Drone On (Part 2)
by Ben Lambert, Culture Editor on April 18, 2007 in Culture
This is part two of a two-part series on drone music. Part one covered some of the musical ideas behind drone music; this one’s more about the social side. Of drone music. You’d be surprised.
All music used to be do-it-yourself music. Before the invention of instruments or even two-part harmony there was nothing stopping your average Australopithecus from conceiving and performing his own works. Time has, of course given us options, and with those options come limits. We now possess musical technology that lets you sculpt the very shape sound takes as it travels through the air. But it’s all very expensive and complicated and almost no one has the time and resources to do it.
Ever since the first caveman said, “you pound rock while Og rub two sticks,” people have been pining for the days of less advanced, more useable, cheaper technology. In recent times this has manifested itself in a variety of “do-it-yourself” movements and backwards-looking recording efforts.
Bruce Springsteen probably capped the trend when, responding to expanding pop success, he recorded Nebraska on a 4-track in his bedroom. These days you can record yourself and sound pretty decent on a cheap computer. Do-it-yourself probably can’t get much easier, technically speaking.
The only remaining obstacle is talent. After all, it’s pretty easy to record a Dylan song just be a genius and then tape yourself playing guitar and singing. Do-it-yourself is about democracy, about freeing music from the hands of the rich and well-connected, and giving it to anyone with something they’re burning to say. Yet who will save us from the tyranny of differing capacities for organizing information, from the despotic grasp of unequal access to musical training, from the jackboot fascism of genetic inheritance?
The answer is drone music. You probably thought I was going to say cloning or designer genes or something, but no. Drone music is the answer because really anyone can sound good if they¹re playing one note for a really long time. Anyone can express themselves by pouring out their thoughts, feelings, or life philosophies in the form of the subtle hum of a switched-on amp. And perhaps the reason that drone music has spread like wildfire throughout the musical underground is because it establishes the ultimate free relationship between music producer and music consumer in fact, it largely erases the line between the two.
When I listen to be-bop, I can’t play along. I can’t participate. You’d have to be a trained jazz ninja to be able to. But when I listen to a CD like Oren Ambarchi¹s Grapes from the Estate (more static) suddenly I am thrust into the music as an active participant. Not only can I add to the music consciously by humming aimlessly, say but even the accidental processes of my life become part of the musical space. When I turn the page of a book, the sound made adds to the texture of the music I am listening to. The same goes for the sound of my footsteps or of a door creaking on its hinge. This kind of interaction spurs me to want to create my own music. Not as an expression of my musical proclivities of my talents as a pianist or of my creative genius as a composer but as a social response.
Drone music feels like someone saying “Hello.” It’s almost impossible not to say something back. Contrast this with more demanding music, which tends to come across as a monologue. You listen, but you don¹t say much. Of course the concepts and that music, as a response to the world, at times must also be complicated.
Recently the Boston Symphony played Ligeti’s Atmospheres, a series of tones, chords and textures that kind of resembles the organic washes of noise that occur naturally as drones in our cities and in nature. But Atmospheres utterly refines and systemizes the sounds, as classical music can. It’s rich, hard music that takes an army of highly trained professionals to perform. In the end you can’t get away from the fact that the world is complicated and that music, as a response to the world, at times has to be complicated too. However, just as sometimes there’s more value in a quiet conversation than in a dense lecture, or in a line than in a painting, a single tone can be a rich and expressive thing.
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