A newsletter for the Portland area Didjeridu player......July 2000 Volume 6 Issue 7
Apologies for publishing April, May and June issues in April and then being late for July. I've been busy. Which is the subject of this issue, by the way. Sorry also if this issue is a little Portlandcentric. I've been busy with Portland. In the past couple of months I've lost an old friend, a pet of twelve years. Around that unhappy event came visits by Stephen Kent, Randy Graves, Brandi Chase and Peter Lister. All of whom, amongst their many other achievements, have been the subject of previous articles and interviews with these pages. In addition, I was privilege to have an old friend with me for a couple of days in the person of Dave Crowder from Boulder Colorado and John Burrows of Olympia Washington. I've been gifted a stack of CD's, a book and several articles which I've longed for, for a very long time. In addition, a lot of experiences along the way. Not all of them are warm and fuzzy as you will discover if you choose to read on. Most of them were beyond expectation in terms of quality and educational value. For your sake, I will sprinkle in all the playing tips and CD recommendations I've received the past few weeks which will hopefully make this article worth your time.
I should start with Samantha. About three weeks ahead of Stephen Kent's concert date, our twelve year old golden retriever lost all balance. The vet diagnosed her as having canine vestibular syndrome, an illness from which most dogs make a full recovery, but is very frightening to witness. The onset is sudden, the symptoms start with a head tilt and quickly progress to a complete loss of balance and inability to even stand. Duration is normally three days to three weeks. Great, three weeks, exactly the time until Stephen's arrival. Yet all the literature and information I could gather on this disorder was hopeful. For three days, I gave her total care and she seemed to make astonishing progress. Even to the point of returning to daily walks and a bit of playing. We were hopeful for another few years with her enjoying life and being a well - albeit older - dog. So it was that with two weeks to go, Samantha was doing great but there was another thing ... my band, Jawidge had shows both weekends before Stephen's show as well as committed to opening for Stephen. This is when I learned that our drummer and woodwind player would both be out of town the weekend of Stephen's concert.
Also, because of Samantha's condition, I deemed it unfair to ask Stephen to stay with us at that time. Some last minute hauling of a futon over to my band's mates' Michael and Padrice's house solved that. Padrice and I recruited two percussionists to rehearse the night before the concert. We worked up what we thought was 20 solid minutes of material in about two hours on the night before the gig and prayed no one would guess we'd never done that material before. The next day Stephen arrived and we did the show. I'm sure no one there even remembers we played. We didn't play badly, but Stephen took the stage, the room and all the souls contained within for an hour and a half of solo performance. Winding through material dating back to his street performances in England, pausing only occasionally to comment briefly on the history of a piece or fire off a quick joke. Always within the moment, always in touch with the audience. Masterful.
The next morning, I picked up Stephen and after a quick breakfast, we headed downtown to the Portland Saturday market where I had the extreme fortune to encounter one of my first teachers, Jean Poulot. Jean now runs a rickshaw company (Portland's first) and he graciously gave Stephen a short tour of Water Front Park in one of his rickshaws. Turns out that Jean and Stephen are both movie buffs. I had the honor of doing some didj sound track work for Jean's 1998 animated short film , "When the Star's Came Dreaming", based on his experiences with the Marika family of Northeastern Arnhem Land. So I was able to sit and listen to Jean answer Stephen's questions about the film. It was a beautiful day and after parting company with Jean, Stephen and I enjoyed a cold adult beverage at a sidewalk cafe. People who are acquainted with Stephen already know what a treat he can be to just hang out and talk with. As talented as he is, he is one of the easiest people to be around. I found him to be one of the most thoughtful and thought provoking people I've conversed with in my life.
That evening there was a workshop with Stephen hosted by Tom Lange. After introductions and hearing a little bit of didj from everyone, Stephen focused in on the heart of his playing technique - the belly. For me this was both validation and revelation. While my emphasis on the breath control starting from that part of the body had a long history, the sublety and virtuosity of Stephen's style were beyond my countless hours of listening. In the course of the evening and amongst other things, Stephen de-constructed his famous solo from "Landings" down to its' most basic form. One exercise which gave me particular insight was to do gut slaps with the cheeks and tongue completely relaxed. I found I had a great deal of difficulty relaxing my tongue! From years of playing with the tongue retroflexed, training myself to play with the tongue in that position, I found it quite challenging to keep it relaxed and completely out of the way. What I learned from this is just how little control I really had over the individual parts of my playing. The workshop ended with everyone doing the featureless drone. In other words, keeping the drone constant without variation in harmonics. He had each of us take a turn lying in the middle of our circle for about a minute and a half. While I was playing, I hear little variation in the collective drone of the group. When it came my turn, I was astonished at what I heard. All kinds of variation. It occur to me that in most playing, there are levels of variation which are quite subtle indeed and that if I could just really listen I could realize so much more from the instrument than I thought possible.
During this time, I also began to notice subtle changes in my dog, Samantha. After making a remarkable recovery from the vestibular episode, she was occasionally tripping over her own feet or brushing against nearby objects as she walked past them. It was very late after the workshop with Stephen when I lay down in my bed I allowed myself to think, "I don't know if I'm ready for her to pass away yet". I heard a voice, not my own voice but as if someone wiser was speaking to me, "ready or not, your going to have to let her go soon." I've always had a sort of understanding with my pets (and I've had pets my entire life), as long as life is fun for them I'll do whatever is required but when it's over, I'll not allow them to suffer. I'd given Samantha a chance to get well and she did! But there was something different about her. On her walks she was insistent on visiting all her "friends" - two legged and four - in the neighborhood. It was as if she was on a mission. No one could be just walked by as if they were common. Everyone had to have a chance to pet her. And I began to notice other signs. Shortly after I put Stephen on a plane for home, I was sitting on the back deck with Samantha. A breeze came up and she stood up and faced it, the wind gently blowing through her beautiful blonde hair. She looked off in the far distance and I felt the breeze blowing through my hair, caressing my face and I felt I knew what she was feeling. And I knew I would have to let her go to whatever it was she was gazing at in that moment. In that moment, I understood what was going to happen. But I told myself it would be a ways off...
Stephen flew out on a Sunday. In the following week, Samantha grew more and more unsteady. She had a couple of sudden falls. Thursday afternoon, she fell over and didn't get up until I coached her and by that night her breathing was labored. She was disoriented and restless. The next morning I was to demonstrate the didjeridu at a local school. Fortunately, the vet had given us some tranquilizers to calm her during her bout with vestibular syndrome. In the morning I got up and showered. She tried to follow me into the living room and I heard her crash to the floor. I carried her out to the living room and realized she was near the end. I comforted her as best I could. I came into the bathroom where Lisa was just emerging from the shower. "She's dying", I blurted out and we both cried. I gave Sam a tranquilizer and Lisa sat with her while I went out to the school. Our hope was that we could get our vet to come out in the afternoon and end Samantha's ordeal.
|
Facing those kids without showing any sign of what was going on at home was amongst the hardest things I've ever done. I'll just have to ask you to trust me, I've had to do some hard things in my life. This one was the hardest because I knew when I was finished I would have to come home and comfort my dog through the end of her life. The best we could do was take her to the vet in about an hour. I gave her three more tranquilizers, put on a Yothu Yindi CD and we sat with her constantly telling her what a good dog she was. I was telling that as she took her last breath. |
I worked the following day and it was probably good therapy. By Sunday morning however, my body felt terrible. All the stress of the ordeal with my dog, playing three shows in three weeks and not missing any days at work caught up with me. Plus I had an obligation that afternoon to play for the Multnomah Arts Center annual faculty concert. Normally, this is a fun thing. The MAC, where I've taught didjeridu classes for the past six years, has a number of talented music instructors. To be on the same program with them is an honor - but more than that - to hear them perform is a special treat. This year it was a tough thing to do. I did two didjeridu solos, both about dingoes. One of my own which I titled Warung, and a stab at one of David Blanasi's which he taught me in 1998, Djamu.
I've heard it all my life and it's probably true that there is no rest for the wicked. I now had about three weeks to prepare for a visit from Randy Graves, Brandi Chase and Peter Lister. Because I was able to put Stephen, my PA system and futon all over at Michael and Padrice's house - my house was a wreck which had seen literally illness and death for the past week. Laundry, dishes, yard work and a host of routine chores were not even a thought. Bigger projects like replacing the front deck have been on the back burner for sometime. To give Brandi and Randy a room of there own, my music room (the most cluttered mess in the small place I live in) had to be cleared out even before I picked up the futon to give them something to sleep on. And another obligation. My band Jawidge has a performance coming up for which the sponsors wanted to film a short television promotion piece. Our woodwind wizard Lyle is off for the summer teaching at a music camp and we added two new members to replace him. This meant major stress as one of the new members is another didj player, which means for me working him in tonally and finding new parts to play in material we've done for five years.
The Randy, Brandi, Lister tour arrived at my house to find me and my old friend John Burrows anxiously awaiting them just hours before the show. Randy and I opened the show with a didjeridu duet which was improvised. We had never played together before. This was not stressful, for me at least, since I just followed his lead. For the bulk of the show, I was able to devote myself entirely to the sound system. Running sound for someone else, without worry about playing was a new and exciting prospect and one I enjoyed very much. While Peter Lister ran the projector, Randy and Brandi retraced the steps of their visit to Arnhem Land with narrations, demonstrations and playing sound samples collected by Randy. It was quite interesting and for the small group (around 25 people) very eye opening. After the lecture portion, Randy took over with some fine solo work and then joined by Brandi for a couple of duets. The duet piece, Harmony which featured Brandi and Randy on didj's a fifth apart was wonderful to mix. Randy played a contemporary didj piece which featured Peter Lister doing Northeastern Arnhemland style patterns at the beginning and the end. The effect was a dramatic demonstration of the difference between traditionally influenced Yirdaki and contemporary didjeridu, which is far more different than just rhythmic patterns. It's the same instrument at its' most fundamental level, but worlds apart in playing technique all the way to such details as the lip position, mouthshapes and method of breath support. These differences would be the subject of much discussion and practice for the next week.
The show ended with Peter Lister and I. Peter played a piece and dedicated it to Lisa and I for our recent loss. As I looked out into the audience I saw that Lisa was crying. Not crying in a sad way, I understood. She was so touched by Peter's attention to his hosts emotional trials that the tears just flowed in appreciation and healing release. Then Peter and I did a spontaneous duet. I just launched a pattern which I felt he'd be familiar with, and let Peter do the rest while I coasted on the familiar vamp. The next morning, everyone left for Seattle and another show while I left for work about two hours late and on even less sleep. Everyone returned on the following Tuesday afternoon.
On Wednesday morning, John Burrows returned from Olympia. The plans made earlier on was to again impose on Tom Lange to host a workshop for Randy at his house on Wednesday evening. Which I forgot was also the evening of my first Summer session class at the Arts Center. So Peter Lister, John Burrows and I went to teach my beginner's class; Randy was deposited at Tom's house where he was joined by Dave Crowder; Brandi and Lisa went off to a new found friend's house for Brandi to share some "women's business" like weaving and whatever else. My beginner's class got a real treat and I had the excellent opportunity to call upon a couple of very skilled didj players to demonstrate various points of my presentation and concentrate on my teaching more than my playing. My class ends at eight, so off we went to check in on Randy's workshop. What we found there was amazing. Everyone had been sent off in different directions to practice what they had learned and they were very excited with the results they were getting. It was surreal, since John and I really hadn't been to one of Randy's workshops before. When everyone reassembled, Peter gave a wonderful talk on visiting the communities up in the top end. How to arrange it, what to expect and finally a very clear demonstration on the differences between Balanda and Yolngu sound production on the instrument. There were two teaching points he made which I remember the most clearly. First the pouting or pushing out of the lips so that transition between the first overtone and fundamental can occur with lightening speed and clarity. This was not new information for me, but it was by far the clearest explanation and demonstration of it I'd seen. Second was the purpose of the retroflex tongue, that it splits the air stream in half adding a thickness to the drone absent in most white fella tone on the instrument. And that the pressure builds up behind this retroflexed tongue position in the throat - an effect that has to be felt and at first is a little gaggy. After several weeks of practice, I'm still working with that. Keeping contact with tongue to the top of my mouth and working further back in the throat.
Peter and I stayed up quite late that night talking about traditional playing techniques. The hardest thing for a non-traditional player to realize is that they must start completely over. Almost everything they've been doing must be forgotten and one has to relearn the instrument from scratch. At least that is our shared perspective. The implications for this are somewhat daunting for someone who has played as long as we have. It was a step that Peter has a much greater head start on than I do. To assist me, Peter brought me the disc Walker River Clan Songs, rare articles on Arnhem Land music by Trevor Jones amongst others and a great book, Wandjuk Marika Life Story (As told to Jennifer Isaacs).
There is no rest for the wicked, though sometimes there is help. The next morning I had a last minute request to appear on a local news show to promote an event I would be involved in that evening. Additionally, I had to be on the other side of town in the afternoon to film the previously mentioned promotion for the Jawidge show. Peter said, "give me a kick in the morning mate, I'll come with you". So Peter and I sat off around 8 AM. Whilst Peter gave me moral support, I sat on the steps of an exhibit down town and played my Djalu E while they filmed the shoot. After asking me a few insane questions like "How long can you blow on that thing without stopping", I was dismissed from that obligation. Since it was a live shoot, I have no idea how it turned out. Everyone at my house was sleeping.....
Again Peter accompanied me to another filming. Jawidge set up and played a set with fire performers while a TV film crew of one worked. Our fire performers set off smoke detectors twice, but we stumbled through it. The event I was asked to play for that evening was a private one, so I was successful in talking Peter into again coming with me and bringing a stick to play with me. This was again downtown in a roped off area. Peter and I were standing around talking with some of his countries most beautiful women (hey, there is no rest for the wicked, but there is sometimes benefits) when a guy on a bike with a bunch of plastic didjs stops by on the other side of the ropes and shouts to Peter, "Can you play that thing." Peter jokes back, "No mate, I'm just holding it I can't play it." The bicyclist shouts back, "Then you ought to let me have it 'cause I can play it." Peter just started playing in his unmistakably yolngu influenced style, for which this player had no context or possible way to understand. He rode off. If I read his mind correctly, he probably was thinking, I can play better than him.
Peter Lister started playing the didjeridu when he was ten. That's about thirty some years ago. He spent some of that time not interested in playing, however. Largely because of what was going on with the instrument around him as it began to be exploited and commodified by the mainstream and he saw it being separated from the culture who properly owned the tradition of it. He had no interest in appropriating something from a culture he grew up respecting and enchanted by in order to call attention to himself or stroke his own ego. That would be quite out of Peter's character, in my estimation. But he discovered the Mills Didjeridu Listserver and through it connection to people who were seriously interested in the instrument as a musical instrument and indigenous people as people with culture, art and knowledge worthy of study. He also saw a need to share information which had a basis in contact with the Aboriginal people of his country. His web pages contain a wealth of information designed to help people learn more about these things and hopefully inspire them to make their own investigations leading to some understanding and respect for the history of art, music and languages of the Top End. In this little encounter encounter between a local street musician and my friend from Australia was significant to me. There is a large and growing number of people around the world proclaiming themselves as experts on an instrument they have no traditional context or history to understand. It's not that they don't know what they are doing as players - many are very accomplished at playing - it's just that they lack knowledge or commitment to tradition, culture or anything beyond attracting attention to themselves. I don't know what that will mean in the long run. Many assert that the instrument itself is the teacher and that it will "open your heart" or reconnect you to "Mother Earth" or several other cliches which I often hear or read in association with instrument sales, workshop promotions or CD liners. I don't see much of that in my reality. But sometimes, I glimpse wonderful selfless acts by didjeridu players. I've seen a lot of them from my friend Peter Lister in the few years I've been associated with him. There are lot's of people like that in the world. I keep meeting them and they offer to me hope. If there is no rest for the wicked, there is sometimes forgiveness. Perhaps, in future, I'll be less cynical about a multi-million dollar industry that profits the Aboriginal people of Australia very little, because for a large and growing number of people, their lives are enriched and filled with hours of pleasure. And every once in a undetermined while, a little respect for the Aboriginal history and culture or at least the wondrous continent of Australia is transmitted in the process.
Friday morning, I was again confronted with children. Several hundred if not a thousand this time. For the first time in days I was the lone didj player. I felt a bit confused about how to play, what to play. I was stumbling between my safe little world of world music, improvisation and cool harmonic shifts; and the retroflexed tongue, guttural vocal harmonies, thick harsh drones and rapid clear overtone toots. It was kind of heady stuff, I was free to experiment and be playful. I was just there to play the didj. Not to perform, or "educate". That was all being taken care of. They tell the children what I'm going to do and I do it. Nice, but exhausting. No rest for the wicket, but lot's of play time.....
Friday afternoon I drive home and to my surprise, Randy, Brandi and Peter are all waiting for me before traveling south to Eugene to continue their tour and wind down Peter's visit to the USA. Goodbyes, hugs, promises to see each other again. I was pretty spent but there is again, no rest for the wicked. I have another performance but there is some help on the horizon. Dave Crowder from Boulder is in town and wants to come with me. This is a lot to ask because the energy of Downtown Portland coupled with this event is mixed and quite tiring. I don't even remember much about the two or three hours there. I remember most the conversation Dave and I had on the way. We always get into these kind of raps about life and death, ego and soul. It's great. The next day, I had to work. I invited Dave down to busk at the Saturday Market, which he hopefully enjoyed and that evening he treated us to dinner and gifted me a copy of Voluminous Cacophony, a CD mixed by John Madill of the Boulder Solstice Gathering performance at Penny Lane. A wonderful compilation featuring Dave, Ron Holmes, Allan Smith, John Madill, "Drin" Smith, and many more.
There may be no rest for the wicked, but there are CD's. In the past few weeks I've been gifted Voluminous Cacophony, Walker River Clan Songs (very difficult to find), Whirlwind vol 1 and vol 2 by Randy Graves , and perhaps my favorite The History of Martial Dance by Randy with Jon Agree, Greg Callahan and Mike Lebien. I learned Dave's rhythm which is a thirteen beat cycle (Dave, its' probably best written as a 5/8 and I'll do that and send you the transcript when I find rest from my wicked ways), Dolphin and Brolga from Peter Lister (aka Bita) and how to be a basket case widower from Randy Graves and Brandi Chase. I got to see old students like Dave Delacy, Tom Lange and Damon Roberts as well as old friends and old friends I'd never seen before. In Australia, they call a really good didj player "Deadly" . There may be no rest for the wicked, but contact with all these deadlys is having an effect. I hope to be less of a restless wicked player and someday a more "deadly" one. Perhaps then, I'll get more sleep.