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Something I question of what Rich said, though: would Basho have been better off with a grounding in solid music theory and what-not? I don’t eschew that approach (there are too many composers I admire who came up that way); nor am I in the camp that embraces primitivism and self-taughtness, in every case, for its own sake.
But I think a case can be made that players / composers like Robbie and Fahey (and others) were as much a product of what they didn’t know as what they did. They invented and refined their own musical language, and while music theory, it could be argued, wouldn’t hurt the truly creative spirit, I think something can come out of an intuitive approach that schooling, in some cases, could diminish or make (merely) “correct” or conventional, or derivative, something Basho, decidedly, was not.
Something guitarist / sarodist Peter Walker (*Rainy Day Raga*) said to me recently, which I found amusing: “When I was playing ragas and didn’t know what I was doing, everybody loved it. So I studied, learned how to play ragas correctly -- and nobody cared.”
The thing is that Robbie’s (and Walker’s and Fahey’s) so-called raga style owed very little to true raga music — and I think it was better for that.
Had Robbie’s studies with Ali Akbar Khan (who, I agree, is one of the greatest musicians of the past 50 years) led him to play in a more traditional raga style, it would have hurt, rather than helped him -- I think -- and made him a poor second to the masters of this style. (It’s difficult to beat the masters at their own game.)
However, Basho adapted, and composed and came up with his own thing, of which, I would argue, he was a master.
on 12/8/07 8:31 PM, artpaws at artpaws@... wrote:
Hi Robbie,
It's good to see you posting again. And thanks for taking a mild,
non-judgmental attitude to my somewhat iconoclastic posting.
Robbie had real musical genius. About that I do not doubt. This was
coupled with a hugely passionate spirit and the heart of a journeyer
and lover of God. I think I mentioned in my last post how one's very
strengths can become liabilities. Robbie was completely absorbed in
his process. The man also experienced some kind of synesthesia, as
is apparent when you read his early liner notes. The
correspondence of chords, tunings and colors was based on
experience.
During the Stanford concert I mentioned, I was introducing one of
Robbie's pieces that I was going to play, the "Lost Lagoon Suite",
and mentioned how for me it was clothed in the deep emeralds and
greens of the Northwest, despite the oceanic and equatorial
implications of the title. As I did so, a voice floated out from the
wings, "No, it's gold." He just couldn't help himself! And because
of that very fact, I excuse the extremeness of his self-absorption.
In a way, he was a little like the "masts" (in India, a Persian word
for people who appear crazy or drunk, in being totally wrapped up in
their inner worlds) that Meher Baba spoke of, saying they were "drunk
on God".
As for a transcription project: I could contribute a transcription
of "The Golden Shamrock". It is certainly not note for note the
piece as Robbie plays it, but it is close enough and forms the
framework of the way I perform it today. It's the only piece I have
re-learned in this fashion, coming back to the raga-style after 20
years. There are other pieces I love as much, but I quickly
realized that it would be counter-productive and enslaving for me to
get into a transcription, note by note, process. It was bad enough
30 years ago just being in awe of what he was doing and not being
shown any way to explore independently. Now that the springs of
melody have begun to flow, I am much more concerned with how to keep
that flow active and alive. So, for the present time, other Basho
pieces are for me more skeletal formal structures to use when
improvising. If I were to expend the time for another note-by-note
transcription right now, it would be of a raga by Ali Akbar Khan, a
true master IMO.
Interestingly (to me, at least) we have heard Khan-sahib in concert
a couple of times in the last few years. Already in his 80's, one
noticeable tendency was that in each raga he seemed anxious to get to
the fast and "overdrive" sections as soon as possible, as though to
prove that he still has the "right stuff". And those sections have
never interested me as much as the very slow and adagio-allegro
portions. The tendency toward speed seems to show up in Basho's
later albums too.
"To make a long story unbearable", I shouldn't depart without at
least a partial answer to Robbie's question about what we are seeking
in this forum. For me, this is all part of the process of "sorting
out" what is of value and finding a way to define and move forward.
I mentioned before that I thought Robbie should have created a school
of guitar. I guess since no one else has done it, I am just
beginning to think in that way myself. What could someone have
showed me as a guitarist that would have helped me to leap up into
the improvisatory and compositional realms of a Basho, a Bach, a
Branford Marsalis…..?!
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