As you read this, your body is radiating photons to the world around you. You are in constant energy communication as you exchange photons with the people and objects within the room in which you sit.
In the realm of the Akashic, there is always a meaning behind the Meaning. You and I meet there everyday without ever knowing.
“Now shape-give.”
Those three words hold significant meaning for mega-influencial musician Jon Hassell as they were spoken to him in song-form by Indian raga singer Pandit Pran Nath in the early 70’s. Through the teachings of Pran Nath, a key of unusual wisdom was passed that allowed Jon to open his heartspace to hear the meaning behind the Meaning. Pran Nath intuitively showed him that one could create a space of meaning between the musical curves of traditional note structure if one wished to seek out the means to give it shape. With this “shape-giving” knowledge and Pran Nath as the portal to the higher mystical music he was searching to create, Hasselland his “lonely trumpet” departed from their traditional music background to that of something very unique in music- playing theMeaning of the silences between the notes.
With the album Vernal Equinox from 1977, so began Hassell’s public musical journey into what he termed Fourth World music. Since then, many musicians have adopted the idea, and none more so than Brian Eno who immediately contacted Hassell after hearingVernal Equinox that same year. As a result, Possible Musics, the first of several Hassell/Eno collaborations came about. Eno has said of Hassell’s influence: “Jon is an inventor of new forms of music- of new ideas of what music might be and how it could be made. His work is drawn from his whole cultural experience without fear or prejudice. Jon’s (Fourth World theory) is an optimistic, global vision that suggests not only possible musics but possible futures.”In countless interviews from the 70’s and onward, Hassell speaks freely and with precision on his auspicious Fourth World music theory as “a unified, primitive- futuristic sound combining features of World Music ethnic styles with advanced electronics.”
Perhaps it is Jon’s acknowledgement of the trumpet as “a lonely instrument” that encourages his desire to merge the trumpet so seamlessly into the very fiber of his and our sensual experiences. When played, Jon wants his trumpet to traverse those exotic faraway placesboth topographical and corporeal, to take us all with him. Always shape-shifting, the sound of Jon’s trumpet is sometimes like a gentle north-easterly Sahara wind. Then, other times, it is reminiscent of an elephantine cry or even an imagined quasar blip on the end of your fine-toothed comb… on another planet.
Somehow it seems inexplicable that the otherworldly sounds ofJon Hassell’s trumpet have been silent to New York audiences for the last 20 years. Born in Memphis in 1938, Jon once called New York City home. He lived in the Westbeth art complex in the 70’s and 80’s and joined poet/ filmmaker Ira Cohen for late-night soirees hosted by Vali Myers at the Hotel Chelsea.Western Europe, however, has lured this original to countless stages overseas in the interim. InMay 08, Jon performed a choral work for “100 voices and chamber group” in an 11th Century Norwich Cathedral. Since 2005, Jon and his Maarifa Street collective have been heard in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and throughout Scandinavia to promote and perform selections from the album, Maarifa Street. This album,Jon says, wasinspired in part by theidea of creating a “cultural alchemy” via a musical fusion of Arabic and Tibetan poetry. Salient as well were the memories of friends now departed and the shared experience in 1985 of hearing tinkling sounds of handmade bells worn by a gamelan of wandering sheep. With each sheep bell having a different octave or tonal texture, the creation of a gamelan orchestra from the hillsides of Deia became alive at night for his delighted earsto take in.
While visiting family and friends in Los Angeles with my husband in 2006, Jon gaveme a copy of his recent album, Maarifa Street. Subsequently, the first time I heard this magnificent album I was riding the Blue Line, a commuter shuttle from downtown L.A. to Long Beach, California. With the warm summer sun filtering through the train’s passenger window, I immediately felt myself ready for transport to lands far and away. To this day I still relate a specific connection between Maarifa Street and the stimulating properties of the sun which induced a sort of extemporaneous daytime hallucination for me that day. Now, consider your body warming as photons are absorbed by the atoms of your body. And, consider Hassell’s trumpet inviting you in with soft whispering tonalities which slowly build to a rhapsody of dueling sonic textures.
Weaving through the bliss, a vaguely disinterested female voice could be heard to repeat “doors are closing” like a mantra. All the while, the cacaphonous chatter of hip-hop kids departing and emerging the train integrated well with the ecstatic bleating vocalizations of Dhafer Youssef which seem to move in and out of the album like a sonic mirage. With the rays of the hot summer sun shooting it’s warmth to my skin, the coffee-colored kids turned to astral travelers ridingcolorful carpeted skateboards toPlanet Mumtaj.
JON HASSELL AT ZANKEL HALL, NYC. FEB. 10. 8:30pm.
SPECIAL NOTE: In April 09, Hassell and Brian Eno deliver their “Conversation Piece” at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. This “conversational remix”, an animated juxtaposing of philosophies of life, art and music was premiered at Norway’s Punkt Festival in 08 to much acclaim.
Today's post courtesy of Mia Hanson. (Photo by J. M. Lubrano)
Living with Legends 