VA: Ecstatic Music of the Jemaa El Fna (Sublime Frequencies)
Purchased at Dave Kuzy's yard sale
Hello.
It's kind of amazing that I was as diligent about maintaining this blog as I had for the first half of 2023. My week of so absence from writing isn't due to anything in particular. Without being on a regular schedule currently, it's easy to sit back and watch too much Mystery Science Theater 3000. I have been working on some compositions, including a big project I've suggested here previously. I still can't discuss it, I still need to know I can pull it off. I've been playing some gigs here and there. And even when I have written on this site, I always promise myself I'll spend as much time working on music as listening and writing.
Here I am again in confessional mode, I suppose. Blah blah blah, get stuff done, Ben.
I went to Dave Kuzy's yard sale today, knowing full well I didn't intend to leave empty-handed. He unloads a few things, I accumulate more. At least I'm mostly limiting myself to records/CDs, occasionally a book, and musical equipment; other collectables, I really have to want it. I've spent enough money and used enough space gathering objects.
Out of his box of vinyl: Stevie Wonder's Innervisions, a reissue of Joy Division's Sordide Sentimental 7", and Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention. On a sticker for the latter, he wrote, "$1/it sucks." Which I know it will, but I'll buy a record such as that for that one track I know will be okay. He had all three volumes of Joe's Garage for cheap, but I have it in CD and I know hate most of that work anyway. I've written about Zappa on here before, maybe I'll have to put on today's buy later as a reason to share some thoughts on late-period Zappa.
And this record. On a stick Dave wrote, "Face-melting jams, with liberally applied distortion." $5.
Sold.
The region? Morocco, Marrakesh in particular. A practically mythical location. Jemaa El Fna is a square in town, thick with magicians, fortune tellers, and soothsayers during the day, and ecstatic musical performances at night. With three groups (one a solo oud player) in a total of nine tracks here, there's a flavor of the music on this compilation. What I assume is that while these tracks sound like complete pieces at times, that the full performances go on much longer.
We have a different sense of time and scale in Western music than in places such as Asia and Africa. It's probably been compounded by a reduction in our attention span due to hyperactive media that is never far from our senses. Generally, I have no problem with either approach: compacting ideas into as short a time span as possible, or stretching ideas out well past the time they might seem "interesting." There's one of those John Cage stories I'll paraphrase, in which he says (not verbatim here), "If something bores your for a minute, listen to it for ten minutes. If it bores you in ten minutes, listen to it for twenty, etc. Eventually you discover that it's not boring at all, but interesting." This of course didn't stop him from questioning why Morton Feldman's pieces were so long.
The recordings on this comp are appropriately noisy and grungy. Studio quality this ain't, but wouldn't that defeat the point? There's always some sort of stringed instrument at the center of things, either "banjo" or "mandolin" in most cases, always super-overdriven in sound. Liberally applied distortion, indeed. Sometimes there's group singing, sometimes percussion.
It's rare to hear anything this nasty sounding on a "world music" broadcast. But then, in general that wouldn't sell it, would it?
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