We are all more or less indebted, of course artistically. Someone somewhere has explored the trails before us as we explore sound instantly. In music, the real innovators are actually very rare. If I look at my personal journey, the tangent being taken by my music and my interests, I can only admit to having some great art school, which is still unknown, despite its major impact on modern culture.
And no, I'm not talking about the Hip-Hop ..
My biggest influence is now more of an artistic movement that arose in the late 50s and early 60s, I would call here the Fluxus movement.
Fluxus is basically a group of New York artists have begun to redefine the rules of art and creation, with the foundation, among others, the work of composer John Cage. Thus, the Fluxus movement includes music, but also film, visual art and literature. A bit like hip-hop finally ...
course, this is the music I made contact with the Fluxus and without the knowledge of hand. The first artist associated with the movement that profoundly affected me is unquestionably the German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann. There is a good story behind this discovery. When I was young, my father was a subscriber to the journal French Cultural News, a magazine as he does it any more. I assiduously read this magazine because of the strange articles, photos, shock and often for pictures of naked women. So, the beginning adolescence marked by puberty as friends by the experience of psychedelic drugs. In a number of Current, I was struck by criticism of a disk, Material Group, entitled "Hallucination Engine". I listened mainly prog of the 70s at the time and the fact that modern disk can be used to hallucination had piqued my curiosity. A few years later, I came across the disc said Renaud Bray Park Avenue, at a dinner den French on Fairmount College. I returned the next day without any discomfort to steal my first CD ...
Well, this disc has not had the desired effect, I'm not sure what I expected but I remember putting it into the drive during one of our many trips acid and have thought his play would cause hallucinations ... After the many protests from my friends and the absence of hallucinations (although I was thinking it would come later) I had to put "Ummagumma" by Pink Floyd. However, I discovered new names: Bill Laswell , Nicky Skopelitis , William Burroughs .... But it was Bill Laswell me scored the most. Enough that I found years later behind a fascinating hip-hop entitled Material Intonarumori. On this record we found Laswell prod but Kool Keith, Ramm El Zee , Juggaknots , Killah Priest, Flavor Flav and others less known (I later learned that Laswell had produced disc Afrika Bambaataa, but that's another story).
Subsequently, I stopped using drugs heavily and I became interested in experimental music. My friend 1-2-d'piq had a disc in his collaboration between Bill Laswell and Peter Brötzmann named "Low Life" . Hard disk today, I never listened to the full I think. But I was curious when I saw in here (when it was good in 2001 ...) Peter Brötzmann playing in a room which I was then unknown named Casa del Popolo, I decided go check it out. I walked out converted. Brötzmann played that evening with William Parker and Hamid Drake and during the evening has shaped what would become my obsession, free jazz and improvisation.
Only much later than I learned that Brötzmann was part of Fluxus.
What therefore Fluxus? We relate the origin of Fluxus at the thought of John Cage, who sometimes calls for the deconstruction of musical schools and calls into question the idea of virtuosity in music. Music, like art, not to be limited to schools of thought or diktat aesthetics. In this world everything is possible and everyone is a potential artist. Joseph Beuys was also associated with Fluxus, and the influence of this thinker on the German music scene of the 70s is undeniable (the first album of Kraftwerk in the running head). In this world of choice and spontaneity, you learn to play instruments by ourselves (as Brötzmann), it consists of parts for water or for silence and nothing prevents you compose a piece for a diver before the play in a whale's vagina ( Nam June Paik ). This world is free, creative and disturbing ... It is George Maciunas, a visual artsite, reportedly left the movement in 1961 in New York, Around him were grouped musicians, painters, filmmakers, a small community made possible by Lamonte Young appears he said.
Speaking of Young, an entire generation of musicians gravitating Fluxus around that will also draw on the modal music of India (UAVs), especially with the arrival of Pandit Pran Nath in New York in 1972. This allowed the emergence of a so-called minimalist school in mind Lamonte Young, Terry Riley, Henry Flynt, John Cale, Angus Maclise, Tony Conrad, Charlemagne Palestine, Rhys Chatham ... The Velvet Underground is only the tip of this iceberg
artistic movement in Japan is also growing. Taj Mahal Travellers is definitely the group that currently inspires me the most, also associated with Fluxus. UAVs are ubiquitous and works Yoshi Wada and Takehisa Kosugi are transcendental. But we often forget one of the most famous critic (despite it) of this movement; Yoko Ono, who before meeting John Lennon was married to Toshi Ichiyanagi , one of the great composers and musicians of the Japanese Fluxus. Some forget that Yoko Ono had an artistic approach much more intransigent than her famous husband and when you denigrate by treating opportunistic, one wonders if this is not the opposite happened too.
Also, if I take into consideration the contemporary music group that I most admire, they resemble more or less the idea of Fluxus. The list is long ... And it also goes further, the deinstitutionalization of Art, Fluxus has opened the door to the DIY aesthetic that influenced the punk movement énormémnet and why not, hip-hop too. The debt is huge and you have to be repaid at that took ...
to explore the site Ubu Web
