May 2008 Archives

My alma mater has a tradition not unlike many state schools. And also not unlike many, they call it Quadmania. It's a weekend festival held every spring, focused around your standard carnival games like throwing ping-pong balls into fishbowls and riding giant metal contraptions that disorient you. There's also music. I've never been too happy or impressed with the acts they book, which is why my first Quadmania is two years after I graduated. While the headliner this year was T-Pain, I biked over to the school Saturday afternoon to see a paunch, balding man in stained red slacks and an old Tasmanian Devil t-shirt tweak knobs on pawn-shop digital equipment. His name is Dan Deacon.

(yes, another crappy cell phone pic)

Deacon is a DJ, but only because, in this day in age, DJ is still something of a catch-all term. One could just as easily, succinctly and accurately call him an outsider artist, and a combination of those two brandings would actually give a pretty fair impression of the man. Deacon is a native of Baltimore, and part of its fabled Wham City collective of artistic and creative folks living and working communally. He holds a graduate degree in composition and positive album reviews by major publications. He's becoming a hot item, really.

Deacon set up his table of equipment on the blacktop in front of the stage. He insisted that a guitar monitor, pointed towards the crowd, would be his only amplification. He invited the crowd of thirty-ish people to gather around him as he played. But first, we had some exercising to do.

What could be considered musical comedy or performance art is really just Dan being himself. He directed us to stretch and twist, get on one knee, point at the sky, make eye contact with a stranger, and talk without moving our jaws. This cut into his already very short set time, but it allowed all present to quickly develop a sense of community and purpose, something I had never realized how much I missed from other concert experiences. After burning through "Okie Dokie" while we danced jerkily, the activities continued. For the remaining half dozen songs played, Deacon would organize what essentially were children's games and pranks, including but not limited to running in a circle, tagging people, creating a moving human tunnel, and singing to a randomly chosen bystander. His imagination and indomitable quest for the purest sense of fun is infectious, and as a participant in his concert one happy follows his every direction. If you are told to dance as if you are The Joker and have sworn to give up your life of crime and be a good citizen, and that you have learned to play the saxophone, but that while you play your sax gets smaller and smaller and you get bigger and bigger, by golly you dance like that.

Deacon also played "The Crystal Cat", "Let's All Go for a Ride", and "Silence Like the Wind Overtakes Me", among others. This really was not so much a concert as a sampling of what a concert would be. But it only take one sampling to make a new fan.

After the show I approached Dan and offered him a hug ("Let's do it!", he answered). I thanked him for helping to make Baltimore an important city for music. He seemed flattered, but I hope that he understands how true that is.

p.s. As further proof of his awesomeness, Dan Deacon recently put up most of his back catalogue online in high-quality mp3s for free download. Take a sample for yourself and see.

Last night I watched a documentary, Keith Jarrett: The Art of Improvisation. Through numerous interviews with the subject and those close to him, the film attempted to explore all that is this famed jazz pianist.

If the director were to call me today and ask if I would take part in a five-minute survey about my experiences with the film, and to rate it on a scale of Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair or Poor, I would respond with Good. If he pressed me for a one-word review, I would say, "Illuminating." It was indeed an enjoyable documentary, one that held my interest throughout and one that I would recommend to others (ahem?), but that is almost entirely on the part of Keith Jarrett and his overflowing brilliance.

That Jarrett is a truly exceptional musician cannot be overstated. For the unfamiliar, a prime example of this is his career of solo piano concerts, in which a full hour or two is completely improvised. Consider the supernatural abilities one must possess in order for this to be successful: dexterity, stamina, agility, to say nothing of an almost unparalleled musical cognizance. That's the key to Jarrett's music, that what he improvises can stand alone, as a complete and rich composition. He could have had a perfectly fine career if he only had his excellent style and technique, but what makes him a musical genius-- and what makes me question using that term with other musicians, even those I love more-- is that Jarrett can come from nothing and create something important.

I do take issue with one part of the documentary, and that is the title. To me, the phrase, "the art of improvisation" means a learned skill, or at least a talent. It implies that one must practice and work hard to master this ability. That indeed can be true for improvisation, and it is a sure fact for Jarrett, but all the same that is not where his improvisations come from. No, it's not that simple. To hear Jarrett play, and especially to see him play, it becomes undeniable that, in a way, the movements, the music, are not coming from him. This documentary only reinforced this; we hear Jarrett make such remarks as, "when I create those worlds, I try not to fill it up with things I like, so that it is created by something other than my preferences", and, "some people see improvisation as a way of connecting two written pieces, but I see it as connecting nothing to nothing", and "when I stopped telling my left hand what to do, it began to show me things that I never knew it was capable of." Others interviewed often spoke about asking Jarrett about how he comes up with what he plays, and his common answer appears to be, "I don't know, I just do."

Tied into all this is Jarrett's notorious stage presence. When he gets into it, the man is unrecognizable. He gyrates, he contorts, he jumps, he squats, he scrunches his face, he sighs, yells, and sings along to himself in a high-pitch whine. This underpins the sense that when Jarrett improvises he is not rapt with attention to every musical choice, but quite the opposite; it is all happening through him but independent of him. It could be as if his body is a robot, and he just hits the big "ON" button and the figure begins to churn out music... but robots can only do what they are told and follow a set path, they know nothing of creating. It could also be as if he is possessed by a demon, one who uses his body as a tool... but demons are pure evil, they know nothing of the beauty of this world and therefore could not create it. I cannot identify where Jarrett's improvisations come from, but I can certainly say that they do not come from him.

Jarrett is interesting as a psychological case study almost as much as a musician. I would love to hook electrodes to him as he performs and scan his brain. I'll bet that when he really lets go, there is something amazing happening in there.

Jocelyn watched some of the documentary with me, and later commented on how corporeal Jarrett's playing was. That's a good word. The composer Harry Partch famously said something along these lines: music should be corporeal as a way of achieving holistic healing. I don't know if Partch ever saw Jarrett play, or was a fan, but I'm sure he would have been proud. And perhaps that's all that Jarrett is doing when he's improvising: he's healing.