World Famous Comics: Arcana II: Musicians on Music
Arcana II: Musicians on Music
From: Hips Road/Tzadik Publisher: Hips Road/Tzadik Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Hips Road/Tzadik Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 300 Publication Date: September 01, 2007 Release Date: September 01, 2007
Product Description: In his preface to the first Arcana: Musicians on Music (2000), avant-garde composer and saxophone player John Zorn wrote: "This book exists to correct an unfortunate injustice, the incredible lack of insightful critical writing about a significant generation of the best and most important work of the past two decades." That the injustice was repaired by that collection was happily affirmed by its subsequent success. The range of writing--from the technical to the aphoristic/diaristic--demonstrated that sometimes critical writing on music can inspire as much as it can explicate. As Zorn acknowledged, though, Arcana was also a first step. Now Arcana II, also edited by Zorn, extends the scope of its predecessor, compiling further essential writing by luminaries of contemporary improvisation and composition such as Butch Morris, Evan Parker, Marina Rosenfeld, Ned Rothenberg, Sylvie Courvoisier, Steve Coleman, Dave Douglas, Annie Gosfield, Jim O'Rourke, Milford Graves, Zeena Parkins, Bill Laswell and Uri Caine.
Not as engaging as the First I' don know, this second is not as engaging as the first, it seems everyone is looking at their own navel too much, and if you are particularly into the subject matter and materials, as marginal film sources as O'Rourke,and otherson Dada and Surreal (that hasn't died yet) the writing is pretty useless. I like Jason Eckardt, for he was very straight-forward just describing to you a piece he had done, and giving its contours and outlines, Is this is what we got now?, everyone in the avant-garde scene is simply working at their own shibboleths, tribal agendas and self-indulgences without any cross-referential anything, as perhaps the Scratch Orchestra work had implied or collective improvisations, the improv scene seems to get smaller, contracting into itself, without any looking outwards, I guess that is a dirty word "collective" anything, it doesn't make for a free market, we need to privatize the avant-garde as Reagan and Thatcher Years taught us, that's were the dough is, we need people to pluck down their Bread to help Feed us Great Unwashed Improvisors. . . Zorn should be given some Stars here however for his work in trying, it seems he picks whomever he knows, how about spreading the wealth for these Crumbs more, I guess that is too extreme a view.I'd like more music examples, even if you can't write music properly, give me what you got anyways. . .
Still I 'm happy with sheer technical insight now, if you can give me that, that's useful for writing music, or improvising, or making film wioth paint with improv, or dancing, or playing the french horn with a garden hose, or torturing an electric guitar with with multiple incisions of metal and wood rods, laying motors and cocktail mixers across the hardened body of the stratocaster Gibson.
More excellent essays Zorn's "Arcana" was a huge success that went out of print almost immediately. Fortunately, it's once again available and now there's a second volume. For those who enjoyed the first volume, I'm happy to report that volume two is more of the same. This time we get a new round of fascinating, unique articles from avant garde, experimental, or otherwise marginalized composers and performers.
As with volume one, the writing style varies from essay to essay: some of the writers are quite well spoken, while others are clearly not "writers". Ultimately though, the articles are strong on content, so we can forgive some extremely poor grammar and usage.
Unfortunately, Zorn restricts himself to a brief introduction. I'd love to see a book of essays by Zorn, but for now, it's great that he's putting these collections together. Again, if you enjoyed the first volume, you'll enjoy this. Highly recommended!
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Tailipoe
Trevor
