Sound
Seekers survey the spectrum of music for ideas and inspiration
to build on their musical skills and identities. This is done
not through appropriation, but by interpreting and linking new
musical concepts with the musician's own vision. At times, this
experimentation may appear random and nonsensical, but this
process of exploration often helps pave the way for altogether
new musical forms, which ultimately challenge listeners and
inspire other musicians.
Live recordings from
Jackin' the Ball are presented in a variety of formats. Download
either MediaPlayer, or RealPlayer for free.
Tom
Ze is one such pioneer. In the late 60's, Ze and several of
his fellow Tropicalistos began to graft characteristically native
Brazilian musical traditions with conspicuously foreign influences,
particularly Anglo-American rock and psychedelia. They often
substituted electric instruments -- and in the case of Tom Ze,
power tools -- for the traditional acoustic accompaniment to
Brazilian samba, bossa nova, and carnival music. The Tropicalist
aesthetic was a collage of contradictory rhythms and melodies,
at once rhythmic and dissonant. Tropicalist lyrics were suffused
with poetic contradictions, juxtaposing images of the primitive
and the modern, the rural and the urban, the folk and commercial.
Many
current musicians, including Beck, Sean Lennon, and the High
llamas, have given a knowing nod to Ze's music for fusing elements
of found sound and tape loops together with a pop sensibility
that we take for granted in much of today's modern music.
In the spring of 1999, US audiences got a glimpse of Ze's raw
genius when the 62 year old played a series of concerts in support
of his recently released "Defeito 3 Politicar."
Jackin'
the ball will attempt to take the music out of the more traditional
performance spaces and bring the music closer to the streets.
San Francisco's Broun Fellinis were kind enough to share an
evening of live performance in the subterranean passages of
the Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART). This particular
performance was filmed right underneath Mayor Willie Browns
City Hall offices on the platform of the Civic Center station.
The
tour also served as a preview of the fishbowl-style experiment
that will be featured in Jackin the Ball. Ze arrived in the
US four days before the tour began to rehearse with his backup
band, which he had never met, and who weren't at all familiar
with his brand of Samba or Portuguese Fado. Ze was being backed
by a eclectic mix of jazz and rock musicians from Chicago known
collectively as Tortoise (Doug Macombs, Jeff Parker, John Herndon,
Dan Fliegel, and John McEntire).
At
first, Tortoise grappled with the unfamiliar rhythms and melodies
of what Ze calls, "Heretic Samba." But after a four-day crash
course in Tropicalia, the musicians were able integrate some
of their own instrumentation and melodic voicings into the arrangements,
creating a Tropicalista for the 90's that wowed audiences night
in, night out.
