The Roving Musicologist

Zone Drain (Mumbai)

For the first two days in India, it seemed a better idea to stay on the mat on the floor, letting the maid kick me around so she could sweep, and nodding whenever the cook spoke to me.  The apartment was small and there were no screens on the windows.  My only view was of a vacant lot, about two acres in size, with an unpaved footpath in front of it.  All day long, there were two constant streams of people going each way.  The haze cut off everything in the distance, and I wasn’t ready to deal with a rickshaw driver yet.

   After a nap, I woke up and saw a child on the path struggling to pull an animal that looked like a cross between a goat and a horse, with large white circular blotches on brown fur.  I had no idea what it was.  Soon my host would be home and ask what I had accomplished that day.

I recorded the sound of this water in the bathroom drain of their apartment.

Birthing Roma Stars (Pecs, Hungary)

    Someone told me to be in the parking lot of the big market and to look for a guy in shorts…you will go and see guys in caves, some gypsy guys, and here, take these contact mics with you.  Then a writer is there from Wire:  http://www.representativetrust.co.uk/archives/414

and this guy Balazs Pandi I know, who plays the drums:

http://fucktothemusic.blog.hu/

SO there we were, after a long drive, recording these Roma kids freaking out.  They turned the power on just so we could do this, and turned it off almost the minute that it was over, finally over, after a straight hour of noise.  Once I tried to go outside and the kids tried to get me to drive them around in the car.  I wasn’t going to drive that car; “fuck you” one of them said over and over.  He didn’t know what it meant.  When Balazs explained to him what it meant, he started saying it over and over again.  Those were his words, yes, no, fuck you.  He was the MC on the track.

Drunkaholism (Budapest)

Some people have a drinking problem, but I seem to be addicted to drunks.  They cry out to be recorded, because all their gestures seem so grand to them at the time.  Religion provides the other pole, presenting itself as grand even when completely sober, and most things posted here reflect the practiced channels it facilitates or the undirected and novel energy of someone that has forgotten what they were so worried about before they started drinking.  If it’s a good day maybe they mix.

Atheist Church Bells (Prague)

   The park on the hill is the best place to listen to the bells of the many churches of Prague.  The Czech republic is also the most atheistic nation on Earth, so there’s no need to feel like it means anything else besides a sound.

While few keys are required to move around Prague, the Door to the House of God is often Locked.

Eye Myths

It was a going away party.

Eye Myths relocated to Portland from San Diego several years ago, and since then have become involved in various projects, including working with the Tenses and Eat Skull.  

They aren’t a band that plays very often, but when they do there seems to be a gulf of thought between what they sounded like before and where they are now.  This was the most lucid set to come my way yet, although as it’s from June they’ve probably left it a long way behind by now.

Solar Powered Instruments of Junk (Budapest)

Currently at Makettlabor Gallery.

The Artist is Bori Balint, and the name of the show is Kabocak.

Hungry Hungry Hippos Amplified (Portland, Oregon)

Re-enacting the Tragedy of the Commons provides hours of entertainment.

Contact microphones attached to an aggressive behavior-inducing board game provides us with this sound.

Travel Post #28: Running the God Drill (Latakia, Syria)

Travel Post #27: High Pitched Sunrise Temple Chant (Mangalore, India)

The only thing open was this temple and a newspaper stand.

There were only a few pools of light in the streets when I was dropped off by the night bus.  The few desperate rickshaw drivers waiting by the bus refused to give me any directions so I walked around looking for a place to get coffee, but nothing was open.  Then I heard this chant coming from somewhere, and followed it to a place called temple square.

I spent some time sitting with an old man selling leaves that had some religious purpose while the motorbikes and trucks began breaking the silence.  He was trying to sing along to the chant.

More people began to gather around the temple as the sun came up.  I moved next to the bodhi tree and watched a woman circling around the tree repeatedly.

The chant ended and the sun was up.  People were awake.  The shopkeeper across the street insisted I take his picture.

At the time, I didn’t know why.

Mangalore is unaccustomed to tourists.  The guidebooks barely mention it and no one stays any longer than they have to, usually.

As I walked around the next day, a man stopped on his motorbike and said he had seen me praying at their temple.  I was only standing there while the sound recorder was on, but this was prayer in the eyes of this man.  He was curious to ask all of the usual questions, and then he left.

Then I went to the mall.

Travel Post #25: Where are the knobs on those cricket Frogs? (Nan, Thailand)

These frogs are like an organic version of an earlier post, Gorf Freaks Out.  I have recorded many insects and frogs at night on the trip, but this one is probably the best and the only one good enough to post.

This was recorded out of the window of the oxcart room I stayed in for two weeks in the north of Thailand.

Travel Post #24: Mekong Boatmen Chaos Chorus (Luang Prabang, Laos)

An example of the boats that the singers live on.

There was nothing to do in Luang Prabang most nights, unless you went to the markets.  But the markets were dead most of the time and so Jacques and I ended up down by the river, for lack of money and ideas. 

At the river, boatmen sat in a circle and moaned in a musical way.  Some would  yell and leave, then sometimes come back and join together.  Various instruments took their turns; first a guitar, then an accordion, and finally a keyboard softly pumping out a generic beat.  But all of them were punctuated by the put-put of riverboat engines, as long craft in the dark made their way to points I would never see - except across the river, where the silhouette of a large boat settled in and let a car off onto the far shore of houses and temples, and maybe other things that were now just lights floating across the water mixed with the heavy haze in the air.

Jacques said the smoke was because the farmers were burning forest, which they always did, but for some reason it was worse today.  The smoke burned my eyes and scratched my throat, but it was too nice to leave here yet.  Lights, fluorescent, were nailed to the trees up on the bank, but they left the grand staircase down to the beach unlit, making the lights from the banana shaped boats seem much stronger. 

Hanging in the boats were pots and pans, the organization of lives shining in the light, radios with digital screens, and maybe a lantern here and there.  So many boats were moored here and yet the river was supposed to be too low for them to go anywhere.

Jacques talked about Egypt…the Mekong reminded him of places by the Red Sea.  It was like this, he said, people living like this. 

Travel Post #23: Party in the USA (Portland, Oregon Again)

Ending where I began the trip, this recording is a sampling of the country I almost left behind. 

On this recording there is a street performer and two different conversations, one of which was just one person.  While I can’t say where exactly they were recorded, the picture below was taken nearby one of them:

The storefront was blank except for soda bottles from bankrupt ventures.

Having recovered from the shock of being swathed once again in the language that not so long ago was reserved for the inside of my head, I have been able to put this together.  More recordings from outside of the US will be posted when they can be identified.

Miley also welcomed me home when I caught a ride in a gleaming SUV.  Photo courtesy of fisherwy.blogspot.com

Goatskin Sack Music was dominant at Alberta St.

And for those of you that came here in error:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M11SvDtPBhA

Travel Post #22: Funeral Music and Hello Ambushes (Kampot, Cambodia)

No Laughing Zone

Joseph Conrad was right, heat warps your mind.  You can’t walk anywhere, any destination becomes a trudge.  Even the novice monks at the temples seem out of sorts.  Although the worst thing you could do is get married in this state of mind, weddings are a constant.  Funerals, coming along on their own, feature repetitive rolling tones blasted out of a PA system that looks like something from an elementary school.

This recording is the result of a day of walking around in the sun in Kampot.  One part of the recording is funeral music that was being played out of a PA system down a dirt road.  The other part is the music produced in an unattended school of music, abandoned in anticipation of the Khmer New Year and full of nothing but percussion and wooden swords.

Travel Post #21: Call to Prayer Echoed (Alanya, Turkey)

Triple reverberations of Islamic Prayer fill the valley next to the sea where Alanya sits.  The Mosques in most of Turkey are very close together so it is easy to record several calls to prayer at once, although this spot in Alanya had better acoustics than any other spot I found.  The scraping in the track is from the tools of construction workers that were digging drainage ditches in the courtyard. 

Weyes Bluhd Part 2 (Baltimore and other places)

That’s how it goes.

This is a song from a set recorded in October 2009.  The other song can be found in an earlier post. 

This was the first song from the set, and it has a way of wrapping itself around you like a mist.  The mixture of tapes, live instruments, and singing in this song is done very well and shows some good instincts.

I’m not sure what exactly Weyes Bluhd is up to right now, but she seems to stay busy wherever she goes.