Area
Event '76

Does Music have value? If so, in what terms? Only when meticulously crafted, when something is constructed clearly, precisely, and correctly to find corresponding notes on a staff? Or in the act of improvisation, when certain structures and logics are challenged, leading to something initially unpredictable? Or do both situations possess intrinsic dignity? These are questions that probably have no answer, or rather, they might not even need to exist.

Each of us is capable of producing noises which, from a physical standpoint, are simply waves characterized by a lack of periodicity. Even the most celestial sound, like one of the two sides of "In den Gärten Pharaos" by Popol Vuh, is a wave. So what distinguishes me from Florian Fricke? We are both men, we both have intellectual capabilities and produce waves; under these conditions, I could even compare myself to him. The difference lies in the way and the motivations that drive us to produce a sound, and this leads me to say that the waves produced by Fricke deserve much more than mine. There you have it, the motivations. What drives us to make music and what compels us to do it in a certain way? Everyone has their reasons, and they have varied greatly since the beginning of human existence, as musical instruments have often been narrators and inspirers of stories on this earth. Some do it to aptly accompany their lives, others to celebrate a historical event, some to survive, and others to deceive and take advantage of others.

You can philosophize about music ("Life without music would be a mistake," Nietzsche once said), or you can denounce a state of affairs ("We are all children of the stars and descendants of His Majesty money"), and you can even construct a different way of composing and thinking. For this purpose, avant-garde movements exist, which are present in all arts (for example, Scapigliatura, an artistic avant-garde) or can spread across all arts (as Futurism attempted). Since Music is an art, or rather the Art (and it is not by chance that the muses, who symbolized the arts, share the same etymological root), there has also been an avant-garde in this field. There have been many exponents, even in the 20th century: the century of speed. Those who create avant-garde work challenge speed, time, and structure; they have very different ways of thinking and existing. One of these pioneers was John Cage, a legendary American composer, capable of imparting extraordinary lessons that, unfortunately, not many have tried to understand and spread, managing perhaps to create variations and improvements on that idea which was not initially developed or got bogged down in failed attempts. Fortunately, Science makes progress through trials, by stubbornly believing that an idea is correct, and thus by moving forward, it will be possible to prove the validity of something that seemed insane until recently and often, in hindsight, the recognition of the idea does not happen despite its changing the History of Humanity and, by reflection, an individual existence, as happened to Ludwig Boltzmann: without him, there was no chance that Einstein, Planck, Bohr, and Heisenberg (just four random people) could have entered the Legend.

Returning to John Cage and his idea: by the way, what could this brilliant intuition ever be? Soon told: he wanted to make an attempt in which a group of musicians played on their own, totally disregarding what the artist next to them was doing, exactly the opposite of what happens in an ensemble where a unity of intention is sought. An attempt was made, initially successful, but then habit prevailed, and the experiment failed. Yet there was someone who dared to repeat this project, incorporating the famous variant, and such madness struck a group called "Area International Popular Group" in 1976.

At that time, the basic quintet that had played for the previous two years had dissolved into a trio, consisting of Demetrio Stratos, Paolo Tofani, and Patrizio Fariselli; it must be said that the two missing members (Ares Tavolazzi and Giulio Capiozzo) also played and appeared on the record released in November of the same year ("Maledetti") but in the meantime allowed their fellow travelers to attempt something on their own, like Cage's experiment. The ideal opportunity came in Milan, at the Aula Magna of the University of Milan, where they would play and donate the concert proceeds, a political price of 1000 Lire, to the Fronte Popolare, and to do things right they enlisted for this crazy project two musicians of the caliber of Steve Lacy (saxophonist) and Paul Lytton (percussionist). But before starting, let’s describe the variant: each musician had, next to them, a basket containing a series of notes attached to a stopwatch, on which it was possible to read one of the following five words: violence, irony, silence, sex, and hypnosis. At the beginning of the concert, they would draw a ticket and play based on the interpretation they gave to the word written on the ticket, and every three minutes, Fariselli's brother would time them, they would have to draw another and so on. The result? An elusive concert, from the verb "to elude," where they brought out all their flair and an innate instinct for improvisation, completely disorienting the audience, composed of students and Jazz experts, who were expecting the usual Area repertoire and, seeing the course of the concert, actively participated in the project, producing sounds or noises of any kind. Still, waves added to those coming off the stage.

"Event '76" documents this concert and consists of only 3 songs: the first part of Chaos, about 20 minutes long, the second part, later performed in the Studio in "Maledetti," and finally the title track, which is a variation and a dilation of the theme of "Scum." It represents a unique sound document of great artistic value, it was published posthumously in 1979 by Cramps of Gianni Sassi, who made himself depicted on the album cover, where a little girl can be seen next to Frankenstein (Sassi, in composing the texts of Area, chose as a pseudonym the creature from Mary Shelley's pen). Inside, in the original edition, there was also a report of that concert by Patrizio Fariselli. The date on the record grooves is June 26, 1979. It's not a random date; less than two weeks have passed since the death of Demetrio Stratos and that fantastic concert at the Arena Civica, which became an extraordinary tribute to one of the greatest innovators music has ever known.

P.S. I conclude with a note of regret and a dedication. The regret is in the fact that no one has had the courage to resume the experiments and the way of playing of Area, neither in Italy nor elsewhere on this earth. Remembering and spreading a message is surely a good thing, but it is not enough when no one is able to work and impact the grooves that the group and its individual members have left. This review is dedicated to Demetrio Stratos and Giulio Capiozzo, who are no longer of this world. We miss you, and I have a dark confession to tell you. We, momentary survivors to death, have not only lost the memory of the 15th Century but are at risk of losing that of all the others. The evaporation of human thought is happening...