Re: any written material on Hassell`s harmonic structures/improvisation-approach

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

On 19 aug 2007, at 18.51, rune fagereng wrote:

>> I would like to know and understand more about
>> Hassells music. Are there something written on this
>> subject? Like what are this harmoni-structure on -
>> lets say,  "open secrets" ? How does he think and
>> approach when improvising?


There's some texts at his web site and some articles on the internet,  
that you should find by Google. As far as I remember no one have  
asked him those questions though... or maybe he refuses to answer. At  
least I know he started out studying singing with this Indian male  
singer I can't remember the name of right now. After a wile Jon  
started bringing his trumpet, instead of singing, to the lectures. In  
India you learn by playing/singing together with the master by trying  
to copy the phrasing. So what he has always been doing is actually to  
play trumpet as close as possible to the particular Indian vocal  
singing tradition (sorry, don't know much about Indian vocal  
tradition either). When coming back (to New York, I think it was) he  
wanted to expand his playing into a "music style" by adding drums. He  
took the decision to not fall back on the Indian tabla tradition  
because he felt it would be too much of the same spice crammed into  
the same sandwich (oops, my expression ;-) and that's why he looked  
to African rhythms. He recorded the Burundi Drummers (West  
African..?) and simply flew them into some tracks on the multi track  
tape recorder to go along with his "indian singing" trumpet lines  
(sometimes adding a fifth by harmonizer). Myself I have always loved   
the way these hand drumming does not play a certain beat pattern  
(rather sounding like thunder or zebras running by etc) and maybe the  
explanation to this is that his early recordings were created with  
this collage technique? I don't know if he played the trumpet lines  
listening to those zebra-thunder-no-beat-drumming-clatter-cluster or  
if he recorded the trumpet first and then spliced in the drumming  
tape later? Would be nice to find out the truth about that.

I'm not sure there is much "harmony structure" at all in his music? I  
don't know about his inner ways of approaching improvisation but to  
my ears it sounds very Indian, like the Raga tradition; using a theme  
an stretching it into different directions during different parts of  
the evolving piece. That music is more about Time than Harmony.

On last thing; very early he mounted the term "Coffee Colored Music"  
as a way to describe the music he wanted to do. He meant that he  
takes influences from all cultures and colors and if you mix all  
colors of the entire world it would end up as - coffee colored. This  
was "world music for the future" before that term "world music" was  
even invented by media.

Think I reached the bottom of my all too thin Hassel knowledge by  
that - over and out.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se (Swedish)
www.looproom.com (international)