Monotony ... or do I mean 'Mono-Tony'? February 2013

 

GEELONG MUSIC GROUP (21 February 2013)

 

MONOTONY … OR DO I MEAN 'MONO-TONY'?

 

You may recall that in Ian's first presentation to this group he offered 'A Night of Sex'. In contrast, in this - my fifth presentation to this group, I'm inviting you to 'An Evening of Monotony. Beware the passage of time, my boy!

 

Tonight's presentation originated from two very different books. The first is Lennon Remembers - the interviews with John Lennon that had appeared in Rolling Stone magazine. Lennon suggested something that for some reason stayed with me - that rock 'n' roller Little Richard was, in fact, an avant garde artist:

'Tutti Frutti or Long Tall Sally is pretty avant garde. I met an old avant-garde friend of Yoko's in the Village the other day who was talking about one note like he just discovered that. That’s about as far out as you can get.' (p. 103)

Lennon Remembers. (The Rolling Stone interviews by Jann Wenner). (1970) Penguin Books.

 

Characteristically, Lennon overstated his case, but I think that it's essentially true that much of Little Richard's music was based on or around one note, which you can describe either as monotonous or as a monotone or as a drone. To demonstrate this idea, here's Little Richard performing 'Ready Teddy':

TRACK ONE: Little Richard (1956) 'Ready Teddy' Specialty. (2.07)

 

The second book is Blues & Chaos: the music writing of Robert Palmer (edited by Anthony DeCurtis). The book covers an enormous rage of subjects, reflecting Palmer's eclectic musical taste. For now, I just note this passage:

'Drones, introduced via Indian music, were big during the sixties. John Coltrane's improvisations took advantage of these one-note or one-chord continuums, as did Canned Heat's boogie.' (p. 394)

 

I've always been attracted to the droning of the Indian string instrument the tamboura. Its role in classical Indian string music is to underpin a raga - a sequence of notes from which a soloist improvises an extensive performance on, for example, a sitar or a surbahar. Here, Talbert St. Clair plays a flute over a droning tamboura. The track balances the tamboura's drone with the lyrical notes of the flute playing both against the tamboura's drone and around it:

TRACK TWO: Talbert St. Clair (2002) 'Tamboura (Return of Hollow Hills)' from Tears of the Forest - Mystical Journey. Talbert St. Clair. (4:50)

 

The tamboura has also been used outside of that traditional context. For example, here's Ian Naismith's 'Cryoseism … for keyless piano and tamboura':

TRACK THREE: Ian Naismith (2009) 'Cryoseism … for keyless piano and tamboura' from Isbre … possible fragments for orchestra. VidrioArts. (4:39)

 

We hear again that relationship between monotony and difference in Canned Heat's 1968 hit, 'On The Road Again', featuring a tamboura:

TRACK FOUR: Canned Heat (1968) 'On The Road Again' Liberty. (4:56)

 

Canned Heat were fans of John Lee Hooker and Hooker was another fan of the drone. In his later work, he often used his voice as a drone against a variable guitar, but his earlier work featured a droning guitar against a variable voice. Here's John Lee playing his first big hit, 'Boogie Chillun':

TRACK FIVE: John Lee Hooker (1948) 'Boogie Chillun' Modern. (2:36)

 

 

Indigenous droning

Droning is a common feature of the otherwise diverse music of some indigenous cultures. We'll start with the instrumental drone produced by the bagpipes of, for example, Scotland, Ireland, Brittany and Northumbria. The bagpipes feature what's called a 'drone' - a cylindrical pipe that is generally not fingered but rather produces a constant harmonizing note; while the melody is played with two hands on the 'chanter'. While the chanter can produce variable notes, it sounds continuously (like the drone), so there can be no rests or silences in the music. Instead, the player uses 'grace notes' to break up notes and to create the illusion of emphasis. Here's a classic Scottish bagpipe tune - 'Scotland The Brave' - played by The Auld Town Band:

TRACK SIX: The Auld Town Band (2006) 'Scotland The Brave' from Magnificent Music of the Bagpipes. MusicMasters. (2:39)

 

In the bagpipes, the drone is an essential feature of the instrument; in the Aboriginal didgeridoo, the drone is the instrument. The didgeridoo's drone depends on the player's ability to exhale continuously, while simultaneously inhaling - a process called 'circular breathing'. (The technique is often associated with 1960s/1970s US jazz musician Rahsaan Roland Kirk.) Australian Aboriginal band Yothu Yindi's 'Bayarrmak' is sung over the drone of the didgeridoo. Like a lot of traditional Aboriginal singing, it features a very narrow range of frequencies - what we might call 'variable vocal droning' (!):

TRACK SEVEN: Yothu Yindi (1992) 'Bayarrmak' from Tribal Voice. Mushroom Records. (1:53)

 

Like Aboriginal music, many songs of the Native Americans feature voices in a very narrow range of frequencies, often over the droning of single-pitch drums. This is 'Secret Admirer' by the Spirit Sands Singers - an Anishinabe (Plains Cree) singing group from the Swan Lake First Nation, Manitoba:

TRACK EIGHT: Spirit Sands Singers (2005) 'Secret Admirer' from Eagle Songs - PowWows of the Native American Indians. ARC Music Productions Inc. (3:10)

 

The Didgeridoo isn't the sole source of droning in Aboriginal music and droning isn't restricted to 'traditional' Aboriginal songs such as we just heard. Here's Australia's Warumpi Band's 'Stompin ground':

TRACK NINE: Warumpi Band (1996) 'Stompin ground' from Too Much Humbug. CAAMA/Shock. (3:33)

 

The final example of drones in indigenous music comes from the Classicist people of North Europe. This is the 'Prelude' to Richard Wagner's Rheingold played by the Bayreuth Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Barenboim:

TRACK TEN: Bayreuth Orchestra and Chorus & Daniel Barenboim (1992) 'Rheingold: Prelude' (Wagner). Teldec Classics International. (4:11)

From melody to rhythm

So far, we've seen that mono-tony can be found in a variety of musics in various forms, including monotonal or droning instruments and 'variable droning' voices. We can find another form of mono-tony in Funk music. Originating in the mid-to-late 1960s, Funk subsumes melody and harmony to a strong rhythm, foregrounding bass and drums. Unlike R&B and soul songs, which consist of chord progressions, funk songs often consist of an extended vamp on a single chord. Rather than playing tunes, instruments such as guitar, bass, organ and drums play interlocking rhythms, overlaid by a horn section playing rhythmic 'hits'. The result is a chopped-up, urgent and exciting mono-tony that's quite the opposite of the continuous drone. Funk is dance music, not thinking music!

 

James Brown was often called 'the godfather of soul', but he was also the father of funk! His 'Out of Sight' (1964) was the prototype of funk, its cross-rhythms echoed in a repeated one-note horn riff. Fully-fledged funk appeared as James Brown's single 'Papa's Got A Brand New Bag' (1965); and his 'Cold Sweat' (1967) went even further in making a song out of cross-rhythms. James Brown continued to lead the development of funk into the 1970s, exemplified by this classic funk single, 'Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose':

TRACK ELEVEN: James Brown (1969) 'Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose' King. (2:50)

 

 

Popular droning

In the 1950s, Little Richard and Bo Diddley were creating music that was 'mono-tonous' yet wildly popular; and in the late 1950s, avant garde composer La Monte Young started to write pieces featuring extended one or two-note drones, expressing mathematical 'formulae' that Young derived by combining sonics and Indian classical music. His pieces were anything but popular - they were played to very small audiences in New York and weren't recorded at the time. Perhaps this is the 'old avant garde musician' to whom John Lennon referred - for a while, Yoko Ono was part of that New York avant garde art scene.

 

In the mid-1960s, John Cale and Lou Reed turned Young's mathematical 'formulae' into ground-breaking yet popular songs by the Velvet Underground. E.g. Venus in Furs:

TRACK TWELVE: Velvet Underground (1967) 'Venus in Furs' From The Velvet Underground and Nico. Verve. (Reissued 1996. Polydor.) (5:12)

 

Droning reappeared in the 1970s as part of the defiant simplicity of punk music and it continued in 'post-punk', especially Joy Division, illustrated here by Dead Souls:

            TRACK THIRTEEN: Joy Division (1980) 'Dead Souls' Factory Records.

(4:54)

 

Drones were central to the phenomenal popularity in the late 1980s of U2 (E.g. 'I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For' and 'Pride [In The Name of Love]'). A more recent recurrence of mono-tony is Sure Don't Feel Like Love by someone whom you might not associate with avant garde drone music - Paul Simon. Is nothing sacred?!

TRACK FOURTEEN: Paul Simon (2006) 'Sure Don't Feel Like Love' From Surprise. Warner Music. (3:57) (TOTAL: 57 mts.)

 

'Johnny One Note' is a show tune from the 1937 Rodgers & Hart musical Babes in Arms, where it was sung by Wynn Murrary. Judy Garland sang it in the 1948 Rodgers & Hart biopic Words and Music.