WAYS & MEANS is the improvising trio of Dan Godston (trumpet, percussion),
Jayve Montgomery (reeds, electronics, percussion)
and Joel Wanek (upright bass, cello). These three young Chicago musicians explore the intricacies and multiplicities of sound and vibration using rhythms, melodies, drones and
other soundscapes. Their performances are an amalgam of ritual and ceremony, mourning and celebration, dance and chance.
- a Disease called Freedom produced by The Ways Ensemble and presented by Pangea World Theater as part of Bridges; a series of multidisciplinary performance art. -Dates: October 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th 2007 Time: 7:30 PM tickets @ 612.203.1088 or visit www.pangeaworldtheater.org -Venue: AVALON THEATER / 1500 East Street in Minneapolis MN / home of Heart of the Beast Featuring: Tom Kanthak, Steve Hirsh, Roxane Wallace, Rene Ford, Michael O’Brien, Mankwe Ndosi, Kenna Sarge, J. Otis Powell!, Bill Cottman and Beverly Cottman
-Brief description: a Disease called Freedom uses the metaphor of a river as one point of departure, the psychiatric diagnosis of Drapetomania as another point of departure and the Dogon concept of the Andoumboulou as a rubric for human existence in this absolutely new evening of performance art. This river is never the same - always the same river. This river known now as a Disease called Freedom began two years ago as Ways of Knowing and has swelled into a body of water containing our collective mythologies. This river carries our stories, our music, our dance and our visual creations for the stage and is subject to, as a river is, changes in weather. a Disease called Freedom is a continuation of a series of productions created as part of Pangea’s Bridges; a performance art project featuring multiethnic, multidisciplinary artists telling communal and personal stories together. The Ways Ensemble works in a jazz aesthetic, collaboratively creating performance at intersections of each other’s stories.
-Contact: J. Otis Powell! OPWLL@AOL.COM for interviews or more information
Happy Equinox - The birth mark of John Coltrane - if you can't heard in your heart put it on your stereo today.
Rise/raise on up out of here to some place no one has ever been said the voice of the Dogon through the thickness and the faux silence And sing! Seduced for the moment by doubt I asked But how can I sing such a song in a strange land? Strangely the voice replied. Then like a great idea the voice wrapped in the wisdom of the Nommo offered Sing in the spirit of L’inconnu. To which I broke all illusion of quite with a squeaking, What? My expression was a wet squint-eyed compliant when I said But there is never not another set of stairs to climb – never not another room to clean – never not another wind to blow in bad weather – never not another stack of bills to pay. By now names that spoke of the absurdity of our human condition emerged from the thickness in the faux silence like metaphors.
Sun Ra answered me in a Birmingham Alabama accent that whiplashed my memory almost all the way back home when he said And there is never not another po' excuse for assuming yo'self stapled to the ground. Touché I said before making an attempt to recover with Lift every voice and sing. We can only lift our own voice volleyed Billie Holiday - God bless the child that's got the blues. Then our song must be contagious insisted John Coltrane And our voice must be an unimpeachable force. Our song I remembered from reading Nathaniel Mackey Be of the Andoumboulou; our song be the blues rising as dust to become the air. We reclaim ourselves through the strange songs we sing as we struggle like fledglings to ascend. Excerpted from - a Disease called Freedom ~J.OP!~
China! China! China! A character named Aunt Nancy in a novel by Nathaniel Mackey titled Djbot Baghostus’s Run told a story that I believe bears repeating hear. This story which another character named Jarred Bottle christened Namesake Anecdote #1, went like this: Aunt Nancy went to see and hear Frank Wright band leader and saxophonist who was playing with his band one night in a New York loft in the early seventies. Wright was in a blowing mood that night; the band came on with a tuneless, ultra-out wall of sound (no head, no recognizable structure), a raucous, free-for-all cacophony which at times had the feel of an assault. The first set went on that way, nonstop, for about an hour and fifteen minutes. During the break between sets Aunt Nancy approached Wright and asked if he’d play a request. He said, Yeah. What would you like to hear? She told him China and he said, No problem. The second set, however went just like the first, equally tuneless, equally nonstop, equally without a head or reconizable structure, coming nowhere near the melody line of China. The one difference was that about forty-five minutes into the set Wright let the tenor fall from his mouth and hang by its strap, cupped his hands in front of his mouth like a megaphone and yelled China! China! China! He then took the tenor back to his mouth for another twenty or so no-letup minutes of squeaks, honks, moans, growls and screeches.
Thanks for the add. Welcome to Myspace. I heard you guys are going to the west coast. May I beef up you page.
: After-the-Fact Lecture/Libretto (Aunt Nancy Version)" in _Djbot Baghostus's Run_ by Nathaniel Mackey. Jarred Bottle, sitting at a stoplight in Los Angeles at three in the morning, thinks of a quip he'd heard before, "Revolution would never occur in a country whose people stop for traffic lights late at night when there's no one else around." Subsequently, sitting at the intersection, defiantly "deferring to nonexistent traffic," Bottle constructs an exquisite ten- plus page journey of romantic ("...so tenuous a thread could be so binding made for a mystery only moans could address") and musical intrigue (he swears he hears the horns of imaginary cars playing the three chord melody line from Frank Wright's "China"). In the midst of his trance he reconstructs part of the meeting with Aunt Nancy (a member of the Mystic Horn Society), from which he was coming. His work, he explained to her, "would revolve around locale and dislocation, two terms of a continuing obsession he felt not so much prompted as dictated by." Jarred Bottled comes out of his spell, finally, when a policeman approaches him. The section concludes:
The cops would ask him had he been drinking, ask what was the idea of just sitting there. He'd tell them he was a Rastafarian, that he was waiting for the red, yellow, and green lights to come on at the same time. "All this time," he'd explain, "I've been thinking about Paris and China, but it was Ethiopia I was actually headed for." The cops would have no idea what he meant.
