WKCR Music Festival

[Brad]

I turned on WKCR, hoping to hear some Charlie Parker but instead got the following. What they were playing was what they call in the third paragraph of the release, soundscape field recordings. For example one of the recordings was a recording of people walking through a park in Oporto, Portugal and street sounds in Istanbul. Yes, I listened for a few minutes.

Frankly, I don't see how this is music. I could go out and record this kind of thing. That doesn't make me a musician. While music may be a flexible concept, recording what happens in a street doesn't, IMHO, constitute music. I'm not questioning the rest of the festival, just this aspect.

If that makes me an old fuck, so be it.

What do you guys think?

WKCR New Music Fall Festival

The WKCR New Music Fall Festival will take place over 72 uninterrupted hours from Wednesday, October 22, midnight, through Friday, October 24, midnight. To celebrate 25 years of new music programming on WKCR and the twentieth anniversary of our New Music Department, the Fall Festival will not focus on a single subject or artist (like our previous festivals: John Cage, Evan Parker, "noise", etc.) but on various genres intended to showcase a wider scope of the department's collection.

The festival will open on Wednesday (10/22) with a historical survey of sound poetry, from its roots in the Dada movement with Raoul Hausmann, to Kurt Schwitters, Henri Chopin, and their present-day contemporaries. Wednesday will also feature music from the Fluxus art movement, including archival recordings by artist and percussionist Joe Jones.

Tune in on Thursday (10/23) to hear music by large improvising collectives (from AMM to Globe Unity Orchestra to No-Neck Blues Band) and soundscape compositions (music made with field recordings, including early musique concrete, environmental-sound artists from R. Murray Schaefer to Chris Watson and Francisco Lopez, and a slew of recent urban field recordings from the chicago label, Locust Music).

To conclude the festival on Friday (10/24), we will broadcast 24 hours of solo percussion, including recordings of composed and improvised music by Milford Graves, Toshi Tsuchitori, Le Quan Ninh, and live performances by New York City percussionists Tim Barnes, Sean Meehan, Tatsuya Nakatani, Jim Pugliese, Christine Bard, and others. Tune in to the festival as well as our regular programming to hear the best in new music

Edited October 23, 2003 by Brad

[Z-Man]

I'm with you, Brad. I normally pride myself on having a very high tolerance for the experimental and even self-indulgent artistic expressions of others. Believe me, my collection includes some pretty off-the-wall stuff. This festival, however, I just don't get. One morning I awoke to the "Sound Poetry" segment, and it sounded to me like people just making mouth noises, with no unifying theme or underlying purpose. I'm going to try to listen to some of the solo percussion stuff tomorrow, but as far as I'm concerned, the sooner we get "Bird Flight" and "Out To Lunch" back the better. On top of this, WNYC is having their fund drive, so it's been an especially dismal radio week here in the Big Apple.

[Harold_Z]

Yeah...WKCR lasted about 20 seconds on the car radio this morning. Oh well...it's usually my favorite station. BIRD FLIGHT on the ride to work. I guess they can be forgiven - at least when they play something you don't like, you usually know how long not to tune in.

[chris olivarez]

Normally this is the kind of stuff that our public radio station dumps between 2 and 6am. I find it amazing that any station would program this during prime listening time unless they just don't want to be bothered by listeners.

[Brandon Burke]

I'll admit that I don't listen to that kind of stuf all the time, but I like all three of the examples in that paragraph.

[PHILLYQ]

WKCR sure does play some weird stuff sometimes- a couple of years ago they had a noise festival(I'm not making this up!) featurong recordings of,well, noise. I was in my car and I turned it up pretty loud and I had the windows open, so it sounded like I had car trouble- it was a good laugh to see the looks on people's faces when I stopped at red lights!

[7/4]

WKCR sure does play some weird stuff sometimes- a couple of years ago they had a noise festival(I'm not making this up!) featurong recordings of,well, noise. I was in my car and I turned it up pretty loud and I had the windows open, so it sounded like I had car trouble- it was a good laugh to see the looks on people's faces when I stopped at red lights!

LOL!......I discovered the fest on Thursday morning when I picked up rental car because mine was in the shop. I was programing the radio, while I was driving. Nice sine tones. I had to make a turn and I heard this percussive click. Must be Ryoji Ikeda, I thought.

It wasn't. I was hearing the left blinker.

I heard some the Derek Bailey segments later on too. I enjoyed that too.

Is it music?

Is there any point asking at this late date? For some it is and for some it isn't.

I remember the noise fest. It was alright. There were points where I turned the radio off and listened to what I wanted to hear out of my own collection.

You have that option too.

[JSngry]

For example one of the recordings was a recording of people walking through a park in Oporto, Portugal and street sounds in Istanbul. Yes, I listened for a few minutes.

Frankly, I don't see how this is music.

It's not. But when presented as such, I think that whoever does so is trying to make the point that there is "music" in everyday life. Sounds colliding in harmony/dissonance, individual rhythms interacting in interesting ways, all of it by chance, yet somehow there's an overall shape to it. I'd imagine that the presenters view it as a kind of "sensitizing" experience, an exercise in encouraging the listener to hear the poetry and music of their immediate surroundings. It's there, and quite often, it's delightful. The cool thing is, you don't have to buy it, send off for it, or otherwise look for it. It's just there. Always. It's free, and it's never the same twice. The ultimate improvisation.

Having said that, though, since I figured this stuff out more than a few years ago, and since I'm still going through life hearing like this, it's the LAST damn thing I want to hear when I turn on the radio.

(But it's NOT a bad idea at all to listen for the "music" in our daily activites. Really, it's not.)

[Michael Fitzgerald]

But God bless WKCR for doing *whatever* they're doing in depth and seriousness. No, I don't listen to everything they broadcast, but I never feel that they are pandering or playing from a rigid demographically-tailored setlist. Are they worried about losing listeners? No, they're very proud to be able to present all kinds of non-typical things (who else will?). The stations that are worried about losing listeners and program accordingly are the ones that have sold out - maybe to one degree or another - but sold out, nonetheless. Now, they may have sold out to *you* and only play one particular thing you like and that can be very appealing, but they've still sold out.

I realize that a great deal of this probably comes down to expectations - "I turned on the radio expecting to hear a certain kind of jazz that I've become accustomed to hearing at a certain time of day and I didn't." And WKCR apologizes, as they always do when pre-empting programs.

As for "is it music?" That's a question that John Cage addressed over 50 years ago. Besides, if the answer is yes, that doesn't mean it has to be "music you like." And the "I could do that" argument has often been used on artists like Cecil Taylor, Bill Dixon, Robert Rauschenberg, Jackson Pollock, et al. Hey, great - knock yourself out! What it comes down to is establishing a new aesthetic that will let one be expressive in a very atypical format. To oversimplify - can one express love, or anger, or sadness, or joy in this new artistic style? Is one example of this style more or less appealing to someone than another? If so, it sounds like art to me. And if it's art in a sonic (rather than visual) medium, I guess we have to call it music.

BTW, speaking of WKCR, I'll be on November 16, 2-7 PM for a Gigi Gryce jazz profile. We're talking depth here - in the New York area: WNYC/NPR gave Gigi 10 minutes, WBGO gave Gigi 60 minutes, WKCR will give Gigi 300 minutes.

Mike