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

["Tom Rex" <tomrex1@cox.net>]

His bio is on his website.  (very impressive, Per!)

Tom

http://www.jonhassell.com/bio.html


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Per Boysen" <perboysen@gmail.com>
To: <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com>
Sent: Sunday, August 19, 2007 10:23 AM
Subject: Re: any written material on Hassell`s harmonic 
structures/improvisation-approach


> 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)
>
>
>
>
>