Sound

I stumbled on this amazing video called simply "Sound" from 1966. It features Rahsaan Roland Kirk and John Cage, two sonic experimenters that I never expected to see together. Kirk, if you don't know, had a habit of playing multiple horns at once and taking the appearance of a shaman. As far out as Kirk got (and he did get out there) there's always a deep blues root.

And then John Cage! I read a bio of Cage several years back, and while I don't love everything in his work, he was an interesting Zen presence in the world of music. The Fluxus, conceptual aspect of Cage is intriguing and inspiring. I performed in a theater piece in college where I used some of his ideas for creating using random selection to inspire musical structure.

Here, Cage says:

Is it a sound? If so, is it music? Is music the word I mean? Is that a sound? If it is, is music "music"?

In the film, Cage addresses his famous piece 4:33 as non-obtusely as I've ever heard him:

Silence is not a question of a little sound or more sound. There's no such thing as no sound. It's just a question of what sounds we intend, and what sounds we don't intend.