Tradition and terra incognita make strange music together.
World music in the West is often diluted, packaged, Westernized and gussied up, more Mickey Hart than the Master Drummers of Burundi, more Ottmar Leibert than Paco de Lucia. Two upcoming shows, however, are about to impress upon us just what world music should be. Zakir Hussain's Masters of Percussion, sponsored by the Outpost
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Performance Space in Albuquerque but gracing Santa Fe's Lensic, ought to shake some of the dust out, while the Late Severa Wires solve the pantywaist problem entirely by cutting loose of moorings altogether.
Hussain's lineup includes a variety of musicians on traditional Indian instruments including sarangi and sitar, as well as Manipuri Jagoi Marup (The Dancing Drummers of Manipur). But the main draw is Hussain himself.
Zakir Hussain plays tabla, and is widely acknowledged as the greatest living master of the instrument. The subtlety of tabla manifests in tuning, dynamic range, interplay between the smaller
wood
dayan
, on the player's right, and the larger
bayan
on the left. The
bayan
is a sort of "talking drum," which is capable, with pressure from the base of the hand, of producing colorful pitch changes. Traditionally, the musician executes a "tal," (what we call a "time signature"), as well as polyrhythmic excursions over these complex meters, making improvised choices. Typically, a tabla performance uses an almost imperceptible acceleration of tempi and spans an hour or more. These challenges mark master tabla drummers as among the most virtuosic musicians in existence.
Indian classical music appealed to a generation of hippies and other assorted bored bohos, because, like many forms of world music in general, it has accessible, even welcoming surfaces. The drone of the tamboura in reassuring open fifths, the melodic modalities of most ragas that were recorded for Western consumption, and the gentle, hypnotic overall effect of tabla combine to create a sort of friendly psychedelia, a trippy but not too threatening first impression. Led Zeppelin, Miles Davis, the Beach Boys and, of course, the Beatles all appropriated the "I just smoked a brick of hash" ambience and exoticism (but absolutely none of the vitality) of tamboura, sitar and tabla.
Indian classical music is, in fact, endlessly complex and rather daunting, right beneath the cloak of accessibility. While we might find the modal sameness and the kaleidoscopic rhythms enchanting, we also begin to squirm around in our seats after the first several minutes. We have no way of accessing, for example, an 11-beat cycle, divided 2/2/2/2/3 as in
tal sawari
, let alone to follow multiple and sub-groups of cycles played at lightning speed over the top. We often can merely mutter, "wow, that's some mighty fancy drumming."
Letting go enough to enter into a traditional Indian performance takes a training we do not have, as well as an attitude that is the opposite of our usual narrative obsession and insistence on emotional content in music.
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Hussain's solution to these
aesthetic demands has been to maintain fierce integrity in traditional settings, while opening himself to all sorts of musical realms-Bollywood, rock, fusion, jazz (Charles Lloyd) and what could be called Nouveau Indian, in his energetic work with John McLaughlin's
Shakti
.
By contrast, the Late Severa Wires (in their first High Mayhem performance in two years) manage to avoid any and all references, cliches, road maps or devices one can latch onto, period. The band consists of Yozo Suzuki on guitar, Carlos Santestivan on bass, Mike Rowland on drums and Ultraviolet on turntables. Their
modus operandi
is to play: a radical commitment to total improvisation. Shapes that emerge are often immediately morphed, undercut or destroyed outright. Using conventional rock band instrumentation creates the sonic impression of distant familiarity, but so inventively twisted and richly alien as to be entirely disorienting. Oddly, the attentional space required to fully engage in a Late Severa Wires performance is almost identical to that for Indian classical music-a complete letting go of acculturation, preconception and expectation.
