|
creepy songs...hmm...well i used to get a bit freaked out when i ran into music that used (black magic or whatever you call it) ritual frameworks--you can feel something funny going on--but over the past few years, i have been doing music involving ritual so it doesnt really work for me in the same way any more. turns out that i looked for this extramusical elevation all along, so it figured in the music i really like. most powerful stuff--which i suppose other folk would find creepy--is often gnawa (morrocan spirit-possession ritual performances--the recordings of the actual rituals are much more complicated/interesting than the snippets used by folk like brian jones...)
the oddest experiences involving music i have had are different from the above:
i accidentally went to a baseball game in philadelphia and within that larger accident had the strange luck to find myself standing in front of the flag pole during the singing of the national anthem---THAT was creepy...
being at the last peter gabriel show i will ever see, again in philly, during yossou n'dour's set, listening to fuckwits in the spectrum (the now-demolished space in which it was held) screaming racist epithets at the stage....
being at a who show in boston garden long long ago in the first row of the first balcony watching some nitwit shoot a roman candle into the boards of the hockey rink, watching them catch fire, watching the fire spread, realizing i was dead if the fire did not get put out.
listening to either dave matthews or phish generally creeps me out too. imagining that either band has an audience does too.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|