The distinguishing mark of good music is the unique sound quality of voice somehow entangled in the tones and transmitted from the instrument for the ear of the imagination. Though music is literally sound, some sounds make us hear someone’s character.
~ Yusef Lateef (Known for his innovative blending of "Eastern" music with American jazz)

I first realized Matthew Montfort was a true guitar wizard when he called me on the phone and played me one flawless Hendrix riff after another. We were in the seventh grade. By the time we escaped high school, Matt had gone acoustic, turning coffee house basements into his own planet with fierce improvisations. Now a pioneering master of world fusion, his knowledge and depth are staggering, yet he doesn't let it get in the way of the joy and spirit and soul that we like about music in the first place.
~ Jello Biafra, Dead Kennedy singer, punk rock icon and spoken word artist

As far as 'world fusion' goes, I actually coined the term in response to the term 'world music' which as coined by Dr. Robert Brown of the Center for World Music, only applied to traditional music. But I wasn't trying to create a genre. World fusion is a process, not a genre. So Ancient Future is a band dedicated to a process, not a style, not a genre, nothing like that.
~ Matthew Montfort


SOUL SERENADES

When I first heard this album in a quiet room late at night I thought of my mother. That was the week of Mother's Day. Mom passed two years ago. I'd been thinking about her off and on through the day, but it was a busy day. "Seven Serenades for Scalloped Fretboard Guitar" has a technical name so I didn't expect it change my mood and slow down my thoughts. There were feelings of loss in my body and mind but they were quiet feelings while I was busy. This CD slowed me down with a drone sound like throat singing played on a didjeridu with a deep roar swelling up as thought it were coming from the earth. I was not thinking of a didjeridu when the guitar and violin began to play. The drone continued quietly swelling and subsiding as the guit-box started to meander into sound. The music was emerging from that calm and undulating force beneath the surface resisting the tug from below like a bird pulling away from a congealed oil slick drawn above by a melody on the violin. Then I remembered my Mom on her bed in a pink hospital gown. All but three of the hospital gowns were white but Mom had insisted she wanted to die in the pink. This album had given me a still moment, slowed my racing thoughts, and let me feel what my spirit was doing. My spirit was morning like an inarticulate drone while daily tasks had occupied my thoughts, so when the music slowed me down those thoughts stuck to my deeper feelings.

I'm glad you can feel my music. It is interesting that it brings up your feelings about your mother. My mom actually heard much of the music on the recording before she died, and I played for her live when she was near to passing. So the music on 'Seven Serenades for Scalloped Fretboard Guitar' is very similar to what my mom heard in her last conscious moments.

GUIDED BY VOICES

Those thoughts of Mom wanting to die "in the pink" meandered through my waking mind like little mists taking momentary form like shark fins or bird wings forming and dissolving in the air as they escape the tar of loss. A sense of life and wellbeing drew me into the atmosphere toward a soothing tone and timbre like a violin or the voice of a mother. As the sink of dishes, the news, and that spot on the carpet subsided my feelings emerged into meaning. I missed my Mom and I love her. I realized I'd been neglecting my feelings that day, and came to resolve to feel more. I smiled. That was what those other musicians, the Great Lake Swimmers, had instructed me to do with a song. This music worked the same way. The declension of that process is "Stop Listen Feel Believe."

This album doesn't have a text message. The message was the music. Try to work out the religious implications of the aboriginal Australian world with the Pantheon of Indian deities with a Western mind and you will probably get a headache. Matthew Montfort has the faith to believe in the beauty of disparate and rich cultures singing in harmony. He believes there is a place common to mankind for the combined voices of disparate cultures. Worlds do not collide as we are taught to expect. They coalesce when these musicians play. As the sound of this music rises, it comes together. Everything that rises must converge.

TECH TALK

The scalloped fretboard guitar has indentations between each fret to allow the guitarist more easily to adjust the tone of a note. The scalloped fretboard is a feature of the "veena" in India. This guitar can be used to play in proper pitch in Indian or Balinese music. Matthew Montfort is a pioneer in the use of this variation of the guitar. He teaches classes on the use of the scalloped fretboard, and uses it when he plays Western, Eastern and music combining musical values and systems from different cultures in the process called World Fusion.

The songs on this album were improvised from a simple structure to allow the song to develop "live." While painstaking work was done in post-production, those original improvisations were not altered. While this album was conceived in part to show the capabilities of the instrument, it is not an "experimental" album.

Dick Dale definitely used the world fusion process. It is actually the process that creates new traditions. So it has been going on for thousands of years. The difference in my career is that I've dedicated it to the process, rather than exploring a specific area of music, or even a specific new area of music.

The process of combining elements of music from different cultures is nothing new. To clarify my understanding of the World Fusion process, I asked if Dick Dale's creation of Surf Music out of chords from the West and a scale from the East. Psychedelic music from the 1960's often was basic blues with a Middle Eastern scale. Blues came from a clash of tonalities from two continents. Same as it ever was.

Matthew had been asked to create an album featuring his guitar, since he had been so often part of the sound in a larger ensemble. This album includes collaborative improvisations featuring the scalloped fretboard guitar, and instruments indigenous to India, Australia, Persia with scales and tonal variations both familiar to those instruments and from the imagination of the players. There are several improvisations for unaccompanied solo guitar. "World Fusion" is a process for combining music from different cultures.

IT'S JUST MUSIC, MAN

When I first heard this album, it got to me. I thought I would write a review in a couple of hours. It was beautiful, and the music moved me. Then the process of World Fusion, and the subtleties of the scalloped fretboard guitar began to fascinate me. Mr. Montfort was very generous with his time, and those afforded me an opportunity to explore with a recognized authority the intricacies of how music is created. I am prone to get excited when good music happens, and have the distinction of having been tapped on the shoulder at a concert by Stanley Turrentine who told me, "It's just music, man!" Point well taken.

My initial reaction to the music hasn't changed. This is an album of beautiful guitar music. I don't need to understand it to feel it. Whatever process went into the making of this music, it works just great. This music takes me to a private place. I can get there listening to a Raga, but "Seven Serenades" feels more familiar to me. These songs change the quality of my thought when I listen intently.

Perhaps the reason that the harmonies seem sweeter is that the recording uses very minimal harmony. Mostly there is just the comparison between the drone and the notes of the scale, which is not a full chord but just an interval. The few chords I played are likely not in tune to just intonation, but may be a hair closer than normal. Getting just one note in tune with tempered frets is a challenge, much less a whole chord.

I don't know about that. I think master improvisor and composer Yousef Lateef's statement about the music of Lester Young applies to this album. "[S]ome sounds make us hear someone’s character." When I hear an improvisor, I hear what that musician has to offer. John Coltrane said it best: "When I've heard a man's music, I've heard that man."

THE SONGS

[The song descriptions below are taken directly from the liner notes of the album. I present them here as the best description available of the origins of the music and a listing of the players.]

1. Gauri the Golden. Matthew Montfort (scalloped fretboard guitar), Patti Weiss (electric violins), Alan Tower (didjeridu). As an invocation to these serenades to my muses, this improvisation draws from North Indian raga, employing a tonal framework using notes common to both Rag Bhairav (associated with Shiava in Hindu mythology) and Rag Gauri (associated with Shiva's consort, Guari). The didjeridu provides an intense drone bed while the guitar's plaintive calls and the violins soaring responses create a contemporary interpretation of the North Indian musical form known as slap (a rubato exploration of melody without rhythmic accompaniment).

2. Sangria. Mariah Parker (santur), Matthew Montfort (scalloped fredboard guitar), (Patti Weiss (violin). Mariah Parker surprised me with this very beautiful piece in 7/8 she composed for this project. Captured fresh, the piece was new to me when we recorded it, so I was sight reading the melody and the rest of my part was improvised in the moment, inspired by her soulful composition in D minor.

3. Soul Serenade. Matthew Montfort (scalloped fretboard guitar). This improvisation in E minor captures the feeling of the initial emergency drive-by serenade that inspired this recording.

4. Michelle's Star. Matthew Montfort (scalloped fretboard guitars). Written as a gift of longing, the recording equipment was turned on during the composition process, capturing the very moments this song in 5/8 was conceived.

5. Celtic Raga. Matthew Montfort (scalloped fredboard guitar). There are many parallels between ancient Celtic and Vedic traditions. For example, both Irish music and North Indian raga are modal and make use of drones and extensive ornamentation. Buit improvisation in Irish music concentrates on changing the ornamentation of a set melody, while North Indian raga prescribes a set of conditions to create an improvised melody. This improvisation applies Indian melodic exploration techniques to a prominent scale used in Celtic music, commonly known as the Greek mixolydian mode, which corresponds to Khammaf that (pronounced 'tot') in the North Indian scale classification system.

6. Purple Raga. Matthew Montfort (scalloped fretboard guitar), Alan Tower (dijeridu). An Indian raga is a melodic recipe for a mood: a 'super scale' using a set of notes in ascending and descending order, a hierarchy of note importance, and a key phrase that shows the heart of the movement of the raga. I was inspired to create a modern 'raga' based on the music of Jimi Hendrix after seeing a photograph of Jimi in the front row of an Indian music concert, his mouth agape in awe of what he was experiencing. Each raga has a patron god or goddess, which in this case has to be the god of rock guitar. So I serenaded to the spirit of Hendrix while improvising within the raga rules I created inspired by the guitar solo in Purple Haze. Underneath the didjeridu drones a chord in overtones: a D7#9, also known as the "Jimi Hendrix chord."

7. Lilalit. Matthew Montfort (scalloped fretboard guitar). This serenade for Lila falls within the scale of Rag Lalit, a raga often portrayed in ragamala paintings as a lover looking back as he departs from his sleeping beauty before sunrise.