The album reaches Ethiopia
May. 13th, 2004 07:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomus
And you may ask yourself, well... how did I get here?
Let's see, I was in Tripoli with a taxi driver, then in Elizabethan England with the bantam boys -- they were some sort of black electrobethan eunuch dandies, I guess -- and then, wondering where to go next, I remembered an African singer my friend, the composer Roddy Schrock, mentioned on his blog a couple of months back, Alemu Aga. I listened to Alemu Aga at the time, some sound samples of his album in Buda Musique's Ethiopiques series, and was struck by the grave sensuality of his poet's voice and the resonant, buzzy, yet soothing sound of his beguena. So the next thing became a trip to Ethiopia to channel the Aga.
I started by sampling my fuzzy-stringed acoustic guitar, which sounds quite like a beguena, and improvising a complex yet intuitive sequence into EZVision. I also wanted to create a rhythmic backing a bit like the one you can hear in this sample of some Addis Ababa azmari street musicians. Well, my electronics didn't really capture the intimacy of Alemu Aga or the dry snappy zest of the azmaris; what emerged was something not a million miles from Talking Heads circa 1980.
The lyrics took a while. A structureless song like this needs a chantlike vocal. At first (influenced by Alemu Aga's title 'Death of the Lefthanded Man', the Epic of Gilgamesh, and, musically, 'Tomorrow Never Knows') it was a song about death with psychedelic-ethnic vocal inflections. But that felt too sombre and portentous. So then it became a first-person retelling of the plot of a great film I saw recently, Hyenas, a transplantation to Senegal of Durrenmatt's play 'The Visit'. But I didn't like the silly African accent I was adopting as I tried to play the character. Finally, it became a song about divining for water, sung in Orominya, one of the languages of Ethiopia. I added a lot of sounds and made a lot of 'tape' manipulations. That's where it is now. Here's the mp3... in fact, this time there are two:
The Water Song (Nick mix)
Sorry, this track is no longer available. Please buy the CD when it comes out!
The mix I ended up with incorporates a piece by Roddy Schrock (we met in Tokyo last year, spent new year together in Berlin, and Roddy's now based in Holland, making music for contemporary dance amongst other things), inspired by Alemu Aga. I liked the much more radical nature of Roddy's composition. It added an avant garde edge to my piece. The 'Nick' mix just uses Roddy's piece as a background texture, the 'Provisional Roddy' mix foregrounds it. But Roddy is working on his own mix: 'At some point,' he writes, 'I would find it interesting if I re-remixed them again, sort of moved them back towards the experimental side of the spectrum.' When Roddy makes that mix, I'll link to it and take down the Provisional Roddy mix I'm posting here. Anyway, all comments and donations (one dollar suggested) are welcome, as usual!
I have to say I'm not sure if this track is just a curiosity or if it will end up on the album. That depends where things go, thematically and musically, from here. By the way, the mp3 posting will have to end when I sign a contract with Cherry Red for the CD release of this album, which is likely to happen soon. I want there to be something still undiscovered, some remaining mystery, when the record comes out.
The Water Song
Orominya
Woha chigralla
Woha yellem
Woha koom
Mook gasgazza
Na amboha
Aneed gatata gra na ky
Dehnaderu
Ayasfeligegnim
Koom sigarra
Ayasfeligegnim koom
Leslassa ishi
Katata aneed
Woha yellem
Aydellem
Tenastalign
Denaderu
Chigr alla
Chigr yellem
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-12 10:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-12 11:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-13 12:45 am (UTC)i have all of your album, i loved (and i still love) all of them... except oskar.
i can't follow you in this new music way, i cant'"understand".
(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-13 01:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-13 02:29 am (UTC)saying goodbye is my way to be a little provocative, 'cause i know i'll keep on listening to you and trying to follow you in your new directions (but i won't pay!!!!)..
(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-13 02:56 am (UTC)Tender Timelord
Date: 2004-05-13 03:07 am (UTC)Re: Tender Timelord
Date: 2004-05-13 03:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-13 03:15 am (UTC)- Charlotte
(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-13 03:16 am (UTC)Those are exactly the musicians who continue to arouse interest and to influence today's musicians, whether it's Ilhan Mimaroglu or the Silver Apples or Moondog.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-13 03:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-13 03:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-13 04:01 am (UTC)Re: Tender Timelord
Date: 2004-05-13 04:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-13 05:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-13 06:04 am (UTC)Robin Hood: Mediocre
Corkscrew King: OKish
Bantam Boys: OK
The Water Song: OK
Klaxon: Good
Serpreverde: Excellent
Life of the fields: Excellent
By the way, the new one reminds me not so much of Talking Heads as of Peter Gabriel (circa 1990).
All in all, the mood swings will make for an interesting album.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-13 06:13 am (UTC)Radio Ethiopia
Date: 2004-05-13 06:13 am (UTC)I once had two Ethiopian students, brother and sister, who were the sweetest, most beautifully innocent students I've ever had; they lent me their high school yearbook, which was actually just a well-foxed, perfect-bound collection of mimeographs. They were so proud of this sad little "book," which they'd carried with them from country to country, that I had to cry; sadder still, it was filled with Ethiopian attempts to mimic "American" fads and phrases, but getting it all wrong, of course. These mistranslations were both pathetic and heartbreaking; the best I can recall is that a typical "cool" saying documented in the pages was something like, "look, now I am becoming a hotdog." Sadder still was the fact that they'd survived the Eritrean war and had probably lost most of their family and now were faced with the harsh realities of this America they'd once idolized from afar.
I'm just mentioning this because I know how love Momus loves mistranslations, and I can easily imagine that native speakers of Orominya might find these lyrics as amusing or mystifying as I found some of the phrases in that yearbook. Certainly, for "Westerners" Ethiopia has always seemed the most mysterious country on the continent, from the days of Prestor John all the way up to Haile Selassie.
Momus can certainly do a better job of handling his detractors than I ever could, so I won't defend the song, except to say that I've found it to be quite satisfying, with more of that mystery all too rare even on the fringes of "popular" music. (The Roddy version is indeed the more adventurous.) But I do wonder, more than rhetorically, why these detractors keep coming back to these pages and the music, only to condemn or regret. Not that I don't think a little dissent isn't good for Momus--but I'd have to be pretty bored to want to keep listening to the words and music of someone I couldn't abide or who constantly frustrated me. I mean, you turn to the Fox network for a couple minutes now and then just to remind yourself how bad it really is, but then you move on...
Re: Radio Ethiopia
Date: 2004-05-13 06:20 am (UTC)I have a friend who remembers Moondog well from his days of busking in Manhattan in the early 1960s. People then seemed to view this crazy bearded giant on the sidewalk with a mixture of reverence and mockery, and judging from his titles and the music itself, Moondog never took himself too seriously, either--and I suspect he never worried too much about how seriously he'd be taken forty years later. My point being that you just do what you're compelled to do now, and let the future--whatever's left of it--take care of itself. To live is to experiment and to experiment is to live.
Re: Radio Ethiopia
Date: 2004-05-13 06:24 am (UTC)-roddy
Re: Radio Ethiopia
Date: 2004-05-13 06:52 am (UTC)i said "in my opinion".. i'm not a detractor, and i'm not condemning him.. i said what i think about the last works of momus..
i can't understand why i have to stop following to momus, only 'cause i don't like his recent music.. i know the artist, i know that i liked him, i know that he can do something very good.. stop.. these are the reason i keep on (better, i try to keep on) listening to momus music..
is it an experiment? ok.. it doesn't work.. my taste is far from this (maybe not so far from far enough)..
this music is not my tazza di the, i confess.. excuse me..
(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-13 07:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-13 07:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-13 07:38 am (UTC)anyway.. i think this is a very good idea.. a record about objects, things.. a record made from the point of view of the oblects.. a coffee pot, a bathrobe, a lampshade, a condom.. think about the opportunity of really experimenting some new sound.. and crazy lyrics..
(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-13 07:46 am (UTC)