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Reinhard Gagel

Accéder à la traduction en français : Rencontre avec Reinhard Gagel

 


Encounter between Reinhard Gagel and
Jean-Charles François

Berlin, June 29, 2018

 

Reinhard Gagel Reinhard Gagel is a visual artist, pianist, improviser, researcher and pedagogue who is associated with the Exploratorium Berlin, a center in existence since 2004 dedicated to improvisation and its pedagogy, which organizes concerts, colloquia and workshops (he retired in March 2020). He works in Berlin, Cologne and Vienna. This interview took place (in English) in June 2018 at the Exploratorium Berlin. (www.exploratorium-berlin.de) in June 2018. It was recorded, transcribed and edited by Jean-Charles François.

 


Summary :

1. Transcultural Encounters
2. Improvisation Practices across the Arts
3. Pedagogy of Improvisation, Idioms, Timbre


1. Transcultural Encounters

Jean-Charles F.:

I think that today many people work in different environments with professional, artistic, sentimental, philosophical, political (etc.) identities that are incompatible with each other. The language that should be used in one context is not at all appropriate for another context. Many artists occupy, without too many problems, functions in two or more antagonistic fields. Many teach and give concerts at the same time. The antagonisms are between art teaching circles and those of artistic production on stage, or between the circles of interpretation of written scores and those of improvisation, or between music conservatories and musicology departments in universities. The discourses on both sides are often ironic and unlikely to degenerate into major conflicts. Nevertheless, they correspond to deep convictions, such as the belief that practice is far superior to theory, or vice versa: many musicians think that any reflexive thinking is a waste of time taken from the time that should be devoted to the practice of the instrument.

Reinhard G.:

There is also a tradition here in Germany of considering old-fashioned to work in both pedagogy and improvisation. At the Exploratorium (in Berlin), for years and years all the musicians in Berlin said that the Exploratorium was only a pedagogical institute. This is really changing: for example, our concerts include musicians who are also scholars. There was a problem between the academic world and the world of practicing musicians, and I think that these boundaries are being erased a little bit, in order to be able to develop exchanges. The type of symposium I am organizing – you attended the first one – is a first step in this direction. The musicians who are invited are also researchers, pedagogues, teachers. But in Germany, our discussions are mainly focused on the constant interaction between theory and musical practice. This is my modest contribution to trying to overcome the problem that exists in many of the colloquia in which we participate: that’s there’s only talk talk talk, endless speeches, successions of paper presentations and little that really relates to musical practice. Your action with PaaLabRes seems to go in the same direction: to bring together the different aspects of the artistic world.

Jean-Charles F.:

To bridge the gaps. That is to say to have in the Editions of our digital space a mixture of academic and non-academic texts and to accompany them with artistic productions, with artistic forms that, thanks to digital technology, mix different genres.

Reinhard G.:

In your Editions you use French and English?

Jean-Charles F.:

Yes and no. We really try to concentrate on the French public who often still have difficulty reading English. Translating important texts written in English and still little known in France seems very important to me, this was the case with the texts of George Lewis, David Gutkin and Christopher Williams. Unfortunately, we do not have the possibility to translate texts written in German. We are in the process of developing a bilingual English-French version of the first edition.

Reinhard G.:

I have the feeling that your publication is interesting, even though I didn’t have much time to read it in detail. I find the theme of the next edition “Break down the walls” really important. My next symposium at the Exploratorium in January (2019) is going to be on “Improvising with the strange (and with strangers), Transitions between cultures through (free) improvisation?” I invited Sandeep Bhagwati, a musician, composer, improvisator and researcher, who works at a university in Canada and lives in Berlin. He belongs to at least two cultures, and he has created an ensemble here in Berlin that tries to combine elements from lots of different cultures to produce a new mixture. It’s not like so-called “world music” or inter-cultural music or anything like that – I think they’re trying to find a really new sound. This should be built from all the musical sources of the musicians who make up the ensemble and who all come from different cultures. I invited him to give a concert and to present the keynote address of the symposium. The last symposium was about “multi-mindedness.” This term is said to come from Evan Parker, and it refers to the problem of how a large group of musicians organizes itself while playing together. Some musicians use methods of self-organization, others use conducting in various forms. For example, my Offhandopera brings a lot of people together to create an opera in real time, with moderate conducting. The symposium has led to a good exchange and the new edition of Improfil[1] (2019) will be devoted to these issues.

Jean-Charles F.:

A first reaction to what you have just said might be to ask how this idea of trans-culturalism is different from Debussy’s approach, which takes the Indonesian gamelan as a model for certain pieces. There are, for example, many composers who use other cultures from around the world as inspiration for their own creations. Sometimes they mix in their pieces, traditional musicians with classically trained musicians. The question that can be asked in the face of these sympathetic attempts is that of the return match: to put the musicians of European classical music in their turn in situations of discomfort by confronting themselves with the practices and conceptions of other traditional music. It is not just a question of treating the musical material of particular cultures in a certain way, but of confronting the realities of their respective practices. In Lyon within the framework of the Cefedem AuRA[2] that I created and directed for seventeen years, and where from the year 2000 we developed a study program that brings together musicians from traditional music, amplified popular music, jazz and classical music. The main idea was to consider each cultural entity as having to be recognized within the entirety of its “walls” – we have often used the term “house” – and that their methods of evaluation had to correspond to their modes of operation. But at the same time, the walls of each musical genre had to be recognized by all as corresponding to values as such, to necessities indispensable to their existence.

Reinhard G.:

For their identity.

Jean-Charles F.:

Yes, but we have also organized the curriculum so that all students in the four domains should also be required to work together on concrete projects. The idea was to avoid the situation where, as in many institutions, the musical genres are recognized as worthy of being present, but separated in disciplines that communicate only very rarely, and even less allow things to take place together. There are many examples where a teacher tells the students not to go and see those who make other types of music.

Reinhard G.:

It is typical of what happens often in musical education.

Jean-Charles F.:

In fact, this also happens a lot in higher education. The question also arises in a very problematic way with regard to the absence of minorities from popular neighborhoods in France in conservatories: the actions carried out to improve recruitment can often be considered as neo-colonialist in nature, or on the contrary are based on the preconception that only the practices already existing in these neighborhoods definitively define the people who live there. How to break down the walls?

Reinhard G.:

This fits my ideas quite well:

    1. My first idea was to say that improvised music is typically European music – free improvisation – there are for example differences in practice between England and Germany. British musicians have a different way of playing. Nevertheless, there is a communality. Whether it is a common language, is a question that I ask myself, I don’t have a ready-made theory on the subject. On the one hand there are the characteristics linked to a country or a group of musicians, but on the other hand there are many possibilities to meet in open formats, as for example at the CEPI[3] last year. If I play with someone sharing the same space, I don’t have the impression that he/she is an Italian musician. Nevertheless, she/he is Italian and there is a tradition of improvisation specific to Italy.
    2. But the next idea that came to my mind was that of Peter Kowald – do you know him? – the double bass player from Wuppertal who had the idea of the global village. His idea was to find out in practice whether there is a common musical language between the cultures. He coined the term « Global Village » for improvisation and he brought together musicians of different origins.(See the article in the present edition: Christoph Irmer, We are all strangers to ourselves .)
    3. And the third idea that motivates me concerns things that I see as very important in the actual political situation: the scientific research concerning the encounter between different cultures. In Franziska Schroeder’s book Soundweaving: Writings on Improvisation[4] there is a report written by a Swedish musician, Henrik Frisk, on a research project about a musical group that tried to grow together with two Vietnamese and two Swedish musicians. He describes in his text the difficulties they had to overcome: for example, you cannot just say “OK, let’s play together” but you have also to try to understand the culture of the other, that is the strangeness that despite everything exists. So, they provide a good example. The Swedish musicians went to Vietnam and the Vietnamese musicians went to Sweden. And they tried to stand in the middle between the two cultures: what is the tradition of Vietnamese music, what could they do or not, and so on… They meet each other to work together and play. And that was the basis of my idea to organize the next symposium in January with musicians and researchers, and I found Sandeep who I think is very aware of these issues: for him it’s an essential aspect of his project. He told me that he is not talking about trans-culturalism, but about trans-traditionalism. Because, he says – it’s the same as what Frisk says – a culture always has a tradition and you have to know that tradition, your culture can’t be all that matters, but tradition is what’s most important. And I’m very curious to know what he is going to say and what we will learn from the debate that will follow.
Jean-Charles F.:

And at the Exploratorium, how do you address the question of the public and the difficulties of bringing in specific social groups?

Reinhard G.:

For the past year we have been developing a project called « Intercultural music pool ». And there are questions in Germany and in Europe today concerning refugees and borders, the question of bringing in only a few and not too many; and on top of that the question of terrorism and invasion and all that. In this situation, in Germany, we are moving in both directions: on the one hand, official political decisions and, on the other, local initiatives that try to integrate emigrants. So, we decided to develop an integration project so that people from other countries can play with musicians who have been living in Germany for a long time. And there are examples of choirs that exist in Berlin where people and refugees sing together. Matthias Schwabe[5] and I accompanied this project from the theoretical point of view, with the papers and other necessary formalities. This project has been in place for a year but with no refugees participating. In this ensemble, there are two musicians who come from Spain, but this is not at all what we hoped for. Certain musicians came and said that it could be possible to do it with improvisation; improvisation is a link to bring people together. I don’t know how we’re going to continue, but for now it’s a fact: we tried to make this project public, but they didn’t come. Therefore, I think we need to ask ourselves questions given this failure on inter-culturalism and trans-culturalism. And for me the question is whether improvisation is really the link, the bridge that fits? For example, it is perhaps more important for me to learn a Syrian song than to improvise with someone from that country. I will ask the musician leading this « intercultural musical group » to make an assessment of these experiences. We have not yet carried out the evaluation of this action, but it seems important to do so before the symposium. Here are the questions we are facing: is improvisation really an activity that involves a common language? No, I think it may not be the case.

 

2. Improvisation Practices across the Arts

Jean-Charles F.:

Well, very often I also ask myself this question: why, if improvisation is free, why does the sound result most of the time fit into what is characterized as contemporary music from a classical and European point of view? And one way of thinking about this state of affairs in a theoretical way is to say that improvisation, historically, appeared as an alternative, at the time when structuralism dominated the music of the 1950s-60s. The alternative consisted of simply inverting the terms: since structuralist music was then presented as written on a score, and moreover was written in every detail, then one had to invert the terms and play without any notation at all. And since structuralist music had developed the idea that ideally every piece of music should have its own language, then it was absolutely necessary to develop the notion of non-idiomatic music, which obviously does not exist. And since all structuralist scores were written for well-defined instrumental sounds in treatises, then ideally all these sounds should be eliminated in favor of an instrumental production belonging only to the one who created it. You can continue to invert all the important aspects of the structuralist culture of the time. But to invert all the terms we risk depending only on the culture of reference, and to change nothing fundamentally. On the other hand, and this is a paradox, what free improvisation has not failed to preserve is particularly interesting: its artistic productions have remained « on stage » in front of an audience. Outside the stage, music does not exist. This is a legacy of the Romantic West that is difficult to get rid of. As a result, it can be said that free improvisation developed strategies to prolong the tradition of European learned culture while claiming that it did exactly the opposite!

Reinhard G.:

I think it’s important to emphasize that it’s not just about looking at improvisation as such, but all the things that improvisation includes. I agree with you about romanticism, improvisation on stage and the idea of inspiration on the moment, the idea of momentum, of waiting for moments of genius. For me, everybody in the world of improvised music talks about the quality, good or bad, of improvisations and the inspiration of the moment, the momentum in jazz, these are important things that do not only concern the practice of improvisation. I discovered through you the works of Michel de Certeau and I am reading a lot about collectivism and its applications in collective performances and performance theory: this theory tries to reflect about the way to show something, and it’s not only to have music on stage. But it’s possible to think about things outside of just the music on stage: you can go and perform outside the concert hall and mix audience and the musicians together and find new forms of performance of dance and music. I kind of like this idea of saying that improvisation is not just about these genius things, but it’s really a common thing; it’s a way of making music; it’s elementary, you have to make music that way. So, I meet a person and we make sounds together, and if someone says, “Okay, I have a song,” then let’s sing it together, and if I don’t know that song, we’ll just play one strophe or a phrase or something like that. I also think that the concept of quality is also a Western idea, this perfection in performance…

Jean-Charles F.:

Excellence!

Reinhard G.:

Let’s stop saying that it’s necessary to organize concerts, but let’s rather say that it’s necessary to invest in places where it’s possible to play, that’s what interests me. The Exploratorium is going a little bit in this direction: we organize open stages where people can play together, and so people are invited to produce music by themselves. It’s not about doing something that someone tells them to do, but it’s “let’s do it together”. So, I think it’s necessary to think about improvisation not only in terms of what constitutes its central core, at the heart of the music, may be not only in the core constituted by the interactions together, but also in the core of concerts and situations. That seems interesting to me. For example, the game of “pétanque” organized in France by Barre Phillips[6]: it was a bit like this idea of putting something in common, not for an audience, but for ourselves. And today, we meet before we play together in a concert[7] and not only on the day of the concert.

Jean-Charles F.:

Right.

Reinhard G.:

Here’s what could happen: it was my idea to invite you to do a concert, but it would be very interesting to do a rehearsal before the concert. I’d like to do that in addition to playing at the concert and trying things out and being able to talk about them. For me this is as important as doing concerts. It goes hand in hand with the idea of coming and going, finding things, allowing yourself to get out of the cage, getting out a little bit of the cage of improvisation limited to musical things, dealing with issues of idioms, interactions, looking at other aspects…

Jean-Charles F.:

With PaaLabRes, we have been developing for two years a project to bring together practices between dancers and musicians at the Ramdam[8] near Lyon, notably with members of the Compagnie Maguy Marin. This project was also based on the idea of bringing together two different cultures (dance and music) and trying more or less to develop materials in common, the musicians having to do body movements (in addition to sounds), the dancers producing sounds (in addition to dance movements). Improvisation here was a way to bring us together on a basis of equality. Indeed, what improvisation allows is to put the participants in full responsibility towards the other members of the group and to guarantee a democratic functioning. This did not mean that there was an absence of situations in which a particular person assumed for a moment to be the exclusive leader of the group. At the Exploratorium what about the interactions between artistic domains, do you have any actions that go in this direction?

Reinhard G.:

Yes, I am also a visual artist. Since last year I have had a new studio – in the countryside – which I use as my atelier: I can create in a continuity my music and my visual works together, and in October (2018), a musician, a poet and I will play a performance of my paintings. As far as other art forms are concerned, the question of improvisation is not the most important thing. In the visual arts, I think that there is no reflection on the questions of improvisation.

Jean-Charles F.:

In our project with dance, at some point last year, Christian Lhopital[9], a visual artist joined us. If you go to look at the second edition on the PaaLabRes website, the map that gives access to the various contents is a reproduction of one of his paintings. He came to participate in a session of encounter between dance and music. At first, he hesitated, he said: “What am I going to do?” Then he said, “OK, I’ll come in the morning from 10:00 to 12:00 and I’ll observe”. The session started as usual with a warm-up that lasted almost two hours, it’s quite a fascinating experience, because the warm-up is completely directed at the beginning by a person from the dance who gradually organizes very rich interactions between all the participants and it ends in a situation very close to improvisation as such. We start with very precise stretching exercises, then directed actions in duet, trio or quartet, and little by little in continuity it becomes more and more free. Well, after a few minutes, Christian came to join the group, because in a warm-up no one is afraid of being ridiculous, because the goal is not to produce something original. And then after that he stayed with us all weekend and took part in the improvisations with his own means in his artistic domain.

Reinhard G.:

This is something very important. For example, if you say or think: “when I make music, I have to be completely present, concentrated, and ready to play”, then the music doesn’t necessarily materialize in action. If you think, “Okay, I’ll try this or that” [he plays with objects on the table, glasses, pencils, etc.] and it produces sounds and there’s I think pretending that it’s music, that music only functions when it is recorded, or is just on stage, or if you listen to it in perfectly made recordings. This can become a completely different way of practicing music. In Western music, I think, historically in the 17/18th centuries musicians were composers and practicing musicians (also improvisers); it was a culture of sharing musical practice, of common playing: there was Karl-Philip Emmanuel Bach and the idea of the Fantasy and meeting to play at dawn, with the expression of feelings and with tears, and these were very important events for them. Later, I think, we developed the idea that we had to learn to play the instruments before we could really play them to produce music.

Jean-Charles F.:

Specialization.

Reinhard G.:

Yes, specialization.

Jean-Charles F.:

And to continue this story, Christian participated in the improvisation process by using the stage as if it were a canvas to draw on by using paper cut-outs and drawing things on them as the improvisations unfolded.

Reinhard G.:

I would like to see this, where can I find this information?

Jean-Charles F.:

At the moment this is not available, it might become possible in the future.

Reinhard G.:

OK.

Jean-Charles F.:

You said earlier that visual artists don’t talk much about improvisation.

Reinhard G.:

This may be a prejudice on my part.

Jean-Charles F.:

It’s quite true though, Christian Lhopital, the artist in Lyon had never done it before. We met the American trumpeter Rob Mazurek[10], who is an improviser but also a visual artist. He produces three-dimensional paintings that serve as musical scores. The relationship between musical practices and the production of visual art is not obvious.

Reinhard G.:

Yes, it’s more a question of going into a trance through different media, and I think that with music and dance things are more obvious because it’s done in continuity over time and you can find combinations in the various ways to move the body and to produce sounds on the instruments. But let’s take for example literature, improvisation in literature. That would be something very interesting to do.

Jean-Charles F.:

There is improvised poetry, like slam.

Reinhard G.:

The slam, OK.

Jean-Charles F.:

Slam is often improvised. And there are improvised traditional poetic forms. For example, Denis Laborde wrote a book on improvised poetry practices in the Basque Country[11] in a competitive logic – as in sports – by improvising songs according to tradition and very precise rules: the audience decides who is the best singer. There are traditions where the literature is oral and is continuously renewed in a certain way.

Reinhard G.:

There are also singers who invent their text during improvisation.

Jean-Charles F.:

But my question was about what a center like the Exploratorium was doing in this area. Are there any experiments that have been carried out?

Reinhard G.:

Yes, one of the workshops is dedicated to this aspect of things, but it is not the main focus of our program.

Jean-Charles F.:

What is it about?

Reinhard G.:

She is a visual artist who makes pictures – I didn’t attend this workshop, I can’t say exactly what she does – but she gives materials to the participants, she gives them colors and other things, and she lets them develop their own ways of drawing or painting. She conducted this workshop in public during our Spring festival.

Jean-Charles F.:

But she does this with music?

Reinhard G.:

No. She doesn’t. I really don’t know why. Maybe it’s because that’s kind of the way we do things here, which is to say, “everybody does it their own way”. Ah! once we’ve moved to our new home, we’ll be more open to collaborations.

Jean-Charles F.:

And you also have dance here?

Reinhard G.:

Yes, we have dance.

Jean-Charles F.:

What are the relationships with music?

Reinhard G.:

It’s more in the field of live encounters on stage. There are three or four dancers who come with musicians for public performances, and there are open stages with music and movement, and last Thursday we had the “Fête de la musique” here. The performances that are given here often bring together dancers and musicians.

Jean-Charles F.:

But these are only informal meetings?

Reinhard G.:

Yes. Informal. Anna Barth[12], who is a colleague of mine and is working at the library with me, is a Butoh dancer. She has performed a lot with Matthias Schwabe in this very slow and concentrated way of moving, and they’ve done performances together. But that’s not one of our major focuses. Our work is concerned with free improvisation in all arts, but 90% of it is music. There is a little bit of theater-improvisation, but only a little bit. The Exploratorium is centered mainly on musical improvisation.

 

3. Pedagogy of Improvisation, Idioms, Timbre

Jean-Charles F.:

Are there any other topics you would like to share with us?

Reinhard G.:

Yes, there is a question I ask myself that has nothing to do with multiculturalism. I work in Vienna at the University of Music and Performing Arts with classical musicians on improvisation. They are students at the Institute for Chamber Music. I’ve only had two workshops with them. I only give them a minimum of instruction. For example: “Let’s play in a trio” and then I let them play, that’s how I start the workshop. And during this first improvisation, there are a lot of things they are able to play, and they do it, they don’t have problems like saying “OK! I don’t have any ideas and I don’t want to play”. They play and I invite them to do so. And they use everything they have learned to do well after fifteen years of study. My idea is that I don’t teach improvisation, but I try to let them express themselves through the music they know and are able to play, and this would mean that they have the resources to improvise, to make music not only by reproduction. They can be also inventors of music. And for them, it’s a surprise that it works so well. They’re present, they’re concentrated, and they have really good instrumental technique and what they’re doing sounds really interesting. The feeling expressed by all is that “it works!” So I’m thinking about a theory of improvisation which is not based on technique, but on something like memory, memory of all the things you have in your mind, in your brain, what you have embodied, and with all that you just have to give them the opportunity to express themselves by just allowing them to play what they want. And I think that if we lived in a culture where there would be more of this idea of playing and listening and where classical musicians would be allowed to improvise more often and to improve in improvised playing, we could develop a common culture of improvisation. I’ve been doing that for the past five or six years and I have many recordings with very amazing music. What I want to discuss with you is about these resources. What are the resources of improvisation? What does improvisation mean to you? I think it would be interesting to get a better idea of what a common idea of improvisation would be.

Jean-Charles F.:

Yes. It’s a very complicated question. Historically, in my own background, I was very interested in the idea of the creative instrumentalist in the 1960s. The model at that time was Vinko Globokar and I was convinced that thirty years later there would no longer be composers as such, specialized, but rather kinds of musicians in the broadest sense of the term. But curiously at that time I didn’t believe that improvisation – especially free improvisation – was the way to go. In the group that performed at the American Center on Boulevard Raspail in Paris with Australian composer, pianist and conductor Keith Humble[13], we were thinking more in terms of making music that belonged to no one, “non-proprietary music”. We thought, for example, that Stockhausen’s Klavierstücke X – only clusters – was grandiose, except that clusters cannot belong only to Stockhausen. The concept of this piece, “play all possible clusters on a piano in a very large number of combinations” could very well be realized without referring to the detail of the score. So, we organized concerts based on collages of concepts contained in scores, but without specifically playing these scores.

Reinhard G.:

I can understand this, because for me too, the term collage is a very important thing.

Jean-Charles F.:

I left Paris for Australia in 1969, then San Diego, California in 1972. One of the reasons for this expatriation had been the experience in Paris of playing in many contemporary music ensembles with most of the time three or four rehearsals before each concert with musicians who were very skilled in sight-reading scores. One had the impression of always playing the same music from one ensemble to another. The musicians could produce the written notes very quickly, but at the cost of a standardized timbre. We had the impression of being in the presence of the same sounds, for me, the timbres were hopelessly gray. At the American Center, on the contrary, without the presence of any budget – it was not a “professional” situation – music was made with as many rehearsals as necessary to develop the sounds. It was a very interesting alternative situation. And that’s exactly what a research-oriented university in the United States could offer, where you had to spend at least half your time conducting research projects. There was a lot of time available to do things of your own choosing. And once again, some composers in this situation wanted to recreate the conditions of professional life in large European cities around a contemporary music ensemble: to play the notes very well as quickly as possible without worrying about the reality of the timbre. So, with trombonist John Silber we decided to start a project called KIVA[14], which we did not want to call “improvisation”, but rather “non-written music”. And so, as I described above, we simply inverted the terms of the contemporary ensemble model: in a negative way, our unique method was to forbid ourselves to play identifiable figures, melodies, rhythms, and in usual modes of communication. It was rather a question of playing together, but in parallel discourses superimposed without any desire to make them compatible. We would meet three times a week to play for an hour and a half and then listen without making comments to the recording of what had just happened. At first things were very chaotic, but after two years of this process we had developed a common language of timbres, a kind of living together in the same house in which small routines developed in the form of rituals.

Reinhard G.:

And what were the sources of this language, where did it come from?

Jean-Charles F.:

It was simply playing and listening to this playing three times a week and not having any communication or discussions that could positively influence our way of playing.

Reinhard G.:

Ah! You didn’t talk?

Jean-Charles F.:

Of course we were talking, but we felt that the discussion shouldn’t influence the way we played. But this process – and today it doesn’t seem possible anymore – was very slow, very chaotic, and at a certain moment a language emerged that no one else could really understand.

Reinhard G.:

…but you.

Jean-Charles F.:

Yes. Composers in particular didn’t understand it because it was a disturbing alternative…

Reinhard G.:

But it wasn’t traditional music, but the music you had developed… Was it the experience of contemporary music that gave you the initial vocabulary?

Jean-Charles F.:

Yes of course, it was our common base. The negative inversion of the parameters as I have noted above does not fundamentally change the conditions of elaboration of the material, so the reference was still the great sum of contemporary practices since the 1950s. But at the same time, as Michel de Certeau noted when he was present on the San Diego campus, there was a relationship between our practices and the processes used by the mystics of the 17th century. It was a question for the mystics to find in their practices a way to detach themselves from their tradition and their techniques. It’s exactly the opposite of what you described, it’s a process in which the body has stored an incredible number of clichés, and good instrumentalists never think about their gestures when they play because they’ve become automatic. That’s what we’ve been trying to do: to bring all this into oblivion. You mentioned the idea of memory.

Reinhard G.:

Memory, yes.

Jean-Charles F.:

It was exactly another idea, to try to forget everything we had learned so that we could relearn something else. Of course, that’s not exactly how it happened, it’s a mythology that we developed. But for me it remains a fundamental process. The fear of classical musicians is to lose their technique, and of course whatever happens they will never lose it. In this process, I have never lost my ability to play classically, but it has been greatly enriched. The importance of this process is that through a journey to unknown lands, one can come back home and have a different conception of one’s technique.

Reinhard G.:

It’s a combination of new and old things?

Jean-Charles F.:

Yes, so it is possible to work with classical musicians in situations where they have to leave their technique aside. And in the case of John Silber for example – he borrowed this idea from Globokar, and Ornette Coleman[15] had the same kind of experience – because our playing periods lasted for a very long time without interruptions, he got tired when he only played the trombone. So, he had decided to play another instrument as well, and he chose the violin, which he had never studied. He had to completely reinvent by himself a very personal technique of playing this instrument and he was able to produce sounds that nobody had produced until then.

Reinhard G.:

But the process through which these classical musicians I work with go through seems different to me: it’s a bit of another way of considering instrumental playing. If I tell them “play!” they don’t really try to play new things, but they recombine.

Jean-Charles F.:

Yes, what they know.

Reinhard G.:

They recombine what they know. But because they are in an ensemble situation, they can’t have control over it. There’s always someone who comes across what they’re doing. If they have expectations, there’s always someone who comes and disturbs them, and then you have to find a new way. And the interesting thing is that they are able to follow these crossings without getting irritated and saying “no, I can’t…” It’s a phenomenon where in many workshops, the participants first say “I can’t” and as soon as they start – a bit like the painter you mentioned – it works. And the question I ask myself is: is it a musical problem or is it a problem related to the situation? My main theory is that suddenly there’s a room and someone allows them to do something and they do it. And it’s interesting to note that they never do it on their own. They come to me and they play, and then they go outside, and they never do it again. There has to be a group and a space dedicated to this activity. There is a musician who came with his string quartet and they tried to improvise. Later he told me that they played an improvisation as an encore at a concert; but they didn’t announce that it was an improvisation but that it was written by a Chinese composer; and he said that the audience really liked that encore very much, and he was really surprised that it could happen like that. For me the problem seemed clear, because if they had announced that they were playing their own music, there would have been people who wouldn’t have wanted to listen to it. If you play Mozart, it’s because you’re playing something serious, there’s an effort to be made, and so on. So, the improvisation is more centered on the personality of the person doing it, and you enjoy yourself doing it, that’s a very interesting fact.

Jean-Charles F.:

It is said – I don’t know if this is really the case – that Beethoven playing the piano in concert improvised half the time and that the audience much preferred his improvisations over his compositions.

Reinhard G.:

It is really an interesting fact, yes.

Jean-Charles F.:

Was it like that because improvisations were structurally simpler?

Reinhard G.:

Now we are faced with two possible paths. The first leads us to an open field where we say to ourselves: “I don’t want to do what others have already done or are doing”. And the second one is to say: “I’m going to do an improvisation that won’t be a complete” – what do you call it? …

Jean-Charles F.:

An erasure, an oblivion.

Reinhard G.:

This is about “thinking about your ways in a new way” rather than looking for a new musical content; and so, it is not a very avant-garde posture. Yes, we produce music that is a bit polytonal, with polyrhythms, and harmonies that are a bit wrong, a bit like Shostakovich, etc. But for me the important thing is not to say: “we are going to create a completely new music”, but that the students can see the work session as improvisers. What they are able to do in this situation and the skills they can develop will help them to explore things for themselves: “it’s not something original that will define me, I’m only a little bit open to new things, but I love the music we produce together, I find it moves me completely.” This happens in a very direct way because they’re playing as persons and not as someones to whom I would say, “please play me now from bar 10 to bar 12, in a wahhhhhhh [whispering loudly], you know how to do it.” But if they decide to do it on their own, then  it’s something completely different.

Jean-Charles F.:

Yes, but for me the essential question is the timbre, the qualities of the sound. Because there is an equation between structural music and others: the more emphasis is placed on the complexity of an established grammar, the less interesting the sound material is, and the more emphasis is placed on the complex quality of timbre, the less interest is placed on the complexity of syntactic structures. If we consider the European classical music of the 19th and 20th centuries, there is a long process in which instrumental playing becomes increasingly standardized, and the dominant instrumental model of this period is the piano. And so, the challenge is to create a lot of different kinds of music, but from the point of view of what is represented by the notation system, the notes and their durations, which can easily be realized on the equivalence of the keys of the keyboard. It is a matter of manipulating what is standardized in the notation system, the design of instruments and the techniques of sound production, in a non-standardized way and differentiated from one work to another. The structural approach in this case becomes very useful.[16] And of course a lot of experimentation has been done in this context with the looting of traditional music by transforming it into notes: of course, in this process we lose 99% of the values on which this music works. The equation is complicated because from the moment concrete and electronic music appear, a different cultural branch is set up, a different conception of sounds. And with popular music such as rock, the combination of notes is of no interest, because it is too simplistic and tends to be based on few chords, which makes this music more accessible. But what matters is the sound of the band, which is eminently complex. The musicians of these types of music spend a considerable amount of time working out in groups a sound that will constitute their identity, reinventing their instrumental playing based on what they identify in past recordings in order to dissociate themselves from them. Following this model many situations can be envisaged in improvisation workshops that put musicians in processes where they have to imitate what is really impossible to imitate in others, difficult situations, especially for musicians who are so efficient in reading notes. What happens when a clarinetist plays a certain sound and now with your own instrument, a piano for example, you have to imitate the sound that is produced in the most exact way?

Reinhard G.:

It is a question of timbre.

Jean-Charles F.:

Yes. The world of electronics creates a universe of resonances. This is true even if we don’t use electronic means. But at the same time, you are completely right to think that the tradition of playing from the notes written on the score is still a very important factor in musical practices in our society.

Reinhard G.:

In Western society.

Jean-Charles F.:

A lot of good things can still be done in this context.

Reinhard G.:

You have a memory, and a pool, and an archive. I think – and this surprises me a lot, but that’s exactly how I see it – that improvisation doesn’t work with notes, but it functions with timbres. I call it musicalizing the sound. With the classical musician, you have a note, and then you have to musicalize it, you have to decode it.

Jean-Charles F.:

To put it in a context of reality.

Reinhard G.:

Exactly! Put it in a context, and then you bring it to sound. And when you turn the sign into sound, as a classical musician you are in the presence of a lot of fusion from sign to sound, using everything you’ve learned and everything that makes up the technique. The technique allows you to realize variations of dynamics, articulations and many other elements. This is the way they really learned to play. And now I’m going to take the notes out and ask them to keep making music. And that’s how I often start my workshops by asking them to play only one pitch. The seven or eight people who were at my workshop in Vienna last week, they did an improvisation on one pitch with the task of doing interesting things with that pitch. And it’s interesting because they have so many nuances at their disposal, and it sounds really very, very, well. And for me it’s the door that opens to improvisation, not to rush to many pitches, but to always start with things that are based on the sound qualities. If you look at the history of music, I think that humans who lived forty thousand years ago they had no language, but they had sounds [he starts singing].

Jean-Charles F.:

How do you know?

Reinhard G.:

I have a recording [laughter]. And I’ve done the following experiment with my students: do a spoken dialogue without using words [he gives an example with his voice], it works. They can’t tell you something specific, but the emotional idea is there. I think you’ll agree that the timbre of the spoken voice is really a very important thing, as Roland Barthes noted in The Grain of the Voice.[17] I agree with him. I try to get these classical musicians to improvise a little bit in their tradition, so they don’t create new things, to discover their instrument, but within their tradition.

Jean-Charles F.:

From the point of view of their representations.

Reinhard G.:

Yes exactly, and what came out of this workshop is very interesting.

Jean-Charles F.:

This is a very pedagogical way of doing things, otherwise the participants are lost.

Reinhard G.:

Yes, the former Head of the department of chamber music at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna loves improvisation. I think what he likes about improvisation is that the students learn to get in touch with each other and with the issue of timbre production. For chamber music these are very important things. I’m not a perfect instrumentalist myself because I don’t spend thousands of hours in rehearsals, but I think I can work with that in my mind, I can really find a lot of artists working in music on scores that are interesting, it’s really very rich.

Jean-Charles F.:

In a string quartet, the four musicians have to work for hours on what is called the tuning of the instruments, which is actually a way of creating a group sound.

Reinhard G.:

That’s what I do with improvisation, I function in a way that is very close to this tradition. The tasks are often oriented towards intonation between musicians, but it’s not only about going in the direction of the perfect bow stroke, but also in the direction of the music. Well, I was very happy with this interview, which will feed into my writing. I would like to write a book on improvisation with classical musicians, but I don’t have the time, you know how life is…

Jean-Charles F.:

You have to be a retiree to have the time to do things! Thank you for taking the time to talk.

 


1. Improfil is a German journal [connected with the Exploratorium Berlin] concerning the theory and practice of musical improvisation and functions as a platform for professional exchange among artists, teachers and therapists, for whom the subject of improvisation is a main topic in their work. See https://exploratorium-berlin.de/en/home-2/

2. The Cefedem AuRA [Centre de Formation des Enseignants de la Musique Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes] is a center in existence since 1990, devoted to the training of music school instrumental, vocal and music theory teachers. It is a center for professional ressources and artistic higher education in music. It carries out research in musical pedagogy and publishes a journal Enseigner la Musique. See https://www.cefedem-aura.org

3. CEPI, Centre Européen Pour l’Improvisation [European Improvisation Center] : “For me CEPI is a meeting point where improvising musicians, other practitioners of improvised performance-arts, scholars, thinkers, anyone who is active and/or curious about new forms and methods of doing can meet to exchange their ideas and experiences and also to participate together in the creative process, in short to improvise together.” Barre Phillips, 2020. See http://european.improvisation.center/home/about

4. Franziska Schroeder, Soundweaving : Writings on Improvisation, Cambridge, England : Cambridge Scholar Publishing. See the French translation of Henrik Frisk, “Improvisation and the Self: to listen to the other”, in the present edition of paalabres.org.: Henrik Frisk, L’improvisation et le moi.

5. Matthias Schwabe is the founder and director of Exploratorium Berlin.

6. During the CEPI meetings in Puget-Ville (in 2018 in particular), Barre Phillips proposed a game of “pétanque”, in which each team consisted of two ball throwers and one person who would improvise music at the same time.

7. The encounter took place a day [July 2018] before a concert of improvisation at the Exploratorium Berlin with Jean-Charles François, Reinhard Gagel, Simon Rose and Christopher Williams.

8. RAMDAM, UN CENTRE D’ART [à Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon] is a place for working, a rather flexible place, open to a multiplicity of uses, with adjustable and transformable spaces according to the needs and constraints of the selected projects. Ramdam is place of residence of the Dance Compagnie Maguy Marin. See https://ramdamcda.org/information/ramdam-un-centre-d-art

9. Christian Lhopital is a French contemporary visual artist, born in 1953 in Lyon. He essentially produces drawings and sculptures. His work was presented at the Lyon Biennale: “Une terrible beauté est née”, by Victoria Noorthoorn, an ensemble of 59 drawings from different epochs (from 2002 through 2011) were presented in the form of a drawing cabinet. In June 2014,the Éditions Analogues in Arles have edited the book Ces rires et ces bruits bizarres, with a text by Marie de Brugerolle, illustated by photos, mural graphit powder drawings, sculptures, miniatures, from the serie « Fixe face silence ». https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Lhopital

10. Rob Mazurek is a multidisciplinary artist/abstractivist, with a focus on electro-acoustic composition, improvisation, performance, painting, sculpture, video, film, and installation, who spent much of his creative life in Chicago, and then Brazil. He currently lives and works in Marfa, Texas with his wife Britt Mazurek. See the known place “Constellation Scores” in the second edition of this site (paalabres.org) http://www.paalabres.org/partitions-graphiques/constellation-scores-powerpeinture/ Access to Constellation Scores. See https://www.robmazurek.com/about

11. Denis Laborde, La Mémoire et l’Instant. Les improvisations chantées du bertsulari basque, Bayonne, Saint-Sébastien, Ed. Elkar, 2005.

12. Anna Barth is a freelance dancer, choreographer and artistic director of the DanceArt Laboratory Berlin. She studied Modern Dance, Improvisation and Composition at the Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis Dance Lab in New York City and Butoh Dance for several years with renowned co-founder and master of Butoh Dance, Kazuo Ohno and his son Yoshito Ohno in Japan. https://www.annabarth.de/en/bio.html

13. Keith Humble was an Australian composer (1927-1995), conductor and pianist who saw these three activities in continuity with a practice that resembled the function of the musician before the advent of the professional composer in the 19th and 20th centuries. During the 1950s and 1960s, he lived in France. He was the assistant to René Leibowitz and in 1959, at the American Centre for Students and Artists, he established the ‘Centre de Musique,’ a ‘performance workshop’ dedicated to the presentation and discussion of new music. It is in this context that Jean-Charles François met him. He continued to work with him until 1995. See http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/humble-leslie-keith-30063

14. KIVA, 2 CD, Pogus Produce, New York. Recordings 1985-1991, with Jean-Charles François, percussion, Keith Humble, piano, Eric Lyon, computer vocoder manipulations, Mary Oliver, violon and viola, John Silber, trombone.

15. See Henrik Frisk article, op. cit. in the present edition: Henrik Frisk, L’mprovisation et le moi.

16. See Jean-Charles François, Percussion et musique contemporaine, chapter 2, « Contrôle direct ou indirect de la qualité des sons », Paris : Editions Klincksieck, 1991.

17. Roland Barthes, « Le grain de la voix », Musique enjeu 9 (1972).

Giacomo Spica Capobianco – English

Retour au texte original en français : Entretien avec Giacomo Spica Capobianco

 


Encounter with Giacomo Spica Capobianco

Jean-Charles François and Nicolas Sidoroff

May 2019

 

Summary:

Introduction

I. The Orchestre National Urbain

II. Actions carried out at La Duchère (Lyon neighborhood) 2015-2019

a. The Projet
b. The Origin of the Projet
c. Instrument Building: The Spicaphone
d. The Residencies
e. The Writing Workshops
f. The Organization of the First Residency

III. Cra.p, An Art Center

IV. Political Politics and Citizen Politics

List of institutions mentioned in this text (with links)

 

Introduction

Giacomo Spica Capobianco has been working for more than thirty years to break down walls, fill in ditches, open windows in the walls to see what’s behind, build bridges so that antagonisms can meet, discover each other, confront each other peacefully. In 1989, he created the Cra.p, “Centre d’art – musiques urbaines/musiques électroniques”. The objective of this center is:

to exchange knowledge and know-how in the field of urban electro music, to cross aesthetics and practices, to provoke encounters, to invent new forms, to create artistic clashes, to give the means to express oneself. [Cra.p Home Page]

It is through real acts of development of artistic practices that his action has taken shape in a variety of contexts difficult to define with hastily predetermined labels, but with a special concern for people who often “have no access to anything”. The breaking down of boundaries, in the reality of his action, never corresponds to forcing one aesthetic on another or to the detriment of another. On the contrary, his action is based on the creation of situations designed to help individuals develop their own artistic production, collectively, in the company of others, whatever their differences.

 

I. The Orchestre National Urbain

Jean-Charles F.:

Can you give us some details about the Orchestre National Urbain [National Urban Orchestra]. What is it and how does it work?

Giacomo S. C.:

The Orchestre National Urbain was created following an idea I had a long, long time ago. In 2006, at the Forum on popular music in Nancy, I answered someone who asked me what I was doing, “Yeah, I am setting up the ONU” [United Nation] with a giggle. So, he said, “What’s it all about?” I told him, “It’s the Orchestre National Urbain.” OK, that was in 2006. In 2012 it started titillating me and in 2013 I decided to really create the Orchestre National Urbain.

The Orchestre National Urbain[1], is not the ONU [UN], let’s not be mistaken, it’s just a thumb of the nose. The cast of this orchestra is made up of both men and women musicians, there is parity between men and women. There are people who come from classical music, jazz, hip hop, electro, from all directions, it’s not about making a melting pot of everyone because it looks good, or everyone is great, it’s absolutely not that. It’s about working together to produce music, everybody also having a fairly strong pedagogical intent. It’s about working with a lot of people in the deprived neighborhoods, but also not just these people.

I asked around who would be interested in joining an orchestra with me. Lucien16S (Sébastien) was the first to express some interest. Also, Thècle who does beat-box here, electro, a very interesting girl who took part in our training program. asked her if she wanted to be part of the ONU and she said yes. Afterwards, another person came to join, and so on. The number of people has changed since then, because some people have left. It has been a little while since it has stabilized to eight people. The goal of the game is to have a written repertoire, everything is written. You can still improvise, you can improvise, but it’s really a very structured music to start with, which I composed. The texts are shared, which means that I’m not the only one who writes the texts, I write very few of them, it’s more the others who create them. And the name of the game was to compose everything by recording directly with a spicaphone (my one-stringed stick) and the use of my looper, and then to work in an oral way with people. This approach avoids having scores and all that it implies. Except for the brass players, because sometimes they would say, “Scores!” Then, we had to find people who wanted to be part of this dynamic. The idea was also that they could come and share their knowledge with any public and on top of that have some patience as well. I recently met a girl on drum set who was a candidate. We discussed it, she told me: “Anyway, no pedagogy, no improvisation.” I told her: “No ONU! Ciao!” I thought we couldn’t get along if pedagogy and improvisation were against her nature. We had to create a team that wanted to do this kind of thing. It was a very long process, because we had to set up a repertoire that lasted a little over an hour. Immediately the question arose as to the raison d’être of the Orchestre National Urbain, what does it represent politically, and what does it mean? It’s not only an artistic project, but it’s also to come back to the most remote neighborhoods and put a dent in things to get them going again. From there, I wrote a project that I presented to the local authorities (City of Lyon, Préfecture, DRAC and Lyon Métropolei). Everyone accepted. So, they started to help us a little with small grants to get started. We were able to launch the projects we had announced. I’m not saying that we now have thousands and hundreds of euros, but we now receive more support than what we had at the beginning.

With the Orchestre National Urbain, the idea is to settle in a city and ask to have access to a concert hall. We stay for a week, it doesn’t cost them anything because we are financed so that all the people involved are paid, and for a week we work with all the kids in the area.

Today, the reflection is not limited with the Orchestre National Urbain to sharing our practices with people from the most remote neighborhoods, but also to do so with people working in higher education. In other words, to show them our way of working. I want to see how we can take young musicians to work first on the artistic side and then on ways of looking at pedagogy. That is the main idea. A base has been established with the Orchestre National Urbain. But it is a base that moves, that is not fixed. In other words, there is a base and then there are around punctual and satellite projects. I just came back from Morocco, I discovered that in Morocco they are very interested in this project. I worked with Berbers, Berber tribes, mostly women, it was very interesting. If all goes well, we will be invited to go and play in Morocco in September (2019), and I don’t just want to go and play in Morocco to pretend to be the star. We will go there to meet the Berbers and work with them both artistically and pedagogically. That’s why I went there: I played and developed pedagogical situations. And I want to develop this more and more. My wish is that the Orchestre National Urbain will multiply in other regions, in other countries, and that this reflection can be part of a network, because we think it works well. Today we have a result, that is to say that we are quite happy with what is happening and especially with the relationship we are able to establish with the people we meet.

For me, it’s a bit like the results of thirty years of Cra.p where I’ve done a lot of projects, a lot of music, and where I’ve had the chance to meet a lot of different people and work with them. There was a moment when I thought that I needed to create something very, very tightly framed, but geared towards meeting people, and to see how you can develop things and reflections from this project. And with a huge cock a snook: for the Orchestre National Urbain, to call itself the ONU [UN] means a lot to me – and it is a political and cultural act. As far as Cra.p is concerned, I’m super happy. We have been around for thirty years, with people that we have been able to bring today to get a State Diploma and who now work here, others will follow the same path, it’s all working well. And I would like it to be a model for other cities and towns, in other regions, but it’s very fragile because we are perhaps the only ones to have developed this idea.

Jean-Charles F.:

So, inside the ONU, the way I understand things, it is at the same time a musical ensemble, and also a sort of commando somehow, a group of reflection and a pedagogical team. So, it’s a multi-entry structure. And at the same time, within it there is diversity. Could you talk about this diversity? And also, how do those who come from this diversity meet each other?

Giacomo S. C.:

Diversity is achieved through the choice of the members of the orchestra. I didn’t want to have only people for example connected to amplified popular music (in addition they are in a network of which I myself am a part). Moreover, diversity was not achieved by a calculation, but by affinity. This means that I had the chance to meet people from different worlds, I don’t have blinders on. I’m often invited to go towards others who are not supposedly part of my musical field, but I don’t see what that means: going towards others doesn’t necessarily imply abandoning one’s own way of seeing things. But when a classical singer comes to see us, I find it very interesting to wonder how we’re going to work together. She has learned things on her own, we have built things of our own, how can this be connected? Is the public going to be able to get involved in this process as well? Because inevitably, when you have eight people who all come from completely different places, and who present themselves in front of an audience that is also different, you wonder how they will consider this work, how they will react. That’s what interests me. It means that we have to ask ourselves how we’re going to be able to shake up the blinders of those who are separated by the barriers they’ve built, we’re at the heart of the subject of your edition, “Breaking down the walls”. For more than twenty years we have been saying with great ambition (and utopia) that we were going to be able to change things to make the departments of jazz, rock, traditional music, or other “something” departments work together. I don’t think things have changed that much.

Casting people from very different backgrounds in this way brings back this ambition to the forefront, and we demonstrate that it can be successful. And right now, I’ve just invited a cellist, Selim Penarañda, because we had a saxophonist who could hardly ever be there. I knew Selim and I called him. He has an extremely interesting background, it’s very rare. He is of Andalusian Arab origin, from an Algerian mother and a Spanish father. He was born in La Croix-Rousse [a Lyon neighborhood]. He was not at all destined to be a classical cellist. Selim ended up doing classical music, because he had a great teacher when he was in school: for the last half hour every day, she would play classical music for them. When he was 12 years old, he said, “What’s that?” She said, “It’s cello.” So, he said, “I want to play the cello”. His parents struggled to get him a cello and he managed to get lessons, and everything followed on. Now he is a cellist and he is a teacher. He is a teacher and a musician. He comes from classical music, and all of a sudden you amplify his cello, and everything starts happening, and he’s delighted. He says, “Finally, I find a project where I feel good.” And furthermore, he plays chamber music. And that’s the kind of situation I’m interested in.

Nicolas S.:

How did you meet him, for example?

Giacomo S. C.:

He came to enroll here, and he told us: “I play cello and chamber music; I want to work on the new technology”. We talked and he did a three-month internship with us. But he was playing so much that he couldn’t go on. He didn’t have time to continue the training he wanted to do here, so he disappeared. We then had Caroline Silvestre on trombone, we tried to work with her for a while and it didn’t work because there were two residencies where she couldn’t come. So Sébastien told me that he had contacts with Sélim and that we could try to work with him. I accepted right away, that’s how it happened. And Selim is delighted, he has direct tools for dealing with encounters, he does things that work directly, he lends his cello, and so on.

Then there’s the trombonist Joël Castaingts who joined the ONU about a year ago, because Caroline Sylvestre couldn’t continue. He’s a very interesting person, what really appealed to me about this guy is that he wasn’t the kind of person who refused to lend his trombone to those who participated in the workshops. For example, he would play something and then he would pass his trombone to one of the kids and say, “Go ahead and play”. That’s a sign for me, because you still have to be careful when you do that, because you can get bacteria, you don’t know what the kids are doing. It’s a sign of trust, for me it means a lot of things.

It’s very positive, but this choice is also made because, when you go in a residency, you are in front of an audience with whom you have to share these different ways of making music. You have to take into account how they see a lyrical singer, how they see a classical cellist, how they see a crazy person with instruments made from simple materials, how they see someone who makes rap music. And they realize that in fact these people can actually work together. How they see a dancer who’s not hip hop, nor in contemporary or classical dance, but who’s moving and all of a sudden, she’s making sense of her body, and how they can make sense of their bodies too. I have practiced this axis so much and for so long that it has become almost an unconscious act on my part and it could not be done otherwise. This is more or less the story of diversity and encounter. Indeed, this meeting of diversities is difficult and takes time. It’s not as simple as that, since the current team is not the same one as two or three years ago. Because there are some people who couldn’t hold out, faced with reasoning which was so disruptive to them. Recently, I’ve seen people leave the orchestra saying, “No, my idea is not to make music like that.” Then all of a sudden, it was people who were not ready to do that, who were trying to put some kind of very personal thing inside the project and that made it a project within the project. And I also find that this type of encounters is interesting at the research level, that’s what we would like to see a little bit more in educational training programs, where unfortunately, I say, it’s getting worse and worse. That’s why I’m talking about the lower regression in relation to higher education. I think there is an even more worrying backtrack than the one we experienced in the 1960s and 1970s: that period was perhaps more interesting than the one we’re experiencing today. You can go to any place where you practice music, there are very few of them with interesting things going on between the different musical castes present. There’s a kind of partitioning that drives me crazy.

This is how the Orchestre National Urbain was conceived. But it goes further than that: we are in the process of building up a repertoire. My ambition is also to meet other groups. I talked about it some time ago with Camel Zekri who told me: “With traditional music, we really need to put something together”. With Karine Hahn, not long ago, I talked about Gaël Rassaert with his Camerata du Rhône, a string ensemble, why not organize a meeting with them? What could we do together? I have a network of rappers, so we’re going to invite rappers on stage so that practices can be confronted. What interests me is to organize a platform with an orchestra where it moves. How can you envision that it’s not all and everything? What coherence can we find with traditional music from any ethnic group, from any place? How can we meet with contemporary music, with classical music musicians, with whomever? It’s not just about meeting each other, it’s also about knowing how we think together about the problems that it raises, how we really work together in common. That’s more or less the idea of this project[2].

 

II. Actions carried out at La Duchère ( Lyon neighborhood) 2015-2019

a. The Projet

Jean-Charles F.:

Could you describe a particular action in detail? A project you have done recently or less recently. Something where you would have all the elements at hand.

Giacomo S. C.:

A very recent action is the work carried out at La Duchère, a neighborhood in Lyon (in the 9th district). So, la Duchère project has been in existence for three or four years, working to create a group of young people: four years ago they were 12/13 years old, now they are 16/17. This work, for me, has given the most interesting result today, certainly in the research on the behavior of this group and its entourage. We did three residencies there, the last one took place in April 2019, always with the same young people, which allowed us to see how they had evolved. From the point of view of the young people, it was something that worked very well. It set in motion a lot of possible openings. Then, it’s more difficult when we have people who participate in the project and who are hired by a Social Center, a MJC [Maisons des Jeunes et de la Culture, Cultural and Youth Centersi], a Music School, or a Conservatory, and who, because their directors suddenly throw in the towel, can no longer work with us. This means that we can no longer work with people who are in constant contact with the kids. Precisely at the Duchère there were some unforeseen changes: the project took place in the library/media library of the Duchère and the Conservatoire de Lyon [CRRi] was a partner. All of a sudden, this place burned down due to a criminal act. All the equipment used to make music burned down. That’s how the MJC de la Duchère opened its doors to welcome these kids.

The aim of the Orchestre National Urbain is to identify young people, above all to bring them to a diploma course. We’re seeing a drift that I described in 2005 in Enseigner la musique,[3] and we’re going to have to work hard on this: animators working in one place, who initially do a bit of music, but don’t have that function, are trying, despite the fact that they already have a job, to take the place of the Orchestre National Urbain’s players, while requesting to be trained. So the problem is that these people act as a screen in front of the young people without being aware of it or being too well aware of it. The worst thing here is to mislead kids, telling them they’re going to be stars, they’re going to play everywhere and they’re going to make big bucks. That’s what Cra.p has been fighting against for thirty years, that’s why we’re here, I think. We receive a lot of requests to train MJC’s activity leaders and during the meetings I fight very strongly against this attitude which consists in pushing the kids into an illusion that will in any case bust if they continue this way. I don’t have anything against the MJC activity leaders, it’s not a minor job. And since they absolutely want to be trained to help young people, we don’t say no. We can welcome these activity leaders in training on one condition: there has to be a charter that stipulates that the goal of the training is to bring them up to a Conservatory degree and then to a teaching State Diploma in music. This is where we are, in concrete terms, right now.

Jean-Charles F.:

I would like to go one step back: at the Duchère, you said that it had worked well, but what worked well?

Giacomo S. C.:

What has worked well is that over the four years you have a stable public, a group of twelve children who have grown up, who have continued to be involved in the project and who continue to make music. At the beginning they were kids who had never touched an instrument or written texts. That’s it, the machine is up and running. They are also starting, themselves, to get the younger ones to work. That’s where it works. This project consists in saying:

  1. We’re going to take kids from neighborhoods that have no future anyway, because even if they go to school, there won’t be a job when they finish.
  2. For those who are interested, they will be given the necessary tools to go all the way.
 
And where I’ m pleased that it works is that, although the decision-makers and facilitators change, the kids stay. I think that’s where the success is. It means that we’ve managed to amaze them and encourage them. For me, they are the future educators with whom we will be able to work, and who will be in relay with the work we are doing in the 8th arrondissement of Lyon. It’s going to become a network: the 8th with the 3rd, the 7th and the 9th. And we will train these kids so that we can get them back to be a link with their neighborhood, so that they can develop things and so that they can have a similar position to that of a violin teacher at the conservatory. La Duchère is the most interesting example for the moment, because it’s still going on, it didn’t collapse, it’s the same people from the beginning. What’s super interesting for us is that there are more girls than boys, knowing that in certain neighborhoods the position of girls is culturally restricted.
Jean-Charles F.:

To make music, in the Duchère context, what does it mean in terms of, for example, oral learning, use of instruments and technologies, styles of music?

Giacomo S. C.:

This is the reflection that motivated me a lot: how was I going to set up a pedagogical project precisely so as not to fall into the flaws of a single particular aesthetic? When you arrive in a neighborhood, we tend to talk only about rap, R’n’B, a lot of trap currents, a lot of things that are happening now. That’s not what interests me. Of course, it’s not that I’m not interested in making them do rap or anything else, but that’s not what really concerns me. More, it’s about creating a group that produces a collective creation, and we don’t have to dictate to them what aesthetics they should choose. There are also writing workshops, and we’re not going to tell them what subject matter they need to address. They just have to avoid talking about sex, politics, and religion, because, being overseen by the Ministry of the Interior, we’re not allowed to do that with minors. Working in a collegial or collective writing workshop, they choose their own subject matter.

Then, we always work with musical orality, quickly, with loopers, with electronic instruments, with drums and with a lot of other things. Because in the Orchestre National Urbain, there are not only electronic musicians, but there is also a trombonist, there is a cellist, there is a drum set player. The trick is to give them a little bit of basic skills and let them build their own projects and their own aesthetics. And we can’t say that, tomorrow for example, the group de la Duchère is going to do songs [chanson], rap or something else: who cares? They create something and after a while they will do with it what they want to do with it. That’s the goal. But it’s certainly out of the question to arrive and say: we’re going to do a workshop of this or that music. We don’t know, since we also put young people in contact with people from the classical music world, types of musicians they are not used to meeting. At the moment, I am preparing a video for the festival where we see the cellist, Selim Peñaranda getting people working, he has an electric cello – in the Orchestre National Urbain it’s more appropriate to play with an electric cello than with an acoustic one. When he gets kids to work with a cello, all of a sudden, a contact is created. His approach is very interesting, but that doesn’t mean that he’s suddenly going to turn them into classical musicians or rock musicians. It’s more a question of saying: “You make music.” The idea is to simply make music. But that’s not my only concern. It’s also about taking into account all the different professions in the performing arts. It means that for a while, you may have someone working in sound engineering explaining to them what a mixing desk is and all that it implies. Because there are some, in the mass, who are not going to be musicians, but who may be interested in other aspects of the performing arts. For example, one of them is going to be interested in lights, or another one is going to be interested in décors (we don’t do décors). By showing that there is also work in the world of the performing arts, we open up a field of possibilities for everyone. There are far too few minority people working in this sector. And then these people are not even aware of what’s going on, they don’t even know that there are vocational training centers for that.

The example for the moment, the lab if you want, the most interesting is that of the Duchère. It’s not simple at all, because I’m in the process of wrestling with several people, because they don’t understand that they simply have to provide the interface. You have to tell them all the time, that this is not for them. But they know it as well as I do: when you bring something interesting, you have to provide the interface, without wanting to take over the main role, as in a slightly mafia-like system (i.e. the animator who would like to take the place of the young people in training for the State Diploma in Popular Music [Diplôme d’État de Musiques Actuelles Amplifiées]i).

 

b. The Origin of the Project

Nicolas S.:

What interests us is how do you start? What was the beginning, the starting impulse?

Giacomo S. C.:

In the background of the Duchère, one dimension must be emphasized: to be able to attract young people, to get them into this process, it was not done in a snap of the fingers, and they would not have come without a teaser. At the Duchère media library where the project began, we were asked: “What can you offer to attract kids?” I suggested something very simple: a “round of loopers.” It means:

a) There are several people.
b) We turn on loopers.
c) Each one takes a microphone.
d) One produces onomatopoeias in the microphone such as clack, plack, pluck, plick, click, etc.
e) One puts them in loop with the loopers and it turns.
f) And then, you may freely play with it.

We created three stations in the library in the middle of the afternoon, without requiring people to register. We started to make sound and the kids arrived. And then we teased them: “Do you want to go on? Yes? Well! Paf! Poof!” It started. At one point, they left: “Where are you going?” – “I’m coming back.” They came back with 15 of their friends, it went fast. Because, for them, it would be absolute bliss to have a machine like that in their possession. So, we did the loopers’ round and the objective was to work with Lucas Villon, who is a musician working for the Lyon Regional Conservatory. He was in training at Cra.p while taking care of the kids there. He was the relay, and we said to all these kids, “Here you have the possibility to come every Tuesday evening from 6 to 7:30 or 8 p.m., with Lucas.” We went to see them from time to time, we went there three times a year. And a year later, we organized the first residency, and there we saw them all again. So, the residency also developed from the work that Lucas had done, that’s what created this group. For three years, every year we did a residency with this group, and now we’ve just done one. That’s how these kids became faithful to us. But, in the beginning, they were not regular users of the MJC [Youth Cultural Center] de la Duchère, nor of the library. Maybe they went there to look for a book, but there was no cultural activity organized for them. Afterwards, since the library burned down, we saw with the MJC if it was possible to open something and they took over. That’s how it happened.

Nicolas S.:

I am more and more convinced that people are experimenting with things and are gradually building an experiment by trying things without really knowing what they are building. Ten years later, this produces something more or less interesting and yet it works, and it has answered the questions that were asked at the beginning. And after ten years of experimentation, they will always be talking from where they have ended up. And what’s often missing is the narrative that finally gets you to understand the insight of experimentation, so you can allow others to start doing something similar.

What’s interesting for me is the whole process that took place to invent this particular system, in this particular place, which could be quite different elsewhere. At La Duchère, you just talked about the loopers’ round at the library. What is it that at a given moment, given the circumstances, the encounters and the situations, this round of loopers is made possible? Why did you find it interesting to go and do this project there?

Giacomo S. C.:

In fact, this project was made possible initially by the concern of the elected officials of a city, its social and cultural actors. It is this concern on their part that gave meaning to the loopers’ round. Otherwise you come, you do a round of loopers and it’s direct consumption by the individuals who pass by: they’ve consumed something and then we don’t talk about it anymore. If there isn’t a sufficiently global awareness among the citizens who are there, surrounded by all these people who decide for them, or who think for them, if there isn’t a common reflection, we can’t work. The relevance of the loopers’ round is that, when it happens, it corresponds to how you can bring people to an artistic act very quickly, and how you can hang them up right away so that, after that, they can work in the long term and that suddenly it will make sense in the city. In this case, this project took place on the site of the Duchère where culture had been put aside completely for religious, political, social and financial reasons. The problem was: how to succeed in putting a breeding pond back in place. I think the loopers’ round is a possible solution among any other. We could have just as easily worked with the instruments I’m building there [at Cra.p], putting them in the library and then having them hit the cans. It would have been the same for me. The important thing is to think about the best way to involve people in a long-term process, so that we can create a team of people who are going to raise awareness among these youngsters as they grow up.

Nicolas S.:

Before arriving at the round, how do you raise awareness of the team of people around them and who decide for them, how do you get in touch with them? What makes that, at some point, they are the ones who come looking for you saying: “Giacomo (or the Cra.p) we need you”? What relationships do you build, because there is a long-term story there too?

Giacomo S. C.:

Most of the time we do a bit of advertising, well, not much advertising, the town councils have been called upon a little. So, there is no accident, there are moments like that when we were sought at the moment when things were being set up. A few years ago, within the framework of the Orchestre National Urbain, I met a musician – Lucas Villon (see above) – whom I met at the CFMIi a few years before and who told me: “I would like to work with you.” It’s the only one in twenty years of CFMI – I’ve been working there for twenty years, four days a year – it’s the only one who came to see me and said, “I want to set up a workshop with the kids in a neighborhood, to do hip-hop, if that’s what they want.” At that time, I was working very hard on the Orchestre National Urbaini and on these issues. I asked him to join the Cra.p. training program. The Lyon Regional Conservatory paid him for two years of training here, because he was not up to date on practices within the neighborhoods and on writing workshops. So, he came to see me because he had a project to set up a hip hop workshop at La Duchère and he said, “I’m coming to see you because I need you, can you help me?” So that’s how it was done, and there are a lot of places, you know, where we’ve been called to try to solve big problems. As for example, some time ago at Morel College [Junior high school], Place Morel in La Croix-Rousse [Lyon neighborhood]. The documentalist had called us, in order to find solutions because there was a rather delicate social split in this college: you had the Whites on one side, and the Arabs and the Blacks on the other, and they were fighting each other from morning to night. She had the intelligence to tell herself that she was going to find people to set up a hip hop workshop in rap music and in dance too, and so we worked there for more than a year. It’s requests like that that allow us to reflect afterwards, to say, well, we’ve been through this, what does it achieve, even on a sociological level, how does it evolve? Most of the time, on all the actions that we have carried out, we have been called, we have not been the ones who solicited the institutions.

Nicolas S.:

At the Duchère, it is Lucas who comes to see you, but do you also have an analysis with the people around him, in order to decide that it is worth doing something there?

Giacomo S. C.:

In fact, we received a call from the Lyon town hall, and they told us that there were big problems at the MJC Vergoin of the 9th arrondissement in Saint-Rambert [Lyon neighborhood]. It’s the politicians who are calling us today, who tell us that they need us to put out the fire there, who are asking us to put things in place. In this case, for the story of the Duchère, it was Lucas who made the first step. We met one of the people in charge of the 9th arrondissement media-library, who is also very involved in this and there was a round-table discussion with other people in charge of the town, before starting the project. For me, when there is a round table discussion, if there are not strong enough political reflections behind the project, I don’t go along. That means that I absolutely don’t want to do what we were made to do more than 25 years ago when things were burning everywhere, one-off actions to calm things down, to prevent people from burning cars. That is over. When we met the people at the Duchère, we demanded that we work on the long term: not for one year, but for 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 years. Even if we are not the ones who are going to carry out the project, we needed to be able to create a team capable of grasping what we had put in place and so that it could continue. These are decisions that are made even before arriving on the loopers’ round, it’s well before, it’s really the preparation, with the elected officials and with everyone. Actually, I was a little hesitant to contact these people, but it’s easy to do, you call them and then you demand that everyone be around the table. And they get moving nevertheless, and afterwards it’s good, because there are some who adhere, there are some who don’t, but at least you can talk with them. That’s how the preparation before the beginning of the project went. There is always a reflection that has to be done before starting something in relation to the problem that is posed. It’s not like in the case of a master class where you come, you do something great and you leave straight away, without any reflection before or after, it’s direct consumerism, for me that’s not interesting. The thinking that we carry out before any project concerns the question of what we could set up with a specific public, which most of the time has been hindered. Rarely have we arrived in a place where everything was completely comfortable. If the local people did not understand what we were bringing, no connection could be established with them. I also believe that what gives us more and more work today is that there is less comfort everywhere. You have to find a balance in order precisely to federate when you get to the loopers’ round, it’s actually very simple: you’ve already arrived.

Nicolas S.:

And the time between the moment when Lucas says, “I want to do that” and the moment of the loopers’ round how long is it, a year, a year and a half?

Giacomo S. C.:

No, it’s faster than that, it’s very fast, we’re still talking about rapid emergence here, we have to be quick.

Nicolas S.:

You have to be quick, but you have to get in touch with the librarian who is interested, and make sure that you get the around the table you talked about?

Giacomo S. C.:

It’s 3 or 4 months. There is this first meeting with 2 or 3 people, and then after they understand, they can interface with the others. Because it’s all about interfaces, you don’t call an elected representative directly and say that we have to see each other, it doesn’t work like that. In fact, you need the interfaces that advise people to say that they have to meet us, because there is an interesting project that we want to set up with them. You can see that’s how it works. Today we’re a little bit beyond that stage, because we’re accredited by Grand Lyon agglomerationi, which means that we have a recognition label that took 30 years to establish. The relevance of a project doesn’t simply depend on the fact that I come to play and then do one or two master classes, but it’s: what continuities, what processes are put in place so that people seize control on the project. The project at La Duchère is the most interesting example for us, you can see it by the way these young people take control of it and above all the space we leave for them. Because the biggest battle when you are on a site like that is to make those who work there and who are in regular positions understand that they have to leave space for the young people who come to do things there.

Jean-Charles F.:

Can you develop this idea of collective, democratic creation. How does it really happen? What are the procedures?

Giacomo S. C.:

It’s very simple: there are eight of us, sometimes ten, each with a very specific discipline, with a project. So, we have to work together to ensure that it’s not just a simple consumption, with each person doing his or her own thing in his or her own corner, we have to establish links between all the disciplines.

 

c. Instrument Building: The Spicaphone.

Giacomo S. C.:

When you arrive at the sites, you realize that buying an instrument is impossible. Many refuse to make music because they think they can’t do it for financial reasons. In my workshop, I can have a quarter of an hour with kids working with the instruments present: we are in a phase of awakening, of meeting people; we are not really in a music learning situation, it’s not about delivering music courses, it’s only the possibility to be with an instrument, with a microphone, with a looper, to insert a loop and with all that to do one’s own thing. I let them see what can be developed with several instruments I built myself. If I have five participants in front of me in a space-time, each one will be able to create something. I tell them: “This is the instrument I built like this, it works like this, it has this function, you can use it like this.” I make them play these instruments and from there we create something.

For example, I built a spicaphone, it’s a very simple single-stringed instrument. I love playing with this kind of thing, because I don’t consider myself a guitarist anyway. It’s a posture to be a guitarist, you are part of a family, and if you don’t jerk off at 150 000 km per hour on the neck, you’re not a guitarist. I don’t like the “hero” side of the guitar. So, I told myself that I was going to put only one string, so I wouldn’t be like the others and with a piece of wood even less. And this piece of wood, a polenta spoon, is even worse. People wonder what that thing is, I show them that in fact it works. And when they tell me that they can’t buy a guitar, I tell them no, you can take any piece of wood and make your own. I’m going back to Morocco to build a lot of this kind of instruments. I intend to build six-string orchestras, for example E, A, D, G, B, E, like the ones on the guitar, with six people, each playing a single string.

When you take a drum set, you take it apart and six people can play. This allows you to get back to more interesting things related to collective creation and ensemble playing. It’s mostly about thinking that if I put a kid with something like this in his hands, he’ll play right away. If I put a six-string guitar in his hands, he doesn’t play, I have to fiddle with it, I have to put it in his lap and he has to take sticks to hit it, because that’s the only way he feels comfortable, because otherwise there are too many strings. With the spicaphone there is only one string: “Look, you can do toum toum toum just that, or Tooum Tooum Tooum Tooum simply on the beats.” And that’s it, it starts. This instrument costs only seven euros. These types of instruments, we say among ourselves that they are “crap”, reversing the meaning of the word!

I play with this instrument by fiddling with a lot of tricks; for example, I play with a cello bow. I also let them see that with an instrument like this with one string, you can also create sound materials. You can go as far as creating things with electronic means that are different from sound synthesis. They are very attracted by that; they wonder where the sounds come from when they see me playing. That’s what they’re interested in because suddenly they think it’s possible to do it. And as soon as it’s possible, they adhere, and they come. It’s a pedagogy that doesn’t consist in doing your scales for hours before being able to conceive of an artistic project. It’s a different attitude: approaching music right away, without going through this absolute obligation to learn your scales. However, I don’t talk about scales but about finger dexterity: to be at ease, I make them work on the speed of execution, to feel the fingers on the notes. But I don’t talk to them about notes or scales or things like that. In fact, they are building themselves on their own from that situation. And afterwards, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t the presence of a very sharp theoretical ground, since they are brought up to the point of writing texts, because everybody writes, on very precise rhythmic frames, it’s ultimately rhythmic solfège. You lead them into that, but in order to do that you have to go through a lot of practice beforehand. That is to say, we come back to how we ourselves learned to make music: it was very punk, you would take an instrument that you couldn’t play, you would lock yourself in some stuff, you would play, and then, afterwards, you would go into theory. The opposite works less well for me.

Nicolas S.:

You’re not the only one who thinks that! [laughter]

Giacomo S. C.:

Yes, I take the example of what we lost. Academic pedagogy bothers me today, it’s even found in rock music. I’m more than disappointed to see all these young people we’ve graduated – young and old – doing exactly what they criticized for years, I find it absurd. I remember meeting the inspectors who had recently come to Cefedemi for a sort of audit to find out what popular music was doing in a place like that. And the first thing they told me was that they were touring around France a bit because they couldn’t stand to see popular music behaving like classical music with scores in rock bands. I found that quite interesting. However, I’m not against scores…

I built a spicaphone for a young Kosovar girl, Aïsha, who had never studied music before. I don’t know what happened over there, but at first she didn’t speak, she was there, she was barely speaking to us. I told her: “You can do toum toum toum toum toum toum toum toum toum toum toum toum [he sings a melody], you can do whatever you want, or you can do toum toum toum toum toum toum [regular and on one pitch] and stay on the beats.” I explained to her: “We’ll turn some sounds (in a loop) and then you’ll play, and then you’ll see. Very shyly, she asked me how to do it: I told her to take the instrument, tap a rhythm, try to place one or two notes and see how it could work. It worked right away, there was direct contact. She started to play this way, she fell in love with the instrument, she wanted me to build one for her, and now she’s playing with it. We put an amplification system at her disposal, and she said that it didn’t sound the same anymore. But she started playing with it, with the idea of varying the sound. And later on, all of a sudden, they came to tell me that she had started to sing as well, even though she didn’t know how to do it, and that up to that point she didn’t even speak. In four years, we’ve seen her evolve and now she’s a leader! We didn’t know where she was going to position herself. She assumed a position.

I have tried with other instruments and it doesn’t work as well. That’s why I’m not the kind of guy who builds maracas out of Coca-Cola cans by putting rice in them.

Jean-Charles F.:

What I find interesting is that the spicaphone is a real instrument.

Giacomo S. C.:

Yes, it’s a real instrument, it’s not just a phony one.

 

d. The Residencies

Nicolas S.:

Do the residencies take place during the school holidays?

Giacomo S. C.:

Practically all the time. For the moment we have not made a residency outside school holidays. The first day, when we arrive, it takes a while to settle in. As there is a dance person, Sabrina Boukhenous, she is taking the whole group, while we install everything, so as not to lose time. At the end of the first day, there is the presentation of part of the dance: the group comes to present what they have done, and we introduce ourselves.

Once we’re settled in, on the second day we’re going to start getting the groups together, we’re going to focus during the second day on the writing workshop, because if there are fifteen, twenty people, we can do a writing workshop with fifteen, twenty people and make subgroups inside. We can do five groups of four, with four different topics. Once we have something solid in the writing workshop, we put them on stage right away, so that something emerges: even if they have only written twenty sentences, they have to get them out. As soon as the writing workshop is over, we keep 20 to 30 minutes, so that they can come and present what they have done. Things evolve very quickly, from one day to the next you realize that something has happened.

And then, on the third day, the music workshops on the instruments begin. The number of people is divided by period of time and they are rotated through the workshops. We make them discover all the instruments. They go around all the different instruments so that they can immediately touch them and play them, so that it puts them in a perspective of making sounds, because otherwise if we start playing the aliens ourselves with our instruments, they won’t get hooked, it’s not going to work.

Then they go to see the trombonist, Joël Castaing, he makes them try his instrument straight out. Then they go to Selim, the cellist, the same thing happens, they play and create something. In electro, we’re going to do the same thing using a computer to produce sounds. On drum set, she’s going to make them play, most of the time she makes them play freely at first, and then she tells them: “Well, you can also do that, you can add that, your bass drum can be there, and you can play together.” And then all of a sudden, as we have this single-stringed instrument, the spicaphone, with a bass sound, then we can make a link between the bass (the spicaphone) and the drums. There is also a vocal techniques workshop, with Thècle, a lyric singer, beat-boxer, who also does electro. Finally, Sébastien Leborgne (better known as Lucien 16S) takes them in a writing workshop. For a week, they get to see a little bit of everything that is possible to do. That’s how it goes. That’s the way it works when we work with them for the first time.

All the workshops meet together at the end of the period, we try each time to have between 3/4 of an hour and 1 hour on the final moment, at least, let’s say, over a week, at the end of the third day. We get them up on stage, in small groups, and we say, “Well, there you go! Play!” We let them play. At the beginning it’s pretty messy, but the mess is important, because all of a sudden it gets structured. Then, we tell them: “If, for example, we talk about a 4-beat, 5-beat, 7-beat meter; there are seven of you, we’re doing seven beats; you take one beat each.” They each have an instrument, it’s very simple, it creates a structure and then two people add texts, and that’s how it starts. Everything falls into place, and then suddenly they are told, “Paf! Improvisation moment!” They improvise freely and then we define a framework for their improvisation. That’s what I’ve been doing for years, very simple things. But these very simple things are the means of structuring the group; all of a sudden they play and find an interest in it. Every day we make them play and at the end of the week there is a concert. They play with a full house, at the Duchère, without pretension. For example, I remember there was a full house with the Préfecture’s delegate and other kids from very troubled neighborhoods. What we do with the Orchestre National Urbaini is not always easy for them, I thought they were going to burn us! Well, no, that went very well. The kids who get to perform, we don’t fill their heads with a bunch of rubbish, telling them “That’s it, you’re stars”, that’s absolutely not the case. Instead, we explain to them that it’s a job. We talk a lot with them, we accompany them, we get them into situations, we involve them, and that’s why we see them again afterwards. And so, at La Duchère, this is the fourth year that we have seen them. All this is done with very little material that we leave them to use between our interventions. We also make sure that the people in charge of the Youth Cultural Center (MJC)i manage to have equipment for the kids, so that all year long they can have a room and come to work there. And there are activity leaders who are starting to help them. So, it’s good that they help them, as long as they don’t help them too much and don’t divert them from their personal development. That’s why the activity leaders who ask for it can come here, to learn, or rather to dis-learn, so that they don’t format as usual kids who have things to say and who are the music of tomorrow.

 

e. The Writing Workshops

Jean-Charles F.:

And there are text-writing workshops. Can you talk about their importance in the set-up?

Giacomo S. C.:

Well, the importance is on many levels. First, it just means “writing”. In the many writing workshops that we organize, we realize more and more that people haven’t mastered the simple act of writing. The kids even less so. The texts don’t necessarily have to have rhythm, they do what they want. If they want to read aloud their text, they can. I’m not talking about rap, or slam, but of “spoken words” [in English in the text], period. Then, if it becomes rhythmic, it’s up to them. But for those who wish, we also teach them how to loop a text: if, for example, someone says: “My sentences I wish they sound like this”, then we determine the number of space-time, and if it is four (or five or other numbers) beats, how to work on four beats (or other basic numbers). The function of writing, for me, goes further than that. These are collective writing workshops, so there is a common thinking process through discussions on a topic chosen by the participants. And there are bound to be people who don’t necessarily agree among themselves, and that’s what’s interesting. It’s through discussion that the workshop begins: you start talking about something, you try to determine what the reasons might be for talking about it, it can get out of hand, then it calms down, there is an exchange of ideas, and then all of a sudden there is a common thinking process. But we don’t do anything in there. In other words that the thinking process must be carried out between them. We are simply there to be the time keepers: after enough debate, at some point they have to get down to writing. We provide them with writing techniques, we see how it goes in terms of syntax and the vocabulary search. It is clear that writing allows the person to develop a social structuring. We feel this especially in this type of writing, because we are not in a situation where writing is detached from social realities. For me, the beneficial effect of this activity is at 100%. And then there is the problem of how to deliver the text on stage – I’m more likely to call it sound poetry with text declamation. What do they do with it? Rhythm or no rhythm, it doesn’t matter. They simply need to be able to engage in a project, in a space-time. They are told: “There, you are now presenting something to us”. And it’s up to them to make their own montage, the relationship between what the text is saying, the content of the reflection, the choice of music and so on.

 

f. The Organization of the First Residency

Nicolas S.:

Could you describe the first moment of the first workshop? It seems to me that there are almost three profiles of intervening people from outside, with the eight workshops. So, what is the possible path for one of these people? What makes him or her enter the place at a certain moment and what does s/he do when s/he arrives? And then there would be the same description for the move of one of your eight members of the Orchestre National Urbaini: what do you do before, during and after? Are the eight workshops at the same time or not? And then afterwards, could you describe what a person working in the host structure does, but who is not one of your eight, or what the audience who comes to participate does?

Giacomo S. C.:

Do you remember what you just said to me there?

Nicolas S.:

Yeah. [laughs] So, maybe the easiest thing: are all eight workshops taking place at the same time, for example? How does it work at the beginning? You’re there all eight of you, all the time?

Giacomo S. C.:

One must always adapt to the context, i.e. one can never predict that, from this time to this time, everyone will intervene at the same time. We are always there as a group. We only take the children for two hours a day, but then we work full-time from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Within that time, we dedicate two full hours for the children, and then it’s up to their families. Because we have to take into account the fact that they may have another activity: if they have a soccer activity in the afternoon, we take them in the morning, or the other way around – I say soccer or something else. Everybody is there all the time, because what is important is that the trombonist is not just centered on his instrument and then he can’ t understand what is going on. There’s a constant relationship between the members of the staff, that means that everyone is rotating all the time. But there is a time when you have to fix things too. The kids have to really pass through all the situations, even if they’re not attracted to a particular one. You make them understand how important this particular instrument can be, for example, in a group like the Orchestre National Urbain and what role it plays. Whether you like it or not, you have to go through it. It’s for example the children who come and say: “But I only want to be behind a computer to make instrusi”. We say, “OK, but you have to understand how a text is set up, so you can compose music for people who make texts”, and all of a sudden it works. I have a recent example, at La Duchère, of a young boy who had difficulty performing his text on stage: we talked a lot, we made him feel confident, the second time it was already better. But then he found himself behind the machines on a pad sending sound, and there he was super comfortable; when he came back to the text, it completely freed him. They all have that polyvalence there. That is, we want them to rotate. Because in the relationship between the text and the other sounds, we talk about interaction, we never talk about accompaniment. Because we don’t accompany the text, we interact with it, it’s improvisation. So, with the one who is performing the text, there are four or five who interact. After letting one or two texts go by, he or she finds himself or herself doing the music. One is at the service of the other all the time, and I think that’s very important, not to start saying that we have separately a group of singers or of a group of musicians. No, all of them have to have a fairly strong polyvalence.

We will say that most of the time, they’re willing to go for it. Rarely have we had kids who didn’t want to do something. But there are also those who don’t know at the beginning what they want to do. For example, Aïcha, who I already mentioned, who didn’t talk at all at the beginning. And then some of them only want to do one thing and others on the contrary want to do everything.

Nicolas S.:

During the workshops, do you work in different rooms, or are you always in the same place where the sound mixes? When working on electronics, and you with the spicaphone, are you in different rooms?

Giacomo S. C.:

Yes, or when it’s not too loud, it’s possible to work in the same space. There are also workshops that can be joined together. For example, in the dance workshop it can be interesting to have the presence of the musicians participating in the rhythm workshop, there can be this relationship. It all depends on the space, because if you go to a place where you have enough space, you’re going to be able to organize things as you wish, and if you only have two rooms, you’re going to have to deal with that. That means that the workshops are set up according to the available space. Depending on the location, it is not always possible to have all eight instructors working at the same time.

Nicolas S.:

And all of you, you are on stage with them to perform with them?

Giacomo S. C.:

No, no, we don’t play, we don’t accompany them, that’s not the point, they are the ones who perform. Many people always say to me, “Ah, but it would be nice if you played with them.” I answer, “No, they’re the ones playing.” That’s the most important thing for them. It’s up to them to take the initiative. That’s it, we know how to do it, but it’s up to them to do it, it’s not up to us. I really care, and I always tell everyone, “You don’t perform for them, you leave it to them, the ball is in their court.” Then there is also a negotiation with the people I recruit in the Orchestre National Urbain it is to know if they are prepared to share their instrument But that’s another story.

Nicolas S.:

Do you consider that out of the two hours in a day, there is one hour of workshop and one hour of work with the large group?

Giacomo S. C.:

Yes, they are mainly prepared to perform. For me, I break it up: the first day, after the dance workshop, it’s a big group meeting, we let them see who we are and what we do; the second day they start to present us something from the writing workshop and the third day, well, they start to really play, that is, they’re all really in a real situation. From then on, when we have a lot of them, we’re not going to have an 8-10 band on stage, it’s useless at first, but we’re going to form groups, trios, quartets, and then mix them up. On Friday, we really prepare them to present something on stage, we talk to them about a sound check as well. It’s not just about playing, it’s not just about creating a piece, it’s also about how to do a sound check, how to work with a person who’s on sound amplification, how to work with a person who’s on lights. We don’t mean a stage coach like, “I’m going to go like this”. We are absolutely against that idea. They are very free in their postures. And it’s the same for dance: we don’t make them dance so that they dance, but so that they become aware of the reality of their bodies, because we make them understand that it’s the body that produces music, that when they play, you have to be aware of the body. But it’s not to make them into dancers, absolutely not. It’s not that. I mean, especially the body at that age, what do you do with it? To really release a lot of stress. And then it’s also about awareness of rhythm, because we’re on very rhythmic music.

Nicolas S.:

So, you were describing two hours and all that, but I guess on Friday they’re not just there for two hours?

Giacomo S. C.:

No, they come earlier. But they are always there, right! When we’re here, they’re in other rooms, they work everywhere. At La Duchère for example, they spend as much time in other rooms where they work. Because now the thing is on its way, and us, we only take them for two hours.

Nicolas S.:

During residency, what did the kids do when they weren’t with you for two hours?

Giacomo S. C.:

They were working in a lot of other rooms; they were rehearsing what they had started working with us. They’re not all there from 9:00 to 6:00, because you’ve got some who were doing sports or other things. But there was still a small core that was there all the time without any other commitments. They were free. For that, you have to come across directors of facilities who are open-minded, and to say that we are not going to compartmentalize our cultural activities by telling young people to come only from such and such an hour. The stays open and then if the rooms are not occupied – anyway there are such large spaces at La Duchère – they can work undisturbed. And then, in the end, there are not so many activities during the day. Because you have a theater space and things like that, where it’s for adults who only come in the evening.

Nicolas S.:

And you were talking about the times when you chat a lot with them. How do these conversations disorganize and organize themselves?

Giacomo S. C.:

We will sit with them. I remember a young boy who arrived who had a very virulent text that was not actually from him. He had a vision of what he wanted to do. A bit hardcore, but hardcore rap, but in everything he said, you could feel it wasn’t coming from him. So, I crashed into him. It was a pretty hard clash. The next day he came over and he thanked me, because he said, “Yeah, I finally understood…” Because I had said to him: “There you are not being yourself, you have to write down what you are yourself; there you are hiding behind a person, so we will never see you as who you are; if you want to be yourself, you have to be yourself.” That’s an interesting discussion, because when you arrive and they’re full of illusions about “what music is, what music mean…” There is the misconception that success is mandatory. This is not true. Once again we are faced with a gap between the realities of the professional world and the idea they have of the star system, the Star académie[4] and so on, all that crap that does not do us any good. When we arrive, we tell them: “Well, no, it doesn’t work like that.” When I arrive with a piece of wood to play with, well, they burst out laughing, or tin cans, they’re laughing hard. Then, when I start to play, they laugh less. These discussions are there to give meaning to actions. And if the whole team is there, it’s to help them and to raise them into something a little more interesting than what the media make them believe. I mean, especially the ones they watch and listen to. Luckily, not all media are like that. These are discussions that are long and interesting, and it’s completely thought-provoking, without resorting to some kind of guru diktat and saying that things have to be absolutely like this or that. It’s more like saying, “If you want to be yourself, this is not the way things happen.” That’s part of the discussion. And also, there are discussions about attitudes, such as the relationship between boys and girls. There’s even talk about homosexuality. When we say that we don’t talk about sex, we can still say that homosexuality exists and that it is not a crime. There are little things like that that we need to talk about. We also talk about drugs. That means that we’re in a landscape where everywhere there are drugs and it’s not good drugs, it’s shit! Because now there’s starting to be crack in every street corner. And then, worse than that, there’s another crack shit coming and they’re the ones who are going to be the victims. So, we also do prevention. I’m working a lot on that. And these are discussions that seem to me as important as making music. And that’s the role we take on. But if you don’t take on that role, what are you going to get? We’re not going to make them into animals making music, and then you take away the score, and it’s: nothing works anymore. You have to go further. I don’t have a score, I don’t have it, there’s no score [laughter]. The discussion is not prepared, it is done as needed, like when, all of a sudden, you have a child who is going to arrive disturbed for X reasons. Or on the contrary, because they are not only disturbed, you have a kid who can arrive in a fantastic top form, he has achieved something, well we are going to discuss it, we are going to share it with everyone. And then you have one or the other who has a big problem, a big worry, so we are going to talk about it. In any case, we don’t say: “No, no, wait, we’re not social workers.” I don’t know what that means. So, you have to be a little bit ready to listen and to serve the people in front of you. I don’t think we’re in a situation where we’re giving a course. We’re not going to give a half-hour class and then go home, that’s not how we see things.

Nicolas S.:

Let’s go back over the whole story. So, the round of loopers, the workshops on Tuesday afternoon with Lucas, the external musician paid by the Lyon Conservatory. Lucas, who is not part of the Orchestre National Urbain, what is his role?

Giacomo S. C.:

He’s there during the residency because he’s looking after all these children. He acts as an intermediary and he ensures continuity – because if you have them once a year in a residency you won’t see them all the time – by developing things with them. Between the first and second residency, a one-year time span, they evolve, they continue. That is to say that we invited the children to come here, it was Lucas who brought them, to work with other groups of their age here, to program them in the Crapul festival at the Kraspek [a concert place in Lyon; Crapul for Carrefour des Rencontres Artistiques Pluriculturelles Urbaines de Lyon], it was the first time they were going to perform, they were coming down from La Duchère. So, what was fabulous was – I would have liked to have had all the politicians present – to have had veiled women, their parents who came to Kraspek, it’s not bad at all. And then they played. But they played a real project, it wasn’t: “Ah! Between the little Arabs of our neighborhood and then the violets, oranges, of people of all colors, we did something.” No, that’s not it. It’s: they worked their brains out to make a creation together, right, and then they found themselves on stage freaking out and saying: “Well, we’re in a place, we don’t really understand this sardine tin, what it is…” It was crowded up front, and all of a sudden, they played. And then it was frrrrt, the trick… And Lucas’s role was to think about how the interaction with the young people from here and his own is going, how we, on our side, make our people work, and how he, on his side, makes his own work so that it comes together. And so that’s how this research is conducted. For me, it was completely successful. And this year, during the Crapul festival at the Kraspek this week, those we worked with from La Duchère will perform on the last day. They’re going to play with headliners of former students, for example Balir, who is thirty-seven or thirty-eight years old, who came to Cra.p, when he was fifteen, and who has a career now, so I called him and he agreed to perform. The idea of bringing in a guy like that, who is known in this milieu at the youth level, is also not to give them illusions, but to show that in fact it is possible to do it. This link seems important to me, so that over time, it won’t be worn out. What interests me is to have Aïcha and all these young girls who have grown up come here next year, for example, so that we can offer them training (they don’t have the means to pay for it): 1st, 2nd, 3rd cycles, as we do with everyone, after getting them into the DEMi – if there is no more DEM, all the better, because that’s starting to tire me out – to see at what level they will arrive with a real group in which they will play and why not enter higher education program, present themselves for a diploma course and leave with a degree. This so that they, in turn, in their neighborhood, can redevelop things in connection with the conservatory. Thus, finally, we will be able to offer young people from a deprived community some work. In a neighborhood like La Duchère today – I remind you and you can keep the recording and say it very loudly – the amplified popular music [Musiques actuelles amplifiées] is a disaster area, because some people have put a monopoly on a certain place, and no one goes there and certainly no citizen of La Duchère. That’s the kind of struggle I’m waging… if I manage to do it before I get killed….

 

III. Cra.p, An Art Center

Giacomo S. C.:

The Cra.p has now become an art center because the way of working there is completely different from what we used to do before. It’s no longer just a training center. There are workshops in which students, people and groups have a lot of autonomy. And then we signed agreements with the diffusion partners. So, everyone performs a lot, because that’s what I missed the most until now.

Jean-Charles F.:

For you, getting people to perform is not part of their training program?

Giacomo S. C.:

Maybe it’s information, or disinformation, I don’t know, but it’s not just about workshops anymore, even if they continue to be very powerful moments over one or two days. Then we provide spaces where everyone should be able to work independently. After three months, we can already feel a considerable change in commitment. It’s really better, and it also allows us to take on more people.

Jean-Charles F.:

I think that all teaching ought to increasingly take this form.

Giacomo S. C.:

I think it’s obvious now, we can see that the rest is not working well. Well, it works for a while, until a certain age, we’ll say, children until a certain age, and after that, it doesn’t work anymore, so people leave and disappear.

Nicolas S.:

You say that the Cra.p is no longer a training center but an art center. So pedagogy, training, what is it for you?

Giacomo S. C.:

In fact, for me there are two things:

  1. In the first place, if we put things back in perspective, I am not a teacher, I don’t have any teacher status, I haven’t had teacher training, education training or anything like that. Rather, there’s a recognition of the work of sharing that I’ve done. Pedagogy I don’t know if that’s what I do. I was told that I’ m doing pedagogy but I didn’t even know that. It’s more about making music, doing things and sharing them. In fact, I lost that a little bit for a few years, hiding behind some kind of label, it wasn’t even me who found it. But I was told I was a pedagogue dude and all that, and it was becoming a little too institutional and too formal for me. I think that for me and the team I work with, it lost meaning in the actions we were able to carry out.
  2. All of a sudden, I consider myself more like an artist-musician, but without pretension. This means that it’s my job to share things, a passion and a job I do rather than to conduct a certified academic pedagogy. There is no certificate of what one does, and that’s what interests me, because certification makes me more and more afraid when I see what is going on in my pedagogical environment. Because, for years I was one of the people who worked in the excitement at the birth of amplified popular music until the opening of the diploma course and I saw shifts that worry me much more today than they reassure me. That’s why I don’t want to continue with this kind of reflection or this kind of work. And there, every time I go somewhere (I come back from Morocco for example) and I meet people, I play too, so I make people see something of what I do, and I get them to play a lot. The idea, in fact, is to bring them right away into an artistic project rather than a project where pedagogy is more important than art. The idea is to put people in situations even if they are not artists, so it changes the approach we have with people, we perceive them in a different way.

Two weeks ago, I experienced some pretty amazing things, I still put all the people I was working with on stage, some unexpected things happened, for me, but then even more for them. There were people with psychological problems who were unable to speak and putting them into an artistic project process unlocked a lot of things. I think it’s more interesting to do it that way. If I had talked to them about pedagogy, I would have locked them even more into their problem. Here’s the philosophical thinking, it tends to go more in that direction, it’s to say that it’s not a mutation, but a return to when I was much younger than that: we were more, as a group, sharing things, rather than as pseudo-teachers who tell people how to do things. Coming back to those sources, that’s something completely fascinating for me. This is why I say today that Cra.p is not an educational center – moreover this has never been the case, these are only headings that imposed themselves at a certain moment, but in fact this is not true, it was not the right thing to say – but it is an art center, a meeting place for multicultural artistic crossbreeding. It is a place open to many things that does not lock itself into a single specialization. I remember when, Jean-Charles, you said that Giacomo is a guy who makes people work in rap but who doesn’t do rap himself, and that’s a little bit like that, going back to the idea that we’re not in an absolute specialization of pedagogy, it’s open to a lot of things. In any case, we can see that there is a permanent recycling of the art, and so we must avoid closing ourselves up.

Jean-Charles F.:

Just one point, in an ironic way…

Giacomo S. C.:

Yes please.

Jean-Charles F.:

Doesn’t everything you say have to do with pedagogy?

Giacomo S. C.:

Maybe, yes, maybe that’s the word.

Jean-Charles F.:

What you say is based on a long experience that has been passionately devoted to pedagogy to a very large extent. Moreover, I agree 100% with what you say.

Nicolas S.:

We agree!

Giacomo S. C.:

Yes, but then maybe it’s the deviation of the jargon.

Jean-Charles F.:

Well, the jargon, everyone has some! But it may also be a question of institutionalization, of the influence of those who control the institutions.

Giacomo S. C.:

But right now, where are the obstacles? What is the attitude of the people you face when you tell them that we’re going to make them work on an educational project? And how are they going to react when you tell them on the contrary that we’re going to put them in a situation where they’re going to embark on an artistic project? How will they feel? You, you have a rather powerful experience in this, so you have the rhetoric and the quick understanding of the reactivity, I’m not sure that ordinary people, younger, who have less experience, and who are not completely in the field, have the same reaction, it’ s more those that I deal with.

Jean-Charles F.:

It’s obvious. You’re not going to start by meeting people and telling them that we’re going to piss them off for six months with workshops.

Giacomo S. C.:

Yes, but you can piss them off and tell them right away that they’re going to learn things first and only then will they be able to fulfill their artistic dreams.

Jean-Charles F.:

Yes, absolutely.

Giacomo S. C.:

Yes, there is some pedagogy. But I never said that I was a pedagogue, it was the others who said it for me. In the beginning I didn’t even know what it meant, to tell you that I was quite ignorant. The trick is to share things, but as I experienced it when I was a blue-collar worker: there were old people who taught me the trade, I was an apprentice; well, I didn’t have a book and they told me, “Here, we’re going to make this thing, we’ll show you and you’re going to put your hands in it.” It was very manual, and I understood a lot of things thanks to the old people because otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to make it my trade.

Jean-Charles F.:

In conservatories we find the case of people who are suspicious of pedagogy and who put the emphasis on the long-term artistic project, but who tell their students that in the meantime they must practice scales. It is not enough to say that one is going to make an artistic project from the outset without there being mechanisms to achieve it.

Giacomo S. C.:

I would rather say that we are here to help with the experience we have, because the idea of “training” also bothers me a lot. You have to help give birth to an artistic project to a person, and to what he or she is himself or herself. I don’t know how to do scales, because I haven’t learned to do that. I know there are people who do it very well, but we’ll never do it. We don’t do repeats, we don’t learn music by retaking over a piece, I don’t believe in it at all.

Jean-Charles F.:

I didn’t say all this to imply that this is what you are doing, but to try to further reflect on what you are telling us and start a debate with you.

Giacomo S. C.:

My approach is mainly based on the mirror of what people send back to me and what they ask me, and from there to take into consideration where they are at. This means that it is impossible to build oneself alone, I don’t believe in it at all, it doesn’t exist anyway. And if today I have tools, and I have a lot of work to do in this field, and I’m quite happy about it, satisfied with what’s happening – I can never be satisfied enough – it’s thanks to all the people I’ve met over the last 30 years, they’re the ones who influenced me, it’s not me who influenced them, that’s obvious. In fact, when you want to try to keep that, it’s less comfortable, because all of a sudden, when you make that choice, you get away from a lot of things: for example, you quit teaching at a national music school because you don’t agree with the current pedagogical behavior, you don’t work with just anyone, you get completely marginalized, you become an electron completely outside the cultural world. It can go a long way; it can even go as far as not being programmed in certain places because we are against it. That’s one way of looking at it. But where I’m quite satisfied, well, quite happy today, is that I see that in fact there is a much younger population that thinks more and more in this way, and that everything else is becoming quite “has been.” It’s a bit my way of thinking from the beginning that is being questioned: I got caught in the mousetrap, now I have to get out of it [laughter].

Jean-Charles F.:

This is my fault.

Giacomo S. C.:

No, it’s not the case. But you were not alone, I will provide some names: Gérard Authelain and Camille Roy.

Nicolas S.:

You were a whole gang. What’s interesting, if I pick up on what you’re saying, is that you have a way of naming things that is hyper situated in the place and time you are, this in interaction with the people you’re talking to. And it’s precisely because you manage to have fairly precise descriptions of ways of organizing things, as you’ve just done at La Duchère, that you can develop a discourse in relation to acts. I would say that what you are doing is research, in relation to what I am working on. Then the people from teacher’s training centers will be able to say that it’s pedagogy because that’s their word, and others will say that it’s an artistic practice, each group of people can use their own key words.

Giacomo S. C.:

Of course. I leave it up to the people to give the label. When Eddy Schepens tells me that I am not an artist, but a craftsman, I answer him: “If you want.” I don’t question his own way of looking at things.

Nicolas S.:

And then do you take the proposals into account and try to see what it allows you to say and do?

Giacomo S. C.:

Yes of course. I think that if I can reflect today, and see things from different aspects, it’s because I have experienced all these things through actions. Otherwise I would not be as comfortable – and I am not quite there yet – I can see that there is a transformation to be accomplished, one cannot separate oneself from the movement of the population, from what it is experiencing politically, from what it is experiencing socially. I don’t think you can separate culture from that, so it’s necessary to constantly renew thinking in connection with what’s going on. What bothers me about the pedagogical side of the word “pedagogical”, where it has its weight, is that it’s a method: there are some who adopt methods that are 150 years old, that’s fine, but 150 years ago we didn’t live as we do today. All these backward-looking people bore me deeply because that’s why it doesn’t work, and that’s why this word pedagogy has unfortunately changed a bit. The word pedagogy bothers me a lot today, and that’s why I’ve completely discarded it. It’s a rather easy solution to pretend to do pedagogy, in order to put oneself on a pedestal. Being a pedagogue should mean that it means managing others, and that’s not insignificant. It gives power over others, and that’s what worries me a bit about the use of this word today.

I have a passion for many things, whether it is music, painting or any other art. But it’s above all when it comes to the meeting of the arts that I see things that completely annoy me. I tell myself that we are going to hit a wall: there is nothing, or very few interesting things coming out. We can see that it is a recuperation by the artist’s vision full of glitter and flicker bling-bling. It’s too black and white for me all this, and then there’s nothing else around, it doesn’t relate to reality. If we take music as a case in point, it’s really a catastrophe today, so what should we do next? Recently, I was in Morocco and I filmed a band playing on the Medina square in Meknes, with rotten equipment. They were surrounded by people, it was full to bursting point, with veiled women, everyone was dancing, it was good playing, it was very roots [in English in the text]. So, I said to myself, this is the truth of artistic communication. It was of Islamophobia day, so I filmed it and I sent it to the whole world, to France from everywhere, and everyone responded that it was great. I thought, yes, it was great, except that when you see someone in a veil it pisses you off too. You just have to remember that we’re actually experiencing cultural shifts that are quite interesting. Today, I’m paying attention to labels that can lock us into a caste. When I am told “You are a teacher”, I answer “No”, I am not a teacher, because I don’t have the status of a teacher. The headings, the titles, the labels, that’s what hides the whole problem a little bit. It’s too easy to manipulate. The titles we give people, that worries me a lot.

 

IV. Political Politics and Citizen Politics

Jean-Charles F.:

How do you see the context of Cra.p, today, in relation to the political context in general?

Giacomo S. C.:

I could say that right now I have one position, and on Sunday I might have another [the Sunday in question was the day of the European elections] [laughter]. I’m doubly annoyed, because I could have escaped to Italy, but it’s worse there. So, I’m caught in a stranglehold.

If I look back over the past thirty years, well, there have been some very chaotic moments politically, because what’s quite interesting sociologically on that period is that we’ve actually had a lot of changes: we’ve had several governments, several attitudes, people running local communities providing grants who have changed, it’s been a bit of a roller coaster ride, and now it’s starting to stabilize. But it’s stabilizing because, since I made the proposal with the Orchestre National Urbaini for undertaking such work, all of a sudden, things are really opening up, and I find that politicians are taking a serious look at the problems. But it is linked to a context, for me, much more worrying, in other words that there is a form of global radicalization of thought, and not just of religious thought. I’m talking about global thoughts, I’m not just talking about Islam or anything, or even Christians or Jews. I’m not talking about religion, I’m talking about a context of mindsets that are changing. In fact, it’s a mess all the same: the proposal I made with the Orchestre National Urbain called into question the ways of doing things, especially ours, in relation to the people we reach – people who very often have no access to anything. But all of a sudden, politicians take hold of this kind of proposal, even today, they are very fond of it. So, in what I call political politics, an exchange is happening, leaders are finally starting to think and understand things. Because during the thirty years we fought, they didn’t understand all the time. They are beginning to understand, but not all of them. I think it’s an interesting development, but it’s also because we have a lot of arguments to present today. It means that we started from a situation where we had nothing. The State authorities [the DRACi] didn’t know where to put us, so we had to create a new box which consists of saying that the aesthetics linked to urban music are of vital importance, and this box has finally been taken into account by politicians. But it has taken more than twenty-five years of struggle so that today – we’ll say since about five or six years ago – we are more peaceful and serene at work. For me, there is political politics, that is to say, politicians, and then there is what I am going to call citizen politics: it is this one that interests me, because it is those who are on the street who are doing politics, not those who say, “That’s the way to do it,” in any case, they don’t do anything. And there, I have a lot of doubts about citizen politics at the moment. I have a lot of doubts, because I have the good fortune to work with both people from higher education and people from the lower regression. When you go to a neighborhood where there’s nothing left, it’s a no-man’s land, there are only lawless zones, even the cops don’t go there. You’re going to try to install things culturally, but there’s a gap that has grown so wide, such a big divide, that makes some people wonder why we come, they don’t see the point, and that’s what worries me the most. In fact, they no longer understand the cultural interest that we bring to them and what kind of socialization development this will produce. But those who don’t understand are not the people in the neighborhood but those who are in charge around it. For example, some leaders among social workers have created a real divide. And then there’s another gap that worries me more and more: in fact, I try to do regular work with people from higher education, who are in the educational training centers, but there’s no way to make connections. In other words, we try to put things in place in connection with these neighborhood populations, but people don’t feel like it, they don’t want to do it. These are the aspects of citizen politics that worry me a lot, in fact, we’re going right into the wall. I’m afraid that in a short period of time it’s going to produce uninteresting results, because there’s such a strong split. In the teacher training centers, there is a lack of reflection around questions concerning cultural practices in the deprived neighborhoods, the links that we are trying to develop between the Cra.p and these institutions are not working well. There are forms of refusal that are expressed, where all of a sudden you feel that one is singling out a public by saying “Well, that’s good, but that’s not a culture I’m interested in,” and that’s felt physically.

And I think we had a hump in the 1990s: in 1989 exactly, when the Cra.p association was born, there was such a big gap between aesthetics! In 1992 or 1993, things were happening, and we were heading towards a rather interesting ground. For example, there was that famous meeting in 1998 between rappers and classical musicians from Cefedemi, we really had gone up a step. For me, now, we’re going in the other direction, it’s completely fallen off. Gangrene has already taken its place. It will take a long time to get out of this hole. And I think that if we don’t gather more forces to reflect on this, we are heading for difficult times; but I’ve been talking about this problem for thirty years. So, from the point of view of politics, all of a sudden, politicians are very fond of any proposal along these lines: we now have a lot of support for the project of the National Urban Orchestra. We even signed an agreement with Grand Lyon Agglomeration, a kind of labeling. The Prefecture is very supportive, as is the city of Lyoni.

If we consider Cra.p’s cultural policy from the beginning, it was to say: “We’re going to open our doors to people who are nowhere, and see how we can bring them through diverse and varied encounters to enter higher education.” At one point, we thought about how these kids, one day, could go to higher education institutions. I’m still fighting on this, but for me, it’s not yet won. With the Orchestre National Urbain, we have put it back on track, again we’ve created trouble, which has consisted of saying: “What do we do, do we go or don’t we go?” We’re starting to get interesting results, because the fact that we’re working in many neighborhoods and districts of the region and throughout the whole Agglomeration, has allowed us to invite young people who make music and animation to enter into training here at the Cra.p. Thus, several of them came to work with us this year in order to bring them to the State Diplomai, the famous diploma that would allow them to work and be considered on an equal footing with the others. It’s working well. But it goes further than that: it is also how these people meet each other. I’ll take an example of a young person we spotted a little over a year ago during a master class in the Lyon 8th arrondissement. As we were talking, we felt that he had things to say and that he was already experimenting things on his own. He told us: “How do you deal with all these people who have jobs in activity leadership with a minimum of qualifications, because, as they don’t make some sacred music, as their practice is considered as underclass music, you can’t give them a diploma.” It is this kind of state of affairs that revolts me. I told him to come and work with us, he’s been with us for a year now and it’s going really well. We’re going to take him to a diploma program, in the hope that he’ll get a diploma through a training program in relation to the work he does on Wednesdays with the kids from the 8th arrondissement neighborhood in Lyon. When I say that it goes further than that, I mean that he himself meets a lot of other people here, and not only those who are part of the culture he practices. What interests me is to see how he can work with people who come from classical music, contemporary music, jazz, etc. When I report this on the outcome indicators, it can only be beneficial at the moment vis-à-vis the political decision-makers who help us.

Coming back to the question of the history of current politics – citizen politics and political politics – what has reversed now is less concern about the decision-makers, because they have understood, but more concern about the public itself. Since we are in direct contact with the Prefecture, we are happy to be able to meet its delegate. So all of a sudden they are interested: there is a result.

It’s not that there is no expression from those who live in the deprived neighborhoods, it’s that there is nothing. If they do it they do it in their corner. We just did a week’s residency at the MJC [Youth Cultural Center] of Rilleux-la-Pape. Oddly enough, we didn’t have many children, and all those we tried to hook up, to come and rehearse what they wanted to do on their own, stayed outside the MJC, but didn’t want to go inside. But this was not because of our presence, it was something that already existed before. There is a gap between all the cultural places in the neighborhoods and the people who live there. And since when has this gap existed? Since the birth of SMACi – and I don’t spit on the birth of SMAC. I myself knew what there was before the SMACs, I was one of the people who did a lot of work in all the MCJsi in the region: I used to leave with a flyer, with a sampler, with a drum machine, etc., and with a colleague, we used to do workshops in all the MCJs, we had a fairly large network. In those days, kids would gladly come and take part. When all of a sudden, the labeling of the Scènes des Musiques Actuelles Amplifiées, the famous SMAC, was launched, there was a kind of call for air for a public coming from outside the neighborhood. Obviously, it’s much more interesting to go to a SMAC now, because when you’re doing rock or any kind of music, you’d better go there. Before this public didn’t go there, because it was the MJCs. There was then a much more popular aspect of culture in the MCJs and all of a sudden there was a kind of elitism, even in rock, which worries me a lot, and it pushes all the minorities aside. So, let’s take some very simple examples: there are a lot of guys who were doing hip hop dance workshops in the MCJs and got fired. That means that when you fire one person, the whole population goes with who gets fired. It’s a phenomenon that goes back to the 1960s and 1970s, when they put all the minorities back in their place, because they provided chicken coops for them, they put them back in, they get them stuck in there, they build great facilities in the community where they live and they don’t have access to them. It is a whole other population that comes from outside that uses the place. That’s where the gap is. That’s an empirical observation. It’s more than shameful when I see that! That’s why, when I come with the Orchestre National Urbain, I’m not always welcome! It’s war! When I arrive I say: “These kids, we have to take them, we have to bring them back, and then they have to have a job; because they are from there (it’s not only because they are from there), they have the right like the others, they are taxpayers.” And there, to make people understand that, well, it’s a crazy job! It’s a crazy job! And when I talk about this gap to young people who don’t have financial problems, who live normally and more comfortably for some, and when they are asked to make an effort to make things change, very few come forward. So that’s why I say we’re in a regression. Finally, it’s a loop, we have a real obsessive-compulsive disorder. I feel like I’m fourteen again when, in the Salle des Rancy MJC, I was told at the time: “Come and help us sand canoes and kayaks”. With all the friends, the local losers, we sanded canoes and kayaks. And when we had to leave in June for the Ardèche, all the little bourgeois of the area left and we stayed here. That’s the canoe-kayak effect. And so we are in the process of returning to this situation. That’s what worries me today. That’s why it’s malfunctioning all over the place. In fact it’s very simple, it’s not new, that’s why there are kids who fall under the grip of the fundamentalists of any religious or political community, or with drugs and extremes, leading them to say: “Well, here I have a task; over there I don’t have a task. There I don’t have a job.” Because there is no job either. Myself, I’m not far from quitting, I’ve been doing this for more than thirty years. It’s not that I want to do anything else, but when I retire what am I going to do? Am I going to drop everything? Am I going to run away? No. I want to do more things, but I also want more people to worry a little bit. There’s still a fracture, whether we like it or not. And that’s why everyone up there says, “But no, the kids from the neighborhoods have to go to higher education.” That’s the fashion these days. But it’s not just a fad, you have to think more about that.

Jean-Charles F.:

Yes, because on the government side about higher education and the Grandes Ecoles we hear the opposite narrative: meritocracy must take precedence over this aspect you describe.

Nicolas S.:

In what you have developed, there is the idea of a ditch, a gap. The pretext for our meeting was the idea of “Breaking down the walls.” In the ditch, there is a kind of depth and width, and you also use the term gap. Does that change things, a little bit, that formulation or not?

Giacomo S. C.:

With the wall, you don’t see what’s on the other side. For me with the gap there is a hole, but you still see what’s happening on the other side. That’s how I see it. If I go back to our history, in May 1989 we created the Cra.p, and in November the Berlin Wall came down. All of a sudden it gave us a kick in the ass, and I think that strongly reinforced our motivations. We were being challenged as well. All our walls were graphitized and a symbolism was set in motion. And the story of the wall, the walls that there are now, the idea of bringing them down, yes, I’m for it, but at the same time, what’s behind them? The gap is rather visible and how do you build a bridge so that it will pass over this hole? What bridge? What passageway? And there isn’t one. Here [the interview took place at the Cra.p headquarters, in the Guillotière neighborhood in Lyon], we are in a neighborhood that is, I remind you, on the other side of the bridge [Guillotière is separated by a bridge on the Rhône to what is called in Lyon the “presqu’île” (peninsula)]. There is also a café called “L’autre côté du pont” [The other side of the bridge]. It is not for nothing that we are called “The other side of the bridge.” I was born there. What you have to know is that on the other side of the bridge, therefore, the “presqu’île”, there it was absolute comfort, in every sense of the word, and here it was absolute shit in every sense of the word. Because here it was one of the most rotten neighborhoods: there were slums everywhere. My father when he arrived was living in a room in a rotten shanty town that went all the way to La Part-Dieu. When I was a kid, there was still the military infantry barracks, even the cavalry barracks, in the place of La Part-Dieu, and all around you had small shacks with small factories, it was filthy as hell. At first there were only Italian emigrants, because one of them came, and he made everyone come. After 1962, the Algerians arrived, and so on. But we are on the other side of the bridge. Once again, it is the bridge that makes this connection. And we were always looking on that other side. And when you reached a certain age you could go to the other side of the bridge. But when you would go there, it was to smash other gangs’ faces in, and often on December 8 [in Lyon, this is a festive day: “La Fête des Lumières”]. Because it was a different world there. I’m more interested in these kinds of divides than in the idea of the wall, because the wall, for me, hides something. In fact, it’s good to be able to see if what is opposite is reachable so that you can consider doing something. There you go, I rather have these concepts of gap/divide and bridge in my vision.

The gap comes from what I said before: there was a time when we got to do things. We went uphill, and then wham! it cracked again. And why? I’m not a sociologist, but I think we should certainly look into how it is that all of a sudden, we find ourselves faced with a phenomenon of decline, and that it’s always a minority that ends up on the streets! As we have all the kids from the Painlevé School with us all year round [the Cra.p premises are in this elementary school] – we study this a little – we see some extremely interesting reactions: it’s a school where they welcome everyone, even the Gypsies, they don’t discriminate, even people from the CLIS (Class for School Inclusion), mentally handicapped people who are mixed with the other children. It’s the children’s behavior that interests us, and that’s where the problem starts: when you see for example a little Gypsy girl sitting down, she gets up, there’s never another one to sit in her place. Yet they are first, second and third generation children, people of color. They don’t sit where the Gypsy girl sat because she is plague-stricken. There are a lot of attitudes like that, so what do we do? What do we do with these kids? Because the problem we have in some neighborhoods, for example, is that there is homophobia and racism. If we reminded them of what their parents experienced in terms of racism, I don’t know if they would understand. There is a radicalization that is very, very, very disturbing, there is a fascism close to Nazism in the neighborhoods. Because we’ve created all that: if you leave people alone and you don’t give them anything anymore, what do they do? They go crazy! And I think that’s it, we’ve kind of given up on cultural exchange at all levels. Jacques Moreau (director of the Cefedem AuRAi), last year, came here, at Cra.p, with Colombian musicians: they were talking about the problems they had with the public in Colombia, which is obviously not on the same scale as here, we don’t live in the same country. But I told them: “You certainly have a problem, but it’s not the same as ours.” We have such a strong colonial past in France that today we have to deal with all the communities that are coming, and with those that are already here. So it’s both a richness and a hair-splitting headache that is not so easy to put in motion. But it has to be done, and if we don’t do it, we’re dead. And that’s what’s happening. We don’t do it. National Education has given up, completely, nothing happens at the schools anymore. I have kids who go to school, when I see what they bring me I think they are crazy. As I said before, in the circle of social centers, it’s dead. What do we do? We do education for only certain people in the social centers. And today you have thousands of music schools in the social centers. And on the other side we have the MJCs. We have a stratum, like this, boxes to put the population in. I say it’s not bad, but what’s the connection? Okay, we work like this because we can’t put everyone in the same place anyway. But is there a link between these institutions? Is there a dialogue between them? This is where the heart of the political question lies: today these links do not exist. I keep fighting and telling them this. We did a lot of work for two years at Pôle Neuf, in the ninth arrondissement of Lyon, we work a lot with the ninth, all over La Duchère, and Pôle Neuf is the MJC Saint-Rambert. Saint-Rambert is a quarter where it’s perhaps the most affluent area of Lyon, where all the great footballers have their houses, and all that… Next to it is the completely destitute workers’ cité of Vergoin. A study was carried out where for example – it was not me who did it, it was the people who reported it to us – it was shown that there were families with one or two children who declared 3000/4000€ per year in taxes. Per year! So you can imagine the problem: they have 3000 bucks to make the year, right? It’s not bad! And here we have carried out a work, precisely, to try to bring people together, so that they can meet, always on the artistic project, that is to say with the Orchestre National Urbain. We tried to create synergies between people and genres, all aesthetics and all populations combined, to create a great orchestra like the Orchestre National Urbain, to do things and to continue. We’re quite frustrated, because we haven’t managed to do it. Impossible. We have a long way to go! Because there is a gap that is so violent: neither the Social Center nor the MJC have had – by their authority – a high enough interesting commitment for something to exist. And from then on it was war between the Social Center and the MJC, and they are in the same building! Well, when I talk about links, I get angry. Recently at a meeting with politicians, elected officials, I said that we have in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes one of the most interesting cultural poles. There’s a Cefedem, there’s a CFMI, there’s a CNSMi, there are grandes écoles, there are lots of associations that do things… But what’s the link between everyone, there’s no link! I signed a convention with everyone, I’m a bit of a mercenary. So there is one who says to me: “Ah, you work with them? Ah, you shouldn’t work with that one. You have to work with that one.” But I don’t care. The answer I give is, “What is the pathway of a citizen who comes, a young citizen, or even a not-so-young citizen, who comes to register?” How do we do it? And then after some politicians told me this kind of bullshit: “Yes, but you can’t take people from such and such a place, because we finance that place.” Well, they keep telling us not to do communitarianism, but they just create one, a segmentation of space. Concerning the Cra.p, I’ve heard unacceptable things, that you need to have 100% of local people, otherwise you don’t get any support. There are gaps like that. For my part, I refuse to go and establish something in a neighborhood that is completely isolated from everything, to work only with people from this neighborhood. That would be a big mistake for me. I’d rather be here in this working-class neighborhood and have people come from all sides, because they move around, they meet each other, and it makes for much more interesting things.

Jean-Charles F.:

Thank you Giacomo for all these very fruitful exchanges.

Nicolas S.:

And thank you for going into so much detail about activities and reflections that remain mostly invisible. It is very interesting and useful to explain them.

 


1. Today, the Orchestre National Urbain is composed of : Giacomo Spica Capobianco (1 string Spicaphone, Voice, Spoken Word), Lucien 16 s (Machines, Spoken Word, Human Beat Box), Thècle (Singer, Voice, Computer Music, Spoken Word, Human Beat Box), Sabrina Boukhenous (Dance), Dilo (Drum set), Joël Castaingts (Trombone), Selim Peñaranda (Cello), Dindon (Sound, Spoken Word) et Philipp Elstermann (Lights).

 

2. About Giacomo Spica Capobianco’s experience and the Orchestre National Urbain, see also « L’O.N.U. (Orchestre National Urbain) à Lyon. Musique, quartiers et rencontre des cultures, une démocratie urbaine réinvestie [Music, District, Cultures meeting, an Urban Democracy Re-invested] » in Enseigner la Musique n°13&14, Lyon : Cefedem AuRA, 2019,p. 489-500.
In this journal, Giacomo Spica Capobianco details the workshops he organized in psychiatric hospital (p. 101-130).

3. Enseigner la musique is a publication of the Cefedem AuRA (Lyon). See Enseigner la musique N°8, 2005, p. 66-68 et p. 127.

4. A television show, in which young people perform before a jury of professionals.

ONU, Orchestre National Urbain [Urban National Orchestra], an ensemble founded in 2012 by Giacomo Spica Capobianco (See the first part of this transcription).
The City of Lyon, South-Est of France, had a population of more than 500,000 within less than 20 sq mi. Since 2015, it have formed the Metropolis of Lyon, called Grand Lyon with 58 suburban municipalities (a population of around 1,400,000), a directly elected metropolitan authority now in charge of most urban issues.
A prefecture designates the departments of the prefectural administration headed by a prefect, as well as the building that houses them. It represents the State in the Departments or Regions.
The Drac, Direction régionale des affaires culturelles, is an institution representing the State in the Region, in charge of supervising cultural policies.
The Metropolis of Lyon, called Grand Lyon, is a directly elected metropolitan authority in charge of most urban issues, formed with the town of Lyon and 58 suburban municipalities (a population of around 1,400,000).
The City of Lyon, South-Est of France, had a population of more than 500,000 within less than 20 sq mi. Since 2015, it have formed the Metropolis of Lyon, called Grand Lyon with 58 suburban municipalities (a population of around 1,400,000), a directly elected metropolitan authority now in charge of most urban issues.
A prefecture designates the departments of the prefectural administration headed by a prefect, as well as the building that houses them. It represents the State in the Departments or Regions.
The Drac, Direction régionale des affaires culturelles is an institution representing the State in the Region, in charge of supervising cultural policies.
MJC, Maisons des Jeunes et de la Culture, [The Youth and Cultural Centers] are non profit associations which link youth and culture within a popular education perspective.
CRR, for Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional [Regional Conservatory].
DE, Diplôme d’État [State Diploma] of music teacher, is a higher education diploma (Bachelor). It’s the most common diploma for teaching instrumental or vocal music in schools of music (conservatories but not only).
DEM, Diplôme d’études musicales [Musical Studies Diploma], is a pre-professional diploma obtained at the end of a course in a music school.
Cefedem (Centre de Formation des Enseignants de la Musique) AuRA (Auvergne Rhône-Alpes) is a higher musical education institution accredited and funded by French ministry of Culture, to train musical teachers.
CFMI, Centre de Formation des Musiciens Intervenants à l’école [especially in elementary school], proposes different programs that allow musicians of diversified background to work in artistic and cultural education.
CNSM(D), Conservatoire national supérieur de musique (et de danse), high education institution for music and dance. There are two CNSMD in France, Paris and Lyon.
CFMI, Centre de Formation des Musiciens Intervenants à l’école is a music teacher’s training program for musicians who are going to be in residence in primary schools. It proposes different programs that allow musicians of diversified background to work in artistic and cultural education.
Cefedem (Centre de Formation des Enseignants de la Musique) AuRA (Auvergne Rhône-Alpes) is a higher musical education institution accredited and funded by French ministry of Culture, to train musical teachers.
Short for “instruments”, the electronic sounds that accompany a text like in rap.
The label Scène de Musiques ACtuelles [Popular Music on Stages], corresponds, since 1998, to the program of the French ministry of Culture towards the promotion of today’s popular music.

 


 

List of institutions mentioned in this text

Cefedem AuRA (Centre de Formation des Enseignants de la Musique Auvergne Rhône-Alpes): higher musical education institution accredited and funded by French ministry of Culture in 1990 to deliver a DE, Diplôme d’État [State Diploma], for music teachers. Cefedem AuRA is a professional ressources and higher education music center. It trains instrumental and vocal teachers, with an equal balance between artistic capacities and pedagogical competences and the perspectives on the musician for society, the community musician.

CFMI (Centre de Formation des Musiciens Intervenants à l’école): music teacher’s training program for musicians who are going to be in residence in primary schools. Attached to the University Lyon II, the Lyon CFMI is devoted to the training of accomplished musicians of diversified background. It proposes different programs that allow them to work in artistic and cultural education.

Cnsmd (Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse): high education institution for music and dance. There are two Cnsmd in France, Paris and Lyon.

Cra.p (Centre d’art – musiques urbaines/musiques électroniques [Art Center – Urban Music/Electronic Music]): center in Lyon, founded in 1989 by Giacomo Spica Capobianco.

CRR (Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional [Regional Conservatory]): see for example the one in Lyon.

Drac (Direction régionale des affaires culturelles): institution representing the State in the Region, in charge of supervising cultural policies.

ENM de Villeurbanne: founded in 1980 by the composer Antoine Duhamel, the National School of Music, Dance and Theatre of Villeurbanne is well-known for the diversity of its programs in music (classical, contemporary, Baroque, traditional, jazz, popular song, rock, and amplified music), in dance (African, Baroque, contemporary, hip-hop and Oriental), and in theatre. The ENM is a “Conservatoire à rayonnement départemental” (CRD), with an habilitation to deliver a DEM, Diplôme d’études musicales [Musical Studies Diploma].

Métropole de Lyon: political disctict also called Grand Lyon. “It is a directly elected metropolitan authority encompassing the city of Lyon and most of its suburbs. It has jurisdiction as both a department and a métropole, taking the territory out of the purview of the department of Rhône. It had a population of 1,385,927 in 2017” <en.wikipedia/Lyon_Metroplis>.

MJC (Maison des Jeunes et de la Culture): the Youth and Cultural Centers are non profit associations which link youth and culture within a popular education perspective. <fr.wikipedia/MJC>.

ONU (Orchestre National Urbain [Urban National Orchestra]): an ensemble founded in 2012 by Giacomo Spica Capobianco.

Préfecture: A prefecture designates the departments of the prefectural administration headed by a prefect, as well as the building that houses them. It represents the State in the Departments or Regions. For the Lyon area, see Préfecture du Rhône.

SMAC: the label Scène de Musiques ACtuelles [Popular Music on Stages], corresponds, since 1998, to the program of the French Ministry of Culture towards the promotion of today’s popular music.

Ville de Lyon: The City of Lyon, South-Est of France, had a population of more than 500,000 within less than 20 sq mi <en.wikipedia/Lyon>.

 

Michel Lebreton – English

Return to the French original text :
Français

 


 

Walls and Edges Crossing
the Time and Space of the Conservatory

Michel Lebreton

Summary

1. Closed spaces… still time / Open spaces… time of possibilities
2. Suspended Spoken Words, Retrieved Spoken Words
3. Edges, Fringes, Margins
4. You Just Have to Cross the Bridge
5.Co-construction
6. A Speaking Human Being, a Social Human Being
7. A House of Music(s)
8. One Step Sideways


1. Closed spaces… still time / Open spaces… time of possibilities

The Wall. It imposes itself by its mass, its capacity to delimit a border. It induces a permanence in space, a fixity, an impression of timelessness that contributes to make us oblivious to its presence. We practice, we think in the shadow of walls. But if we always go through the same plans, the same volumes, they soon appear to us, in an illusory evidence, adorned with timelessness. They compel us to pronounce aphorisms such as: “We’ve always done it this way!”, “From time immemorial…”, “It’s obvious that…”, which are all expressions that cement them even more. And discourage debate, since… that’s the way it’s always been done.

The walls along the US-Mexican border are trying to lock Mexicans in their country. In a parallel movement, they lock the Americans in an enclave that some wish to be protective. There is a desire for walls that goes hand in hand with a fear of otherness that is unfortunately linked to a need for security.

A wall is made to defend. It means that an attack is feared. Hadrian’s wall stands against the threat of barbarian invasion. But as time goes by, it is neglected, soldiers abandoning their posts to settle as peasants in the surrounding area. It became a reservoir providing stones to build houses, churches… The wall here becomes the material for other practices. These open up new spaces.

How to open spaces and temporalities, which practices to develop that allow to perceive the wall and to dare to come out of its shadow, to leave this illusory security, to put fears in suspension? And to bring to light the evidences asserted by the powers that be?

 

2.Suspended Spoken Words, Retrieved Spoken Words

I had the opportunity to take charge of a writing workshop for ESMD (Ecole Supérieure Musique et Danse Hauts de France) students with the aim of helping them write their master’s dissertations. The very first session revealed dismay among some of these students, all adults with teaching positions and experience. Their first reactions were: “I have nothing to report”, “I am just teaching”, “Nothing extraordinary is happening in my courses”… They provided closed answers that cut short any prospect of questioning. What’s more, they were saying in an underlying way that there was nothing to observe, thus trivializing their teaching practices, practices whose many areas of interest we were to discover later on.

In order to overcome this state of affairs, I have called upon experiments taking place outside the framework of conservatories. Some experiences putting into play their capacities to accompany, help, educate but in a context where they are not evaluated through the prism of music.

For one student, it was a series of replacements in a hospital environment that led her to practice teamwork, listening to patients, conflict resolution… approaches that she was later able to translate into her teaching practice. For another one it was to help her sister who had difficulties with a baccalaureate exam. This sister was in demand and it went smoothly. The brother had the same difficulties but was reluctant to do school work, especially under the supervision of his older sister! The student did not find any operational situations but later realized, when her brother successfully reoriented himself in a different branch which he liked, that motivation cannot be taught but (I quote an extract from her dissertation) “that the role of a teacher is to develop situations open to the pleasure of learning (manipulating, exploring, building…) so that motivation can happen, can increase”. Finally, for a third student, it was an experience as a school life assistant for autistic children with the aim of integrating them into the standard school curriculum. She indicates in one of her writings: “This one year experience is certainly the most memorable and one of the most beautiful in my life, I understood the importance of being accepted without expecting anything in return, I have a different vision of this illness and above all I was able to acquire a certain number of skills…” (She then mentions competences such as patience, curiosity, ability to adapt, listening to others…).

These stories that they put down on paper and that they exchanged and discussed, played the role of the photographic developer. They saw themselves in situations of accompanying the learners, sometimes of teaching them. Speaking became easier, the desire to listen became more assertive. And with them, the conviction that “something was happening”. And that it deserves to be told, observed and analyzed. This ethnographic perspective has taken over their professional sphere. It became the source of other narratives, which were also exchanged, discussed and analyzed. Each of them had begun to circumvent the wall of foregone conclusions in order to begin to assemble the stones of the possible. And to reappropriate the time and space of their experiences by evoking the human deep layers and movements. On what grounds do we then commit ourselves to make these illuminations happen?

 

3. Edges, Fringes, Margins

The edge is a band, a list, a margin (not a list) between two milieus of a different nature, which participates in both without being confused with them. The edge has its own life, its autonomy, its specificity, its fauna, its flora, etc. The edge of a forest, the fringe between sea and land (estrant), a hedge, etc. While the border and boundary are fences, the edge separates and unites at the same time. A strait is an exemplary figure of an edge: the Strait of Gibraltar separates two continents (Africa and Europe) at the same time as it connects two seas (the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean).
Emmanuel Hocquard, Le cours de PISE, POL, Paris 2018, page 61.

The edges are the places of the possible. Their boundaries are only defined by the environments bordering them. They are shifting, subject to erosion and sedimentation: there is nothing obvious about them. Teachers and learners, both of whom inhabited by musical experiences nourished by their respective backgrounds, find themselves in the first place evolving in the soft soils of the edges. They don’t know each other but they gather around an object “music” that should be written in the “singular – plural”: the Music – my musics / the musics  – my Music. Over time, the teacher has built up a landscape where social and therefore musical representations have been constructed and edified more or less solidly, more or less consciously (for example, “what constitutes ‘music’”, “what does it mean to be a ‘musician’”, “what is ‘teaching’”, “what is the student’s place in this process?”…). The learners also come with a variety of social and musical representations.  But when they enter this place called “Conservatory” for the first time, the first term remind them that they are entering “a high place of expertise” and the second one reminds them that the music taught there is predominantly “great music”. The learners are available, motivated and on the reserve, possibly impressed. They are in the edges, unknown but attractive territories in order to concretize their own desires (at least we hope so). In this case, most often, the practice of an instrument. The question then is: will the teacher join the student in these moving edges, the only ground available capable of bringing them together during this initial moment? And will the teacher try to clear a common space and time for providing mutual learning? Or will she/he take the learners to the shadow of their wall to run a predefined and solidly built program? Will he/she leave the barriers open to vagrancy and tinkering[1], even encouraging them? Or will she/he confine all practices to the enclosure he/she has built over time?

The only real journey, the only bath of Jouvence, would not be to go to new landscapes, but to have other views, to see the universe with the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees, that each of them is.
(Marcel Proust, La Prisonnière, page 762)

In a very reductive rewording on my part (sorry to the Marcels), at the very least update “sous les pavés, la plage!”[2] For what’s the point of being in the presence of other soundscapes if we bend them endlessly to our habitus? Instead, let us create situations open to our imaginations, edges conducive to passing strange objects in the midst of improbable exchanges. Let’s leave a part of improvisation in the “making of music”, and also the “collectively building sound scaffolding”, as well as the “keeping open workshop”. Open the other eyes that are in us and all this through the power of confrontation and exchange with the other.

 

4. You Just Have to Cross the Bridge

The meeting of musicians around open practices (e.g. “in the group, everyone will speak in reaction to what they perceive of other propositions: as a complement – to go towards – or in opposition – to move away –”) and little known or unknown objects (e.g. “let’s accumulate layers of sound texture through increasingly granular timbres”) brings into play relations to objects and subjects that differ from those developed in a training that is still often centered on the interpretation of aesthetically identified repertoires. The usual behaviors and skills are no longer sufficient to participate in the sound narratives that one is called upon to construct, alone or in a group. There are then two possible ways: jump into the departing train without knowing the itinerary and make a new narrative come along or let the train pass (some may even be tempted to dynamite it!).

Such a situation was revealed during a project with a string ensemble (eight violinists and three cellists). Initially, the aim was to create a repertoire of traditional dance music from Berry and also to compose in that style. These repertoires, unknown to the musicians, were approached through singing and dancing, followed by oral transposition on instruments and in small groups. The musicians were invited to search collectively for this transposition, then to confront their findings in a large group. Improvisation games on the fifth structure and the bourdons of certain melodies completed this workshop. It should be noted that the technical skills required for the interpretation were acquired by all the participants.

One of the musicians, aged 16, was on the reserve, both on dancing and on improvising on the proposed rules (she had already practiced improvisation on harmonic grids but in another setting). She had come to enroll in a string ensemble class and expected to work on the « classical » repertoire, although information had been provided defining the particular project of this workshop. But where she had expected, despite the presentation of the project, to work in an ensemble on written works with the aim of interpreting them collectively under the direction of the string teacher, she found herself in a workshop situation in which everyone was called upon to tinker. Add to this the apparent lack of “prestige” of the proposed materials: the apparent simplicity of the melodies, improvisation on five notes, accompaniments based on rhythmic bourdons, popular dance with repetitive steps at first impression… as well as the proposed working methods: collective work and research, confrontations and debates on the findings, search for a final collective construction… which she was put off by. These were all elements that displace the more usual issues such as confronting difficult and prestigious repertoires and blending in with orchestral playing and sound, with many professional recordings as references. I did not succeed in helping her to question this state of affairs, she was unwilling to exchange with me.

 

5. Co-construction

At stake here is the very status of the musician learner/teacher.

Are these learning musicians able to put on different skins (performer, improviser, orchestrator…), different scenarios (orchestra, chamber music, contemporary music group, soloist…) and different aesthetics as they would freely rummage through their trunk of old clothes in their grandparents’ attic to play at being someone else?

Is this teaching musician willing and able to accompany these learners so that these hats become one, flexible and adaptable to the choices and necessities of the moment; so that these scenarios are as many varied human and musical relationships; so that these aesthetics are opportunities to breathe in cultural diversity?

Are these learners able to accept that a course identified as a string ensemble is the place for these different pathways?

Is this teacher able to create the conditions for this to happen?

Here it is important to take into account several aspects that shape the tradition of conservatories. They will enable us to better define the building and its architecture at a time when it is trying to redeploy itself in relation to the evolution of French society. The few remarks below are to be taken into account for those who want to cross the walls.

These walls…

… are partly within the institution which more or less partitions different territories into “courses”, “orchestra”, “chamber music”, “collective practices” … and allows / prevents, more or less, teachers and learners to advance, depending on the projects, by porosity between the different categories of the occidental musical world.

They are also to some degree present in the segmentation of the teaching that takes place from the junior high school onwards, and which refers to a conception of education constructed as a succession of fields of knowledge that the pupil goes through from hour to hour: a gigantic open-space strewn with half-high dividers that isolate while allowing an institutional hubbub to filter through that barely makes sense.

They are present in the dominant conception of conservatory teaching, which focuses the learning process on the instrument and its teacher and conceives collective group practices as an implementation of what is learned in the instrumental course. Some sort of supplement.

They are also included in the division of labor that has developed since the nineteenth century and the hyper-specialization that followed to the present day: to each person his or her place and task.

They are finally present in the teacher-learner relationship which is impregnated by this way of structuring society.

Partitioning, segmenting, dividing… the organization and practices in places of education, including conservatories, are still permeated by these more or less closed constructions. The creation of departments[3], to take one example, has only shifted this reality into a slightly larger circle, but between partners of the same family, they are structured on the same foundations. Many departmental meetings are moreover focused on the choice of repertoires to be played in the coming year and these choices are not the consequence of a more global project centered on learning musicians, territories to be explored and filled with music.

 

6. A Speaking Human Being, a Social Human Being

Walls delimit a territory and allow for its development in a protective setting. They also contain rules that govern individual and collective life on this territory. The edges are these gaps in the wasteland, these moors open to experiments not provided for by the regulations of walled games. They can be confusing, but they can also become rich grounds for various collectively cultivated plantations. And this is one of the keys to reconsidering the aims and organization of teaching: the spoken word, expressed and shared collectively, placed at the service of experimentation and the realization of individual and group projects. A spoken word that accepts to deliver to the eyes of others what makes sense in the practices for each person. A spoken word that is welcomed with respect for each person’s convictions and with a aim of building an institution that is neither the addition of personal projects nor the piling up of departmental projects. A spoken word that suggests that the teacher does not know everything and that cooperation is necessary in order to build something.

Florence Aubenas, journalist, collected often inaudible words. Here is an extract of an article from the newspaper Le Monde dated 12. 15. 2018 under the title “Gilets jaunes : la révolte des ronds-points” [Yellow Jackets: The Revolt of the Roundsabout]

For months, her husband had been telling Coralie, “Get out of the house, go see friends, go shopping.” It was the “gilets jaunes” at the Satar roundabout, in the smallest of the three shacks around Marmande, planted between a piece of countryside, a motorway off-ramp and a large loading platform where trucks take shifts day and night…

…The activity of the “gilets” here consists in setting up filtering checkpoints. Here come the others, here they are, Christelle, who has children of the same age as Coralie’s, Laurent, a blacksmith, André, a retired man attired like a prince, 300 shirts and three Mercedes, Sylvie, the chicken breeder. And everything comes back at once, the warmth of the hut, the company of the humans, the “Bonjour” slamming loudly. Will the “gilets jaunes” succeed in changing life? A nurse pensively wonders: “In any case, they changed my life.”

When Coralie comes home at night, it’s all she wants to talk about. Her husband thinks she loves him less. He told her that. One evening, they invited the faithful of the roundabout to dinner. They’d never had anyone in the house before, except the family of course. “You’ve got it, your new beginning. You’re strong,” the husband slipped in. Coralie handed out leaflets to the drivers. “You won’t get anything, miss, you’d better go home,” suggested a man in a sedan. “I’m not expecting anything special. Here, we do things for ourselves: I’ve already won.”

 

7. A House of Music(s)

“We do things…” This is a prosaic, complex but promising starting situation: a group of musicians (learners and teachers) who act (come together for elaborating a common project). A terrain of expression (roundabout or conservatory). The starting of the project through a co-construction process that redraws the pathways. A situation fraught with pitfalls but nevertheless stimulating.

Sensoricity, interpretation, variability and improvisation invite to create a teaching by workshops supported by variable-geometry teaching groups. They can rely on vocal and corporal expression through collective rules insisting on shared intention in sound production. The learning of the written code can be integrated into the sequence “imitation, impregnation, transfer, invention” as a complementary tool opening up, in particular, to composition. That of the instrument is traversed by one-to-one and group work…
 

8. One Step Sideways

This is the second year (2018 and 2019) that I offer a two and a half day workshop to CEPI [Cycle d’Enseignement Professionnel Initial][4] students from the Hauts de France. This year, eight musicians came together, some of whom had already been present the previous year. Coming from practices of amplified popular music, classical music and jazz, they listened to collections of traditional songs from Berry and Limousin recorded between the 1960s and 80s. Simple monodies sung in a kitchen, at home by local people, farmers. No harmonies or accompaniments. Only voices sculpting in their own way melodies with temperaments and inflections unknown to these young musicians.

Between the ear picking up, the singing by imitation, the transfer to the instrument and the rules of improvisations suggested by me, a constant energy was deployed. The most beautiful example in my eyes is the intensity with which they invested themselves in the realization of “living bourdons”. From notes held mechanically on the 1st and 5th degrees, they have gradually evolved into an ecosystem welcoming variations in timbre, the passage from continuous to iterative, entries and exits by variations in intensity… and all this in a wonderful collective listening. These bourdons carry the improvisations and one would be tempted to take them for a negligible quantity. This was not the case, an emerging collective consciousness having offered them a territory to inhabit. They all came out of it with the feeling of having lived an individual experience thanks to the grace of the group and a collective experience thanks to the active presence of each one of them.

I will leave you with a few excerpts from their improvisations: it was obviously not a question of training in the interpretation of the traditional music of Berry or Limousin, but rather of grasping the characteristics of these and other music in order to explore other improvisational voices.

A soundscape, inserted in a longer tale, ends the video. It is brought into play by the musicians of a string ensemble led by a classical violin teacher, Florence Nivalle. In addition to other parts of the tale, we proposed to look at the musicality of a forest:

    • Listening to a recording in the forest and exchanging impressions.
    • Directed listening. Locate if there is:
        – a permanent pattern in the landscape;
        – repeated events with varying degrees of spacing;

        – significant events, in rupture.

    • Assimilate these elements through vocal imitation. Define sound characteristics .
    • Transpose this to your instrument by retaining only the envelopes and textures of the sound and leaving out the imitation.

    The weft (grasshoppers) is played/sung tutti. Repeated events (mosquitoes and animal noises in the thickets) are handled by several duets (one mosquito and one thicket). A few birds appear, solitary. Displacement approaches are invented by each duet to induce the sound production. The two productions are either tiled, juxtaposed or with interspersed respiration.

    It should be noted that a violinist, Clémence Clipet, being both in classical and traditional music violin training, was solicited by Florence and myself to transmit the final bourrée with the bowing indications. At the moment of this first restitution, we had completed 13 sessions. And the first assessment was very positive: all the participants had the feeling of building a vehicle for a journey to be invented.

    Finally, an ensemble of bagpipes from cycle 1 (2 to 4 years of practice, it depends) proposed an improvisation game based on a relay between the first two incises of a bourrée: G a b C and D e F [SOL la si DO and RE mi FA]. The passing is done in tiling by overlapping successive entries. A simple game, but one that mobilized in everyone an energy and concentration sometimes unsuspected. An “engaging” discovery for most of them.

    Michel Lebreton, March 2019

    Return to the French text

     


    1. “The tinkerer is the one who uses diverted, oblique means, as opposed to the man of art, to the specialist. The work of the tinkerer, unlike that of the engineer, unfolds in a closed universe, even if it is diversified. The rule is to work with the means at hand. The result is contingent, there is no precise project, but ideas-force: it can always be useful, it can work ». The elements used do not have a fixed, let alone predetermined, function: they are what they are, at that moment, as they are perceived, desired, in relation to other elements that are the operator of a particular operation. For the tinkerer, a wooden cube can be a wedge, a support, a base, a closure, a corner to be driven in, etc. It can be a simple material or an instrument, its usefulness depends on an ensemble. The appropriateness of a tinkering can evoke the objective randomness of the surrealists.” (Ruse et bricolage, Liliane Fendler-Bussi)

    2. Note of the translator. This is a well-known political slogan from the May 1968 Paris demonstrations, literally “under the pavement, the beach!”.

    3. Note of the translator. In France, since about the late 1980s, departments have been created in conservatories, most of the time along the following groupings: strings, woodwinds, brass, keyboards and percussion, basic musicianship, jazz, traditional music, etc.

    4. Note of the translator. The CEPI or in English the “ Initial Cycle of Professional Teaching” is offered in Regional Conservatories as preparation to enter musical higher education institutions.

     

     

Culture in the Plural

Culture in the plural

1. Extract from Culture in the Plural by Michel de Certeau

2. Slam by Jean-Charles François inspired by Michel de Certeau’s text

 

Michel de Certeau (Culture in the Plural, trans. Tom Conley, Minneapolis, London: The University of Minnesota Press, 1997, pp. 133-139) :

“A first impression, a persisting malaise: culture is soft. Analysis slips everywhere over the uncertainty that proliferates in the gaps of prediction as soon as the certainty of the illusory statistics of objective signs (behavior, images, etc.) slips away. Thus the styles or ways of practicing space flee the control of city planners. Able and ready to create a composition of places, of full and empty areas that allow or forbid passage, city planners are incapable of imposing the rationality of reinforced concrete on multiple and fluid cultural systems that organize the living space of inner areas (apartments, stairways, and the like) or public domains (streets, squares, etc.) and that innervate them with an infinite number of itineraries (…)

The same is true for ways of living time, reading texts, or seeing images. What a practice does with prefabricated signs, what the latter become for those who use or receive them – there is an essential point that still remains, for the most part, unknown. (…)

In fact this soft region is silently exploited by its opposite, the hard. Culture is the battlefield of a new colonialism; it is the colonized of the twentieth century. Contemporary technocracies install whole empires on it, in the same way that European nations occupied disarmed continents in the nineteenth century. Corporate trusts rationalize and turn the manufacture of signifiers into a profitable enterprise. They fill the immense, disarmed, and almost somnolent space of culture with their commodities. All forms of need, all the rifts of desire get “covered,” that is, inventoried, dealt with, and exploited by the media. (…)

From then on, culture appears as the field of a multiform battle between the forces of the soft and the hard. It is the outrageous cancerous symptom of a society divided between the technocratization of economic progress and the folklorization of civic expression. It makes manifest an inner dysfunction: the fact that the appropriation of productive power by privileged organisms has as a corollary a political disappropriation and regression of the country, that is, the disappearance of the democratic power to determine the organization and representation of the labors that a society exerts on itself. (…)

The theory and practice of culture accede to honesty when we cast away the pretention of overcoming, by way of generalities the rift that separates the places where an experience or an event can be uttered. From scientific knowledge (when it is exclusive), all the way up to indigent discourses on “values” or on “humanism”, countless ways of eliminating other existences can be named. The common trait is that of the drive to establish unity, that is, a totalizing vision. Culture in the singular always imposes the law of a power. A resistance needs to be directed against the expansion of a force that unifies by colonizing, and that denies at once its own limits and those of others. At stake is a necessary relation of every cultural production with death that limits it and with the battle that defends it. Culture in the plural endlessly calls for a need to struggle.”

 

 

Jean-Charles François, slam inspired by Michel de Certeau’s text:

Culture in the singular always imposes the law of a power

Culture in the singular always imposes the law of a power

Culture in the regular always imposes the flaw of a power

Culture in the best regularity always imposes the good coleslaw on a pauper

Sanctified culture always imposes its claw on some flower

Culture with the secular arm imposes its credo in a tower

Culture with the secular arm implodes its credo in a shower

A vulture with the regular arm Interpol its paw on some order

A sculpture with the angular arm interposes its blows against older laws

A scripture with the interfering arm exposes its gloves on polder lawns

The capture of the arm in her offering reposes in hundred days lost in lone Lombard

The structure of the Barthes-signified reposes straight out on syntagm and wombat

The suture of the farthest ignited bona fides imposes some turns “salsa and rumba”

The capture of the Roland-enrolled (modified-modifier, ratified-retriever,

falsified-salsify fryer, satisfied-sadist flyer, defied-deft ire, mystified-misty feel air, petrified-

petty fire, humidified-humiliated midfielder, simplified-sample amplifier) imposes facing the

exemplum, persuasive mode by induction, the group of modes by deduction: the argumenta.

 

The rupture of the tortured arm, exposed by Foucault, decomposition of the global gesture

The rapture of the spied out frolics, exported by Foucault, the right arm should be away from

the body by about three fingers, caramba!

The body, upright, should in three steps accomplish the act of the right arm

The boldly bright shoulder in three biceps accomplice to the fact of the tight arm

The boarding bored stiff dig the bock beer at the derby three times “diddlediddledee”

The upright body grips tightly the old bolshie bobby high alright bowing deep

 

Not so sure that Ferdinand, tongs on each foot, was semio-astigmatic

 

Note the sauce sour and sweet, colored tongue that labio-masticates

Know about the post future throng creating immediately labo-massive stakes

Know the posture of the wrong good guy

Know the posture of the trounced hard good cat in combat

Know the curly tune of the trembled cumquat

Now, the pure prude plump gal handles the mess of a crumbled quell

The sulfur tumbles out of the scar, and blesses us nonetheless with a grumble yell

The sepulture in the thunder al Dantesque (O hell!) scolds with a lurid gurgle

Crude failure in subliminal sudden slumber endlessly (Oh well!) calls for a bid to stumble

Cult texture in frugal lumps less friendly chokes on a bit of Strudel

Cruel lure in the rural dead end lastly in essence leads us all to a struggle

Culture in the plural endlessly calls for a need to struggle

Culture in the plural endlessly calls for a need to struggle

Return to the French version

New Notation Literature – Carl Bergstrœm-Nielsen

Western music tradition has a speciality in writing down music. After 1945, non-traditional forms emerged, on the background of changes in culture, society, beliefs and lifestyle. « Graphic notation » is just one notion among others – some notations are like drawings, but many kinds of signs, layouts and the use of verbal means also exist.

 My bibliographies at IIMA, International Improvised Music Archive, aim at mapping literature dealing with this territory, among other related ones connected to improvisation. The full title is Experimental Improvisation Practise and Notation. An Annotated Bibliography, and there is both one volume 1945-1999 and one with addenda thereafter. Presently there are more than 115 entries on notation with summaries of their contents. However, not included in this number are published editions of works, as well as publishers’ series and anthologies. See it all at www.intuitivemusic.dk/iima/legno1uk.htm .

For the most part, universities and related institutions are behind the research and publishing activity, but it should be noted that in many cases the researcher is also a practising composer and/or musician. In the sixties, many works were published on paper both in Europe and USA by commercial multinational publishers – among many others, Stockhausen, Wolff and Cage have been well documented in this way. More recently, the Notations 21 book by Sauer documents renewed interest from composers. In my bibliography referencing usage, this is called Sauer (2009;E1) – E1 refers to the systematic category of general writings on new notations. Exhibitions of new notations have taken place all the time since the seventies – more than sixty have till now been detected and listed, some with catalogues (see category K).

 Cox (2008+2010;E1) open ups a historical perspective: notation has functioned to supplement a primarily oral tradition as a mnemonic aid, as can be found in the neumes of Gregorian Chant – later the function of notation became to provide a product that could be transmitted through a market. Then, after mechanical reproduction was invented, standard notation was no longer the only way to document music. Therefore, composers could feel more free to use notation to make the idea of the work clear, while leaving detailed documentation of the performance to the electronic media and, one could importantly add, leaving the production of details of the work to the performer. Later, computer and internet technologies made information more sharable, also between art forms, Cox states further.

 Not only from published editions and anthologies of entire works, but also from a number of articles and historic treatises it is fairly easy to acquaint oneself with many different types of new notations through excerpts. Brindle (1986;H1) is an allround book on the history of Western new music with many illustrations. Bosseur (1979;H1) + (2005;E1) have a similar aim – the first one is a music history book, and the second deals with notation and provides a direct supplement to the former. It presents examples in order of increasing openness. Karkoshka (1966;E1) and its English translation (1972;E1) is a book on notations – of special interest is the section at the end of the book presenting entire works.

 Sauer (2009;E1) was already mentioned as a recent window into contemporary activity in the field. Storesund (2016;G3.1) reflects the mature development of the field of open works with new notations: focus is consistently on how to realise such works, which require a more co-creative performance practise than traditionally. Improvisation is becoming more and more a part of conservatory curriculums since the nineties, and so non-traditionally notated works also receive renewed attention. The book provides inside information for all interested musicians and could also directly serve as a basis for teaching. A number of « showcase studies » discuss the challenges and dilemmas one may encounter as a musician in nine works. Five are even featured with all nescessary playing materials available, and composers include « classics » from the fifthies and on as well as three pieces written after 2000.

 A considerable number of writings describe certain well-known works or composers. Earle Brown’s December 1952 is topping the list. Cardew’s large collection of graphic scores Treatise is frequently performed from. Christian Wolff has a special status with his introduction of cue systems in the sixties which focus on performers’ interaction. With the growth of improvisational practise later, this appears as a pioneering discovery. Roughly two decades later, the younger Zorn took up this aspect in his game pieces of the eighties which are still popular.

 Of course the common area between visual art and music notation also has its devoted authors. Buj (2014;E1) connects both worlds, investigating the significance of circular forms in graphic notations.

 Introducing, showcasing, discussing, elaborating on history, theory, philosophy, practical issues – it can all be found in the literature on new notations. To reduce the overwhelming complexity that looking at a whole library would induce, the bibliography has summaries, longer than just the titles and not the whole story, but they attempt to capture some essential aspects and keyword-like characterisations so as to make the road easier to travel for the searcher.

 ***

 

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Reflections on Graphic Scores – English Abstract

Reflections on Graphic Scores

Etienne Lamaison (2017)

English Abstract

This article is a development of Etienne Lamaison’s doctoral thesis “L’interprétation des partitions graphiques non-procédurales” (Insituto de Investigção e formação Avançada, Evora, Portugal, 2013). The article is in two parts: a) “The Relations between visual and sound domains”; b) “The Graphic Scores”.

The comparison between artistic domains is a major preoccupation in Western thought. While there is a strict separation of the disciplines, for many artists the sources of inspiration for their imagination may often cross over boundaries. In recent time hybrid forms between artistic realms have been developed and many terminologies belong to two or more domains (color, timbre, nuance, harmony). However all the attempts to develop machines that would translate sound into visual forms or vice-versa have not been very successful. Some artists have developed ways of comparing parameters in one realm to their counterparts in their own realm (Klee and Kandinsky on the temporality of a tableau, Ferneyhough on visual images escaping the unfolding of time, the blank space and Cage’s silence). Colors are often used as code for timbre, visual spaces with temporality. In the relation visual plane / sound plane, notions of simultaneity and polyphony are explored. The concept of density can also produce useful comparison (Xenakis). The notion of splash, of touch, especially in impressionist painting can be related with vibrations.

The definition of “graphic score” is particularly difficult to make in view of the fact that most of them do not constitute a viable notational system. Five forms of graphic scores are presented:

  1. Propositions that define a succession of events.
  2. Propositions in which the total duration of the performance is fixed by the composer.
  3. Propositions that are orientated towards pitch organization (registers, boxes with indicated pitches).
  4. Mixed scores combining graphic elements with standard notation.
  5. Propositions that are strictly non-procedural (with no specified ways of interpreting the visual elements).

Each of the five categories is accompanied with examples of graphic scores. The author explains his own approach to the non-procedural idea (the fifth category) and offers different methodologies for interpreting these various written forms, similar to those of improvisation. Historical and philosophical perspectives of experimental notational practices since 1945 are provided. In the conclusion, Lamaison stresses the necessity for institutions to include more development of the interpretation of graphic scores in their curriculum.

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Encounter with Xavier Saïki – English Abstract

Encounter between Xavier Saïki

and

Samuel Chagnard & Jean-Charles François

2017

 

Discussion about the project developed by the Ishtar Collective on Treatise by Cornelius Cardew

http://collectif.ishtar.free.fr/Sombresprecurseurs.html

English Abstract

The collective Ishtar has evolved from having a large number of members of dancers, performers, musicians, actors (1993-1999) to a more limited group of musicians interested in free jazz and improvisation (2003…). They like to call their activity “noise music” as part of the field of sonic arts : the world of making music with objects and modified instruments. Improvisation for them is a way to question listening, time unfolding, space and public participation. They mix acoustical sources with electroacoustic ones.

The interest of the collective for Treatise by Cornelius Cardew stems, in comparison to other graphic scores, from its radical uncompromising approach to visual layout. They became acquainted with this score at the moment in which they wished to fix certain things in their improvisations. In a first approach to the piece, they decided to play the totality of the 193 pages with a clock, each page having a duration of 2 minutes. Immediately some graphics were more striking than others. They concentrated on very minimal lines. They selected the pages that interested them mostly and they applied their usual modes of playing to the strict temporality of the score.

In their realization of Treatise, the ensemble tried to combine a very strict approach to time organization determined by the layout of graphic elements on the pages, with their usual approach to free improvisation. In the Ishtar collective, each player is independent from the others, there are no decisions in common. For the realization of Treatise, they might have been working on the same page and the same time frame, but each player interpreted the graphics in his own way. Some players strictly respected the signs on paper, others had a more general loose way of translating the visual graphics into sound.

The question of the central line or “time line” has been discussed in relation with Cardew’s Handbook. Difficult choices had to be made between the possibility for the musicians to choose individually what pages to be played and what duration they might last, or on the contrary to use the time line as a common point of time unfolding. The work on Treatise had an important impact a lot on the group’s own practice of improvisation, especially concerning the relation to time.

The collective has also organized workshops for amateur musicians, or young students from music schools and primary schools, in which graphic scores played an important role, and Treatise was often used in this context. The use of graphic scores allows inexperienced players to access improvisation, the score is used as a pathway towards sound production not completely determined by some kind of notation. Pieces like Treatise are at the same time “works” in the traditional sense, and open to modes of playing independent from visual structuring. Treatise is a tool to fabricate possible worlds, to make music in the large sense of the word. But from the graphic point of view, the score presents itself as a sacred object, something fixed, untouchable. There is a very precise continuity in the piece, there is a real graphic development.

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English Editorial 2017

 

Edition 2017 “Graphic Scores”

Contents

Guide 2017
Editorial 2017
Content of this edition

Guide 2017

This new edition is presented in the form of a roadmap, reminiscent of the metro map of our first formal proposition (2016 Edition), taking as basis a photograph of a painting by Lyon artist Christian Lhopital (we thank him for his generous contribution). We took advantage of the presence of  seismic “faults” on this painting to use them as lines for connections between what we call “known places” [“lieux-dits”] in a meaningful way. Some contributions are grouped together on the map in regions (Treatise, films, documentation). The map consists of two big categories:

Artistic realizations

  1. An artistic performance (audio or video) of a graphic score, which can be triggered by clicking on the “known place”, that is the name of the contribution. An explicative, theoretical or poetical text appears when one goes from one known place to either of the two neighboring “known places”, in the form of a collage with the text of the neighboring contribution.
  2. Performances of Cardew’s Treatise, which are clustered in one part of the map and are presented in the same format.
  3. Three musical illustrations of films.

Contributions with texts These are reference articles, interviews or documentation pertaining to the question of graphic scores.

You can move freely in the new map by clicking on any of the names of the known places. But the spirit of our approach is definitively on the side of taking a path following the lines, or seismic “faults” (as in “San Andreas fault”): the strolling from one known place to its neighbor reveals a collage of texts or spoken words provided by the contributors. We strongly encourage you to follow a pathway along on a fault line.

Editorial 2017

Music is irreducible to the spoken word, it is well understood, no language structure can account for it. In order to say that there is nothing that can be said about the nature of music, nevertheless one has to say it.

The idea that sounds cannot be represented by signs, images, by the visual world in general, is less often expressed. Any sonority that cannot be simply measured – as for example timbre in its global complexity – could not be, according to this enunciation, reduced to a system of signs. The accumulation of signs necessary to represent the totality of the sound matter would render the notation unreadable. In order to demonstrate the impossibility of representation, one has to demonstrate it by signs.

Already two paragraphs full of pointless signs for expressing the pointlessness of the effort to conciliate the sonic and visual realms. Yet, in order to make music, one has beforehand to telephone each other, to talk – a language on the subject of music – and then to take from one’s pocket a diary in which to inscribe the place and time of the encounter – a graphic writing linked to the practice of music. Even in the case of an impromptu encounter, the very decision to make music together can be considered as an inscription. Would that allow the naming of this type of process “graphic score”?

The visual elements inscribed on the page of the diary do not prescribe sounds that will be produced at this date, in that place which is associated with it, and with the persons who have written the same “score” in their note book. The graphics in the diary, foreseeing what will happen at such a date and in such place allows the definition of the time and space of the music, the partial planning of its unfolding. As for the rest, anything may happen. The sound combinations and their eventual meaning have to be elaborated at the moment of the encounter.

Graphics, which determine something different from the musical materiality in itself, give that delicious impression of needing no mediation whatsoever: everybody can have access to it in an immediate manner without difficulty. The presence of a score assumes the same function as a totem in the religious and enigmatic sense: it implies the obligation to do an action, some movements, some sounds, and its absence paralyzes. But if the mediations are not provided by the graphics, they remain necessary elements for action to take place. One has either to call on some resources – knowledge or know-how – already present in the performer’s realm, or to invent some kinds of mediations – codes, rules, different means to transform the visual into sound. The advantage that graphic scores have in relation to the dryness of the daily notebook inscriptions, is that they contain generally enough salient elements for giving rise to codes, either in an existing framework (recalling for example notational systems already in use), or in some framework to be invented by the participants. Everybody can have access to action, on the condition that the lack of mediations specified in the graphic score could give rise to mediations – instituted or to be invented – appropriate to the situation of the participants.

This is precisely the PaaLabRes project: a) to conciliate free sounds and academic language; b)to emphasize the profound implication of artists in production and the access for all to practices; c) to connect the well identified objects with those which have to be continuously re-actualized; d) to bring together the private space with public presentations. And let’s not forget hybrid activities, which get artists to think outside their narrow professional corporate world. In other words our aim is to conciliate the visual world irreducible to sounds and the sound world impossible to represent; in this way to go beyond the “readable”.

The use of graphic scores is today widespread in extremely varied contexts and aesthetical modes of behavior. The new edition “Graphic Scores” on the PaalabRes site [paalabres.org] shows a good sampling of this diversity, without pretending to cover the field in an exhaustive manner. For us, the confrontation of realizations by very different groups is of particular importance: professionals, amateurs, students, young pupils, electroacoustic realizations, contributions based on original works by visual artists. This diversity, which is also a good representation of the democratic character of practices implying graphic scores, is expressed in particular around Treatise (1963-67) by Cornelius Cardew, a referent work for many musicians: seven interpretations of this piece are presented.

 

Contents of this edition

Several regions are identified on the map:

  1. « Treatise » :  The graphic score by Cornelius Cardew, Treatise (1963-67) is composed of 193 pages presenting 67 different graphic elements, certain of which are borrowed from traditional musical notation. According to John Tilbury, « Treatise was the culmination of a trilogy of works (with Autumn 60 and Octet ’61) in which this essential, human dialogue was re-opened, explored and refined. Rather than prescribind sounds Cardew sought to stimulate, provoke and inspire through a visual score of astonishing scope and imagination[1] » peformers’ capacities. This score is still today considered as a major reference and often performed in various realizations. This region is composed of:
    1. Cardew: A collage of texts (in French) on Cardew’s Treatise (by Cornelius Cardew, John Tilbury, David Gutkin, Christopher Williams, Matthieu Saladin, Keith Rowe, Arturas Bumsteinas, Laurent Dailleau, Jim O’Rourke and Jean-Charles François).
    2. Saïki: An interview with Xavier Saïki, member of the collective Ishtar, on Treatise by Cardew.
    3. 7 realizations of Cardew’s Treatise by very different groups: on the one hand,  versions by professional groups, the collective Ishtar, the ensemble Dedalus and a trio (Pedro Branco, José Ceitão and Etienne Lamaison) ; on the other hand versions realized in educational contexts by the students of the HEMU of Lausanne (Haute Ecole de Musique de Lausanne), students from Cefedem AuRA, young students of the EPO program at the National Music School of Villeurbanne, and young students at the Miribel Music School (near Lyon).
  2.  « Films »: graphic scores can also be presented as animated images in time. Many projects are centered on the sonorization of silent films, particularly through improvisation while looking at the film. Three examples of sonorization of films are presented in the 2017 edition:
    1. 11e Année : The trailer of the film The 11th year (1928) by Dziga Vertof was sonorized by  Clélia Bobichon, Jean-François Charles, Guillaume Hamet, Krystian Sarrau, Sébastien Sauvage et Nicolas Sidoroff. You will find in between the known-places « Zola » and « 11e Année » information about the practical modes of operation while realizing this project, by Nicolas Sidoroff.
    2. Zola: The primary school Emile Zola in Villeurbanne organized during the year 2016-17 the realization by the pupils of a film. One class was in charge of realizing its sonorization with Pascal Pariaud.
    3. Bois: The sonorization of the cartoon Bois by Lucie Marchais was realized by the improvisation workshop of Pascal Pariaud at the National Music School of Villeurbanne. Lucie Marchais was participating as a musician in this workshop.
  3. « Documentation »: We can find in the world a particularly rich collection of graphic scores difficult to categorize, as many different practical contexts use this kind of tool. In this edition two known-places are proposed concerning the documentation of graphic scores:
    1. At the known-place IIMA, International Improvised Music Archives (http://www.intuitivemusic.dk/iima/legno1uk.htm) you will find information on the extremely rich documentation collected by the Danish musician  Carl Bergstroem-Nielsen. An important part of these archives dedicated to improvisation concerns graphic scores since 1945.
    2. At the known-place Aleph : the Ensemble Aleph organized in 1983 an exhibition of graphic scores at  Issy-les-Moulineaux, in the context of the « Atelier Musical » directed then by Sylvie Drouin. The catalogue of the exhibition « Musique et Graphisme »  is presented in this known-place. The ’Ensemble Aleph was at that time a young contemporary music ensemble, just created by  Dominique Clément (clarinet), Sylvie Drouin (piano), Monica Jordan (voice), Françoise Matringe (piano) and Christophe Roy (cello). The ensemble worked at that time with the composer  Dan Lustgarten, who actively participated in the shaping of the exhibition and writing the texts of the catalogue.

Three reference articles on the subject of graphic scores and more generally on the issues of visual representation of sound, of musical notation and of musical forms of writing are presented:

  1. “Drastique ou plastique ?” an article by David Gutkin (the English version  of this article, « Drastic or plastic? » has been published in Perspectives of New Music ). The author explores the contents of the 1959 lecture by Stockhausen, « Musik und Graphik » de Stockhausen, 1959” in historical and critical perspectives.
  2. “Réflexions sur les partitions graphiques” by Etienne Lamaison, extracted from his recent thesis on non-procedural graphic scores. For this author, the notion of non-procedural graphic scores can be defined as scores leaving a total freedom of interpretation of the visual signs to the performers.
  3. In October 2019, a new known-place was created: “Ecriture et Oralité” (« Writing and Orality »), an article by Dominique Clément. The author confronts here in a double text, the written formal version and the oral transcript of a lecture he delivered in 2018 at the Cefedem AuRA.

Two interiews present effective practices of realizations of graphic scores in various contexts:

  1. An interview with Pascal Pariaud on his pedagogical practices linked to graphic scores.
  2. An interview with Xavier Saïki, member of the collective Ishtar, on Treatise by Cornelius Cardew.

The other known-places present various realizations of graphic scores sent to PaaLabRes after the 2017 call for contributions. Here is the list:

  • sono ba : Frédéric Mathevet, Sono ba 2 (extract): the appartment of my father/of my mother.
  • Gray Area : a graphic score by Julie Mehteru, Gray Area, performed by  Bruno Graca and Etienne Lamaison,  clarinets without mouthpiece.
  • Apples : Christopher Williams, Apples are Basic, performed by  Mary Oliver, viola and Rozemarie Heggen, double bass. Serigraphs by Corita Kent.
  • Pressure/La mer: Alex Ness et Yoni Niv audiovisual compositions, PressureLa mer, 2010.
  • Aifoon : Aifoon,artistic and pedagogical organization, Ghent, Belgiim. Graphic scores realized in children’s workshops and performed by  Marc Galo, electric guitar, Stefaan Smagghe, violin and Thomas Smetryns, dulcimer.
  • …out of the air… : Elain Barkin, … out of the air…, for basset horn, 4 tracks tape and graphic score. This work was created in collaboration with the clarinetist  Georgina Dobrée (1930-2008). The performance was recorded at the University of Wisconsin,  Eau Claire, on March  4, 1993.
  • ENM : 3 scores written and performed by students participating in the improvisation workshop of  Pascal Pariaud at the National Music School of Villeurbanne.  Charlen Guillot, Kerwin Marchand-Moury and Léa Vernet.
  • Yantra : David Samas, Yantra,for the Gamelan Encimal (Stephen Parris, director). Performance of December 11, 2016 at Mills College, Oakland, California.
  • Unbearable Lightness : Carl Bergstroem-Nielsen, Towards an Unbearable Lightness 1992, for any instruments or voices capable of producing some « sombre et heavy » sounds and also some « light » sounds. Performance by the Ensemble Supermusique of Montreal, Canada (2013).
  • London : Guillaume Dussably, 6 travellings in the map of the London Underground, for modular synthesizer (2017).
  • Tres : Frederico Llach, Tres (three in Spanish) for three performers. Performance by PFL Traject, Pascal Pariaud, clarinet, Jean-Charles François, percussion and Gilles Laval, electric guitar, University of California Santa Barbara, February 2015.
  • Schème moteur : Alain Savouret, Schème moteur, performance by Ultim’Asonata, Festival « Musique Action » 2017, Vandœuvre-lès-Nancy. With Alain Savouret, high-speaking music , Yannick Herpin, clarinet, Violaine Gestalder, saxophone, Noémie Lapierre, clarinet, Gaspar Hoyos, flûte and Aurélien Pouzet-Robert, hautbois. In 2019, two new versions of this score are added, played by the group Petit Goulash (with Franck Testut, bass, Pham Tronh Hieu, drums, Gilles Laval, electric guitar, and Nicolas Sidoroff, trumpet).
  • Constellation Scores : Rob Mazurek, trompetist and visual artist, Constellation Scores, an exhibition of his lithographs in 3D at  URDLA, Villeurbanne, September/November 2017.
  • powerpeinture : Laurent Grappe, powerpeinture, video, English translation by Ephia Gburek, la fab-ka, studio doitsu, mai 2017.

Le Collectif PaaLabRes : Samuel Chagnard, Guillaume Dussably, Jean-Charles François, Laurent Grappe, Karine Hahn, Gilles Laval, Noémi Lefebvre, Pascal Pariaud, Nicolas Sidoroff, Gérald Venturi.

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Contributors to the 2017 edition

English Editorial 2016


1. John Tilbury, Cornelius Cardew (1936-1981), a life unfinished, Matching Tye near Harlow, Essex: Copula, 2008, p.234.