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The edgy underground goes (quasi) legit with a CD release benefit.
Max Friedenberg, director of the newly incorporated (but long beloved) non-profit High Mayhem Emerging Arts, leans forward over his kitchen table and says "Mass media has smooshed the natural curiosity of people." With a combination of earnest sincerity and mischievous glee he explains that "preprogrammed" sameness has become the norm in terms of commercial music. "Active and critical listening has become very difficult. Arts education in general and music education in particular has gone down the tubes, so people don't know what they're listening to."
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Experiencing the five CDs High Mayhem is simultaneously releasing at its fundraising event this Saturday, one still might not know exactly what one is listening to, even with music education up the wazoo. But this uncertainty is a sure sign that High Mayhem is fulfilling its mission. "We decided on the phrase 'Emerging Arts' to emphasize High Mayhem's interest in invention, not convention," says an affable and articulate Friedenberg. To those who say, "Hey, when I go out, I just want to party-I want to hear something familiar," Friedenberg replies, "You have to have an open mind! It's like food. Try some squid! You don't have to eat squid every night! But try it!"
The music on the CDs slated for release at High Mayhem's event covers a banquet menu of genre-pushing, genre-bending and virtually genre-less exploration. There's the loopy, danceable, and catchy yet somehow eerie ambience of duo Ray Charles Ives's Clandestine Pedestrian, the strange-rock of Derail's Engine Room and the unscripted improvisation of various incarnations of The Uninvited Guests, a revolving door ensemble of some of the most noted musical explorers in New Mexico assembled by High Mayhem program director and bassist Carlos Santestivan. Also, there's local bassist, mbirist and composer Zimbabwe Nkenya's debut CD release, after nearly 30 years as a dedicated force in the local creative music scene, and a remarkable recording, Baghdad Music Journal, composed and recorded by William A Thompson IV (WATIV) from Iraq where he is currently stationed with the US Army. Finally, a CD documenting the collaboration of JA Deane and author Sumner Carnahan, one inch equals 25 miles, rounds out this wealth of new sounds.
In keeping with the goal of innovation, each CD sleeve was hand screen-printed by Santestivan. "I'm playing with color and texture, especially for Zimbabwe's CD. The idea is to have the presentation give an indication of the music, to have each CD be one of a kind, instead of just a product," Santestivan says. "You won't find these at Super Wal-Mart!" The process involved hand printing more than 4,000 individual surfaces.
Nkenya's CD, The New Jazz, captures his inimitable solo bass from a live performance at The Center for Contemporary Arts, as well as excerpts of ensemble work featuring Dan Pearlman on trumpet, Chris Jonas and Rob Brown on saxes and Dave Wayne on drums. Nkenya's arco playing on bass violin is a choir of otherworldly voices and cries, resonant with double and triple stops, interspersed with muscular phrases articulated gracefully. The bass violin can sometimes be unwieldy, but Nkenya is on sure footing. He often seeks pitches between expected notes and uses the glissandos and the sound of wood and strings to create earthy meditations. The ensemble work features sections of complete group improvisation as well as more traditional rhythm-section-plus-soloist approaches. The impression is indeed of something new, and not derivative even of "New Jazz" or "Free Jazz." Rather, it suggests the transformation of a tradition that is still urgently alive.
Speaking of urgent, High Mayhem's press materials describe one inch equals 25 miles as "urgently weird." Deane's Out of Context ensemble, a group of accomplished Albuquerque and Santa Fe musicians, navigate their performance through Deane's hand signals and gestures and, judging from the recording, every member of the ensemble is on high alert for his direction, every second. The musical result is astonishing, unclassifiable, by turns dense and dark or open and light, reaching for the ecstatic or the inscrutable. Carnahan's words, read by Theater Grottesco's John Flax (as well as 38 others, including SFR Editor Julia Goldberg), from her recently published collection of short stories bearing the same name as the CD, weave in and out of the ever-fluctuating sonic space, oddly both crucial and incidental.
Less incidental and more crucial is the High Mayhem Festival, an annual experimental music event-coming up in October-for which this CD release party is a fundraiser. But cover charge options allow for finding a personal comfort level with philanthropic experimentation, choose either to simply see a show and pay accordingly; or get crazy and dabble in the daring world of arts support-and pay accordingly.
