Inspired by the convocation of George Christian's new podcast "Escutas Experimentais,"
I prepared a brief statement for him but then extended the idea into this short talk for my youtube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDinnAGvFvw
The idea that art and music were akin to, concerned with the exploration of metaphoric "terras incognitas", a place where star trekkers had gone not before. This is what comes to mind when I think of experimental music. That and how experimental became disparaged as inconclusive or too open to be substantial and how very wrong this is. For it is the close-minded world of consumerism and conservatism alone that forces us into conformity and genre and empty concepts of quality. What I'd wanted to do in poetry and music was to catch up with the actual world. Experimental is not academic. Experimental is radical and can be calm and reassuring as a gentle rain in the forest during summer or a cyclone disrupting space and time. Experimental music engages chaos and natural forces. Experimental music improvises and invents. Experimental music is clear and propositional. Experimental music involves one, two, three or more players, orchestras, species and states of matter. Experimental music is without precedent quite often and appears to be alien and unruly but experimental music has a history and great traditions. Shamans were experimental musicians.
The tape music of John Cage and Pauline Oliveros and the statistical modeling adopted by Xenakis to further dilate & explode serialism into pure sounds, the acousmatic works of Pierre Henry, Schaefer, orchestrating noise, blending energy fields of lysergic acoustic ecology, of deep listening strategies, the advent of field recording devices which allow almost anyone to make music concrete. Experimental music is you and your life. It belongs not to corporations, not to governments nor schools nor cliques nor elites. In the digital era or what is called the microsound aspect of granular synthesis, in glitch, one can view ever smaller fractal versions of the cosmos. Experimental space travel in sound. Thank you Sun Ra. Experimental means to experience. Thank you tape recorders and dictaphones: re-listen to experience and enter into the laminal planes of somatic and geological time. The fascination with ancient modes, archaic instruments, ethnic forgery, old skool, trap, Africa, polyrhytmia, Indonesia, microtones, aboriginal, experi-mental. Experiment is dream time, dream incarnate.
Jeff Gburek 25/11/2021
