John Zorn
New Traditions In East Asian Bar Bands

Welcome to the training course for aspiring avant-gardists. First lesson: how to produce an avant-garde musical work in THREE steps.

FIRST STEP. Enter the recording studio, but your basement or attic at home will do, or any other soundproofed place. Bring along a Chinese woman; yes, you heard right, a Chinese woman: but don't get any strange ideas, you just need to have her sit down and place a music stand in front of her: have her recite a text in Mandarin, her language, a text you've had written in the meantime... maybe by Arto Lindsay, yes, but maybe even by John Doe, because then she will translate and recite it in Mandarin, and (unless you're Chinese or have studied Oriental Languages) you won't understand a thing of what she'll say. Anyway, who cares about understanding; you just need to have her recite it, but she must do it well, intensely, articulating each word with passion; and she must be a good narrator, up to the task, someone capable of infusing even a phone book with eroticism. Let her speak, let her take her pauses, catch her breath, stop and start again whenever she wants, don't rush her for any reason; and go on like this for 25 minutes. Then overlay her spoken words on a pre-recorded instrumental base, for which you've called in two guitarists. Yes, it would be preferable if these two were named Fred Frith and Bill Frisell, but anyway, to keep it short... you need two that can create unreal, hypnotic atmospheres, halfway between the unperturbed peace of a lunar landscape and the desolation of bare post-atomic scenarios; let them go wild as they prefer, also for 25 minutes. And make sure they don't step on each other's toes, they must blend well, converse politely, without raising their voices too much...

SECOND STEP. Enter the recording studio (or rather, go back there) etc., etc... But you're tired of your Chinese friend, and just to mix things up, you bring a South Korean instead; make her comfortable, pick up the music stand again and place it in front of her: on it, there's another text (much shorter this time, because the Chinese woman talked too much and annoyed you). For this scrap of a text, you didn’t even need to contact the Arto Lindsay of the moment; you’ve directly asked her to bring something in her native language, whatever she wants, even a Korean chicken recipe would do fine. And she doesn’t even have to recite it with sensuality, she can pronounce it however she likes: give her free rein, even be as inexpressive as possible. It must give a sense of extreme spontaneity, almost of nonchalance, of careless neglect. And underneath, for the beauty of 16 minutes, have two drummers play: maybe Joey Baron and Samm Bennett, if they haven’t made plans for the weekend and if you’ve kept their phone number somewhere. Just grabbing the sticks, sitting behind timpani and snare drum, and off they go: the fun can officially begin. Everything must be natural: whatever comes to their minds they should play without hesitation. What matters is that they play heavy-handed, with those sticks, communicate with each other, exchange impressions. Everything else is irrelevant. An orgy of percussion, that’s what needs to come out.

THIRD STEP. Not satisfied with the Korean either...? Well... you're really hard to please! Then go get a Vietnamese woman and bring her to the studio too. Tear up the papers you left there, on the stand, and have her recite a text in her language: it could be a local poet's text or even Ho Chi Minh's biography... it's all the same (at least for you who don't understand Vietnamese), don't worry too much. She has to pronounce it softly, almost whispering, as if it were a whisper in the ear: her voice must be dark, subdued, subtly sinister; it must give you chills, it must unsettle you. And for the music, how are you going about it this time...? Simple: you've already thought about the guitar and the drums, then it's enough to bring in two keyboardists; maybe two like Wayne Horvitz and Anthony Coleman, and then you’ll really hit the mark. Free rein for them too, obviously, as per the script; let them abandon themselves to free digressions. Yes, maybe give them two chords to start with, or thereabouts, but they’ll take care of the rest. They can really go off-script, as and when they want, what matters is that they’re unsettling too (just like the Vietnamese woman reciting). The rest is idle chatter, and keep it going like that for... oh well, even for half an hour. This time we make it longer, just because we feel like it.

And you...? You sit back in your armchair, enjoying it all; especially if you're called John Zorn, you can afford it. After all, you've given the instructions; you’ve provided the INSPIRATION.

1997. J.Z. returns to dialogue with the East. Surpassing himself: incomprehensible, unjudgeable, unclassifiable.