Elliott Sharp, Bernhard Lang: Donaueschinger Musiktage 2007 - NOWJazz - War Zones

SCENARIOS OF FEAR
›War Zones‹ – a project by Elliott Sharp and Bernhard Lang at the
Donaueschingen Music Days 2007

There is darkness in the air. Undoubtedly, the devastating policies of the US under George W. Bush have led to an escalation of the current world situation. The unjustified initiation of the Iraq war made the already deep rifts between western industrialized nations and the third world even more unbridgeable.

And the strategy of openly fighting the supposed 'axis of evil' turned out to be a dangerous boomerang that caused angry Muslims to engage in a kind of permanent guerrilla war against the Western world, hitting them where they are most vulnerable: the communicative interfaces of capital.

This escalation of violence, which repeatedly turns parts of Europe and the USA into unpredictable “war zones”, and which is to be blamed on a nation or even the politics of a single man, is of course far too short-sighted: it is rather the inexorably spreading mechanisms and inherent contradictions of capitalism , which allow the gap between the industrialized countries and the Third World to widen every day and thus become the secret motor of that religious fanaticism in which the violent criminals believe they receive a kind of divine legitimacy.

However, the willingness to use violence is not only spreading among representatives of the increasingly poor countries, but also among those of the rich industrial nations. Here it is a mostly youthful urban guerrilla who vent their frustrations in increasingly brutal and irrationally xenophobic actions. In the 1940s, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno already knew that 'industrialism objectifies the soul' Dialectic of Enlightenment stated. Now this process has apparently progressed so far that in blind hatred even immediate neighbors or fellow students in schools can be reduced to lifeless things that can be shot indiscriminately.

Art reacts to such threatening developments. Of course not by openly politicizing themselves and thus using the same tools of rule as the powerful. But by trying to reflect on structural moments of domination thinking and – in whatever indirect form – to process them in her works. The two works on this CD, commissioned by the Donaueschinger Musiktage 2007, meet the political developments of the present in such a seismographic way.

Weshalb Ripples From The Bang by Elliott Sharp, the New York-based composer, guitarist, electric bassist, and bass clarinetist, and Paranoia by Bernhard Lang, the Austrian composer and keyboarder, at the Donaueschinger NOWJazz Session under the surtitle War Zones were premiered.

Of course, both Sharp and Lang object to seeing their plays as direct political manifestos. If art were to become a pamphlet, it would lose the autonomy that enabled it to legitimately criticize the status quo. That's why Elliott Sharp also tried to look at the problems from a far more fundamental level. His Ripples From The Bang – which in German means something like ›sound waves of the big bang‹ – can be understood as reflections on the principle of causality.

Why, Sharp and his lyricist LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs ask themselves, does an unpredictable effect result from a chain of intrinsically logical causal connections? Furthermore, why can one and the same sequence of causes and effects be interpreted in very different ways, depending on the perspective and the level of knowledge one looks at?

Consequently, a large number of different perspectives are required, which Adam Smith had already called for in the 18th century with his principle of empathy. Elliott Sharp makes use of this change of perspective compositionally by alternating fully composed parts and prepared electronic sound files with free improvisational passages in his extensive piece.

Bernhard Lang, on the other hand, ties in with the political implications of his music theatre, which premiered in Schwetzingen in 2007 The old man from the mountain that revolves around the mentality of children drilled into killers. He, too, approaches the topic indirectly by using the in Paranoia used the ›CIA protocols on political murders‹ drawn up in 1954 to overthrow the democratically elected government of Guatemala become.

How Elliott Sharp's play operates Paranoia with compositional modules from which improvisations are developed. The structure of the loop scenario, played not only by Philip Jeck on the turntables, but also by the six instrumentalists, signals that ›return of the same‹ that Friedrich Nietzsche had already described as a fatal sign of human history determined by domination. And in the counterpointing voices of the two rappers, the paranoia of fear that threatens to tear our civilization apart behind the facade of wealthy bourgeoisie is reflected – transformed into the poetic.

Reinhard Kager

BERNHARD LANG ON ›PARANOIA‹

Paranoia is a sequence of eight semi-improvisational blocks drawn from the III. Act of musical theater Der old woman from the mountain was extracted and developed. It is based on three groups of texts:

– ›Justifications‹, a cut-up from internet research on paranoia as a political function.
– The ›CIA Protocols Of Political Assassination‹, a collection of different strategies for political assassinations.
– The synopsis of the American magazine ›Paranoia‹.

The improvisations are based on scratched loops and ›damage beats‹, which make references to Phil Jeck's turntablism and Martin Arnold's films, as well as to my composition series Difference/Repeat. The two voices lie contrapuntally as improvised rap poetry over the loop scenario.

The play was made through the book Conspiracy Nation: The Politics Of Paranoia In Postwar America (edited by Peter Knight): Paranoia as a new attitude towards life, paranoia as a political instrument.

ELLIOTT SHARP ON RIPPLES FROM THE BANG

Ripples From The Bang is a series of reflections on causality. How we perceive a chain of events is always extremely personal and varies widely, sometimes depending on factors beyond our individual perspective. These events can be private travel, states of war or even devastating catastrophes of cosmic proportions.

The score, which lets the musicians surf on these 'sound waves of the big bang', contains through-composed parts, algorithmic strategies, graphic instructions, prepared electronic sound files and improvisations.