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 your 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.
Listening can be a key to activating your imagination
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.
Travelling through time was the trademark of Ursula K. Le Guin. In fantasy and science fiction novels, the US-American writer created futuristic scenarios – often linked to Native American motifs.
Her 1985 novel Always Coming Home is an anthropological blend of folklore and fantasy that describes the life of the Kesh, a fictional ethnic group living in post-apocalyptic Northern California.
Le Guin describes their myths, rituals, recipes, and prose in detail. She designed maps and an alphabet, and there is a glossary of terms and illustrations of tools.
To make the world of the Kesh audible, Le Guin and her friend, synthesiser player and composer Todd Barton, even developed musical instruments such as the houmbúta, a horn over two metres long.
A collection of their pseudo-ethnological musical finds appeared on an audio cassette that accompanied early editions of the book. Long Singing, for example, is the imaginary ritual of a sun ceremony held in the middle of winter.
The recording took place at midnight, with 36 people playfully reciting syllables of the word heya. Some of them had already been doing this for four hours, while others would continue singing until dawn.
Singing is also at the heart of Catherine Christer Hennix’s composition Blues Alif Lam Mim In The Modes Of Rag Infinity/Rag Cosmosis, which was performed live in 2014 by the Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage ensemble during the Ultima Festival in New York City.
Sound as a psychotropic guide to increase listeners’ receptivity
The piece is based on a devotional poem written in Arabic by the Swedish-born artist, poet and philosopher herself, and includes quotations from the Koran. It aims to highlight the origins of blues in Eastern musical traditions.
Hennix arranged raga-like fragments by permuting their order, creating a non-traditional work full of depth and hypnotic flow. During its 80-minute running time, the sound expands and contracts, penetrating deep into the listener’s subconscious.
Such a listening experience corresponds to anti-artist Henry Flynt’s 1978 concept of Illuminatory Sound Environments, which was inspired by Hennix’s groundbreaking work The Electric Harpsichord. Flynt’s idea is based on using sound as a psychotropic guide to increase listeners’ receptivity and transport them into states of altered consciousness.
Hennix has been exploring her fascination with such trance-like states for decades. After developing tape works at the pioneering Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) in Stockholm in the late 1960s, she moved to New York City and collaborated with many artists in the thriving avantgarde scene there.
As she was active in the circle of composers interested in just intonation, it was almost inevitable that she would meet the Hindustani raga singer Pandit Pran Nath and become his first European student.
Later, Hennix explored traditions such as Japanese Gagaku music and the vocal works of the French medieval composer Pérotin, which for many represent a shortcut to the realm of angels.
In Blues Alif Lam Mim In The Modes Of Rag Infinity/Rag Cosmosis, aspects of her insights from all such spiritual realms culminate. Hennix shapes them into an immersive experience in which you can move freely while listening through loudspeakers. Sound, surroundings and oneself merge together and convey the feeling of being in contact with infinity.
Featured cover art: Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage – Blues Alif Lam Mim in the Mode of Rag Infinity/Rag Cosmosis (2021, Blank Forms Editions)
Playlist
Brother Ah – Song of the Unseen
from the album Divine Music – Meditation (2017, Manufactured Recordings)
Ursula K. Le Guin & Todd Barton – Long Singing
from the album Music And Poetry Of The Kesh (2018, Freedom To Spend)
Catherine Christer Hennix – Blues Alif Lam Mim in the Mode of Rag Infinity/Rag Cosmosis
performed live by Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage at Ultima Festival, NYC, Issue Project Room, 23 April 2014, 8PM (2021, Blank Forms Editions)
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