Recorded in the streets around and before the Zamek, Poznan. Meeting with the sound of the Taraf des Haidouks sound-checking en plein air. No edits. Few level adjustments. I don't claim any rights to the recordingsof course and they are free to anyone who wants them. I post them hear as an example of the city soundscape in Poland of 2017, so the content is a mixture of the music of extraordinary artists and the quotidian milieu. Please contact me with questions and requests. Multumesc.
Before leaving the flat, in Wilda, I went through a ritual back and forth about taking the recorder with me (to this concert of Taraf des Haidouks). Certainly, if I wanted to dance, I would be better off present, in my person, without any dangling gear or bags to worry about getting lost or nicked. Because, yes, it would be, should be, as it turned out be, THAT kind of dancing, not some half-heartless sway of shy interest, but the step of abandon and ecstasy. Perhaps I was haunted by the motif in Gatlif's Gadjo Dilo, where the character played by Romain Duris, after seeking to record the phantom voice of the elusive Nora Luca, at the end of the journey, smashes his tapes, unspools them, and dances on their shallow grave, an echo of "what shall not be reft from thee" filling the inner ear, as the voice of the heart, the mind, the blood, the soul, for lack of any words. At last I decided to take the machine. No headphones, simple on-board mic. I left an hour and 1/2 early. Seeing Taraf des Haidouks in the flesh was an opportunity I felt as foretaste for years, something akin to seeing Sun Ra or Crash Worship, or Keats's grave, something a bit more like a haj. Crossing over the city on foot had never been easier. After 8 years of having Poznan as a base, a home I must say, though at times it has felt inhospitable, even hostile, by now I know how to walk across obstacles, through gaps in fences, alleys, passages through blocks, and the pleasure that comes with knowing what's on the other side of things built by mortals and mortar, palpable. I went in a bee-line to the source and I heard the accordion first, and seconds later I would know it to be, Marin Manole's, because there he was timeless, ageless on the stage and in that few seconds so many notes rippled put effortlessly that the neurons where buzzing with the flurry of numbers and the tickle in the skin of the scalp, that it could only really be that, this, those, his, ours. I stopped, stunned in my tracks on the ulica Kosciuszko, the tones bouncing between the stone buildings like ping-pong balls, and I noted again that strange stare of people on the street around me, because, again, I recognize myself as a stranger in this world of the urban soldiers, sealed in conservative psychic armour, showing no emotions while going about, because it is not my way and I feel joy and smile. The feeling of the music falling out of the sky like manna registered like rain drops on my face. Sunglasses off, the gear bag opens, and I fit the pieces of this lovely little robot memory friend together, the other companion of my travels through Romania, this witness to many events I myself would have forgotten. As I crossed the avenue, I found myself whistling the tunes already, in that whistle I learned from the shepherd in Cheile Turzii, trapped between 2 trams, I noticed the blessed fact of the calm, the windless, mild summer evening. Approaching the Zamek, I saw them arrayed on the stage as amazing normal, alive, extraordinary, familiar people that I had never seen before. The films one can find on youtube disappeared and the films became just real memories of what this music is. Everything was already there. The so-called sound-check I stumbled into for this outdoor concert consisted of nothing but pure music. They launched into songs at pace, without any confusion, without any scores, with a full spirit and passion, that comes from a tradition being known inwardly and intimately. It often seemed very much like just having turned on a radio station in the middle of a pre-recorded song. They repeated sections of complex figures at appalling speed once, twice, three, four times, only for the benefit of the sound engineer to fine tune the settings each with a fluidity, each time with a slight change of accent here and there that, again, I can only compare to Sun Ra's Arkestra at their height, when they worked as one organism & evinced in one hour of playing something like 200 years of musical history. Taraf also managed to swing into some unfamiliar territories and timbres, since I had never heard them playing with electric violins and with an electronic keyboard. But it is this world they carry in their fingers, the music of small villages, with huge weddings, and gales of laughter, life celebration, even if the group itself, as I've noted elsewhere, has lost quite a few members in the last decade. Although I find in this sound-check a greater degree of clarity, and personal enjoyment of an intimate atmosphere, without flashing stage lights and swelling crowds, the concert was all that could be expected, wild dancing, pure joy, contingents of Polish cyganki arriving at stage-front with their children dancing as well, calling out requests to the band. And we also heard Gheorge Anghel play the threaded violin, in homage to his teacher, Nicolae Neascu. So many things that seemed only legendary turned out to be true.
Despite the focus on music, this is an urban field recording and I consider it a document of a listening environment. I hope it shed light of the ears and ways of listeners.
Guitarist, composer, sound designer, field recordist, shortwave radio poet, blending electro-acoustic, electronica, spectral
comp., cracked circuits, sounding organic objects with an ear towards earth voices. Studied Javanese and Balinese gamelan and theories of Partch and Xenakis. Working with dance/theater/butoh co. Djalma Primordial Science. More than 400 concerts throughout Europe since 2005....more
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