STROKING THE BELL OF TIME

by

Brian Marley & Frank Perry

Three years ago, when 'Temple of the Ancient Magical Presence' was published in Avant 6, my recollections of Frank Perry were rather dim.  I knew something of his early years in jazz and free improvisation, his work with the group Ovary Lodge, his fabled array of Eastern percussion instruments, but I had no idea what he'd been doing for the last couple of decades.  The article was informative, especially about the spiritual nature of his music-making, but it left me wanting to know more.  In particular, I wanted to know what role he felt his music fulfilled in a spiritually impoverished, predominantly secular society.

As luck would have it, I received my answers almost immediately.  Frank rang me up, totally out of the blue, to ask about some recent Morton Feldman recordings, and we ended up chatting for several hours about all manner of things.  Afterwards, when I was mulling over the conversation, I was struck by how enthusiastic and knowledgeable he was about music other than his own. (Believe me, this trait isn't ubiquitous among musicians.)  He sent me a batch of his CDs, and the music impressed me greatly.  I hadn't heard anything quite like it.  By comparison, most other musics seemed shallow and trite.  Actually, to be honest, comparisons weren't easy to make, Frank's music seemed to be pretty much in a class of its own - masterful, egoless, extraordinarily rich and satisfying.  We talked at length on several other occasions, we exchanged emails, and our discussions were so interesting I decided it would be a good idea to interview him.  That was about fifteen months ago.  The first question I fired off was . . .

"Your music is made for reasons different to those of most other musics, and it's intended to serve a different purpose.  If those reasons - spiritual, meditative, ceremonial, holistic, etc - are prioritised over music per se, then the critical apparatus I would normally bring to bear isn't entirely appropriate.  This lets me off the hook, so to speak.  It lets you off the hook, too.  But surely that's an unsatisfactory state of affairs.  When people are listening to a piece of your music purely as music, what might they be hearing?"

It was the first question and, as it turned out, the last.  Over an eight-week period Frank sent a succession of hefty Emails.  Soon, his response to my question was almost 10,000 words long!  Very little of what he sent overlapped with the content of 'Temple of the Ancient Magical Presence', and there was almost no internal contradiction or repetition.  He anticipated most of the questions I would have gone on to ask, and he answered them fully.  So I've done nothing more than edit and shape the material, teasing out certain strands and eliminating others.  My question was, of course, as I now realise, almost impossible to answer.  It was also foolish: music cannot be experienced as a cultural or conceptual isolate, and there's no such thing as a theory-free listener.  But that doesn't detract in the slightest from Frank's response to the question.  All of the words in the following sections are his.  I hope my vigorous pruning has neither distorted nor damaged the expression of his point of view.  Moreover, I hope the result is pleasing.

MUSIC = TIME IN A 'GARDEN'

"When people are listening to a piece of your music purely as music, what might they be hearing?"

Beautiful sounds, beautifully orchestrated!  Music where Sound is most important.  In this context, it could provide an opportunity to be content with enjoying the sound of the moment.  To focus upon what lives in sound and what comprises sound rather than concentrating upon a melody or 'harmony', or imagining what the sounds might be expressing, i.e. Debussy and Impressionism.

I allow the pneuma or divine breath to flow through me as it does naturally, that is to say without friction according to Taoist philosophy.  Therefore, my sensibilities enter into the way the sounds 'organise themselves', for, of course, each sound must be stimulated into being, it cannot happen simply of and by itself.  Because of a certain degree of unpredictability in the music, it becomes easier for the listener to live in the moment and to accept whatever is happening for Now.

What does the listener hear?  Quite simply, improvisations upon metallic percussion. I restrict myself to metal sounds and mostly those having a long sustain.  Drums are not present.  I have pioneered a new pathway through the world of percussion music, one which rejoices in the superb qualities of the sounds used.  Most Western orchestral musical instruments are designed to cut down on overtones in order to play diatonic music.  If you wish to enter into the previously undervalued area of harmonics in musical sound, then my music is for you.

These improvisations are constructivistic and therefore possess a certain degree of form.  However, I resort to form or structure mainly when inspiration fails during an improvisation.  I value inspiration in my music, that intuitive 'leap of faith'.  Because of my spiritual discipline I strive to create beauty.  You are at the very least listening to an improvising percussionist who delights in beautiful if unfamiliar sounds (as opposed to the more 'industrial' uses of percussive sound), and who strives to increase the scope of expression within the percussive medium.  My percussion music places little or no emphasis upon rhythm, which leaves us with sound, colour & texture.  It also includes indeterminacy, which features either as passages or as backgrounds.  Mostly there is a very delicate balance of sounds within a piece, and I seldom use shock tactics (regarding dynamics).  Timing - essential to a percussionist - is also critical.

SOUND SUBTLETIES

Because I exploit certain acoustical properties of the instruments, it should be possible for the listener to enjoy them regardless of what I might think I'm doing with them.  It should be possible to enter into their soundworld and not experience too much of an intrusion from my composing skills as I strive to ride that razor edge between the instruments and what I wish to do with their sounds.  I create from a familiarity with each instrument gained over time.  I've 'lived' with each of them, and explored numerous ways of playing and experiencing them.  I've 'surrendered' to them. I'm not playing 'on' them but rather 'with' them.  The Western obsession with technical display has created a certain distance from the basics of music, namely (individual) Sound and its language.  My sounds often blend into silence, allowing the listener to drink deeply of their individual charms.

Often the whole sound is used; the numerous overtones of each instrument are included within the dynamic of relationship between sounds - not simply the fundamental note or sound.  Sounds chosen to follow others may strengthen certain overtones or are chosen in order to enhance and expose these overtones - or the 'sounds-within-the-sounds.'  One of my approaches is designed to offer me greater freedom, e.g. when I received an ancient and very powerful Tibetan cymbal I then needed others in order to provide a choice between building bridges (moving by steps and degrees) and moving gradually towards its sound, or the more dynamic approach of going straight to it.  When I had just the one cymbal I had no such choice, i.e. it 'stuck out like a sore thumb'.

Similarly, other sets of instruments may be chosen because they provide an alternative texture within a family of instruments.  Such is the case with the Noah bells from India.  These bells have a unique sound-texture within the family of bells.  In my somewhat 'orchestral' or 'symphonic' approach, this supplies me with alternative bells to play - say within a section featuring alternating passages moving between gongs and bells (as in the opening movements of 'Montsegur' on Eternal Peace).  So sometimes I like to build bridges/establish links between sounds.  Harmonics are, as I've indicated, integral to my work and not simply by-products.  The entire spectrum of sound is 'listened' to.  I've chosen richly resonant metallophones - bells, gongs, bell-plates, bowls, and instruments of my own invention (e.g. Petalumines).  They provide pure sounds of relatively long duration in the context of percussion instruments in general.  Each of my instruments is unique in itself, yet it has been chosen to complement the whole collection - it has meaning and significance both independent of and within the complete instrumentarium.  Every sound within a piece likewise could stand alone, yet it also has meaning within the total piece.  By the way, I seldom use any electronic effects (just a touch of 'reverb' when studio conditions demand it), preferring to let the listener hear both what I hear and what has been heard down the centuries (in the cases of some ancient instruments).

Perhaps my music is more in sympathy with Feldman's a priori musical use of sound, sounds seemingly left to organise themselves.  Music doesn't need to 'go' anywhere, it can simply 'be'.  Most Westerners are very concerned with 'doing' things.  I'm not advocating a complete diminishment of this tendency, simply pointing out that we don't cultivate the capacity to value other ways of being in the world.

TUNING IN/TUNING OUT

Most Western music is largely emotional and deals with expressing those emotions commonly experienced by humanity.  Western forms create a sense of safety through their predictability - they start and end in one key; they establish a repetitive rhythmic cycle and repetitive melody.  The intervals derived from the lower harmonics are mostly used.  On the whole, little is left to chance.  This is not the way I work.

Perhaps the most similar-sounding pieces to my own come from contemporary Chinese or Japanese composers who've studied in the West.  Or Western composers who've embraced Eastern philosophy/religion/musics - Cage, Crumb, Stockhausen.  Even here, on the whole, either rhythmic or melodic considerations have come to the fore, with Western musical paradigms largely in evidence, e.g. repetitive rhythmic structures or melodies derived from our 12-note tuning and either common intervals or those common to bell music (mostly minor 3rds).  Admittedly, there have been numerous excursions into microtonal musics by various composers experimenting with instruments other than percussion.  But my music has different criteria for determining which sound will follow which.  It has been favourably compared to the electronic music of Eliane Radigue, in contradistinction to the 'slam-bash' school of percussion playing.  My musical approach is 'symphonic', though many critics have failed to perceive this aspect of it.

It may be the case that we need to learn how to listen with the inner ear to the Soundscapes of the Soul.  What are we taught to listen for?  What are we taught to listen to?  I recall, years ago, trying to introduce overtone singing to a couple of trained classical musicians.  It took more than three hours before one of them asked, 'Is that a flute playing outside?'  'No', I said, 'You're beginning to hear the overtones produced by the voice.'  Evidently, after years of ignoring the overtones of a guitar string in order to tune it, the ears of these musicians had become obsessed with the twelve-tone scale to the point of total denial of anything other.  The harmonic series wasn't taught to these musicians.  All they were taught was how to give the people what they wanted to hear, what the collective was listening to.

How do we listen to music?  Are we seeking the familiar landmarks that confirm that we are indeed listening to music?  To an ordered arrangement of noises selected to be recognised as sounds?  Are we listening in order to give voice to certain emotions, or even to awaken and develop certain emotions?  Are we listening in order to appreciate ideas, how a composer has successfully managed to 'bend the rules'?  Are we listening in order to develop our listening skills, perhaps in preparation for counselling work, etc?  Are we listening to sound as a metaphor or symbol for conveying other dimensions of reality?  If so, must these simply depict familiar earth-bound 'mind-pictures'?  Much of the basis of classical music I see as having been founded upon the ancient Western culture's adoption of reasoned argument and logic brought forward into a Newtonian 'mechanical' universe.  But music needn't only be to do with organising sound in ways laid down in the past.

Music isn't simply a matter of selecting noises considered to be 'musical', and arranging in an entertaining manner.  Sound in animate nature is intimately associated with communication / language - there is a meaning above and beyond that derived from a mere mechanistic philosophy of organising meaningless noises into acceptable forms.  However, through a culture of increasing materialism, sounds have become increasingly devoid of any significance or meaning.

A THIRST FOR THE DIVINE

My music, in common with other sacred musics, tends to be limited in the range of emotions or thoughts expressed through the music.  This is in keeping with the various moral disciplines commonly practised by spiritual peoples, which likewise restrict the scope of behaviour permissible to the disciple.  It has other purposes.  The value of music as a means of building a living bridge between the physical and the spiritual (traditionally called "The Marriage of Heaven and Earth") has always been recognised.  In earlier times it was almost impossible to make music without presupposing its connection with the Divine (e.g. Indian ragas invoking the union of man and God).  Thus the function of music for many people is not an aesthetic one but part of their spiritual practice.  In our more secular times, such holistic and sacred perspectives - which once inspired so much art - have largely been ignored in music training.  Yet the power of music cannot be explained through reference merely to the notes or to historical contexts.  The recent upsurge of interest in sacred musics as a means of transforming consciousness (from Tibetan and Gregorian Chant to Hildegard of Bingen) indicates that many people are once again longing for music to express spiritual dimensions.  Also, the growing appeal of new sacred compositions (by Tavener, Part, Gubaidulina, Messiaen, et al), demonstrates how music is once more becoming a medium for contacting the sacred.  My intention as a musician is to take the listener on a deep inner journey.

Most Tibetan bowl music is formless.  It's usually a guy with a handful of bowls, sometimes more, who simply doodles.  It is aimless, often very repetitive, and it involves a comparatively very limited repertoire.  I love bowls and enjoy the various approaches which others bring, so I have a collection of recordings representing what others 'do' with their bowls.  In general they tend to get 'stuck' in one mode, i.e. no exotic sounds/techniques are used; any one piece sounds the same at any point one might choose to stop it during its duration.  This is mostly the New Age syndrome of wanting to make something emotionally reassuring or comforting, with very few surprises or challenging sounds.  My Tibetan bowl music is, on the contrary, highly structured and drawn from an extremely broad range of playing techniques and sound textures, including the application of the knowledge of acoustics, e.g. constructive difference patterns.  Of course, no one piece will include everything, or there'd be no distinguishing features from other bowl pieces of mine.  In contradistinction to the bowl music of others, my Tibetan bowl music arises from a deep understanding of what 'lives' within these sounds, whilst my compositions organise the structure of a piece according to these observed energy vibrations, which then serve to introduce the listener to a very deep awareness of sound potency, or to an awareness of levels of reality other than the purely physical.

CREDO

Musically, I believe myself to be an 'original', having 'discovered' my own unique 'voice' in the early 1970s.  Similarly, I would describe Evan Parker and Derek Bailey as 'original'.  They are who they are, doing what they do.  You can predict what you're going to hear fairly well when they perform solo, and you either love it or hate it.  Other people don't discover their own musical identity, and so they take a bit of this and a bit of that style and build into what they imagine is something of a working proposition.  There are those who 'play' with the language (simply because it's possible to do so), and those who adjust the language out of a real necessity to communicate alternative dimensions of being or to affect the changes necessary in society.  I'm of the latter persuasion.

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Anyone wishing to know more about Frank Perry should consult his website: www.frankperry.co.uk.  I recommend, in particular, an article written by Eddie Franklin: 'Towards A New Sonic Consciousness'.  The book 'Percussion Perspectives', shortly to be published by Soundworld, also contains a chapter devoted to Perry and his music.

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