Circle Song

We did a lot of circle song with David. He gets us all singing a repetitive rhythmic kind of backing track and we take it in turns to improvise over it. It's taken from Bobby Mcferrin. Who took it from ancestral African traditions. In many ways it's like what we do all night in The Tent on Mbira camp.

So I'm listening to Bobby McFerrin circle songs on Youtube and I'm starting to think about the possibilities for gathering a group of performance quality singers, maybe a pan-European flexible come and go group, with different constellations of singers gathering for performances in different places

I'm thinking about developing some kind of show that's a mixture of the individual singers' work maybe and some circle songs, and doing some fun playful participatory stuff with the audience, I like that part a lot

I'm thinking about progressive circle songs - I really like the way this one of Bobby's builds so gradually and continually as a whole piece. I'd kind of like it to have some kind of key change perhaps at some point - that's getting quite western, you don't have key changes in, for example, Hindustani (Indian) classical and Shona (Zimbabwean) improvisation-based music. You just have really gradual organic progression within a single key or chord sequence.

Then I'm thinking about the form of Indian classical music, and how you could bring that into circle songs.

You start with the alap - low and slow and arhythmic. The sounds enter like the rising sun; first the gradual, soft lighting of the sky. At some point some way in, the actual sun appears on the horizon. Because of the gradual play preceding it, it's a breathtaking moment, electric like a first touch within chemistry. It's when the improviser reaches the 8th note, (in other words the base note, the tonic, one octave up).

The arrival of each new note is an Event, and one that is lingered upon. Atul described it to me like a road trip. "First you are in England. England is Sa (the 1st). Well you go about England preparing your journey. Then you move - and it is a journey - over to France. France is Re (the 2nd). Now you're in France, do you go straight to Germany? Germany is Ga (the 3rd). No! You stay in France. You play for a while, visit some friends. You play around the edges. Then when you arrive in Germany, it is quite an event!"

And so on. And all the while, softening, softening into the music, softening into the experience of letting the music sing through you rather than you pushing and forcing it out of you.

So that's Alap.

Then a beat comes in. It's low and slow. You improvise but every 12 bars or something a little repetitive phrase comes in that marks the kind of corners that are emerging within your form. Your improvisation stays mellow but moves from the arhythmic quality of the alap to a rhythmic quality in resonance with the beat.

Next the beat quickens. Your improvisation does too. The drummer gets more playful. So you do you. You rise together; the pace, the speed of your sonic movements, the tones, rise rise rise until you reach your first climax.

Next, the intensity goes back down half way. Now enters a melodic composition. It will be a little thing, maybe 8 bars, maybe 16 or 32. You'll sing it a few times over. Then you'll start to play with it. You might sing bars 1 - 4 of the composition, then improvise for 4 bars, then come back for bars 5 onwards. Next round, you might improvise for four bars between bars 4 and 5, and four bars between bars 12 and 13. Then you create bigger gaps in the composition for your improvisations, and more of them, then more and more, until the composition is literally in shreds, tiny strips that give a thematic kind of fiber to the improvisation, and you can whip and weave them around each other. By this point both the melodic soloist and the drummer are going crazy, improvising with wild abandon, beyond all control, yet still within the form and feel of the music, until the final peak is reached, and gradually like the slowing and softening after orgasm, the music moves towards the still intimacy of silence.

I wonder if it's possible to weave some elements of that musical form into circle song. With the right group of people. I wonder who those people would be.

What a musician might need

There are some things I need as a musician. That I think anyone needs in order to practice something when they're alone. It starts with not being alone any more.

1. An Elder. Doesn't have to be older. Has to be someone to inspire and guide and help you: someone who wants to do that and is interested in your development.
2. A community. Loads of functions there. To make it fun. To make it social. Not lonely.
3. A point. In yoga the point is to feel and look good. Later it's to pass a difficult exam and gain a qualification, to further ends. What is it for this art? Joy! Pleasure! Your pleasure, and the pleasure of the community. So, you need opportunities to share what you're doing with the community. Like, Lucy's 'Little Show-Offs' community cabaret.
4. A sense of development path. A sense that there are people further advanced than you – and people less advanced than you perhaps – that you have a collaborative and supportive relationship with people at every stage – and a feeling that you are able to progress.

   
   

   On performance

   I've been quite anti performance for a while. I prefer things where everyone is a participant.

   
   

   I've been gently playing with the idea that there might be an interesting middle ground.

   
   

   I'm thinking of a performers playground, a place to practice. My music – a music of honest, heart led improvisation – has more in common with the Clowns and the Fools than with the jazz singers and open mic kids.

   
   

   So it would be a performers playground for all those working on honest, partly or totally improvised, heart led performance where the relationship with the audience is messed up.

   
   

   In Jonathan Kay's Fooling performance, he had the audience forming a vagina and someone from the back being born onto the stage through us. He had us facing each other and pulling faces and hurling insults. And he had us crying with laughter with some straight forward standup. Perfect.
   Bobby Mcferrin: same. Solo performance and playing with the audience.
   So. How would I do it? What would I do? That's the thing to play with.
   Why perform?
   
   
   I'd like to perform for people who are also doing stuff. I loved performing with the scratch band at Findhorn when everyone else was either dancing or singing. I loved that! I'd like to perform for people life drawing or dancing or something. I'd like to improvise with and for them. I'd like it to be woven into an activity; part of it but not the central focus.
   So why claim a stage all for yourself?
   Partly it's to show off, right? What experience does Bobby Mcferrin give people when he stands up and does Opportunity? We're impressed! We see what a human can be capable of. We're entertained I guess. We enjoy it! Do we? I get a little intimidated too sometimes. But only by musicians. Not by dancers or comedians, because I'm not in their game. I just watch / listen / laugh with delight.
   Is there something about... sharing?
   “You made the whole room feel like being inside honey”
   “Listening to you sing is taking an asthma inhaler. It slows and calms you down and makes you breathe.”
   “We were having an intellectual and aggressive conversation. Then you came in the room and started playing and the atmosphere totally changed, became gentle.”
   That's good, isn't it? Isn't that something worth sharing if you can?
   When we see hearts on stage are we reminded of our own?
   When we're rushing and then we see someone being slow, are we reminded we can slow down too?
   If we are fretful and we see someone at peace, can that help us find our own peace?
   ..
   I watched a Bobby workshop on Youtube and all the people he was working with were coming to the front and basically copying him, with quite boastful performances.
   Bobby spent four years not listening to other music, finding his own sound.
   What is your own music? Your true music?
   What is mine?
   What are the status of our performances? Are they to help launch our professional careers? Are they events in and of themselves – for the joy of the performer and the community present?
   So, after any performance, the question will be: was it joyful for you? Was it joyful for them? Yes? Then it was a success!
   ?

Free Birds

I lie in the park at the end of the penultimate day of Jazz Summer School, almost in tears. All day, almost all week, my noise-making has been tightly controlled by a central person – a composer, a conductor, a tutor.

Where is the space in our world to sing like a free bird?

Who puts the birds in a circle and dictates what they must sing?

Who rounds up the Whales?

Simply left to make noise together, humans create such beauty and magic. I've felt it time and time again. With central control, quality, pleasure and presence get diminished.

Walking slowly away from the Guildhall building I feel such a terrible weight. I feel it in my body and I've seen it grow on everyone's faces as the day progresses.

I feel angry with the rigidity of the structures that try to control us so tightly and kill our pleasure.

For our beautiful innate music is not allowed to find itself.

Last night in the studio theatre I did my first ever entirely improvised performance. Actually it wasn't entirely improvised. I knew the five or six chords on the piano I'd be using, but I didn't know in which order. I knew the rhythm and tempo of the piano playing that I'd use as a base. And I knew the first note I'd sing.

It went down really well. “You make being in the room feel like being inside honey.” said one. “I felt as if I was walking by a river, calm and free,” said another. Many questions about my training.

I am extremely untrained, formally. I am simply incredibly honest, and I listen for what the small singer in my tummy is singing, and I copy. And when it is silent, I let myself be silent too. And I trust it. Most of the time...

I have never got on well with formal music education because it seems to ignore that small singer inside me. It tries to paste over it with its knowledge and rules and theories and scientification of music which it assumes to be superior. For many years I simply thought that I wasn't a proper musician, I was inferior. But now I think actually, I am a real musician, and I just disagree. 

I disagree.

And here, even where the course director is a singer, singing is somehow inferior. The instrumentalists in their small bands pass the improvised solos round like sweeties, while in choir we sing exactly what the choir master tells us. Finally solos time comes! With the exception of me, everyone gets their solo at the same time – unlike the instrumentalists - with no guidance at all about how to approach simultaneous improvisation, and the result is uncomfortably chaotic.

I find myself feeling offended that the voice is not considered an instrument in the same way other instruments are. Maybe the whole issue is just the course but these people run the jazz master's course at the London Guildhall and as far as I know that's pretty high up in The Establishment. This perspective feels systemic.

I feel sad and a little angry.

Where is the space to sing like a free bird?

Birds, come along. We can create it! :)

Free Jazz part 1

That evening, we have the first tutor concert. The quartet are technically excellent players. The composition is something that might come into your mind on a rainy November afternoon in the front room of a Victorian terrace in Cambridge in 1998. It's formulaic. Each player takes their 64 bars or 120 or whatever it is to improvise from their brains – and they're clearly very clever – and then it's onto the next. This Shona notion of playing from your tummy when the feeling takes you is absent here. 

Everyone is well behaved and we clap politely.

Oh to have a bunch of musicians, a campfire, and no rules.

After a second piece in 7/8, the melodic instruments take a rest leaving drum, double bass and piano. These guys are starting to play. They go further and further until they take off together leaving the written pages behind on the ground and they're flying. It's alive! They're not looking at their music stands now, they're looking at each other. The drummer is a Dude! I'm excited! My heart is beating faster. They're going crazy! It's fantastic! Slam dunk bang crack bgl gg ggbgbgb BAAAANNNNNGGGGGgggggggggg..... phew. Woops and applause.

Jazz at it's best is incredibly skillful play.

I look up the drummer later. He's Brian Abrahams.