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His bio is on his website. (very impressive, Per!) Tom http://www.jonhassell.com/bio.html ----- Original Message ----- From: "Per Boysen" <perboysen@gmail.com> To: <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com> Sent: Sunday, August 19, 2007 10:23 AM Subject: Re: any written material on Hassell`s harmonic structures/improvisation-approach > On 19 aug 2007, at 18.51, rune fagereng wrote: > >>> I would like to know and understand more about >>> Hassells music. Are there something written on this >>> subject? Like what are this harmoni-structure on - >>> lets say, "open secrets" ? How does he think and >>> approach when improvising? > > > There's some texts at his web site and some articles on the internet, > that you should find by Google. As far as I remember no one have asked > him those questions though... or maybe he refuses to answer. At least I > know he started out studying singing with this Indian male singer I >can't > remember the name of right now. After a wile Jon started bringing his > trumpet, instead of singing, to the lectures. In India you learn by > playing/singing together with the master by trying to copy the >phrasing. > So what he has always been doing is actually to play trumpet as close >as > possible to the particular Indian vocal singing tradition (sorry, don't > know much about Indian vocal tradition either). When coming back (to >New > York, I think it was) he wanted to expand his playing into a "music > style" by adding drums. He took the decision to not fall back on the > Indian tabla tradition because he felt it would be too much of the same > spice crammed into the same sandwich (oops, my expression ;-) and >that's > why he looked to African rhythms. He recorded the Burundi Drummers >(West > African..?) and simply flew them into some tracks on the multi track >tape > recorder to go along with his "indian singing" trumpet lines (sometimes > adding a fifth by harmonizer). Myself I have always loved the way >these > hand drumming does not play a certain beat pattern (rather sounding >like > thunder or zebras running by etc) and maybe the explanation to this is > that his early recordings were created with this collage technique? I > don't know if he played the trumpet lines listening to those > zebra-thunder-no-beat-drumming-clatter-cluster or if he recorded the > trumpet first and then spliced in the drumming tape later? Would be >nice > to find out the truth about that. > > I'm not sure there is much "harmony structure" at all in his music? I > don't know about his inner ways of approaching improvisation but to my > ears it sounds very Indian, like the Raga tradition; using a theme an > stretching it into different directions during different parts of the > evolving piece. That music is more about Time than Harmony. > > On last thing; very early he mounted the term "Coffee Colored Music" as >a > way to describe the music he wanted to do. He meant that he takes > influences from all cultures and colors and if you mix all colors of >the > entire world it would end up as - coffee colored. This was "world music > for the future" before that term "world music" was even invented by > media. > > Think I reached the bottom of my all too thin Hassel knowledge by that >- > over and out. > > Greetings from Sweden > > Per Boysen > www.boysen.se (Swedish) > www.looproom.com (international) > > > > >