Constructive Sounds

I officially no longer need an alarm clock! Why? You may ask... because outside my bedroom, approximately fifteen feet away from where I sleep, is a three month, ongoing, construction project. The project is yet to be complete. From the construction site , several different sounds are projected. The most notable sounds are the machine oriented buzz saw, and the echoing blast of metallic hammering. Such sounds produce a penetrating presence in my psyche. It is strange how the process of dreaming can naturally incorporate these new external sounds into the storyline or events taking place. I can only begin to explain the effects of such constant intrusion of sound privacy.
My dreams have often, and particularly lately, presented fairly obvious and forward notions about my subconscious fears. The characters are usually labeled accurately, perhaps with different facial features or size. Places are distinct, again in name and relevance, but commonly appear in different shapes or colours. The content, however, remains fairly accurate with little ambiguity. For example, if I have anxiety about a certain exam, presentation or essay, my dreams will often portray a failed attempt to complete the task. Often in two ways: 1) a lack of effort or missed critical content, or 2) the most often is a missed deadline. The thought that the assignment was due yesterday is frightening concept for any academic. With dreams like this, I'm happy the buzz saw revved its gears at 8am. The crude awakening by such a horrible sound eventually leads to the realization that it was all a dream, and I still have one more "all-nighter" before I hand in the assignment.
The sounds find a way to plug into my dreams. One time I was discussing academics with my father (in a dream) and he uncharacteristically picked up a chainsaw and cut the table in half. Another time I was dealing with a deep reflective moment about my moral behaviour and I decided the best way to deal with it was to grab a hammer and bang on a metal plate in a non-rhythmic fashion.
This led to my analysis of the noises found at this construction site. If only tradesman had a better sense of rhythm! The subtle implication behind the phenomena of rhythmically placed sound is that the body and mind can find a way to deal with the new sound and appropriately manage them if they are constant and rhythmic. It is the non-rhythmic nature of these noises that wakes me up. I never wake up at the first sound of them, instead my dream simply begins to incorporate it in. Once the sound breaks, and starts up again with no fluidity, my brain begins to question the relevancy of the sound to the images presented. Thus my conscious mind takes over and I wake up. Fascinating stuff! If I wasn't forced into such an analysis I may have never pursued it to such an extent.
My first thoughts after waking up are usually along the lines of wanting to yell out my window about the injustice of the criminal nature of these sounds (criminal in my head after being abruptly woken up). Which than leads to a slightly more rational thought of who can I call and complain to so that my cause is heard by someone? Now, after careful contemplation, perhaps the best thing I could do would be to walk over to the construction site, in my robe, and give them a metronome.

Music in the Streets

On any given afternoon in Toronto, one can walk through the UofT neighbourhood and hear the music of an interesting kind. Often on the intersections of Harbord and St. George or Bloor and St. George is a man with an autoharp playing his own brand of music. His sound is large, echoing and brilliant. It rings out through the streets in a dreamy fashion that manages to penetrate your thoughts. While the timbre and harmonic qualities often remind me of the Christmas season, his music can be heard all throughout the year. He plays with a easy smile on his face as passer-byers respond with similar enjoyment. His music has a distinct quality to it that reminds me of Toronto. Perhaps it's the friendly environment, the politeness, or the general sense of comradery often found within our city streets.
These qualities make up the best part of our city. If anyone ever attempts to cycle or rollerblade through our city they may understand a little bit more about what I am writing about. Cyclist all know the dangers involved in our streets, often overcrowded with cars and pedestrians. Yet we still negotiate through it all, aware of the eminent fear of potential injury or even death. One result of this fear is the friendly comradery that you will find between two cyclist when paused at an intersection. It seems strange, but I found it absolutely true. Often portrayed in a simple nod or gesture, both cyclist are aware of the risks we take and the need for cautious observation. The gesture implies the acknowledgment of each others existence, something that motorist often forget. It's as if to say, I'll look after you if you do the same for me. This spirit lives deep within the core of our city, and can be found in the strangest of places.
I find this acknowledgment from our musicians and street performers as well. I often move around from place to place with a guitar strapped to my back. The guitar becomes a kind of badge that symbolizes my efforts as a musician amidst the thousands of others. When passing by other musicians with similar badges, I often get a smile and a nod, another way of saying good luck and god speed. You can compare the struggle of establishing one self as a musician in this highly competitive scene to the struggle a cyclist endures to stay alive while traveling through the streets, either way, the people you run into during your travels will likely offer a kind and reassuring acknowledgment. Something that I think characterizes this city. For whatever reason we seem to want to look out for one another. And if there is some common ground that becomes apparent in the process we take advantage of the opportunity.
Don't get me wrong, not everybody in the city is on our side. Mainly impatient motorist or cranky, stressed non-musicians turning up their ipods because the busker is drowning out their top forty pop hits. But it is apparent to me that these people don't get it. The city offers a closeness and intimacy found only when large populations co-exists in such close corners. If you really desire the peace and serenity found in silence and non-disturbance, perhaps a smaller city may suit your needs better. For the musician on St. George and Harbord playing his autoharp, the spirit within our city allows him to exist. His music often acts as a pick-me-up when feeling overwhelmed with the stresses of school and its inevitable deadlines. All he asks for in return is a friendly smile and a nod.

The Indian Jazz of Rez Abbasi

Brian Seligman

New York city is known as the definitive scene for jazz musicians. People travel from all over the world to, either attend in the audience or, participate as musicians. Rez Abbasi is a guitarist from New York who has established himself to be unique, adventurous and extremely talented. His music has taken many influences from around world, particularly Indian Classical. His recordings “Snake Charmer” and “Bazaar” have brought his unique genre-crossing sound to an accessible level.

Much of Abbasi’s music uses the Indian Raga tradition[1]. This is a tradition in which a group of notes, ascending and descending, create the source material for the piece. A raga is similar to a “scale” in western music except that Ragas have a specific note hierarchy as well as extra-musical attributes like spiritual or seasonal implications[2]. Abbasi combines these Indian traditions along with the spirit of jazz improvisation. In his music the melodies are often based off a raga, followed by a section of improvisations based off of that melody. This gives Abbasi his unique sound to both jazz and world music circles.

Born in Pakistan, Abbasi’s family moved to Los Angeles when he was 3. There he began to play rock and roll on the guitar. In the late 1990’s he began to play accompaniment with Indian vocalist Kiran Ahluwalia. Abbasi attributes much of his Indian influence to these years performing traditional Indian music with Ahluwalia[3]. In this setting Abbasi was making sure not to use to much jazz in his playing because it would upset the vocalist, so in his music, he makes a firm attempt to place jazz first.

Rez Abbasi is the first established guitarist in the jazz idiom to play an instrument called a sitar/guitar. This is a unique hybrid instrument that uses the sympathetic vibrating strings found on a sitar along with the standard six strings from a guitar. The result it that after a note is played along the six standard stings, the sympathetic strings vibrate creating a timbre that mimics the sitar. As well the uniqueness of the guitar allows Abbasi to bend notes to achieve the quarter tones found in tradition Indian music[4].

Abbasi’s sound is original and unique. He has tastefully combined Indian music with the elite jazz in a way that respects both traditions. Certainly not an easy task to do. He has gained the recognition of such jazz icons of Pat Metheny and Dave Leibman[5]. Abbasi continues to tour and perform with his jazz ensembles around north America. I recently saw him perform at the Rex on April 6, 2007. He is an act you won’t want to miss.

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[1] Howard Mandel. Downbeat Magazine April 2005.

http://www.reztone.com/images/buttons/articles/downbeatarticle.jpg

[2] Dorotheo Hast, James Cowdery and Stan Scott. Exploring the World of Music, (Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1999), 136

[3] Mandel. Downbeat.

[4] Hast, Cowdery and Scott. Exploring the World of Music, 135.

[5] Mandel. Downbeat.

The Wise Dan Weis

On March 30, I was lucky enough to attend the Dan Weis trio performance at the Rex over on Queen Street. The concert was everything a young jazz student could hope for! Weis' trio consisted of piano player Jason Sax and bassist Thomas Morgan with Weis on drums and auxilory percussion. The first time I got to see Weis, he was touring with David Binney, another huge New York player. Morgan was playing bass in that group as well. The University of Toronto was fortunate enough to host a clinic in which the quintet performed and spoke in an intimate environment. Weis was particularly enthusiastic to answer questions and offer his advice to the aspiring crowd. Since than I've been consistently interested in seeing what he's up to next. This trio performance helped to feed that curiosity.
The compositions performed were all originals by either Weis, himself, or Sax. Most of the tunes consisted of complex rhythmic syncopation with virtuosic piano fills and accompaniment . Some of the slower tempo songs presented a sophisticated and dense harmonic structure, not often heard from the compositional perspective of a drummer. Morgan provided more than solid support with his full sound, perfect intonation, and rhythmic punctuation . This group of musicians each compliment each others styles in way that organically evolves from piece to piece. There's an intensity that comes with watching them play, with Weis and Sax exchanging facial expressions as they play, most often in the form of a content smile after a successful cue.
Weis has a unique style and expression in his playing. He has the ability to puncture time that has seldom, if ever, been done in the past. Because of his broad range and ability, it's tough to draw out who his influences might be, a little Brian Blade here, some Jim Black there? Among these jazz influences is a hint of Indian flavour. That's because Weis has extensively studied the tabla as well. While in live performance he will often put down his sticks to play the kit with his fingers in a style unique to Indian Classical tabla playing. This, I feel, is the core of his rhythmic approach. Tabla playing emphasizes the smallest of intervals between various pallets of time signatures using long rhythmic cycles. When Weis applies this to his drum kit in an improvisatory setting, a new atmosphere takes shape and the time appears to reinvent itself with each evolving phrase. Suddenly the space between two eight notes appears to have elongated. Of course without a dropping a beat, Weis seamlessly incorporates these elements into his music.
The Dan Weis trio is a group that is sure to be heard in the future. With Weis, himself, commenting on the enjoyable nature that the Rex has to offer, I'm confident I'll be seeing him again.

Service Learning 2

So our group got to go down to the service learning center a second time and this time we were a little more prepared. Not only did we know exactly what to expect, we also knew what worked and what didnt'. We opened the session up with a stretch followed by a Dalcroze exercise in order to get them moving. We knew they liked the Beatles so we stayed with the classics, Hey Jude and Yellow Submarine. The crowd remembered us and and the songs and got right involved. We also knew not to worry so much about teaching the lyrics, particularly for songs like yellow submarine. We were fortunate to have Will Snodgrass with us this time to help lead a percussion session for the second half. We passed out the instruments and Will directed the group to play either loud or soft according to his hand gestures. He also walked around the group pointing to people who he wanted to play. It was a good exercise because it got everybody to pay attention and focus on what the leader was doing.
Overall the experience was very positive. On a personal level it was quite rewarding to help cheer up the faces of these young less fortunate ones. You can tell that their motivation to participate and have fun is very high, much higher than your average fortunate high school student. I know I was like that. I think a greater lesson to learn from the whole experience is not to take for granted what you have, and that the best way to express this is through community service. We happen to be a group of musicians so it is only natural for us to lead a music session. I appreciate the efforts of my fellow group members and look forward to working with them in the future.
Ciao for now,
Brian

Service Learning Journal

Well, my group (group C) went to the work station last week on March 13, and none of us new exactly what to expect! What we found was: approximately 60 participants ranging in age from 20 to about 40 with most people in their young 20's. There disabilities ranged from a minor learning disability (being a little slow) right up to fully incapacitated in a wheel chair. The first five or ten minutes were pretty intense because we didn't know how they'd react to our program.
The good news is they responded very positively to our program! We were prepared to teach three songs, Yellow Submarine, Hey Jude, and Lean on Me. They seemed to love the idea. We wrote the lyrics of the chorus on a large sheet of paper and than played the song a few time while singing along with who ever wanted to. Hey Jude went so well, many of them got up and danced while the song was playing. Some of them were quite the dancers! So after playing and singing and dancing to Yellow Submarine and Hey Jude, we decided to pass out the percussive instruments. We decided to stick with Hey Jude for the rest of the session because they responded so well to it.
Overall the response was very positive and once we got started it felt easy and quite natural to continue with whatever worked best. Simple ideas work best.
The next step for us is to create a more organized format of the program so that the participants learn 4 or 5 new musical terms. The terms could be orchestra, or conductor etc. Also I hear there has been a request for some African music, so I plan to look into so good examples for the group. We'll be back in the first week of April. Good luck!

Kensington Soundscapes

I've lived in the heart of Kensington market for almost two years now and the soundscape of this great neighbourhood is always interesting. Most afternoons are accompanied by music of several genres. Often their is the loud crashing of a heavy metal/punk band playing at the bar just outside my window. Or it could be the alternative rock band rehearsing in the apartment around the corner. Several stores have their own loud speaker with music of their choice ringing out, popular choices are reggae (Marley) or classic rock (Rolling Stones or Police). Music is certainly unique with Kensington considering most neighbourhood's soundscapes consist of street noise, cars, sirens, etc. So it is music that I hear most which seems appropriate for my lifestyle.
The last few weeks have been a little different because they've decided to tear down the building adjacent to mine. I've been graced with the ever-so-subtle jackhammer alarm clock. I guess the tradesman day starts at percisely 7am. This has lead me to thank the inventor of ear plugs.
At night, Kensington is a little different. The most consistent sounds would probably be the garbage and recycling trucks that do their rounds nightly. More amusing though are the party-goers that feel the need to share their good vibes with the whole neighbourhood in the form of hooting and holloring. And last but not least, we can't leave out the occasional random yelling of a disgruntled and intoxicated less fortunate. Their screams tend to have the doppler affect as the stumble down the streets yelling profanities until they are eventually interupted by a quick police siren.
Animals are also put into the mix, with dog barking being the most frequent. In the summer time there are sometimes the shrieking noises of the violent meeting between cats or racoons. Both of which have very loud shrieks.
The Soundscape of Kensington is very vibrant and unique. I can't imagine there are too many neighbourhoods as colourful as this. It is has clear and distinct routines from morning to night. Both of which only enhance the inner city experience. Although I must warn, it is not for everybody.

Brian Seligman