Henry Threadgill: Rag, Bush and All

The great Henry Threadgill has just been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for music for his recent album In for a Penny, In for a Pound.  Because this blogger doesn't yet have that album, recognition of Threadgill's achievement is commemorated with the remarkable early 1989 release, Rag, Bush and All.  This album was purchased on cassette not long after the masterful Too Much Sugar for a Dime came out four years later.

The record is filled with Threadgill's typically complex, multi-layered harmonic sense, shifting time and compelling melodies. It also features combinations of instruments that are fascinating contrasts in their sonic pallettes, including the leader's alto in contrast with the trumpet and fluegelhorn of Ted Daniels and then the leader's bass flute played off of Bill Lowe's bass trombone.  Bassist Fred Hopkins, a longtime member with Threadgill in the amazing trio AIR, has a cellist counterpart in Deidre Murray.   Finally, there are two drummers, Newman Baker and Reggie Nicholson.

"Off the Rag" is a wild ride, with its theme stated at the beginning, as expected, but then restated in various ways with differing groupings of instrumentation throughout the nearly 13-minute piece.  The cello and bass combination, the various horns, and the dual percussion always provides interesting excursions into sound.  This track is definitely one of the more notable in Threadgill's long career.

"The Devil is on the Loose and Dancin' With a Monkey" has a fine solo by Hopkins, as well as a short and bright one by Daniels on trumpet.  The rhythm is kept moving by the two drummers and Hopkins and Murray.  Threadgill's playful melody is nicely accented by the other horns.

"Gift" starts off quietly with cymbals played as if windchimes softly moved by a breeze.  The horns come in with a mounful and contemplative theme with Daniels taking a lead role in generating high-pitched and plaintive sounds above the others with a minimal percussive accompaniment.  Threadgill's ghostly bass flute then takes over for a time before the ensemble quietly takes the tune to a conclusion.

"Sweet Holy Rag" has another playful opening melodic statement, almost like something from early 20th century popular music, led by Murray's cello and the horns accompanying.  Hopkins plays a catchy bass figure with the drummers rumbling along in sync.  Then, the horns generate a separate theme, swirling and climbing until Threadgill's flute is developed with a kind of lumbering rhythm.  Again, complexity in time, offbeat instrumental linkages and characteristically unusual melodic themes mark this tune.  Threadgill's solo from about three minutes is the centerpiece of the song and is very soulful with his bandmates in counterpoint.  Daniels takes an excellent solo about eight minutes or so in and is followed brilliantly by Hopkins and Baker.

Rag, Bush and All is a stunning recording among many in the long, fruitful career of one of jazz's great composers and bandleaders, who always surprises with his use of unusual instrumental combinations, eclectic harmonic devices, and melodies and themes that are simply Threadgillian.  His receiving the Pulitzer Prize this year is recognition of Threadgill's singular talent.

Trojan Dub Box Set, Volume One

Anyone with more than a casual interest in dub, the effects-laden form of reggae music that puts the emphasis on the instrumental portion as a "version" of a track, has to have some experience with the amazing catalog of the form put out by Trojan Records.

The label was an imprint of Chris Blackwell's Island Records back in the late Sixties, founded by an associate of Blackwell named Lee Gopthal, and produced recordings of some major reggae figures, like its namesake "Duke" Reid, who was often called "Trojan" early in his career, as well as the Upsetters, Jimmy Cliff, and Desmond Dekker, among many others.

The association with Island ended after a few years, but Trojan soldiered on, though it struggled for years until the early 80s ska revival gave a brief resurgence to the label.  In 1985, an accountant and fan named Colin Newman (not the singer of the great British band, Wire) bought Trojan and put a focus on its voluminous and rich back catalog.

The major label, Sanctuary, paid a pretty price for Trojan in 1990, and it was under that owner that a series of budget, three-disc box sets mining the catalog were issued.  The first of the dub sets came out in 1998, with a second following two years later.  In 2007, Sanctuary was acquired by Universal Music Group and then the Trojan label went to BMG, where it now resides.

The first volume is packed with 50 prime dub tracks from such figures as legendary drummer Sly Dunbar and The Revoluntaries; the Aggrovators, the Upsetters, Gregory Isaacs, Scientist, King Tubby, Roots Radics, the Observers, and more.

All the hallmarks of great dub are here--the prominence of largely deep-grooving bass as the melodic centerpiece, the particularly distinctive use of drums and other percussion to ornament the bass with remarkable rhythms, and the heavily distorted remixing of these instruments and guitars, horns and others with often otherworldly vocal samples.

The version of the box owned by this blogger is a demo one, so there was no cover art, just cards for each disc that provided part of an overall story of Trojan's history.  It's very brief and general and could be useful for those coming to dub for the first time or with limited experience.

Dub is one of the few forms of music for this listener that can accompany so many different activities--at work, driving, doing work out in the yard or in the house, exercising, or whatever.  When it comes to some of the choicest examples of the genre available at a great price and providing such a great overview, it's hard to imagine something topping the Trojan Dub Box Set series.

John Cage: In a Landscape

This collection of piano pieces, recorded in 1993 and 1994, by the composer John Cage are mainly from the years 1938-1948, when he was moving away from the twelve-tone method of composing championed by the likes of Arnold Schoenberg and into more esoteric experiments with pitch, tone and altered instruments, often for ballet and dance commissions, but far removed from the electronic, sound environment and chance operations spheres in which he delved into from the 1950s onward.

The intriguing, if often maddening (to many people), thing about Cage was his restless and tireless examination into the fundamental nature of sound, its relation to higher forms of spirituality (he was deep into Hindu philosophy at the time, later delving into Zen Buddhism) and the challenge to conventional musical thinking that animated so much of his work.

So, compared to Indeterminacy, the 1959 work he developed with David Tudor, which to many minds is anti-musical and to others is a daring exploration into music as an expression of chance operations of sound, or to the notorious "4'33"," in which a pianist simply sat quietly at a piano in a concert hall and allowed the uncomfortable murmurings and other sounds from the confused audience become the performance, In a Landscape might seem quaint.  At the time, undoubtedly, it caused its own share of controversy.

To this largely untutored listener, the bookend pieces, 1948's "In a Landscape" and "Dream" are highly complementary pieces and infused with what would later be called "ambient."  One can easily hear how such later pianists as Harold Budd were greatly influenced by what Cage was doing during the Forties.  These simple, repetitive and enchanting pieces don't call for expressive displays of technique, but for sensitivity and restraint and, as such, are quietly beautiful.

In a quiet different and odd way, Cage's "Suite for Toy Piano", one of his better-known works, daring from 1948, uses higher pitches from what is really a child's toy to create its own evocative and expressive music.  Getting past the idea that the instrument is a toy and accepting the intriguing sounds that are evoked from a limited range of notes yields some surprises--again, this is especially true from an amateur with only a rudimentary understanding of the finer points of composition.

Other works, including "Bacchanale" from 1938, "A Valentine Out of Season" (1944), "Music for Marcel Duchamp" (1947) and "Prelude for Meditation" (1944) are also imbued with the intriguing sounds of the prepared piano, rendered such by all manner of material placed in the instrument to evoke a wide variety sounds.  Screws, plastic, wood, rubber, bolts and other materials allowed for a palette of pitches that actually put a fresh emphasis on the piano as a truly percussive instrument.  The reference to Duchamp, an artist who caused a great stir in his peak period with his challenge to convention and use of absurdist humor, is particularly telling.

As performer Stephen Drury, who does an excellent job playing on the album, points out in the helpful notes, Cage was driven to preparing the piano as he did by necessity.  When commissioned to use a piano for a dance piece that called for an "African" sound, the composer turned to a variation on what a former instructor of his, the great Henry Cowell, had done.  But, instead of plucking, scraping, strumming and sliding his hands, forearms and certain objects across the strings, Cage took to developing what he termed "mutes" with those aforementioned materials to change the pitch and otherwise alter the sound to get closer to that "African" sound he was searching for.

One of the pieces stands out from the rest in several ways.  "Souvenir" was composed in 1983, four decades or more after the rest, is performed on an organ, and is longer than the other works, but does share many of the same concerns with evocative sounds, irrespective of a quest for virtuosity, which usually animates solo work on keyboards (or any other instrument, for that matter.) 

In a Landscape is an interesting and, relatively speaking, accessible way to hear what the composer was aiming for during, excepting "Souvenir", a period in which his creative impulses were moving rapidly, as were those of many others in the "new" forms of "classical" music evolving in the 1940s and afterward.  A later look at his "Sonatas and Interludes" for prepared piano will be an excellent complement to this very fine album.

John Cage: In a Landscape (Catalyst/BMG Classics, 1994)

1.  In a Landscape  9:42
2.  Music for Marcel Duchamp  6:04
3.  Souvenir  11:53
4.  A Valentine Out of Season  3:48
4.  Suite for Toy Piano  8:10
5.  Bacchanale  9:27
6.  Prelude for Meditation  1:01
7.  Dream  8:42