When we read and absorb ideas from a book, it is the words that influence us, but what happens if you listen to music that is without words. Music in the form of chants. Primitive sounds from Islam and the Sufi tradition. Zulu war chants, Joika from Lapland. The sound of water falling on stones, the bleating of a lamb. A fire roaring and sparks flying. The bubbling of blood in your own aorta. Grains of sand falling on a piece of aluminium folio. Pebbles in a tin can. Teardrops falling in a pool of water. The snore of a bear in a cave during winter hibernation. The song of a whale. Lonesome bells. Reeds rustling in the wind. The rumble of a train along a track. Two matchboxes being rubbed together. Footsteps in a tunnel running beside a canal. Metal scraping agaist metal. Chalk on the blackboard.
Having got Jim White out of the library. I also picked up Kimmo Pohjonen's Kluster and Bobby Mcferrin's Circlesongs
Pohojonen uses the accordian and fearful sounds of droning monks. There is alot of energy in his music. For me it is dark and frightening most of the time, but some of the tracks like Voima start out peaceful as an eagle soaring in the clouds, then move onto a hunt with yelping dogs, then goes all subteranean with monkish chants and hooting owls with glassy yellow eyes staring at bubbling lava in a dark cave. Huge spiraling sounds that seek to engulf you. Then you get Avento that could be part of Barber's Adagio for strings by William Orbit if it was not so long and repetitious.
On Real player it is listed as 15.56 minutes and on the CD it is only 4.15 minutes. The last bit sounds as though the CD player has got stuck in a continious loop. You would have to concentrate very hard to find out if there were indeed any differences in the repeated phrases. I hope I have not fried my brain listening to it.
Mcferrin on the other hand is joyous and uplifting and he talks about the effects of communal singing. Apparently at his concerts he will invite audience participation in Circlesongs. It is said that he is a practicing Christian and I wonder if the type of chanting that he does puts an acceptable face on glossilia. I was making wordless noises to his songs as I drove into work. It was good. I wonder if Maija would think I was singing in tongues. Mcferrin is of the belief that wordless songs is a form of deep calling to deep.
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