Charlemagne Palestine
Strumming Music

A blinding light that passes through the eyelids, this music would be if it could be seen. Intense but not annoying, a surrounding daze that rocks you on the waves of thoughts.

It's no coincidence that Charlemagne Palestine's performances are accompanied by images and immersed in a religious atmosphere. He is, in fact, a sorcerer and always carries his fetishes with him: stuffed animals and a bottle of Cognac. Music is a means to enter a trance, establish contact with divinity, but also a way to exorcize inner ghosts and fears and transfer them to those fetishes.

"When I have to perform, I prepare like a shaman: I dress specially for each event with a special shirt, special pants, special scarves, special socks, and equally special shoes. Then I drink my special magical Cognac from my special crystal glass and prepare an altar with my Muses, my Plush Animals, my Deities and my Gods, my Intermediaries with the Divine! (if they're toys, they're Sacred Toys). I enter a very special Deep Trance and Interact, Intersect, Interconnect with the Universe! I connect directly with the Forces of Nature! This is how I prepare!"(*)

Strumming is the union of the words "Streaming" and "Drumming", that is, an inexorable sound flow like the current of a river combined with a tribal percussive momentum. All of this is performed at the piano, pounding on a couple of keys until fingers are raw and continuously for fifty-two minutes, using pedals to give different nuances.

"Strumming came around 1972. I was developing a long work at the piano called "Spectral Continuum for Bösendorfer Imperial" at the California Institute of the Arts where I was an assistant and graduate. The work lasted roughly 5 hours and was played with the arpeggio technique, not very different from how the impressionists like Debussy and Ravel used to do, except that I had created a long, liquid and arpeggiated "continuum" that repeated notes and chords, but never the same twice, like the waves of the sea. At the beginning and end of the piece, I played an octave with one finger for each hand alternately, changed the tempo, until I sensed magnificent rainbows or overtones based on the slight differences in touch, intensity, and speed of execution. It was truly a magical sonic discovery for me and from there I began to develop and experiment with this technique in many different and complex ways."(*)

This artist's love for folk music is evident, especially for the more ancestral, shamanic ones, those that have neither a beginning nor an end, blending with the sound of nature, serving to heal the pains of body and soul among the fumes of drugs or frenetic and obsessive beats of tambourines until the poison of the tarantula is sedated. For this reason, the warmth of this music is far from the cold minimalism of La Monte Young, Philip Glass, or Steve Reich.

"I feel much closer, with my rituals and my music, to the Aborigines rather than to the Young-Glass-Adams-Reichs"(*)

This music has thaumaturgic capabilities, it's a personal experience that assumes different colors with each listening and has a different meaning for each listener. It is certainly a moment of escape from reality that leaves one a bit dazed but more free and light.

It would be pointless anyway to continue describing personal sensations, set adrift in Charlemagne Palestine's world to reconcile with heaven and earth.