THE MUSIC OF MEREDITH MONK

	I first heard the name of Meredith Monk through some friends
	of mine who live in New York City - real died-in-the-wool
	New Yorkers who root out all the "in" things to do and see and
	hear. I think they'd seen some Monk presentations at La Mama.
	the were impressed.

	    Not long afterward, some other friends mentioned her
	    name. Then I discovered the Soho Music Gallery on the
	    corner of Wooster and Grand, about the only record
	    shop in the City where you can pick up, on the spot,
	    most of the more esoteric and limited-distribution labels
	    in all categories, including experimental, jazz, new wave,
	    and "non-Western." (This place has since closed. A new
	    and similar establishment is the New Music Distribution
	    Service at 100 Broadway). They had a couple recordings
	    of Monk's music. I bought them. And became a "follower."

      " 'Meredith Monk's works are in no way autobiographical,' Robb Baker
      has written. 'Yet they seem subjective in a highly unusual way in
      that they touch off memories from the viewer's own past or subcon-
      scious mind. Monk's works are all journeys, in a sense, back to a
      kind of collective childhood of shared images, shared tradtions.'
      As it happens, Baker was writing in Dancemagazine about about Monk's
      dance-theater pieces, but he could as easily have been describing
      her music.  Mostly it is music for the human voice, and for Monk
      the voice has always been an instrument of transformation and a
      means of getting in touch.

          "To many people, Monk is primarily one of the most
	   influential choreographers of the day, or a dancer, or
	   a deviser of theatrical presentations, [or in 1988, a
	   creator of spectacles, or a film-maker] and it is true
	   that for a time her music was more an element in these
	   presentations than a thing in itself. But Monk was singing
	   before she learned to talk, and she was reading music
	   before she could read words. It was only towards the end of
	   her college studies, which included studying the voice,
	   that she decided to concentrate on dance. That was in 1964.
	   by 1970 she was giving solo concerts devoted to her vocal
	   and keyboard music and beginning to gain serious recog-
	   nition as a performing composer. This is a period in
	   which the arts are much broader and more catholic than
	   the traditional categories and modes of criticism, and,
	   as often happens, critics of one art form, in this case
	   dance, had been slow to recognize the significance of
	   an artist's break-through in what they perceived as
	   another art form. For Monk, it should be emphasized these
	   art forms are not entirely separable. Her theater and
	   dance are musical, her music is often theatrical and her
	   voice dances." (Robert Palmer, notes for "Songs From the
	   Hill/Tablet," Wergo Sm1022, 1979)

    Some characteristics of the music:

	 Mostly vocal, but the voice used in an extraordinary
	    variety of ways, eliciting a wide range of emotions,
	    from giddy silliness to electrifying mysteriousness

	 Accompaniments often on keyboard or simple instruments with
	    drone melodic figures

	 Extended sequences of sections, carrying on through a journey
	    of emotions

	 Crests of child-like sounds, evoking laughter and the sense
	    of freedom in the play of a child

	 Particular vocal techniques: glottal stops, rhythmic acuity,
	    textural variation, etc.

	 Extensive looping of materials, with build-up in layers

       "If she wanted to," New York Time's John Rockwell has written,
       "Miss Monk could have a respectable career in conventional
       classical music. But she has already perfected her own
       technique ot emit amazing varieties of sounds rarely heard
       from a Western throat, full of wordless cries and moans,
       a lexicon of vocal coloration, glottal attacks, and micro-
       tonal waverings that lie at the base of all musical cultures." (ibid.)

	     "I've been trying to extend the voice in as many
	     ways as possible," she says, "utilizing as many
	     resonating chambers, different kinds of syllables,
	     positions of the mouth, the inside of the mouth,
	     the tongue, the lips and breathing techniques...
	     I've been trying to find a language for the voice
	     that's instrinsic to the voice." (ibid.)

			 UNANNOUNCED OFFSHOOT

	  EXPERIMENTAL MODALITIES:             DREAM MUSIC

	      Gestures from the heart through the voice

		  SHOUTING

		  SINGING


			     In dreams we hear a music
			     the precise shape is unclear
			     at times having
			     startling clarity
			     unremembered

	 what is the relationship between our waking condition and
	       the dream state?

			  Have you ever heard music in your dreams?


						try shaping the sounds
						in your dreams

		       the Temiar Indians of Malaysia seek a guide
		       in their dreams    the guide teaches them a
		       SONG    the guide teaches them a SONG    the
		       song is taught is taught is taught to the
		       rest of the tribetribetribetribetribetribe
		       thetribeworks through the SONG in an all night
		       festivivivivivity

	       Theodore Roethke's line:

		   What can be known?   The Unknown.

	shifting the mind
	so you see behind

	and underneath
	and all around

			   the angle is changed


		     SHIFT ANGLES

				      and alter the perspective

			     to be fully conscious and yet deeply
			     in touch with the unconcsious


  ex.per.i.ment
     a trial, a test
	(see EXPERIENCE)


						  TREE SINGING


	                           dream this music