The Roving Musicologist

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.

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 #16: Thailand Sun Making a Man Slowly Give Up

There’s always a fair in Thailand…little bamboo and thatch huts that sit
in a little lawn and sell things.  Everywhere I go I bump into some kind
of market or festival.  For some reason, the Thai way is to have a guy
going around with a portable microphone and talk about whatever comes into
his head.  On this day, I sat in the shade of an abandoned stall, sweating the whole time, and watched this guy.

The music for the festival was the drone like sounds
you hear, which was completely blown out by the guy’s voice.  No one was
really listening to him, as there was hardly anyone at the fair in the
first place.  The way he said “eah” with the sun coming down on him, carrying his battery pack around, seemed so much a product of the heat coming down. The drone of the Buddhist music in the background gave the fair the feeling that everything was happening automatically, indifferent to how much effort was exerted.

The Nan ethnic fair did not host the Princess of Thailand

Wfmu Audio Postcard #1 for Night People

In addition to this website, I also send in audio postcards to WFMU, which are played on a show called “Night People.”  It airs from 2am to 6am Eastern time, on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, and it has a podcast at the wfmu.org website. This is not a field recording, just me talking. On the show I’m known as Joseph Jonathan.

Although I didn’t want to post these here at first, I am a little too pressed for time to edit my other recordings right now as my flight to India is coming up fast.

Travel Post #9: Selling Bread on the Streets of Istanbul

It’s not easy to get noticed when you’re selling bread.  There are many people in Istanbul rolling around carts full of a bread that is in the shape of a ring.  You can hear the calls all over the city, and where I was sleeping was on this guy’s particular route.  Towards the end of the track, you can hear another guy with a completely different call coming into the street just as the first merchant was leaving.

Another, Inscrutable, Language

Sometimes it may be better to not understand what is being said.  When recording sounds and noises, the actual meaning of the words might get in the way of the plaintive tones of the voice.  Maybe this would be the case for a listener that understands Turkish.

I never read the plaques explaining the silent green sarcophagi, because they had some strange effect on me that was outside of their historical context.  It wasn’t intentional to avoid the information, but later I linked the them to the tones of the man selling bread.

Travel Post #6: Gjirokaster Folk Festival with Three Women

High in the Mountains

Gjirokaster is a small town in the south of Albania.  All of the old houses are made of stone.  Even the roofs of the houses are made of a black slate that is found on the hillsides.  Because of a lack on investment in the town, there isn’t money to keep them up and there are wrecks of the houses scattered around town.  But many of them are still up and there is an Ottoman castle on the top of the mountain.  That’s where this festival was, overlooking the valley far below.

These singers were about the first thing I heard when I came in, and one of the two best things I recorded over the course of two days there.

While it sounds like it has been looped, it hasn’t.

Travel Post #5: Slovakian Attack Warning

The rotating restaurant at the top serves a dish that is not exportable under EU standards.

This was a test of a warning system in case of an attack.  You can hear the voice at the end echoing off of the walls of the largest housing complex ever built in Central Europe.

Currently I am in Budapest, finding more things to record than I have on most of the trip put together.