Call for submissions - DEADLINE EXTENDED

This is an invitation from Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR).

THE TUSCALOOSA MEDITATIONS is my latest work. It's scored for string orchestra, two flutes, and solo (offstage) trumpet. It was commissioned by the University of Alabama to commemorate Vivian Malone Jones and James Hood, the first African-American students to attend that university in that state.

I traveled with my friend, Janet Wong, down to Tuscaloosa, Alabama (upon invitation from the University of Alabama) to learn more about George Wallace and his stand in the school house door; Vivian Malone Jones, James Hood, and their stand against him; and to stand, gaze upon, and learn from Foster Auditorium itself. Being in that building, walking along the dusty floor, and playing the violin through that same, infamous door, has, in very real and significant ways, changed my life. My life is changed because I have a better understanding of what happened there, why the events there unfolded as they did, and just how much consideration was given to everyone involved.

And that is all I want to do, really, is to be considered---that is, for you to consider me and this music, this meditation on everyone who has gone through all the things that we all do just to live and to be alive. There's a saying someone once told me: we all suffer but not all of us survive.

The American composer Charles Ives' THE UNANSWERED QUESTION asks similar questions in its musical language. That work inspired this one. More than anything, Vivian's courage and James' strength, in the face of so much opposition and oppression, laid the foundation for why I chose to memorialize them and to pay homage to Foster Auditorium. There are still so many questions to be answered, so many stories that still linger in the hallways of that place. Mine is only one of them. All the rest must be answered by us.

Are we prepared?

Paris, France
17 March 2007

The iPod is the greatest musical instrument and musical invention of the 21st Century. Like any instrument when you buy it, it's blank, empty, and waiting to be filled, wanting you to put your hands on it. You input your tastes, your music, your ideas. You input your arrangements of those ideas exemplified by your playlists. You make it your own. By shuffling your ideas, or allowing them to be randomized, you are participating in a compositional idea, a compositional technique, an aleatoric procedure. The unexpected nature of what might come next, of what might be heard next, helps to liberate the mind and the ear and expand the very personal nature of one's perception of music, and I think, one's taste. And like any great musical device, the iPod can grow and expand and respond along with the player. Several companies offers ways in which two iPods can be used as two turntables. Podcasts are becoming more and more common and blue collar (the NYPD features one now on its homepage). Today, I noticed there were 235,000,000 "hits" when the word "iPod" was googled.

Music changed my life

Music changed my life and saved my life. Statistically speaking, as a young Black man in America, I should have at least one child; I should have used or should be using illegal drugs; I should have been arrested, been to jail and/or prison at least once; I could be HIV+; I could be unemployed; I could be dead. When I tell you music changed my life and saved my life, that is not an exaggeration.

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In service to music

You have to decide whether or not you are going to have music serve you or if you are going to live your life in service to music.

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It is, is it?

History, tradition, and classical music---are these words related?
Who decides what it is or when it is---is it you or them?

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Composers are

Composers are historians, documentarians, ethnomusicologists, and pathological liars.

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B to MJ to M to PRN

Brahms is to Michael Jackson as Mahler is to Prince. The formers are most concerned with melody with little attention paid to timbre. The latters provide substantial melodic construction supported by overwhelming timbral patterns and design.

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SSS

When everything else is over, music and silence should be about selflessness, selfishness, and pleasure.

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Listen and move

If you want to understand music, take a dance class. If you want to learn how to dance, don't ask a musician. Listen and move to your favorite music instead.

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Listen to your lover's voice

If you want to understand timbre, or the color of sound, that is, what distinguishes the sound of a piano from the sound of a violin, listen to your lover's voice. Have you ever recorded the voice of someone you want to love and listened back to it? Have you ever called someone's voicemail just to hear the sound of their voice if only for a few, passing moments? Have you ever kept a message from them on your cell phone for days, weeks even, because you love the sound of their voice that much? That is timbre, or for me, the best definition.

you have to challenge yourself.
you have to stretch your imagination.
you have to play as though you will not be able to play tomorrow.

you have to play when it hurts because no one else will.
you have to play until it hurts because no one else can or will dare to.
you have to play until the pain is gone.

you have to think about your mother.
you have to think about your mother murdered.
you have to think about your mother's murderer and play to him.
all the rage.
all the anger.

you have to think of your first child.
you have to think of her name.
you have to play to her and be as gentle as the mother you might be.
all the tenderness.
all the patience.
all the pride.

you have to beat your instrument.
you have to play your cello like a bass drum.
you have to play your violin like an electric guitar.
you have to play your drum like a flute.
you have to play your flute like a drum kit.

you have to have so much pressure on the bow it all becomes pure noise.

you have to listen with your whole body.

you are way too comfortable with what you think you know.

you have to keep learning.
you have to want to.
you have to go to new places and then you can take me there.

you have to have balls and know when not to.
you have to see with your father's eyes; no one is blind.

you have to find the beauty in one note and then share it with me.

you have to want to be new.
you have to listen to things you don't want to listen to.

you have to make NIN a part of your DNA.

you have to play tired and make it beautiful.
you have to be poor and shallow and play rich and deep.

you have to try 1,000 times harder and that is only a start and you have to know that.
you have to count and make it count.
you have to not take it for granted and i think you do.
you have to not become a broken record doing the same things everyday.

everyday do the same thing and see how it feels; tomorrow do one thing
different and see how that feels. pick one and repeat.

ask yourself, "why would i want to listen to you?"
i ask myself, "what am i playing that hasn't been played before, better?"

are you original?
where does originality exist?
is there anyone in the world like you?
no?
prove it!

you can.
play it!

you have to decide.
you have to make the choice to be a great musician in the hopes that
you might make good music.
you have to be able to make great conversation first.

there is nothing i can teach you that you don't already know.
don't you know this?

There is nothing special about any composer combining hip-hop music with classical music. As a composer, I see myself and my work as an extension of what rap and hip-hop producers did and still do: combining seemingly disparate music (and musical IDEAS) within a singular, unified vision. The earliest rap records used James Brown records, a classic, black soul music, and the earliest hip-hop records sampled classical recordings and symphonic scores.  Barry White often led an orchestra of 70 musicians, backed by a fierce rhythm section of drums, bass, and keyboards.  More than the celebrated conductor/teacher Pierre Monteux, White had the biggest stick and conducting arm in "classical" music.

Today, I'm not the only "hip-hop violinist", with international stars including BLACK VIOLIN, NUTTIN' BUT STRINGS, and MIRI BEN ARI all on the scene, all using violins, strings, and classical music within their own unique expression. 

A reporter from UCLA asked me is there "something else" going on in my music. Good question.

Marvin Gaye asked a similar question years ago, in response to the Vietnam War.  As a black composer living in Harlem during a time of war, I do feel a call to duty. My violin is my sword, my gun, my weapon of choice.  As a composer, I can enlist an army of 100 symphonic musicians.  For them to play HIP-HOP ESSAY FOR ORCHESTRA then takes on a very special meaning for me, and I hope, the audience.  I hope to bring my own brand of democracy to the concert hall so that my compositional pursuits and preferences are not seen as something exceptional, special, or unusual, but rather, that hip-hop and classical music might CONTINUE to live side-by-side and that we all might truly become one nation under God and a mighty, might groove, too.

                                                                 

 

 

 

Composing and finding time to compose is a commitment you make with, not only yourself, but with other musicians and an audience that doesn't exist yet.  I am always aware that at the moment of conception, the idea for a new work, a new note, a new melody will actually become REAL in another space and time.  So composing time is dream time---it's fantasty, imagination, and all facade. 

Composing is like creating a mirage in a dreamworld of ghosts.

The following blog entry was written originally for The Flynn Center's Blogsite(http://www.flynncenter.org/blog/dbr.shtml).  DBR will perform Voodoo Violin Concerto with members of the Vermont Youth Orchestra and 24Bits: Hip-Hop Studies and Etudes with DBR & THE MISSION at the Flynn later this month.

String Quartet No 1, X: I was in my early twenties, and had recently read Brother Malcolm's autobiography. I was moved to tears and rage and completely related to his struggles, many of them in his early twenties, too. I wanted this quartet to change my world. I ended up combining the best of Bartok's motifs with my own developing sense of funk.

String Quartet No. 2, King: This quartet is inspired by the controversial phone tapes and other information found on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s adulterous affairs.  The music illuminates the pillow talk that might have occurred, and what influence these mistresses might have had on him, and consequently, on the entire Civil Rights movement. One need only mention the names Karin Stanford or Monica Lewinsky to know that adultery still has a firm grip and place in politics...and yes, the puns are intended.

String Quartet No. 3, Powell: Adam Clayton Powell, Jr's., writings and legislative efforts paved the the way for the Johnson Administration's eventual passing of Civil Rights laws. Were it not for him, I would not be allowed to be a composer nor would I have had the access to my education and most things I probably take for granted.

String Quartet No. 4, Angelou: Maya Angelou personally knew each of these three men and too often I think we tend to neglect the strong leadership roles Black women have had in the Civil Rights movement. Powerful though her words and poetry are, in this quartet, it is the wondrous timbre of the sound of her voice that forms the source material of the electronic soundscapes generated by me and the ever-revelatory, DJ Scientific.

The following blog entry was written originally for The Flynn Center's Blogsite(http://www.flynncenter.org/blog/dbr.shtml).  DBR will perform Voodoo Violin Concerto with members of the Vermont Youth Orchestra and 24Bits: Hip-Hop Studies and Etudes with DBR & THE MISSION at the Flynn later this month.

Being a part of DBR & THE MISSION has been a rewarding experience for me. It's rare when one finds a combination of nine people who aside from being fine musicians are fine people as well.  When those forces are combined, a certain magic takes place.

I think what makes this group particularly special is that we share a common goal.  Our aim is to provide a unique and exciting musical experience for listeners of every age and culture.  Music still remains the one true unifying language in the world.  Fusion is the next stage in promoting that but it is no easy task.  It requires sensitivity in order to uphold the integrity of the individual genres in hand.  DBR has demonstrated a singular ability to achieve this goal with a revolutionary style.  His compositions manage to address both musical and technical issues that co-exist in the classical and popular music worlds.  "Hip-Hop Studies and Etudes" may easily become a standard in the future of music education.  Once introduced, it will undoubtedly add depth to that which musical institutions already provide.

As a musician myself who stems from a classically trained background, I would advise music students of all ages to never resist the opportunity to expand your knowledge beyond your classical training.  Embrace every outlet you have to explore the vast varieties that music has to offer.  It will only enhance that which you have going already.

Jon Weber

The following blog entry was written originally for The Flynn Center's Blogsite (http://www.flynncenter.org/blog/dbr.shtml).  DBR will perform Voodoo Violin Concerto with members of the Vermont Youth Orchestra and 24Bits: Hip-Hop Studies and Etudes with DBR & THE MISSION at the Flynn later this month.

HIP-HOP STUDIES AND ETUDES were my compositional response to teaching at the Harlem School of the Arts some five years ago. I was there as the chair of the Composition/Theory Department and noticed many of the students there were not at all interested in music fundamentals, including scales, rhythmic studies, or harmonic exercises. At the same time, I noticed the music that we were all listening to was incredibly complex melodically, harmonically, and even in terms of its form and texture.

That music, hip-hop music, instilled in a me a desire to deconstruct it and, using my own compositional voice, create HIP-HOP STUDIES AND ETUDES that would not only be a more accessible method towards learning the major scales, they would provide my students with a musical vernacular by which they could learn more about music, American music, and more about their black music and their African-American culture.

In the end, HIP-HOP STUDIES AND ETUDES are as much about their needs as mine, as a composer, performer, and artist.