Sonic Revelations, Sonic Revolutions

I would like to concede my original thoughts about the Tramp. First I believed that Bryers was using the Tramp to his advantage because he was dry on ideas for a song. After Bryers created a successful song, he didn’t give any credit to the tramp himself, who was the overall melody and obviously most important part of the song itself. However listening to the song itself, it mostly became beautiful when the orchestra came in and gave it life. It’s hard to keep the same line interesting for an hour, Bryers beautiful accompainment gave life to the tramps song. The tramp receives acknowledgement through the title, and the description of the piece. He is not entirely forgotten. The fact that his song and emotion would inspire someone to write a symphony behind it is indeed a great form of praise to the tramp. I did feel however, that adding a famous and flourishing musician like Tom Waits, was a negative addition to the song. Here we have someone who is indeed living a cold and sad life as a homeless person, singing his little sparks of hope through song, and a rich musician who is trying to copy that emotion on top of it. To me it is a mockery of the tramps life itself. Here we are mixing real emotion with an actor trying to express that emotion in a harmony. Although they both sound dirty and poor, the idea of it just makes the final movement clash. The first movements were so powerful and expressive, I was disappointed when the Tom Waits came in.

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Our discussion in class about Tramp with Orchestra (Jesus’s Blood Never Failed Me Yet) really intrigued me. Was it ethical to create this piece with the recording of the tramp’s voice when the tramp may have never even heard it, much less have received monetary compensation for it? Somebody else in class described this song as stealing a part of the tramp’s soul, and I completely agree with that person. I also completely agree with Finn’s blog, in that the reason this piece feels like it captured a soul is because of its unremitting honesty. Like I said in class, this argument highly reminds me of photography. Suppose you take a picture of a girl crying on the street. Is it ethical to portray such sadness without compensating the subject of the photo? You’ve taken a picture of her when she is emotionally fully exposed, and if you’re a really good photographer, you’ve managed to compress some of her soul onto a sheet of paper. You could never learn her name and her portrait could hang in national museums. Is that different, somehow, because it is inherent in the medium of photography? Art is meant to portray life, and when the line between life and art is blurred substantially it can make people uncomfortable because they are forced to face the realities of life head-on. The serious negative reactions of a couple of people in our class to this piece because it felt like it nearly encapsulated a life made me have an even greater appreciation for the work. That is the mark of a seriously successful work of art. Another, I think, is the ability of the music to take on whatever emotions you bring to it, which I think was also shown in our class’ conversation by the way some people found it very uplifting and others found it very depressing.

In my opinion, souls are not meant to be kept anyway. We give away our soul willingly on a daily basis, by saying what we’re thinking and caring about people and creating art. Souls don’t have a limit. They replenish. I think it’s a sad thing that people are uncomfortable looking directly at who someone is. I do not believe Gavin Bryars had anything but the most honorable of intentions in creating this work. I still can’t find the right words to describe the tone of this piece. It isn’t depressing or uplifting, it’s just comforting. It’s another one of those works that reminds me of all sorts of cliched things like how there is always good around the corner and silver linings and such.

Of all the music that we have listened to in class thus far, I can say, without any doubt, that Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet affected me the most.  I confess that I had very low expectations going into this piece.  When professor Alegant said in class that it was over an hour and used a tape loop of a tramp singing, I braced myself for the worst.  After listening to Come Out and I am sitting in a room, both of which I did enjoy, for the record, I was tired of lengthy, experimental pieces involving the musicality of the human voice.  I was scared it would simply reiterate this idea with some sort of twist.  The thought that Bryars had selfishly not given back to the Tramp also occurred to me.
When I listened to the piece it completely blew me away. The second movement had the deepest effect on me.  It had that great quality of being overwhelmingly sad and yet not depressing.  It made me feel sad for the tramp and for society in general, not for myself.  After listening to the piece, I cannot believe that it was conceived from selfishness, vanity, or sarcasm. I think that the creator put real feeling and emotion into this piece. The orchestrations did not mock or patronize the tramp, they sympathized with him.
Someone in class said that music like this captured a piece of the soul.  I don’t think it was only the tramp’s soul.  I have no experience in musical composition, but I do have experience in the visual arts, and I think it is extremely difficult to show that much of yourself in a work of art.  I believe that Bryars was being completely honest in this work.  For me, this music is a pure expression of human sadness, not sarcasm, and not self-indulgence.

Bryars’ composition is one of my favorites that we’ve looked at. While a lot of you guys hear it in an ironic context, I really do think it’s a genuine concept seeking genuine responses. Over the course of the six movements, your emotions build and build; the imagery I get from extended listening of this piece is incredibly powerful. I’ve been transported to parts of my life I haven’t thought about in years and years. The fact that we don’t really quite know who the tramp was adds depth to the composition – it’s as if the tramp is nobody, and yet everybody at the same time. I’ve always thought this effect was ungraspable unless you’re Bob Dylan. Bryars’ orchestration is tasteful and colorful. It adds a sense of hope to the tramp’s voice and gives beautiful context to the words.Several people in class brought up the idea that Bryars was capitalizing on the tramp’s soul. I really don’t agree with this; there’s no material compensation that could have made it more “okay” to use the tramp’s singing. The idea of taking his voice and bringing it together with orchestration stands as a shrine, an homage to the tramp’s singing. Tossing the guy a nickel would be not only inconsequential but insulting. This composition isn’t about helping this tramp out of his situation (of which we know little), but rather opening the door to a voice that would otherwise go unheard.  The other thing I’d like to address is the Tom Waits aspect of the composition. Some say he’s over-doing it or that it’s out of place since he’s a famous dude. But for me, it fits perfectly. I don’t think Tom Waits cares that he’s famous; he cares about weirder and more visceral things, like black coffee, midgets, or spiders. In any event, Waits is in fact the only other guy I would add to the list of the nobody/everybody list along with Dylan and the tramp. His voice is filled with such filth, truth, beauty, and life; it perfectly suits the tramp’s essence.  Stay cool everyone.    If anyone knows how to skip lines when writing these things, please let me know – I’ve been trying since blog #1 to make paragraphs to no avail. So my apologies if my statements seem abrupt at times. Thanks y’all.  

I just listened to Bryer’s song featuring Tom Waits again….the contrast between Tom Waits and the Tramp’s voice left me pondering the interchangability of their lives, and yet the drastic differences between them, which I think is expressed in the song.  Tom Wait’s voice emerges as stronger and more passionate, and in a way I feel as though he is singing for the tramp, singing with all his might to do the tramp’s unfortunate life justice, although I admit that that is very sentimental; nevertheless, sometimes it just seems like Tom Waits is giving the tramp his regards, his respect…this isn’t the best example but it’s the only one that’s coming to mind: on tv once I saw Alicia Keys and Stevie Wonder singing together, and Alicia had a very reverential manner towards Stevie Wonder; in this case, Tom Waits is Alicia Keys, and the tramp Stevie Wonder (sorry…that was a really horrible analogy!).  Could it be the ultimate irony here then, when their voices are overlapped and singing about jesus’s blood, when tom waits is this renowned musical figure, and the tramp dies anonymous, but both espouse the enduring goodness of jesus’s blood? The tramp with the string quartet was the most emotional one for me because his voice is very prominent and shines through the strings, and the feeling I get from the song is very cinematic, as though I could see the tramp on the street, and as the camera focuses on him, the strings begin to play. In the song with Tom Waits, the tramp’s voice seems to become irrelevant after a while, and Tom Waits takes the center stage–in fact, a chorus comes in as well, and the message seems to be predominantly praiseful–it could be taken as a remark  upon how easily the downtrodden and disadvantaged are forgotten in light of the self-righteous and self-celebratory tone of songs such as this. It is never about Jesus’s sacrifices, I suppose, but rather, how it “never failed me.” In the Tom Waits version of the song, the strings and accompanying orchestra sound jubilant and joyous, almost like a Christmas carol. While the first version of the song could be the soundtrack of, as Bryer’s says, a 1950’s war movie, the version with Tom Waits could be the background soundtrack of some Santa Clause spinoff movie.  At times the tramp’s voice peeks through the sound curtain of the orchestra and the chorus and Tom Waits, and for a moment it is just the tramp again, but those moments are very fleeting, and Tom Waits overpowers the tramp. The  progression through the songs could reflect the process of how religion might affect different kinds of people in different kinds of circumstances, if indeed this is even about religion anymore…