Browsing the extremely prolific blog Global Groove, I was struck by a post which juxtapose a record cover from Congo and a backyard made out of curious folk objects and garden sculptures covered by snow. Moos, the blog owner, tells that “it’s cold in the Netherlands [where he lives], with some 8 degrees Celsius below zero, the coldest day untill now. The whole country is covered with snow, cold but beautiful” and that the picture has been taken in his backyard, the same morning, december 19, 2009.
I had a similar experience last night, driving from Milan to Bologna during one of the worst snowfalls of this season, streets were completely covered by ice, and maximum speed was 20 km/h, it took six hours to get to Bologna – usually it’s one and a half. Landscape was completely different, it moved slowly, and I had enjoyed it while listening to the wonderful compilation Ghana Special, Modern Highlife, Afro Sounds, Ghanaian Blues 1968 – 1981.
The issue of “what kind of landscape arouse from this music” – or vice versa, is somehow neuralgic to me, notably if we are experiencing an extra-occidental object from an occidental position and point of view. To me it is not “a contrast with the warm tropical atmosphere on this nice record” as Moos argue, but, on the opposite, it is a different way of perceive musical discourses in the West today, a sort of weird condition of contemporary schizophonia.
I had a similar experience last night, driving from Milan to Bologna during one of the worst snowfalls of this season, streets were completely covered by ice, and maximum speed was 20 km/h, it took six hours to get to Bologna – usually it’s one and a half. Landscape was completely different, it moved slowly, and I had enjoyed it while listening to the wonderful compilation Ghana Special, Modern Highlife, Afro Sounds, Ghanaian Blues 1968 – 1981.
The issue of “what kind of landscape arouse from this music” – or vice versa, is somehow neuralgic to me, notably if we are experiencing an extra-occidental object from an occidental position and point of view. To me it is not “a contrast with the warm tropical atmosphere on this nice record” as Moos argue, but, on the opposite, it is a different way of perceive musical discourses in the West today, a sort of weird condition of contemporary schizophonia.
– S.B.B. du Congo – l’International Orchestre Populaire, Pathe Marconi / EMI 1975 — (curiously the cover shows the musicians as tourists in front of the Tour Eifel, Paris, testing other ways of relation between landscape/music)
– Invernomuto Image for ffwd_mag#2, winter 2004, S. Franca (Pc), Italy
– Image from Ghana Special, Modern Highlife, Afro Sounds, Ghanaian Blues 1968 – 1981, Soundway 2009
