Mea Culpa. I got into a bad habit of leaving this site stagnant while I was finishing my dissertation. That excuse expired (successfully) at the end of November. Since then the only thing keeping me from updating MusicOverMind has been the general time compression that most of us suffer through. While MusicOverMind's scope is limited, I believe you will find here several packets of information and sound that will accelerate any true seeker's journey towards an engagement with the aural richness that surrounds us. Currently this site houses interviews with Jean-Paul Bourelly, Steve Coleman, John Gilmore, Matt Shipp, Cecil Taylor, David S. Ware, and James Blood Ulmer and articles I've written on P-Funk, Butch Morris, Sun Ra, DJ Spooky, Burnt Sugar, William Hooker, and HR. What follows are some long overdue updates on the overall progress of things.

Hati. During the recent calamity in the world's first Black republic, I heard more than one commentator observe that the Hatian crisis was exacerbated by a tradition of poor governence. It seemed to be beyond these observers to acknowledge that the worst of Haiti's leaders were all on the US payroll. William Hooker sent me a piece by historian Henry Louis Gates detailing the tainted nature of US-Hatian relations. It's definitely worth a read. Of course, the Haitian people still need our help.

Bushmeat's Alarm Clock, vol. 1. On January 2, the coldest night of a historic cold snap, the second decade of the twenty-first century was musically christened by a cadre of sonic insurgents who raised the roof of the Velvet Lounge. The night featured pianist/composer Leo Svirsky, back in the states for a brief respite from his studies in the Netherlands. Leo played and did so beautifully with saxophonist John Berndt, bassist Britt Powell, vocalist Stephanie White, and noise-ist Thomas Stanley. The evening featured rare performances by This Bag is Not a Toy (Svirsky, White, and Stanley) and the newly expanded Mind Over Matter Music Over Mind (Bobby Hill, Chris Downing, Luke Stewart, and Stanley), and a special spoken word interlude in which Bushmeat deconstructed the implications of the phraseology of identity theft and our overarching use of first person plural pronouns. Conceived as a roaming festival of sonic freedom, another alarm clock is no doubt in the works.

Late Night Jazz. Holding down Thursday nights (11-1) on WPFW, 89.3fm. It's been a great privilege to rock Thursday evenings (in alternation with Bobby Hill) playing a unique take on the (after)future of jazz. All of the playlists for my half of the show are accessible under the <broadcast> tab above. Bobby published a really interesting rundown of his top recordings of 2009. I've put it here.

Turquoise Beads. In June I met a filmmaker whose work was being presented at the Vision Festival. Lili White and I worked through the summer and into the fall on bringing her images and my sounds together. She expanded the work she had done drawing parallels between the lost civilization of Chaco Canyon in Northwestern New Mexico and New York City in the immediate aftermath of the attacks of 9-11. To this expanded version of her film Lili added a soundtrack composed of a handful of recently cooked morsels of Bushmeat. Below is an edit from this longer work. We hope to be able to do something together in performance sometime soon.

 

"Amplification is never simply neutral or transparent; it changes sound quality. And here several directions might be taken -- the one to try as hard as possible to make the amplification 'transparent' so that the change is minimalized, or to resist amplification entirely -- but also one can enhance the sound changes either gradually or radically. And with this we see the beginnings of new instrumentation...This road, once taken, allows many genies to appear."
-- Don Ihde