Re: What's experimental?

["Krispen Hartung" <info@krispenhartung.com>]

----- Original Message ----- 

> Krispen said:
> "For me, the term provided enough confusion and ambiguity that I
> removed it from my festival and changed the name to the Boise Creative
> and Improvised Music Festival.  Still uses problematic terms, but
> easier for me to address."
>
> You believe they are less problematic?

Here in Boise, yes. We are a very conservative state - 61% McCain voters 
here! :) People I talked to weren't willing to take a risk on something 
titled experiemental, but creative and improvised seem to ring better. Our 
jazz support here is much better than experimental.  I also did an online 
survey to get a better understanding of audeince needs, ideas, etc, and 
the 
new title was recieved well.  People I talk to hear the terms creative and 
free improv, and they don't necessarily think weird, "not quite music", 
etc. 
The other reason is that I now mostly define experimental music (in the 
context of the festival)  according the formal version, which makes it a 
much more narrow genre, hardly anyone at prior festivalsl (except maybe 
Unicorn Feature, Ted Apel, etc), were conducting "musical experiments".. I 
call it what it is. We are playing very creative music, most of which is 
freely improvised It it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, I call it 
a 
duck!  :)

> I ran a group which worked on
> freely improvised contemporary (electronic) dance music. In that
> context, I found that the big majority of people see "improvised" as
> synonymous with "Jazz".

I would not complain about that misinterpretation here. It would actually 
bring more attedendees, and then open their minds to something beyond 
jazz. 
Call it "fly tape marketing".

> And for that reason, I think "experimental"
> fits better for your festival (at least the way it was this year),
> simply because there were more acts which the majority would put into
> the "music that no-one likes" category than acts in the "jazz"
> category.
You saw my last note above. I consider very few prior festival performance 
as experimental. But Creative Music and Free Improvised Music are generes 
that clearly dominating the fesival - by design, I might add. I don't want 
to fill the whole festival with a bunch of university geeks, hooking up 
computers to strange detectors, and using mathematics to create music, 
etc. 
:) Just partly joking, but hopefullly you get my point.  Jeff Kaiser does 
not call himself experimental, nor do Andrew Pask, Craig Green, Tom Baker, 
Emily Hay, Colter, Frazier, and Connoloy, yet...this si the type of music 
I 
want at the festival. Cutting edge....highly improvisational, 
electrro-acoustic, creative, as in the recetly defined "creative music" 
genre that is alive and well in the US, etc.
Kris