My Music
Sometime between the time of Adam and Eve and today, music and dance got absorbed into the culture of global profit driven corporations.
First, music and dance had to be redefined as a spectator sport. Some people do have a natural talent, and if they become full time performers they get extremely good at what they do - they are very entertaining. This is fine. What is not fine, to my way of thinking, is when the concept of competition kicks in, and everybody else is made to feel inadequate, less than perfect. Just a member of the audience.
Second, the “cult of celebrity” had to be created – fame makes big profits – publicity and image become all important. This increases the gap between the performer and the audience.
Music and dance is a natural part of every human being. I am fortunate to have grown up in a culture of creativity. I discovered Circle Dance through my friends Stefan and Bethan, I have jammed with so many people, at all levels, at Subud events and at the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts.
This year I helped out at the Subud ThankYou 2007 event in Ascot, UK, and this meant having many people to stay at my house from July to September. We made a lot of music, almost all of which was not recorded.
One of my house guests was Robin Wyllie, from Australia. One evening I recorded us jamming. Here it is, Robin on drums, me on keyboard. I really like Robin’s drum playing – he is learning all the time.
You won’t find this on MTV, or even on a CD. If we play again it would be completely different – entirely new mistakes!
It has almost no commercial value, it is just a snapshot of one evening. Enjoy!
Robin and Howerd ( its big -16M bytes )
Another house guest was Emile Delcourt from France. Emile introduced me to the music of Café del Mar (Ibiza), modern French music, and a computer program called Reason. Reason allows you to edit rhythms and midi sounds – I could spend (waste?) a lot of time doing this.
I made two tracks, one expressed my mood at the time all too well – its not very pleasant to listen to – I include it because it is interesting. The other is pleasant, if a bit bland. I can see how, if I spent many weeks on each track, I could make something extremely polished, and possibly saleable…
Track one (a bit bland) (about 1Mbyte) Enjoy!
Track two (about 1Mbyte) Enjoy if you can!
2008 Jan 09 Life is good! I’m building up a recording studio – a Heath-Robinson affair that sounds better than it looks…
I’ve just added an effects unit from my Subud brother Simeon… Its late and I just recorded this using it.
It forces me to concentrate on the echoes from the machine, which makes the rhythm quite fixed, but it adds a flowing, chaotic quality to the sound, hence the name : In the eye of the chaos-storm
Some MP3’s for you to download…
Robin
and Howerd jamming ( its big -16M bytes )
Track one (a bit bland) (about 1Mbyte) Enjoy!
Track two (same as Track one, but with added stuff ) (about 1Mbyte) Enjoy if you can!
In the eye of the chaos-storm echoes
from the still point at the centre…
Howerd Oakford