Sakhile Moleshe, Ann Masina and Zoƫ Modiga during the recording of Tongues, part of a series of improvised collaborations recorded at the Centre for the Less Good Idea. (Photo: Zivanai Matangi/Centre for the Less Good Idea)
Live-streaming and collaboration have been the buzzwords of lockdown music. Despite no gigs, no gatherings and no venues, players with the skills and resources have still come together to make music for digital stages.
Something else is emerging from those joint ventures too. The apparently fixed categories of the legacy commercial music scene ā roles, models, genres and more ā were already feeling contingent pre-Covid, as new technology reversed old value chains. Now, some collaborations are simply dissolving them.Ā
For trumpeter Marcus Wyatt and bassist Romy Brauteseth, what began as one duo session streamed from their shared Sophiatown home in April last year has turned into āIn Concert @ House on the Hillā: almost a year of streamed performances in collaboration with South African small groups. Their work asks questions about performance aesthetics, band hierarchies and financial models.Ā
For bassist Shane Cooper, the improvised Happenstance collaborations he recorded at the Centre for the Less Good Idea interrogate not only hierarchy and genre, but even what we call āmusicā and what we might dismiss as āsoundā.
At House on the Hill, they film and record music and initiate archiveable artist conversations for, in Brautesethās words āa different documenting process that shows a more intimate side of the music and highlights each personās character.ā Next up is Tlale Makhene on March 11.Ā
That the two know many of the artists so far featured helps (although they hope to extend the roster, particularly to less-publicised and older-generation players); so does their small, friendly home studio setting. āBy the time we get artists onto our little yellow couch for the conversation,ā Brauteseth says, ātheyāre relaxed enough to talk freelyā.
Wyatt feels the setting supports honest performance. Rather than encouraging people to āstep in front of the audience and become somebody else,ā this quiet, intimate setting āallows musicians not to be that āVersion Bā ā thatās what weāre going for.ā The duo use the acoustics of the space and their engineering skills to support what Wyatt calls ālight and shade and silence in the musicā, rather than instrumental bombast or sound values better suited to ārock music played in a barnā.
Even though they use home resources, such ventures need support ā and artists need to eat. Brauteseth and Wyatt made various approaches, and the first four concerts were funded by the Goethe Institute, which immediately appreciated the concept āwith absolutely no strings, except their governance rules donāt permit monetisationā. A similarly supportive, hands-off donor they prefer not to name will carry the concerts forward.
Wyatt tried to evaluate various business models: āI looked for the numbers ā but there are no relevant numbers! Ideally, of course, we shouldnāt give music away for free, but weāre still building a brand.ā Musicians each receive an equal session fee, irrespective of being bandleader or member. Wyatt sees a future role for sponsor-supported, fixed, equitable fees too, in breaking the tyranny of the ādoor deal ā because after Covid thatāll come back with a vengeanceā.
āAs musicians,ā says Brauteseth, āwe definitely understand the value of earning. But having an online presence can support future bookings too. We consulted about whether posting free online was undercutting [other offerings], and the feeling was itās more important to have performances accessible ā¦ and for it to be something artists are proud of.āCooper was also fortunate to have no-strings support ā from the Centre for the Less Good Idea ā for four Happenstance collaborative sound projects, two of which are scheduled for a 26 April release on vinyl from UK-based Kit Records.
Cooper had already created work at the 2020 Africa Synthesised online conference exploring the sonic possibilities (āthe possibilities are born out of the limitationsā) of collaging tape from an analogue, reel-to-reel recorder with input from only two microphones, a vintage device heād inherited from his father.Ā
Now, with lockdown lifted slightly, āI could invite collaborators into the same room. People could really listen to themselves acoustically, without the studio barriers of booths and headphones,ā he says.
The result was three sessions ā Static, Skins and Tongues ā in which collaborators created spontaneous music in response to discussion and visual scores, plus a fourth, Ecotones, drawing on sounds from nature.
āThat happenstance created the seedlings. Then I spent weeks afterwards alone, cutting up the tapes, experimenting, scrapping, creating loops, all from that generative starting point,ā says Cooper. āI was looking for ways to make the musical transitions sound true.ā
The centre is not designed for recording, so the first rigid envelope to go was studio sound. āItās a big room with lots of reverb, not insulated: you can hear the traffic outside. I worked to incorporate those āsonic blemishesā to become sonic textures,ā Cooper says.
For each session, he collaborated with musicians he knew and some he didnāt, including classical cellist Daliwonga Tshangela. The elements from Tshangelaās sound and style in Static, he says, āspeak towards one language for collaborationsā.
Cooperās leadership role in Happenstance was also highly fluid. Although his deliberation shaped the final tapes, in the live collaboration, āI had to be equally willing to dive into the unknown and explore my curiosity ā not just put my collaborators in the dark, tell them what to do and film them.ā
The fourth session ā Ecotones ā challenges boundaries further. When invited to extend his planned three sound projects to a fourth, Cooper proposed work with artist-researcher Zayaan Khan āto see how far the centre was prepared to stretch the limitsā.
Cooperās interest is in āmicro- and macro-universes of sound: focusing in and focusing outā and he found common ground with Khanās exploration of bacteria, fermentation and their sounds ā āgigantic universes in the microscopic realm.ā
The Ecotones soundscape parallels the slowed clips of cricket and frog song he cut into Cara Staceyās traditional instrumentation in Static.
Echoing the early pioneers of electronic music, like Cairo-born composer Halim el-Dabh, Cooper believes any sound from life can be musical within āa sequence of tension and resolutionā.
Itās going to be tough, he knows, for Kit Records to place Happenstance in any drop-down marketing menu.
And thatās rather the point. Technologies of music production and distribution ā cut-up tape, digital mixing, online streaming ā in contexts of diverse collaboration, hold the potential to render everything liminal. Industry roles and genre categories are up for question. A platform can also be an archive. The scrape of a bassistās fingers, or a cricketās wings, can both be music. Everything, as Cooper describes it, is ādancing between sound-spacesā.