Castles Made of Sand

Thanks for the consistently insightful posts on this blog, including this one on the brilliant work of Carter…it’s truly sad that this work is currently out of print and that it didn’t seem to get the recognition it deserved when it came out…thankfully it lives on here. I have heard the rumor of this band not being Carter’s first choice as well…he did play the tunes live with an LA group before recording it, but I am pretty sure Carter had some say in the group. First of course is Bradford, Carter’s constant musical partner. Davis, Cyrille and Powell were probably (good) ideas from the record company…maybe Ehrlich and Jenoure too, but they were hardly well-established names at the time. Ehrlich still plays with Bradford from time to time too. Baikida Carroll wasn’t exactly a bigger name either…I am pretty sure that Carter knew him through Julius Hemphill, who was Carter’s student in Texas! Incidentally, if I am not mistaken, not long after this recording came out, Carroll had some sort of illness that paralyzed his chops and had to quit playing for years. At any rate, the band is great and I think they met the challenge of the compositions brilliantly. Carter’s writing blends composition and improvisation in a truly unique way making the individual players here that much more important.

Are you having server problems at your end? Much as I would love to hear Capture all the way through, it keeps timing out on me.

Thanks for checking it out — there must have been a problem with my connection. But I have finally succeeded in downloading it after many retries, motivated (of course) by the considerable musical interest. Definitely one of your top selections.

The reviews, such as they were, were almost universally positive at the time (the only negative I’ve seen is one online some rockcrit whose name escapes me). To the extent that he’s remained obscure (though he was voted to the DB Hall of fame immediately after his death) it was because he chose to stay in L.A., not because of the Elders of Zion or whatever.

I think the negative review you saw, godoggo, is from Christgau, which I also came across in looking into this album’s reception. He’s usually got a very good ear for jazz. Not sure what the Elders of Zion comment is referring to, exactly… perhaps PB’s notion that there was something of an (unconscious?) conspiracy against Carter’s brand of jazz in the 80s?

As for comments, Peter, it’s not clear to me whether you buy the “straight deconstructionist” line, or are just laying it out. I agree that to a large extent music is assigned meaning in the ears and mind of listeners, but to ignore the context in which it is offered — Carter, for example, appends a very brief spoken comment at the end of this album, sort of summarizing what he’s on about — is to miss an opportunity for enriching the experience.

I had forgotten the little speech / poem / blurb at the end of this album, I popped in the player and reminded myself. This is what Carter says (over a polyrhythmic African-like rhythm on percussion) : “The journey facing these captives would prove to be truly arduous and eventful. A journey that would, before its completion, interrupt and redirect the dynamics of human existence on our planet.”
This is pretty interesting. I was actually a little shocked at how literal it was. There is no way around the fact that Carter really intended this, at least on album, as program music. It’s not that the pieces don’t stand alone, they definitely do, it’s just that he really really wants us to think about his inspiration for this music while we listen to it.

It really is quite similar in intent and content to Marsalis’s _Blood on the Fields_ . We can debate the not-so-finer points of their differences, but basically we are dealing with two artists drawing on slavery’s impact on world history or at least American history. Marsalis’s is two-and-half hours with lots of spoken narration, and Carter’s is, hmm, could it be as much as 5 or 6 hours spread out over the entire series, with tiny bits of spoken word and other extremely literal references (African drumming here, the harmonica solo there. etc.) His spoken statement at the end of this album is by the far the most literal part of the entire series. So, I agrue Marsalis is more literal, less interpretative, probably even less reflective of the subject matter than Carter. I think Carter says more about slavery in the 40 second spoken word track than Marsalis did in his entire piece , but yeah, those are just my own culturally biased opinions.

I am certainly not a straight deconstruction, though I may be an elder of Zion…where do I sign up for that, does it involve cool hats of any kind…anyway… Deconstructionist or not, the meaning of music..hell, the meaning of everything important really…has to be cultural or at least situated within a cultural context. The only possible non-cultural meaning of music would deal with what is empirically, and unquestionably there: the notes, the vibrations, etc. However, we would still need a cultural bias that tells us that empirical facts are worthwhile or that music should be valued by its objectivity. This is not necessarily true of everything. For example, no amount of cultural context will make your car go faster or keep my house from collapsing in an earthquake. But, in music and all art, it is up us (as listeners, as interpreters) . The composer’s intentions are, strictly speaking, secondary to the interpreter’s ideas. The whole idea of any art is open up the process of interpretation. One generally doesn’t write traffic laws with haikus for example…we want poetry (or art or music) to tell us more than one thing. However, this doesn’t mean that the artist’s intentions are irrelevant. Far from it, we can and often do privilege intention in our own subjective meaning. In other words, we can subjectively believe that the best understanding of the piece is the composer’s and thus, the best possible understanding of that piece is to match exactly what the composer had in mind and conversely, to ignore the composer’s intentions would be to misunderstand the piece. This seems to go counter to my basic premise of art as always open to interpretation, enough so that I would say that privileging intention is not a particularly useful cultural convention. This why program music raises some serious questions, and even more than that, program music in free jazz. Forget about Wynton for a minute as he is not interested in freedom and I am sure he would very well ascribe to a composer’s intention bias. I think it actually pretty shocking that Carter’s series is so programmatic. This is taking it a bit further than just using a title to allude to some sort of inspiration, and lot’s of jazz does this..the title gives some sort of clue to a pieces narrative/mood/inspiration. I think it is safe to say that we can appreciate “Karen on Monday” without knowing Karen or even thinking about Monday and that probably wouldn’t indicate a gross misunderstanding of the piece (and of course the piece itself doesn’t have some one reading a narrative about Karen and Monday). At any rate, most titles of jazz tunes, even free jazz tunes, work along the lines of intentionality (or at least inspiration), they aren’t just names. But full-blown program music strikes me as more rare. The real mystery is why I love this series by Carter so much and I think it is has to do with the fact that he evokes the subject matter so well, so interpretatively…I think to ignore his intentions and inspiration here would be to misunderstand it a bit, which is my own cultural bias…but I also think that he makes very little literal statements about slavery in the music, and rather he opens up a number of dialogues or raises questions about it….so, for me, I want to say this is not program music as it is not literal and certainly not meant merely to communicate some literal message about slavery (and I suspect Marsalis’s is in fact closer to program music strictly speaking, and I imagine he might agree with me). But then here comes the little spoken word part! Damn John…but I love to hear his deeply missed voice…. I want to associate these pieces with the program! I enjoy associating them with his intentions. I should note that I do not usually do that. I have never been to East Saint Louis and have never toodle-oo’d, but I can listen to that piece all day. It is also worth noting that the inspiration or intention of any given piece is just one of many possible meanings. Sometimes I find it very beautiful to try to follow the compositional methods used by serial composers, but I generally don’t. With this music by Carter, the way he presents it and the message itself is very compelling to me and my own cultural understanding. I don’t want to dismiss it or ignore it and I would even go so far as to say that you haven’t fully understood the music if you ignore it.

Are there any other examples of free jazz “program” music where one would want to associate specific narratives or inspirations to the music to the degree that Carter has asked us to do with this series?

One more little note, I am reminded here of Carter’s stunning solo clarinet suite called, also shockingly, _Suite of Early American Folk Pieces_ the titles of the pieces on the album make reference to African American folk music, sort of…but the music even less so. It is the greatest solo clarinet album ever I think.

Ledrew, I think the beauty of Carter’s (and Ellington’s) kind of program music is it’s *evocative*, as Charles also points out. That means I don’t have to follow it like a slide show. Titles and frameworks make a huge difference to me in creating context, and I would probably hear this music differently if, for example, the pieces just had Braxton-like diagrams for titles. The fine quality of these recordings is in large measure a result of Carter and company trusting me to have my own imagination as well as being able to engage with theirs.

PB

I’ve got a lot on mind…and only a little bit of control over it. Peter, yeah Ellington really does have a lot evocative program-like (and at least a few actually programmatic pieces…that do sound like trains). The more I think about it, it gets pretty hard for me to listen to music without at least considering something of the intention of artist, even though most often that intention is more abstract. Coltrane’s Love Supreme…even Archie Shepp’s Four for Trane..how can I listen to that without thinking about Coltrane? Or AECO Dreaming of the Masters… it’s hard to take evocation out of the picture. So perhaps, at least from my cultural perspective, I am using some sort of scale or degree of evocation. On one end of the spectrum is literal program (i.e. extra-musical association) and at the other end would be complete subjectivity (or maybe wholly self-referential?) Either end of the spectrum is not fully satisfying to me, though I would typically prefer the subjective/self-referential end. Carter’s Episodes… is way off to the literal side for me..it is not that just that it is evocative, which all of his music is I think, it is that the series has some literal reference that imposes a frame-work or even, dare I say, limit on my own interpretation.

Odd, I was thinking about Braxton’s titles as I was writing too. At first they seem to be a good example of non-evocative, especially when they are referred by a number (Composition 51 – that swings hard!) but then the actual title is some sort of diagram, which incidentally is probably meant to be more literally evocative of the composer’s intentions than a title with words…and trying to describe them by the diagram/drawing ends up forcing you to practically perform the piece…paradoxically much more like actual program music than usual…except that the referenced thing might be the score itself or something…
I need to set up some sort of character limit for myself for these posts don’t I?

Perhaps “irrelevant” was an overly-strong word, but I never felt that the story-line had much to do with what made the music effective (and I get a little annoyed when I keep seeing that Smith post held up as the last word on the Carter, since it hardly discusses the music at all).

My point with Schoenberg arose from 1) a statement of his that serialism was, if I recall right, “a personal system” (which I seem to recall him saying he wouldn’t teach it to anybody), and 2) studies that have shone that trained musicians can’t recognize by ear whether or not the rules are being followed. The essence of his music is what is intuited, and for me it’s always thus. As a listener I always try (unless I’m using the music as background) to emphasize with the musician’s decision making process, and his irrational leaps, and I feel dissatisfied if I don’t feel they are occurring.

For me the purpose of planning and structure are 1) to delineate a path to point from which the musician can leap into the irrational 2) to fake intuition (which is a good thing).

(an aside, I also think expression of emotions – love, anger, etc – is important, and I think musical feeling – swing of some sort or another – is important, but I’m not talking about these directly here, though for example you can often read “structure” as something like “emotional arc”).

For me the main importance of Carter’s storyline was that it provided him with an effective structure. As a general rule I like programmatic conceits because they tend to result in music that is ambitious and colorful and dramatic and emotional, but ultimately the literal meaning of the conceit is of secondary importance at best, and often disposable.

also: “emphasize with the musicianâ??s decision making process”…Please add a lisp to the word “emphasize.”

…and so on.

This is wildly entertaining for me. Excellent points godoggo…Blood on the Fields and Roots and Folklore are indeed essentially different genres.

Let me try to clarify something: Program music generally would refer to instrumental music that is meant to sound like something non-musical unlike absolute music, which is only about “music”. This is a rather old-fashioned, and I argue a somewhat useless opposition used mostly by pre-postmodern musicologists. The problem is that all meaning really is non (or extra) musical in some way, and thus it is all program music (or all absolute music if you are dull). But thinking more about the nature (actually I mean “ontology” here but nobody understands me when I say that) of what usually gets called program music, it is clear that it is not that it is referential or evocative that makes it unique, but the specificity of the reference. It works towards limiting or restricting its interpretation. It is not so much a question of what the music actually means, but what makes it important to us and at the same what would constitute a misunderstanding of it.

I guess another thing that complicates the matter is that there is music that does not have a back story, or make an attempt to limit its meaning in anyway. Except that in those cases it is rather difficult not to take into greater account the people making it and the specific instance of its creation (i.e. its historicity), which is pretty similar to abstract art. Improvisation causes some interesting problems here along these lines too. We feel compelled to appreciate the method used to generate the music as part of our understanding, which necessarily includes the individuals and the historical specificity of its being made. The spontaneity itself becomes a part of the meaning, a part of the extra-musical connotation. This still doesn’t quite explain why many of us bristle at the notion programmatic music though! I think we just don’t like Wynton.

Speaking of Braxton and abstract art. Check out the titles of some his ghost trance pieces, as appearing on his own Tri-axiom Braxton House web page:
http://www.wesleyan.edu/music/braxton/braxtonhouse/
Unfortunately I cannot quite figure out how the lamp or the table quite figure into the music on the recordings…but like Schoenberg’s tone rows, its kind of fun to try to chase down, knowing that I will probably fail and have other ideas enter my mind instead.

Quoting Grofe is a particularly strange example. Grand Canyon Suite would qualify as old-fasioned program music for sure. But Bird quoting it probably wouldn’t, from a pre-postmodern perspective, Bird would be making reference to the music itself since you are not supposed to suddenly picture the Grand Canyon in the middle of “All the things you are”… the funny thing is that now that has been quoted so many times by so many people that it no longer refers to the Grand Canyon nor Grofe but to bebop itself…the program got hijacked! I love the concept, though I hate to hear it quoted by anyone on the bandstand.

“Is the Smith post being held up as the last word on Carter?” Probably not. You know, blog comments are weird because you blurt something out and it’s there forevermore. But I thought it missed what I saw as the point of the music.

Bobby played on Nels Cline’s Andrew Hill tribute last year, of course. A lot of people don’t have label interest these days…

And I just realized I posted six days too late… oh well, hope someone reads it.

Matt…after posting the last message I left, I went back to listened to whole series again too and you’ve got it right, there are more and more words. I have those Threadgill discs, but nobody told me they were about the death of a computer…no wonder I liked them so much. But it’s not exactly program music! Is it? “Meditations” never actually sounds like wire cutters and a song about Gov. Faubus doesn’t sound like Faubus, etc. i.e. not program in the old-fashioned sense of the term.
Godog…I guess we both live in LA…did you go see the Ark at World Stage Sunday? They play the last Sunday of every month when the world is lucky.

I don’t get to the World Stage as much as I’d like, for various reasons. But I’ll keep my eyes open for Ark gigs.