Kassé Mady Diabaté

 @ Habibou Kouyate / AFP

Le grand djeli (griot en langue Malinké) malien Kassé Mady Diabaté (photo: en avril 2016 à Bamako) nous a malheureusement quitté, à l'âge de 69 ans, il y a quelques jours. Cette grande voix mandingue ne cessera de nous manquer, perpétuant l'héritage de la culture mandingue et de ses aïeux musicaux.

L'écoute d'un de ses disques récents, "Kiriké", au côté de nos amis Ballaké Sissoko et Vincent Segal, n'a jamais cessé de me ravir. Franchement conseillé!

 

Sans oublier les formations dont il a fait partie, le formidable orchestre "Maravillas de Mali", devenu en 76 le "Badema national du Mali", et aussi bien sûr l'"Orchestre régional Super Mandé de Kangaba", "L'Orchestre instrumental du Mali", ni ses incursions au sein de "Songhaï 2", avec le groupe flamenco "Ketama", ou bien avec Taj Mahal et Toumani Diabaté. 

"L'homme à la voix de velours"

1968: Destruction in Art Symposium

 

DIAS - London - 1966

Following the example of the "Destruction in Art Symposium" in 1966, activated by the artist Gustav Metzger in London, the artists John Hendricks and Ralph Ortiz organized the "Destruction in Art Symposium USA" in march 1968, in the Judson Gallery in New York.

 

Beside of the Hermann Nitsch's 27th action, Nam June Paik's piece "One for violin" (solo)" was performed by Charlotte Moorman. This performance consists to smash a violin on a table, but an incident happened as a visitor try to protect the violin by lying on the table, and so Charlotte Moorman smashed the instrument on the arms and the head of the visitor who suffered slight injury.

 

On April 4th, as reacting to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the black civil rights champion and Nobel Peace price winner, the symposium was cut short.

 

about Charlotte Moorman, lot of her works on UbuWeb

& this video biography

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for french language readers:

A signaler l'excellente "Brève histoire des destructions musicales" par Matthieu Saladin

publiée en plusieurs épisodes dans le magazine Revue et Corrigée 

de mars 2013 - N°95 jusqu'à décembre 2015 - N°106.

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The passenger N°6

 

Alexi Keywan is a printmaker and painter based in Melbourne. Keywan often chooses the urban environment as her subject, interpreting utilitarian scenes through monochromatic colours. 

This "Passenger N°6" sound composition looks upwards to the power-lines, capturing sounds that emanate from the sky. A helicopter drones in the distance, the sound of traffic floats in the air, and a power-box crackles as rain begins to fall.

To listen to HERE

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Harsh & thrash

Glenn Branca, iconic figure of the avant-garde No Wave's scene in New-York, passed away this 13th of May at the age of 69.
He got his first  electric guitar after he listened "You really got me" by The Kinks, and  started later with the bands "Theoritical Girls" and "Static" in 1977.
After being part of the "Guitar trio" with Rhys Chatham and Nina Canal, in 1980, he composed several medium-length compositions for electric guitar ensembles,
 including "Lesson N°1", "The Ascension" & "Indeterminate activity of resultant masses"

"Glenn Branca's fire-breathing music is a turbulently successful mix of sonic pioneering and experimental melodics with rock-solid, butt-kicking guitar thrash..." 
Tristram Lozaw for BOSTON ROCK

Here, circa 1978, an amazing solo part of guitar

1968: Towards an Ethic of Improvisation

The famous trio AMM was formed in 1965 by Lou Gare, Eddie Prévost and Keith Rowe. They were involved in the idea of free music , without any direct implication in any style (jazz, avant-garde, rock, classical...etc)
As well Christopher Hobbs who played with the trio, Cornelius Cardew joined the trio in 1966 (*). And in 1968, Christian Wolff joined briefly the band. Later, John Tilbury became a new partner.

Christopher Hobbes, Cornelius Cardew, Christian Wolff
London, International Students Center, 1968

In 68, Cardew wrote the essay "Towards an Ethic of Improvisation" where he described the idea of the freely improvised modes to include all sonic possibilities and permissive to go further in the experiment.

Christopher Hobbs, Lou Gare, Keith Rowe, Cornelius Cardew
Germany 1971

”[…] At the words 'You are the music' something unexpected and mechanically real happens (purely by coincidence two teeth in the cogwheels meet up and mesh) the light changes and a new area of speculation opens based on the identity of the player and his music. 

This kind of thing happens in improvisation. Two things running concurrently in haphazard fashion suddenly synchronise autonomously and sling you forcibly into a new phase. Rather like in the 6-day cycle race when you sling your partner into the next lap with a forcible handclasp. Yes, improvisation is a sport too, and a spectator sport, where the subtlest interplay on the physical level can throw into high relief some of the mystery of being alive. […] ”  C.C.

 

AMM. Langtry Road, 1968. pic Frazer Pearce

 

”[…] my own TREATISE which consists of 193 pages of graphic score with no systematic instructions as to the interpretation and only the barest hints (such as an empty pair of 5line systems below every page) to indicate that the interpretation is to be musical. […]  Ideally such music should be played by a collection of musical innocents; but in a culture where musical education is so widespread (at least among musicians) and getting more and more so, such innocents are extremely hard to find. Treatise attempts to locate such musical innocents wherever they survive, by posing a notation that does not specifically demand an ability to read music. On the other hand, the score suffers from the fact that it does demand a certain facility in reading graphics, ie a visual education. […] ”  C.C.

 

three pages of "Treatise"
with Michel Guillet, Jean-Jacques Palix, Marcus Schmickler and Samon Takahashi
for the exhibition "Cornelius Cardew and the freedom of listening"
CAC de Brétigny sur Orge - June 2009
shot by Benoit Lesieux

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