Real World Beat

Jazz has gone through some weird convolutions these past few decades. First, bebop took it out of the cathouses and dance halls and into realms so abstract only mathematicians and other musicians could follow. Then tone poems and drone artists further abandoned melody in favor of repetition, non-standard scales and ambiance. Now things seem poised to go in any number of different directions, with fusion, acid jazz, rap and other styles mingling to form new currents of music. One of the least interesting of these currents, at least so far, has been new age music, loosely defined as any music designed to provoke a meditative state or simulate/incorporate sounds of nature. Perhaps it's too broad a generalization, but as a rule of thumb, I generally avoid anything that involves whale songs, waterfalls, or sounds made by endangered species. If someone had told me a few weeks ago I'd be listening to noises made by walrus teeth clacking on rocks in the Arctic circle, I'd have said they were nuts.

Happily, David Rothenberg has brought me a new appreciation of walrus teeth, not to mention melting icecaps, Costa Rican highland forest noises and the cries of Weddell Seals. Rothenberg's new album Unamuno is named after Spanish existentialist Miguel de Unamuno, who is credited in the liner notes with having written, "Chance is the inner rhythm of the world" and, "Man can only be truly understood when he is howling." Wedding his clarinet and overtone flutes to natural soundscapes through chance encounters, Rothenberg joins his howls to those of nature and achieves a stunning, mesmerizing soundtrack to an inner vision.

What's remarkable about Rothenberg is the integrity with which he joins manmade and natural, electronic and acoustic, cultural and horticultural. On Unamuno, he mixes electronic washes, spoken poetry, overtone and shakuhachi flutes, various drums and percussive devices, machine noises, guitar, klezmer clarinets and accordions, and whatever else is necessary to create a joyful tone salad.

Among the more interesting pieces on the CD are "Drums Stop," the opening cut and a musical joke (the punchline, incidentally, is "bass solo"). "Toothwalking," the aforementioned ode to walrus locomotion, is majestic and comforting, the tooth clacks providing a surreal snap. "Antarctica Melting" features the recorded tricklings of the melting icecap. And "After Ikkyu" is a homage to the fifteenth century Zen monk, also known as Crazy Cloud, who said, "It takes horseshit to grow bamboo, and it too longs forever, weeps, begs to the wind."

Don't get the idea that Unamuno is cerebral or dull. Rothenberg's percussive tracks move the music along while challenging the listener to accommodate syncopated and changeable rhythms. Anyone who saw the film Latcho Drom, about Gypsy music and musicians, will understand the fascination such pure sounds engender.

"Music is made out of nature, but must struggle so hard to fit into nature, like anything else that we do," Rothenberg writes in the album liner notes. "Only humanity must work so hard to feel at home." Rothenberg's achievement is that he conveys the feeling of being at home in nature, without betraying the struggle needed to do so. Everything on this CD seems natural.

Unamuno is available in area music stores. For booking and other information, call Terra Nova at (201) 642-4673, or email to terranova@hudson.highlands.com. ++

Todd Paul