Listening In

LOCATION: Union Square, New York City

In this episode, we first encounter a young woman listening to the one-stringed berimbao of capoeira music.  She is an avid practitioner of the Brazilian martial art dance.  Fifty feet away, we meet a couple of rocker girls in high-school who complain about the “weird cult-like music” of the Brazilian capoeristas. The revere Korn and System of a Down.  We also hear froma bonafide groupie of Frank Zappa, who introduced him to the found sound of John Cage and Edgar Varese while in a dressing room on the road.

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The essay “Alan Lomax and the Big Story of Song,” featured in the liner notes to the “Alan Lomax Popular Songbook” CD, outlines Lomax’s study of American popular music styles, which puts the US hit parade into the context of global song style patterns.
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LOCATION: Metro North Hudson River commuter train

Busts on the train include Sister with her nephew and niece, who were returning from Sing-Sing prison where they visited Sister’s son in jail.  She is listening to Jaheim’s “Keep Your H-E-A-D-U-P.”  Also, Elijah, a college radio DJ listening to “emo” punk, who tells tales of the mosh pit.  Finally, a man who has just unleashed his 70s LP collection from its slumber and tranferred it to his MP3 player deals with all the memories.

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LOCATION: Union Square, New York City

These busts include a man deeply involved in his “Disney’s Greatest Hits” compilations who is especially adept at interpreting the lyrics from “The Little Mermaid.”  Another self-described “dinosaur” listens to the likes of Bing Crosby and the Andrew Sisters.  He calls Rosemary Clooney’s “Mambo Italiano” rock and roll.  Lastly, a man into Tony, Tone, Toni and Earth, Wind and Fire reminisces about the days when the city streets were filled with the sounds of boomboxes.

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This paper presents the approaches and expectations of a recently launched course at New York University (NYU) in the design and development of musical controllers. The framework for the course, which is also entitled “New Interfaces for Musical Expression,” is largely based on the proceedings of the first NIME workshop held in Seattle, WA in April 2001.

Published in the proceedings of the 2002 “New Interfaces for Musical Expression” Conference, Media Lab Europe, Dublin, Ireland.

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This paper describes a series of projects that explore the possibilities of musical expression through the combination of pre-composed, interlocking, modular components. In particular, this paper presents a modular soundtrack recently composed for “Currents of Creativity,” a permanent interactive videowall installation at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center.
Published in the proceedings of the 2001 “New Interfaces for Musical Expression” Workshop, CHI 2001 Conference, Seattle, WA.

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The Alan Lomax Collection Sampler (compiled and edited by Gideon D’Arcangelo) is the first release in the Alan Lomax Collection on Rounder Records. It provides an overview from each of the series of historic Lomax recordings to be released on Rounder, including Southern Journey; Prison Songs; the Caribbean Collection; the English, Scottish and Irish Recordings; the Italian Collection; the Columbia World Library; Deep River of Song; Portraits; and the Ballad Operas, featuring Woody Guthrie.
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