Given his age and level of experience, I didn't expect any hitches in adding the tenor sax player to the almost-weekly funk/swing/bebop/bossa jam. I guess my apprehension had more to do with how he would perceive Lukas (the upright bass player) and I. As with most anxiety I've felt in the past few months, this turned out to be baseless - it was just a jam, nothing less: trading licks and grooving on bass lines without pretense. I really only engaged the funkier numbers, but I never expected myself to swing during my current effort to consume less caffeine.
Right after we played the last chart, my phone rang. It was an invitation to Martinsbräu, a microbrewery downtown, and everybody involved was already there. Not inclined to keep my friends waiting, I decided my instrument was portable enough to take with me.
We sat and talked over the drone of the open kitchen and chatting patrons while a swarm of vociferous tree people set up in the center of the room. I noticed they openly carried brass instruments. I looked at my horn case. I considered my options.
Then things got ridiculous.
"Wow!" you might say. "What kind of new and enchanting musical form is this? I am entertained but also intruiged!"
And then I might say that you should stop talking like that because nobody has ever talked like that ever. Goodness.
While I love the principles behind this cultural phenomenon known as Guggenmusik and will tell you why I love it in just a moment, I should probably deal with the reader's first impressions; namely that the performance was an example of excellent musicianship in the same way the Ford Pinto was a stellar example of ethical risk management. To their credit, the trumpets generally kept it together but I counted about -1 correct notes from the 'bone section. It wasn't frustrating to play along with, but rather fascinating - through that wall of quintuple-forte came a different note from every bell, and every note was somewhere above or below what I assumed the correct notes were supposed to be; the overall auditory effect was a weird sort of harmonic sleeve around the correct frequencies with a profound sense of nothingness in the middle.
Unfortunately they weren't playing "Wormhole in Pi Flat," they were playing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" and blasting it loud enough to appall the dead, which is actually the whole point of the thing. It's a 400-year-old tradition of the Halloween formula: evil spirits bring disease and bad weather, and the good citizens scare them away with garish costumes, silly music, and huge parties. In order to effectively drive the spirits away, the music has to be as insane as the costumes and festivities. A correct interpretation of Guggenmusik requires its own special brass technique, described by Wikipedia as "false playing," in which the melody and rhythm are correctly played but all other parts are fair game for unrestrained blastissimo trombone nonsense.
What I'm saying is that the tree people up there were doing it right. The way the instruments are played and the emphasis on loud loud LOUD percussion results in a fast, comical, and ultimately fun type of parade music that can under no circumstances take itself seriously.
While I don't think I would buy a Guggenmusik album, I appreciate the principle behind its appeal: it is pure spastic fun distilled into sound. People can and will dance to it regardless of technicality or even coherence.
--
The aforementioned American musicians with whom I play (see last post) are huge bluegrass fans, and so they were naturally pretty excited when a local banjo player invited us to a bluegrass jam session outside of town. It was the ultimate idealization of a bluegrass jam: a dimly lit room with a bunch of old guys and a few younger guys just throwing suggestions into the circle of guitars, banjos, mandolins and washboards. The four in our party were welcomed and we played some of the pieces we knew while the old-timers played along. The atmosphere had no tension that I could detect. There were no assumptions or pretensions, other than one mandolin player's guess that I'd rather solo over a blues, which was a relief. I guess the word I'm looking for is "chill." It was a chill acoustic jam of the highest order.
I had my first German board game experience today, which I will discuss once I understand the rules, which I suspect will be never.
Cheers,
-Jared
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
Muzak?
The semester is over and I have two and a half months to apply myself to my own personal interests talk about applying myself to my own personal interests. When I haven't been maintaining my pile of social networking sites, I've been playing music.
There's a socio-musical dynamic in Freiburg that seems unusual to me, at least unusual in that Americans such as myself can participate with absolutely no trouble.
Performance and jamming are very common here. Between the jazz club, concert hall, street musicians and open mic nights, you can find something worth hearing and someone worth jamming with on a daily basis. Sometimes the opportunities are more impressive than others: I know of one American student who currently plays with the top academic orchestra in the city. For those of us without a music major and extensive classical training, there's social jamming. Right now I play very different kinds of music with two groups of people: an eclectic mix of bluegrass, modern folk, dixieland, and silly rock/hip-hop covers with the guys from the Thanksgiving video, and funky jazz/latin music with Lukas, an upright bassist from Cologne.
While we generally play for our own amusement, there's an pleasure in public performance that jam sessions lack. Freiburg takes care of bridging the gap by providing a huge number of informal performance venues. There are at least four open mic nights per week and if we're too impatient to wait until evening we just play on the street, which is always fun. It's not unusual, either: when the weather is sunny and warm, you can hear didgeridoos, exotic percussion, mariachi bands, and maybe three American students singing in three-part harmony. It's a global city, and the music scene reflects this. In such an internationally musical and extremely public setting, we actually have a place. In a weird but definitely direct way, we contribute to Freiburg's culture.
While I do it for fun, street performance is surprisingly lucrative, with an average total income of 10 Euro per person per hour. I have to say that's an unusual figure; jamming outside with Lukas only brought in about 6 Euro each in two hours. I think the all-American group has a frenetic energy and sense of humor that the good people of Freiburg aren't accustomed to seeing, and they really seem to love participating in the performance by being our audience - admittedly an easy part to improvise.
Sometimes we attract a crowd of young people who talk with us, sometimes it's just one tremendously old German who silently stands there for ten or fifteen minutes. Parents stop and tell their kids the names of the instruments we're playing; apparently they're excited that their children have the opportunity to hear what we play because their monetary contributions are pretty substantial. We have fun; they have fun; we have fun because they have fun and so on. We love the music, and we love the people who love our music.
At this point the line between selfishness and philanthropy becomes a dotted one.
There's a socio-musical dynamic in Freiburg that seems unusual to me, at least unusual in that Americans such as myself can participate with absolutely no trouble.
Performance and jamming are very common here. Between the jazz club, concert hall, street musicians and open mic nights, you can find something worth hearing and someone worth jamming with on a daily basis. Sometimes the opportunities are more impressive than others: I know of one American student who currently plays with the top academic orchestra in the city. For those of us without a music major and extensive classical training, there's social jamming. Right now I play very different kinds of music with two groups of people: an eclectic mix of bluegrass, modern folk, dixieland, and silly rock/hip-hop covers with the guys from the Thanksgiving video, and funky jazz/latin music with Lukas, an upright bassist from Cologne.
While we generally play for our own amusement, there's an pleasure in public performance that jam sessions lack. Freiburg takes care of bridging the gap by providing a huge number of informal performance venues. There are at least four open mic nights per week and if we're too impatient to wait until evening we just play on the street, which is always fun. It's not unusual, either: when the weather is sunny and warm, you can hear didgeridoos, exotic percussion, mariachi bands, and maybe three American students singing in three-part harmony. It's a global city, and the music scene reflects this. In such an internationally musical and extremely public setting, we actually have a place. In a weird but definitely direct way, we contribute to Freiburg's culture.
While I do it for fun, street performance is surprisingly lucrative, with an average total income of 10 Euro per person per hour. I have to say that's an unusual figure; jamming outside with Lukas only brought in about 6 Euro each in two hours. I think the all-American group has a frenetic energy and sense of humor that the good people of Freiburg aren't accustomed to seeing, and they really seem to love participating in the performance by being our audience - admittedly an easy part to improvise.
Sometimes we attract a crowd of young people who talk with us, sometimes it's just one tremendously old German who silently stands there for ten or fifteen minutes. Parents stop and tell their kids the names of the instruments we're playing; apparently they're excited that their children have the opportunity to hear what we play because their monetary contributions are pretty substantial. We have fun; they have fun; we have fun because they have fun and so on. We love the music, and we love the people who love our music.
At this point the line between selfishness and philanthropy becomes a dotted one.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
The semester is over! It’s not over! I’m so confused!
As the weather gets warmer, I spend more time outside and more time eating German street food – which is similar to food, but outside. It’s more expensive than buying groceries but you’re paying for quality AND convenience and it’s not like you were ever a good cook to begin with. Luckily, you're not in Germany; I am, and I’m a fantastic cook. But that’s irrelevant. Like most people around the world, Germans eat, and sometimes they eat things that want you dead. For example:
Mensadrei sells currywurst, a chopped sausage with curry and a usually spicy sauce. The quality of the sausage isn’t great but that doesn’t matter because you won’t taste it if you order anything above a 5 on their scale of culinary masochism. Number 9, Sir Insanity, measures 750,000 Scovilles - that's between the Red Savina habanero and the Naga Jolokia pepper, the two hottest peppers in the world. You can't just try a 9, either. You have to earn it by proving you can eat an entire order of Sgt. Maniac. If you can handle it, you are given a card with the number 7 on it, which you can later trade for an 8 card if you can survive Volcano Dog, named so because halfway through you'll howl like a dog and your body will do things that make Krakatoa look like a firecracker. It’s a cool system that gives you material proof for bragging rights. I can only imagine how satisfying it is to say “I’m allowed to order a 9 at Mensadrei.”
Something big happened in the United States recently. . . Oh, right - the Super Bowl was broadcast live at one of the local Irish pubs. It was completely packed when we got there, but we somehow managed to squeeze into the best seats in the house. Even though I’m not into sports, I had a pretty good time, probably because the noise in the pub drowned out the national anthem and halftime show. They looked great, but I guess when you’re dealing with the Black Eyed Peas, the visuals are probably the only thing worth investing in. I was disappointed by the lack of commercials - the game was broadcast through the BBC and not directly through FOX, which means the only reason a non-sports-fan would actually pay attention to the Super Bowl was replaced with two British commentators and Tiki Barber's eyebrows. It was worth staying up until 4am.
Cheers,
-Jared Boze
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