In the media age, imagination has come under attack. However, the interface between the unknown and the self needs to be triggered as a source of inspiration for art and science. “Why should I read books, when I can read the clouds and the sky, or the stars, or the trees, or even the animals?”, asked cut-up artist William Burroughs.
Listening can also be a key to activating one’s own imagination. Jazz musician Robert Northern, alias Brother Ah, discovered this technique at the age of five after being given a trumpet as a gift.
He learned to play the instrument by imitating the street noises he heard from his family’s fifth-floor flat in Harlem, New York, in the late 1930s – horse-drawn carriages, street vendors’ cries and barking dogs.
After a career as a session musician for jazz legends such as John Coltrane, Sun Ra and Don Cherry, Northern travelled regularly to Africa in the 1970s, spending time in Ghana, Kenya and Tanzania.
He lived deep in the forest with traditional people and learned to understand the language of birds, insects and animals in their natural habitat by listening to them. And sometimes he even interacted with animals such as monkeys by using bamboo flutes.
During a stay in Jamaica in 1978, Northern created the series The Sea with music whose melodies and rhythms he received from the ocean. A few years later, he turned his gaze inward, searching for the unseen spiritual world that lay dormant within him.
Tracks such as Song Of The Unseen from the homemade series Meditation were recorded spontaneously in 1981, immediately after coming out of meditations. The music is based on the images that Robert Northern and percussionist Cleo Jomo Faulks saw and felt with their eyes closed during their spiritual journeys.
Find Brother Ah’s Song Of The Unseen in Sounds Central’s mix
Wild Thyme Music (4): A Sonic Universe
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