JAMES WYNESS
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Charivari

2/3/2022

2 Comments

 
Picture
Depiction of charivari, early 14th century (from the Roman de Fauvel)
Charivari (30:00) [2021/22] is a new composition as yet unpublished. Get in touch if it resonates with your label's aesthetic.

​You can listen to an excerpt here on Bandcamp.

If you want to dig a little deeper into the meaning and history of charivari I'd recommend the Wikipedia page which is well researched and accurate from what I can tell. But I want to write a little about the word and its meaning and why I chose it as a title for the composition so I'll draw freely from the Wikipedia article. Charivari took me about nine months to compose which is quite unusual, maybe even dreadful, in an era where many experimental musicians are turning out new work every other week. The piece began as one thing then became another. I unravelled an initial composition and started again. Such is the experimental method where you work patiently and without reward until the work grows a tiny leg, then an arm, then a head and so forth. I'm very pleased with the work and it represents where I'm at in my research and practice if I can put it like that.

Charivari was a European and North American folk custom in which a mock parade accompanied by raucous music barged its way through a community. Because the crowd aimed to make as much noise as possible using anything that came to hand these parades were often referred to as 'rough music'. There are many socio-political dimensions to these events which show interesting geographical variation .

The origin of the word charivari is likely from the Vulgar Latin caribaria, plural of caribarium, already referring to the custom of rattling kitchenware with an iron rod, itself probably from the Greek καρηβαρία (karēbara), literally "heaviness in the head" but also used to mean "headache", from κάρα "head" and βαρύς "heavy". You get the idea.

A common usage of the word today is in relation to circus performances, where a charivari opens the show with noise, tumbling clowns and other performers entering into the playing space. 

I'll write more on this in relation to the writings of Rabelais and Mikhail Bhaktin's Rabelais and his World, two authors who provided an important strand of my research.
2 Comments
David Kilpatrick link
2/3/2022 18:46:50

This is a superb example of the use of spatial positioning of sound through controlled delay and stereo image. My MacBook Air M1 - the basic one - sat in the middle of a vast roomscape of 'noises off' - to quote Syd, 'I've got a room full of musical tunes, some high, some low, others are a good one' (may have that mondegreened). It's a very visual composition, which assembles countless players in a theatrical space. You can hear automata like the animal demons of Bosch creeping under a canopy of gongs and bells blown by a breeze which rises to a threat. They are swept into a chasm before doors open and emptiness returns. Well worth the months of work put in James.

Reply
Groucho
2/3/2022 18:47:48

Fascinating

Reply



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  • Home
  • about
  • news
  • projects
    • music >
      • ubanu tarasa
      • fouter and swick
      • music for film
      • discography
    • sound art >
      • words on resilience
    • photography >
      • prints for sale
      • Evidence
      • Rural Hours
      • collage
      • photozines >
        • the fundamentals of architecture
        • crusts
    • moving image >
      • The Landowner
      • Conversations with a Forest
    • Archive
  • Blog
  • Contact