat with a single large video projection. I and dramatic in its starkness. In Poland I learned a lot from working with a per­ felt a groaning .. . the pain of what has former as wonderful as Max. We happened there. And we drove through enjoyed a really sharp interaction of the the American Southwest, recording the jazz and the video form. I was seeing sites where the ancient Native Ameri­ how far video performance could go. I can civilization intersects the atomic began to think of it as video jazz. In age. Each of these places is visually 1986 Peter Gordon and I returned to striking and seems to embody strong Europe for more live performances. spiritual powers. And in '87 La Mama commissioned us At BAM, the footage from these to create a work to celebrate their places will be mixed with video paint­ 25th anniversary. We made a song ings and other imagery generated live. cycle, Spectacca/o, for 4 musicians and It's a scored work, both musically and live video, with lights and set by Michael visually. But there are windows of Nishball. He had worked with us on improvisation as well. What is happening The Passion of Passion, and will work in the performance is a form of telepa­ with us again on The Return of the thy between the music and the video, Native. " Blue" Gene was an important as each is being created. What is excit­ Kit Fitzgerald. part of Spectaccalo. ing here is a suppleness and openended­ RA: So what will we see at BAM? ness in the material. KF: Onstage there will be an ensemble RA: If you could just put this on TV 24 of about a dozen musicians. At the hours a day, this would be the most back of the stage, overhead, will be a popular channel on television. large video projection screen. Peter has KF: There is a language of television written an orchestral suite. The libretto here that is different from the main­ is from the table of contents of the stream forms of television. It is a tech­ Hardy novel. I've been inspired by nology with a humanness, which comes Hardy's sense of landscape as character. from the physicality of the bodily gesture. In the making of The Return of the BGT: Yes. Yes. Native Pet er and I travelled to four places to experience their unique characters. We walked Egdon Heath (England), which is the setting of Hardy's novel. We recorded his grave, ancient stone monuments, and megaliths. We lived for two months in Dunquin, County Kerry, Ireland. Here the old language, Irish Gaelic, exists as a living thing. We recorded people in their daily lives, the old storytellers and songs, the bleak and beautiful land. We

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