What is Music Festival By David Olivetti Published - Drum Media 2000
"As a guitarist, I'm interested in expanding what a guitar can do and what a guitar is meant to sound like," says Oren Ambarchi. "There's a lot of different aspects that you'll just pull together and it becomes a language. Your language."
The idea of defining or categorising music has infected sound throughout centuries. People have been traveling from the rainforests of the Amazon to virtual Las Vegas in search of an answer. Some cultures fail to understand such a question. "There are many languages," wrote musicologist Kofi Agawu, "that do not have a single word for what in English is meant by the word music."
Which brings us to the What is Music? festival. Celebrating its sixth year, Australia's premier avant garde and experimental music festival is underway, returning from a run of shows at the Big Day Out. The festival organisers do not claim to have the answer of what music is. "When we named it, it was more a joke off-the-cuff,” admits Ambarchi. However, upon close inspection the list of players to have performed at this annual 'meet' offers light to such spheres of debate.
Ambarchi and Robbie Avenaim have been the festival's organisers since its inception. As musicians, their relationship stretches back to Australian terrorist noise outfit, Phlegm. They have continued to work together and seperately; Ambarchi reeasing impressive solo records, making sufficient impact to tour with Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and The No Neck Blues Band.
"It's music that's vital and it's happening," says Ambarchi, translating the music the festival promotes as a living, breathing organism.
"It's music that's constantly evolving. We do it and we're also fans. We're into it. The first line-up was basically all local - Jon Rose, The Machines for Making Sense, Phlegm, The Mumesons... It was like this weird cross-section. Four nights and only one act a night in those days. It's much bigger than it used to be and it's more well-known."
Indeed, what started as a one-off has blossomed into a full-fledged world class event. This year's festival is shaping up to be the most exciting yet, featuring artists from all over the globe including artists from the Mego label roster, avant garde guitar legend Keith Rowe, English improviser Simon Wickham-Smith, American funnyman Neil Hamburger, Melbourne quartet Dworzec and saxophonist Jim Denley.
The festival brings together a dynamic mix of artists exploring a soundworld through acoustic improvisation, digital technology, free music and far-out collaborations. It's sure to raise the hairs on the back of one's neck, fire the senses and offer insight into a mysterious music world. The line-up suggests a retreat from the terrifying wall of noise characteristic of previous What is Music? festivals. However, the chance of a surprise attack is never out of the question.
"Well you never know with those guys from Mego," Ambarchi smiles, suggesting artists suc as these are in a constant state of metamorphosis and impossible to pin down. "In the beginning those Mego guys were connected to the techno community and minimalism. Since they've taken off, all their new releases are really noisy. Mego has inadvertently become a focal point for this year's festival. The label's most accomplished artists - Peter Rehberg, Simon Bauer, the acclaimed Fennesz and video band Skot - are all performing.
An Austrian label, Mego works across the field of electronic media choosing digital technology as it's chief source of musical mischief. However, Mego reflects a new music state, where sound created through software packages, computers, modulated synthesisers and effects units have become the modus operandi, inventing a new computerised language.
"I'm happy about the Mego label coming here because I think it's something happening right now. It's not something that happened two years ago and then it comes to Australia."
Peter Rehberg and Simon Bauer are two artists at the forefront of the digital music scene. They write and perform their own compositions as well as running the Mego offices. "I've always been interested in the latest developments of music," says Rehberg, discussing his movement from an ambient/experimental DJ to digital innovator. "It developed from the wider availability of software. Prices coming down in computer hardware made it an easier thing to do. You can make sounds now on a computer, which you couldn't make on an analogue machine 10 years ago. I think that interests me more."
On the other side of the spectrum, Keith Rowe is arguably the festival's biggest name. Best known for his ground-breaking work with British group AMM - a post-John Cage improvisation collective than began in the sixties and still perform today. He continues to astound audiences as a one-man sound laboratory. His role as a 'tabletop' guitarist sees him exploring and extending the possibilities of the guitar. Often, he places the guitar flat on a table and with a clear mind and a box of preparations (nails, screws, electric motors, rulers) he begins his compositions as you see it. Much like a painter in the studio. He is very much looking forward to the festival.
"One thing I've realised is that 30 years ago, the freely improvised music that we developed in Europe and North America was particular to a few towns and a few cities whereas now it's across the world," says Rowe. "That music spread everywhere. I'm looking forward to seeing that development happening on the other side of the globe. It’s fantastic."
As a senior member of the avant garde movement, who has been performing for close to 40 years, Rowe finds working alongside the current crop of artists propose new challenges and offer insightful collaborations. "I find it really invigorating because they have a completely different agenda to us older guys in the sense that when we started to make tis freely abstract kind of music without a repertoire we were really fighting against the established giants like [John] Coltrane. We were trying to develop our own music, our own agenda, our own aesthetic. Of course, the young guys have got something completely different. They are much more with computers and technology. I'm a primitive in that respect."
The What is Music? festival is essentially grounded in its enthusiasm, but like the music it promotes the festival itself is evolving. The very act of the festival finds itself (sub)consciously peeling open the systems of established states of performance for both the performer and listener, and offers space for new spheres of thought. Its alive both as a free music enterprise and an ideas factory.
On what influences his current playing, Rowe says, "I think challenging new ways of assembling material. The way a performance is shaped, you know, what happens in a performance. What is a performance?".