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| 2011-05-22 |
| Adam Rudolph, Yusef Lateef and ... er ... Next Age Music |
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All time signatures can be broken down into twos and threes. I learned that in a long discussion with some guy in a long coat out back of the Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles. He'd asked me for a cigarette and we talked for about two hours. Very smart guy about music. It wasn't until the end of the conversation I learned he was the conductor for Yusef Lateef's improvisational orchestras, a composer of note, and the guy who wrote the book of music theory used at CalArts when I was there as a theater student. I'd been talking with Adam Rudolph, and that was a big deal. Best cigarette I ever gave to a stranger. I challenged him on those twos and threes, asking "What about African drummers who accent every 15th beat as a signature in their playing?" Adam rolled his eyes and said, "It's Chapters 12 to 14 in my book." I think I actually swallowed hard at that moment. We'd been talking fast and blowing stuff by each other in a lively and enjoyable exchange. When I recognized that he was the dude with the baton I'd watched in 1984 when Lateef's assembled orchestra played the "Contemporary Music Festival" at my alma mater, I knew he was all that. The band had consisted of a Qawwali singer, tabla, drumkit, Lateef on sax, and some 12 or 14 more pieces from Eastern and Western cultures, and they were all improvising with Adam controlling the flow. It should have been an oil and water mixture, with some sort of academic sound, but it all sounded great. Later that day Yusef Lateef made the statement he didn't mind if his music was put in the New Age bin, so long as it wound up in the record store. This stuff was light years more advanced than the arpeggios of what had come to be called New Age, and that improbable mix of musics may never have been played in that configuration before or since. How the hell did it work? So here's Adam Rudolph standing with me in the alley while his daughter watched some terrific pop music, and I was being taken back to school one on one with a master. Yikes!
We talked about conducting improvisation, which at this level was far beyond deciding who got to solo and when. Rudolph explained that he divided an orchestra into 10 cells and conducted with fingers to indicate which cell he was addressing, and then a fist or a hand to indicate "chord" or "improvise." He added that even at this level with Lateef at the helm, the first improvisation of the evening was finding out who showed up. With players this good, and a band that large, they couldn't pay them enough to ensure they'd all be there instead of a gig that better paid the bills. So first thing, Adam would see who showed up the night of performance and redistribute them into those cells. None of this would matter much if it didn't work, but this stuff was music all the way through. Brilliant, warm, lively, improbable, improvised music from cultures who tuned different, counted different, and who by and large weren't had a different story to tell. I've seen music borrowed here and there and blended into a palatable soup, but never this particular medicated stew. All the flavors seemed to pop, and it tasted great this music right down to the bottom of the bowl. I've only ever seen that kind of compatible blend so diverse and tasty just the once.
So why did the blended stuff East and West that made it to my radio seem to suck? New Age music hit the airwaves in Los Angeles on the station called "The Wave." It had a great beginning with some great successful blendings of musics from Pat Metheny, Bela Fleck, and a host of others who hadn't heard the name New Age but likely were happy someone was playing their tracks. Then it got popular. Yecch! There came to be a genre called New Age and it had the unsatisfying small portion sound of Nouvelle Cuisine. The greats who had been stuffed into this new wineskin at first wound up pushed back into the airy regions of late night public radio in favor of a snappy new subgenre that sold music to people who like their meals prepackaged and easily heated in a sonic microwave. I thought New Age lost it's charm just about as fast as it got popular.
By the time I heard that 1984 Lateef concert, New Age was old hat. I've heard stuff since that gets what's up with the what works in distinct worlds of song and finds it's way through those troubled waters to deliver it's cargo intact despite the vastly different values, timbres, tunings, and timing that weeds out the timid in World Fusion. Matthew Montfort at Ancient Future gets it right. Matt coined the term "World Fusion" and makes that music so right it pleases the initiated as well as the followers of New Age who happen to stray into his bigger tent. That stuff is beautiful.
I can't say I've heard much blending Far East and Way Out West much that pleased the ear, and kept the music from going muddy! Dennis Rea's "Views From Chicheng Precipice" is about as close as I've heard connecting the polar opposites in theory and content, tunings and timings, patience and our own march time and waltz time drive in the Western rat race. That's the next review, and it has been a long long time in coming. I've learned a great deal in the interim, and hope to get it right.
Still and all, I never heard the world sing together like that 1984 Yusef Lateef concert anywhere on vinyl or shiny disc or from any stage anywhere. As time marches on we may be approaching the place prophesied by that concert, but not yet. There are reasons for that, and not just technical stuff. I think our hearts haven't grown big enough just yet. We'll get there maybe if we don't blow up in the meantime. That's someplace new and it might be there will be "Next Age" music right there on our radios everywhere. We are all connected now, but it takes more than tolerance to keep the world's music together at one time on the same stage. It takes a whole lotta love. |
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