I started sitting zazen last month. Two or three times a week, I go to the San Francisco Zen Center and practice 30 minutes of “sitting absorption.” And practice is the right word because I have yet to feel that I am doing it right. Still, it’s refreshing and I keep coming back. About ten [...]
Exploring the boundary between sound & music 2:1
Interesting article from Music Think Tank If a Tree Falls in the Woods Can You Call It Music? By Keith Andrew Recently I was reading some material on the controversial yet highly influential experimental composer John Cage –most widely known for his ‘piece’ 4’33” which if you are not familiar with, is 4’33” of silence. A [...]
Tanya Tagaq — Crossing Genres & “Living Outside the Box”
Few artists cross genre boundaries as freely and seemingly effortlessly as Tanya Tagaq. Labeling what she does as Inuit throat singing inadequately describes what she does. Never easy listening, Tanya takes the listener “outside the box” of her or his expectations. In an interview in January 2010, Tanya discussed her work and her hope that [...]
Exploring the boundary between music & sound – 1:1
In Noise: The Political Economy of Music (1985), Jacque Attali wrote about the socially constructed and historically changing boundaries between music and noise. Brilliant, provocative but I think there is one missing component in Attali’s approach: the distinction between music and sound. It is outside the frame of the questions Attali was exploring at the [...]
