Music is a means to discover the world. People from different cultures begin to listen to each other, they share and communicate their emotions. This is the gift of music: to establish a strong connection between individuals, regardless of the kilometers and miles that separate them from each other, regardless of their different cultural and economic situations.
Today, the musical heart of our planet seems to be able to address itself more directly to the people of the world, connecting Africa, Europe, Asia, North and South America in a direct way. And the inhabitants of this planet seem to be ready to listen to this new/old beat, to incorporate it, and to participate in it. Mankind is more and more discovering its planetary identity, its collective roots. Like a big wave, music reaches the ears all around the globe, jumping across language barriers and geographic prejudices. 1)
Our wealth and abundance allows us to select: from the media´s offerings, from record stores, and from entertainment guides. The countries of the so-called third world do not have this privilege, but they have a rich cultural heritage to look back upon which today is beeing adjusted to the circumstances of modern production technologies. Unlike the results of the musical-ethnological field recordings of the past (which, by the way, were not as true to the original as the dogmatists of the pure and unaltered folklore wanted us to believe), what we get to hear today is mostly hybrids of traditional materials. 2)
Throughout its entire 25-year history, the Erdenklang Label (Erdenklang = sound of the earth) has been aware of and has focussed on this dialogue of cultures, because it is the spiritual power of everything original and authentic, combined with the modern production and music forms of the highly developped "western world", that goes to make up the fascination of a "world music". Even in their early recordings, the band Tri Atma made use of electronic means as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The same goes for the songs of Hungarian singer Irén Lovàsz (which she developped from field recordings), the archaic and partly shamanistic Estonian and Finno-Ugrarian chants by Kirile Loos, and the transcriptions of mediaevel music by the VOX ensemble. So, the "sound of the earth" is nothing but a big "rip-off"? It surely is, and why not? All artists are colonialists, and that is what they ought to be. Today, even in the most remote areas of the planet people can inform themselves about all cultural streams. But what makes up the personality and aura of a musician/composer, is how he filters all the information which is available to him.
This process works in all directions. Let the "sound of the earth" take us to the melting pot of musical cultures! 3)
1) Paul Williams
2) Jean Trouillet
3) in extracts Jean Trouillet
taken from the book „WeltBeat“,
Das JA-Buch für Globe-HörerInnen
Der grüne Zweig 132
edited by Jean Trouillet and Werner Pieper
published by Werner Pieper’s Medienexperimente
ISBN 3-925817-32-8
