Moondog
The German Years 1977-1999

DIVINE CLOCHARD.

Crossing the century within the darkness of blindness that came upon you when you were a boy, crossing it as you sail through the sea of sounds heard only by you, driven by a gentle energy that transforms into music, which by layering, melting into each other, becomes your music.
Crossing it in perfect solitude, like a dog illuminated by the opalescent moonlight.

Like a lunar dog along the streets of New York, on its sidewalks, in the '50s, selling your scores to passersby, to the same passersby to whom you gift pieces of the vast mosaic you are composing.
You are a street musician, like many in those years.
But like no one will ever be again.

The mine of sound is vast, and by virtue of your unlit gaze, which seems to see more clearly, that vastness sometimes finds a way to manifest in tiny spaces, a few minutes within which magical encounters occur.
Chamber music meets jazz, the voice is an instrument among others, like waves or birdsong. And then the "classical" compositions, the assembly of separately recorded parts, the madrigals, the use of music that comes from elsewhere and merges into your sonic sea.
Naturally anticipating what will one day be called cut-up, minimalism, post-modern, world music. And who knows what else.

Crossing the century stepping on a borderline that you continually surpass, drawing from the inexhaustible mine, to let what is "low" cross paths with what is sublime.
With the naturalness and naivety of an educated autodidact who, as often happens to autodidacts, is driven by an omnivorous, encyclopedic hunger.
As I advance within the multifaceted and ever-changing soundscape you have conceived over an entire life, a constant sensation that pervades every fragment accompanies me.
It makes this landscape unique, perfectly amalgamating it.
And it is tenderness, a tenderness that is strength and sweetness. That is wonder. And warmth. What one feels before real things, in which we perceive the accuracy and love that moved the hands of those who built them.
It doesn't happen that often.


Louis Hardin, better known as Moondog, born in Kansas in 1916, is a unique character in the history of music in the past century. Musician and composer, poet and playwright, he truly crossed the century aboard a gentle sound machine, sometimes dressed as a Viking, as you can see by searching for some images online.
There are many recordings and some CDs that testify part of his protean activity, especially from the first part of his career, published by Prestige. Some are very percussive, also using instruments he built himself, others with piano improvisations, others that draw from the Renaissance and Baroque traditions. All, in one way or another, seem to anticipate in certain moments, in an absolutely unique and personal way, solutions and scenarios that will come.

The double, beautiful CD that I present here (2004, ROOF Music), with a booklet rich in notes, information, and images, collects, on one disc, part of his latest musical production, realized during the years spent in Germany, where he lived from 1974 onwards.
It opens with "Bird's lament," (how much I like this piece) composed in honor of Charlie Parker (whom he knew) when Moondog learned of his death. And continues with 21 pieces traversed by his multifaceted delicacy, taken from 7 different albums, concluding with a fragment of his most ambitious work, The Creation.
In the second CD, there is space for the recording of his last concert, held in Arles, France, a month before his death, which occurred in Germany in 1999. Short pieces, dense with simple beauty, performed on the piano with Dominique Ponty.

I have neglected this gentleman and his world in recent years, which I had stumbled upon by chance, a long time ago, only to abandon it, distracted by who knows what sirens.
I am glad to use this space to give a little visibility to his figure, to his work.
I’m retracing the river of time backwards, through the CDs that I can find.
And I invite you to embark on a similar journey, like vagabonds, under his moon.
Isolated and freed for a while from the noise of "new novelties," along the humble, ancient, and lush path of the "divine clochard."

Bye bye, Louis.