Charlie Morrow: A Voice in the Wilderness: Seance vs. Vision Music (1975)

[The following is a classic statement on voice & breath by Charlie Morrow, who for many years has been my collaborator & close companion (at times my mentor) in the elaboration of performative works that touch on both music & verbal language.  The occasion for posting it here is the appearance of a retrospective gathering of Morrow’s written work, The Book of Numbers and Spells, set for publication this year by Sean McCann and Recital
[http://www.recitalprogram.com] in Los Angeles.  Filled with instructive and often inspired directives, along with a treasury of handwritten scores & notations, the book is a contribution as well to our poetics as it continues to unfold into the new century & millennium. (J.R.)]

The single most striking aspect of music in our culture is its relationship to

death. The ‘highest’ music is performed in a special insulated and vibrant

indoor location where listeners sit motionless and soundless while darkly

dressed, carefully schooled and carefully moving musicians play the music of a

dead person.

This seance is magic made possible by the written note. With the written note,

the musician becomes the medium through which ideas and energies of the

long gone spirit live again. Image and sound recording expand this process.

In most of the world, written music and written words are just recently entering

verbal and musical traditions. And learning orally means learning the personal

style of the teacher, not just a melody, words and a general style.

In this age when death is more abundant and violence more colossal than in the

past, the reality of death is farther and farther from consciousness. Food is never

seen as dead animals and plants. Killing and death are divorced in many minds.

Our old people and old traditions are packed away, named and coded, and

disappear from daily life.

As a performer, one allows the audience to enter his place, his mind, his spirit.

You open up the possibility of behavior not acceptable in other areas of life.

Social dancing is one area where music and musicians let the people act crazy.

As people enter my space, I consider what makes that process possible, not just

in music, but in all performing arts, religious ritual, sports, the performances of

everyday life. And how does this relate to death transcendence?

Death transcendence is the highest magic, and is the extremest form of the

physical, mental and emotional changes that ‘being in someone else’s place’

affords. It is the entering of a person’s place, commonly associated with sexual

activity, that is the highly charged process. And trickiness is necessary to bring

it off: heroic skills, wondrous memory, charismatic personality, inventive and

revelatory ideas, an evocative body, androgynous appearance, etc. These tricks

turn up in mythology as the play of the gods. Zeus as swan, bull; God as the

word, the whirlwind; Coyote as creature upstream from washing women who

sends his penis downstream and gets them all; Schools as seminaries.

In Don Juan, Don Gennaro, the old sorcerer, leaps from stone to stone down a

perilous cataract. And the high artist is the high sorcerer who can do a trick a

culture wants to believe.

But it is magic within all of us that is being tapped in these tricks. And in

finding myself being entered, l want to know what is the magic in everyone and

where do my tricks begin. This common ground is what must be established to

prevent exploitation of people hungry for transformation, but ready to buy the

politics of franchised religion. The stranglehold that organized religion has on

magic and spiritual processes, most of which resides in the individual, is a most

unnecessary monopoly.

The common ground is our bodies and minds BREATH, VOICE, GESTURE.

Over and above this common matrix are the ‘codes’ of language and customs

of our species, countries, regions, neighborhood, social & professional clans.

Breath is unique as the universal carrier of information. Its range of

colors and rates is enormous. We know emotional and physical states from

each other’s breath. And breathing, to some degree, is the basis of cross-

species understanding. Each species has its own range of clock rates, with

corresponding physical (respiration, heartbeat) states.

Breath chant: a group can follow and duplicate, in unison chorus, the breathing

of one person. The breathing can be any form: emotional & dramatic (stories),

regular & meditative, holding & letting go, etc., as the role of leader is taken by

different persons and the group unison is continued. The group acquires a sense

of each person’s unique state.

This ‘tracking’ procedure seems able to transmit anybody’s state.

If so, we probably can and do know a lot about each other in all the

transactions of life. The power of this breath transaction also suggests that the

reaction we get from much of performance comes from the breath level, and

not all from the verbal and musical languages, which are further illuminations.

The voice is the fundamental illumination of the breath, filling breath of many

colors with sound of many colors. The rhythm of voice in relationship to the

rhythm of breath seems to effect time perception. (Gesture seems to be in an

equal place with voice.)

Voice enters breath as resonances in the body. The bell, with low vibration at

the rim and higher partials up to its dome, is an idealized respiratory column:

low vowels and grumbles in the belly, higher and higher through the chest,

throat, to mouth and nasal space. All can ring in different ways at once.

In many chant systems, the vibrating parts of the body serve particular ends.

The use of bell & gong sound can serve to focus on the body ringing.

Voice, coming from various resonating combinations, tells of states of

self, regions of the world, and stereotypes invoked. The voices of musical

instruments function similarly.

Voice is also what we hear from our sound environment, animate and

inanimate. It is easy to understand the world as filled with various spirits &

voices. Imparting cognition and volition to the wind, etc., is naturally another

issue. Imitation of voices reflects the way images have entered our personal

space.

Imitating voices comes in several ways: I hear something and respond

spontaneously, or I imitate something consciously, or I dream something and

do it, or I study something and present it. The response to the original voice

in each case is delayed differently and colored differently. But all relate to the

reflex response.

Little children play with the sound world, answering reflexively; field frogs and

other signaling creatures play with the reflex, taking turns leading and following.

There is both a compulsion to answer and the desire to evoke and answer. This

game is a fundamental music, a linguistic music. In music where there is only

melody, most of the world’s music, the role shifting in answering and counter-

pointing expands this game. Basic forms are echoing, dialogue, and follow the

leader.

Chanting, as a way of traveling between or dwelling on various body resonances

and voice locations, is found in all cultures. By chanting, I mean vocal music

where voice is primary and if there are instruments, they propel and punctuate.

From breathing we know our moods and gross physical states. From chanting

we know ourselves better as ‘bells,’ and collections of voices (places in and out

of ourselves). From playing with our unisons and reflex responses, we join with

each other and our environment as active spirits.

And we know our artists as magicians who trick us in ways we want to be

tricked. The common matrix of breath, voice and gesture can be tapped

by anyone. But an artist, athlete, priest, or any transcendor is expected to

go beyond what everyone can do within that matrix. In social dancing, for

example, anyone keeping the beat can begin something, but a good band gets

you farther.

So as a living performer confronted with such high things, I know people will

not enter my body without a seductive process.

In stating this overview publicly, there is my hope that when the ritual context is

established for any activity, that activity can then be that much higher.