Philosophy

This essay is offered as a replacement for a review of Bill Dixon's new release, 17 Musicians in Search of a Sound: Darfur (In Concert at Vision Festival XII) - entirely inspired by the music contained therein and in that sense a tribute to the potency of its contents.

What is the quality of music that distinguishes the revolutionary from the mundane, the seeking from the sought, the cherished from the discarded? Music can serve many functions (and I am adamant in my belief that music is a highly functional art), but in this continuum of music we might call jazz, or in the history of African American creative music that people of all colors, shapes and sizes have participated in and drawn from, what is the quality that musicians who stand out from the pack cultivate?

To my ears and personal experience, there is an element of sincerity of approach and vision, a seriousness in purpose and path that translates into a pure expression of a personal music. The element of individuality is one of the qualities as well, correct? An outward manifestation of an inner understanding or quest for understanding, what George Lewis has termed an Afrological approach to music, where the musician is searching for a sound and personal voice both as a composer and as an instrumentalist (the two are inseparably intertwined).

This is as opposed to a Eurological approach to organizing sound as a composer to be faithfully reproduced in accordance with the original vision of the composer, where the individual instrumental voice is subsumed by the compositional voice.

We can see in the Afrological model that there is a potential to enhance and expand the concept of the latter, where the individual voice is empowered within the context of a compositional structure to enhance and expose supra-musical elements, and indeed is encouraged to do so. It requires not only following a pre-conceived musical score, but also understanding the sound the composer is searching for. To achieve that goal, the musicians must listen and react in addition to following structural concerns.

This idea of searching for a sound, a whole sound that we can hear from its development to its completion, is markedly different than a notion of constructing harmonic and melodic composition, but certainly does not exclude it. Both of them work toward goals and reward the forest view of music, how the trees compose the whole, how the tension contrasts with the release. The former is decidedly more exploratory, and the goal is oftentimes more elusive. There isn’t a conclusive map that will lead to the sound, although as with any unknown territory, the more a musician searches and finds, the easier it will be to map and return.

This brings us back to the original question proposed at the beginning of this piece – that the process of searching for a sound, both as an individual musician, or as a composer, is an ongoing process that leads to the creation of a certain type of music palpably, viscerally distinguishable from music that does not. Bill Dixon is nothing short of a master when it comes to this concept of sound, and at his age and stature is unique in his ability to offer us an incredibly refined vision of this different approach to sound and music.

You can read more about the event itself at Stephen Haynes' blog and at SpiderMonkey Stories.

The artist's dilemma and the meditator's are, in a deep sense, equivalent. Both are repeatedly willing to confront an unknown and to risk a response that they cannot predict or control. Both are disciplined in skills that allow them to remain focused on their task and to express their response in a way that will illuminate the dilemma they share with others. And both are liable to similar outcomes. The artist's work is prone to be derivative, a variation on the style of a great master or established school. The meditator's response might tend to be dogmatic, a variation on the words of a hallowed tradition or revered teacher. There is nothing wrong with such responses. But we recognize their secondary nature, their failure to reach the peaks of primary imaginative creation. Great Art and Great Dharma both give rise to something that has never quite been imagined before. Artist and meditator alike ultimately aspire to an original act.

--Stephen Batchelor, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Vol. IV, #2