Month of May , 2008

To all concerned:

I was asked to inform you of the regrettable death of vibraphonist Walt Dickerson, by his beloved wife, Elizabeth. Walt passed away on May 15 from cardiac arrest. He was 80 years of age and lived in Willow Grove, PA.

In sympathy,

Andrew Cyrille

"A MAN IS NOT A SEPARATE ENTITY FROM HIS MUSICAL PROJECTIONS. They're one and the same. Treat them as such, view them as such and then you get the complete picture. Isolate them, and you'll get a distorted picture, subject to your assumptions, which are erroneous 90 percent of the time." - Walt Dickerson

This essay is offered as a replacement for a review of Bill Dixon's new release, 17 Musicians in Search of a Sound: Darfur (In Concert at Vision Festival XII) - entirely inspired by the music contained therein and in that sense a tribute to the potency of its contents.

What is the quality of music that distinguishes the revolutionary from the mundane, the seeking from the sought, the cherished from the discarded? Music can serve many functions (and I am adamant in my belief that music is a highly functional art), but in this continuum of music we might call jazz, or in the history of African American creative music that people of all colors, shapes and sizes have participated in and drawn from, what is the quality that musicians who stand out from the pack cultivate?

To my ears and personal experience, there is an element of sincerity of approach and vision, a seriousness in purpose and path that translates into a pure expression of a personal music. The element of individuality is one of the qualities as well, correct? An outward manifestation of an inner understanding or quest for understanding, what George Lewis has termed an Afrological approach to music, where the musician is searching for a sound and personal voice both as a composer and as an instrumentalist (the two are inseparably intertwined).

This is as opposed to a Eurological approach to organizing sound as a composer to be faithfully reproduced in accordance with the original vision of the composer, where the individual instrumental voice is subsumed by the compositional voice.

We can see in the Afrological model that there is a potential to enhance and expand the concept of the latter, where the individual voice is empowered within the context of a compositional structure to enhance and expose supra-musical elements, and indeed is encouraged to do so. It requires not only following a pre-conceived musical score, but also understanding the sound the composer is searching for. To achieve that goal, the musicians must listen and react in addition to following structural concerns.

This idea of searching for a sound, a whole sound that we can hear from its development to its completion, is markedly different than a notion of constructing harmonic and melodic composition, but certainly does not exclude it. Both of them work toward goals and reward the forest view of music, how the trees compose the whole, how the tension contrasts with the release. The former is decidedly more exploratory, and the goal is oftentimes more elusive. There isn’t a conclusive map that will lead to the sound, although as with any unknown territory, the more a musician searches and finds, the easier it will be to map and return.

This brings us back to the original question proposed at the beginning of this piece – that the process of searching for a sound, both as an individual musician, or as a composer, is an ongoing process that leads to the creation of a certain type of music palpably, viscerally distinguishable from music that does not. Bill Dixon is nothing short of a master when it comes to this concept of sound, and at his age and stature is unique in his ability to offer us an incredibly refined vision of this different approach to sound and music.

You can read more about the event itself at Stephen Haynes' blog and at SpiderMonkey Stories.

I heard this music once before, in its Chicago debut at the Chicago Cultural Center. I left the performance in a musically altered state, having been transfixed and transported by Nicole Mitchell’s tribute to Octavia Butler, entitled Xenogenesis Suite. The music was expansive, evocative, and perhaps most of all to my ears, a departure from her earlier work stylistically. While it retained her signature flute playing, the compositions were radically different from anything else I had heard from Nicole Mitchell.

So it was with eager anticipation that I awaited the arrival of this album, as I was curious how the power of the live performance of the music would translate to the recorded medium. Having listened to it a dozen plus times since it arrived, I can say with confidence that it makes the transition beautifully, retaining its connotative power.

One of the highest compliments I can pay to this recording is that I always listen to it from beginning to end, and that I don’t really distinguish between separate tracks. It really is a suite in the sense of a continuous flow of feeling and atmosphere that pervades the album. It’s a testament both to Nicole Mitchell’s vision, as well as to her able band’s execution. This is a real, working band, and it shows.

So what does the music sound like? My best description would be otherworldly – there are rhythmically propulsive trance inducing ostinati, glossolalic vocal slurs and murmurs, a strong sense of ensemble and a lack of solos, space imparted by contrasting uses of musical density and silence, and intense dynamic changes. It’s cinematically evocative, and as such extremely effective in creating a musical version of the science fiction fantasy inspired by the work of Octavia Butler.

I think the next step for me is to read Octavia Butler so I can put the music in perspective with its inspired text. I'm looking forward to coming back to the album after I've done so.