A PERSONAL MUSIC JOURNEY FROM 1954 TO THE
PRESENT
By Tom Fallon
I remember the spring air fresh in the sunlight and water running in the
gutter of the main street of Rumford. I heard music from the jukebox my
father had positioned just inside the door of the family restaurant with a
song by an American pop artist.
The music of pop culture was my music as I grew up in the small Maine town.
I did not know this would not last forever.
My mother probably undermined my pop culture when she bought my brother and
me a 45 record player one Christmas with only Al Jolson recordings. We were
both insulted that she hadn’t given us any pop artists, but since we didn’t
have allowances for buying records at the time, we dutifully listened to
“Swanee” and others over and over. I had to admit that Al Jolson did have a
good voice.
And at the tender age of nineteen, walking the main street of Hempstead,
Long Island, New York, I heard a strange string music piped into the air
from a music store. I stopped, listened, and asked the clerk, who was in
front of the store for a sidewalk sale, what the strange music was.
The clerk said it was Ravi Shankar. And I asked if I could buy a record—we
had 33 1/3’s in those days, not tapes or CDs.
So music to stretch my mind began with a Ravi Shakar recording of Indian
ragas. I was entranced by that sound of the sitar and tabla.
I also found a recording at that music store of Australian Aboriginals that
I played over and over, Corroborree. In moving through the years, I have
lost this and have been unable to replace it. I felt that this music reached
deep within my self back to a time when I was young on the "uncivilized"
earth.
A few months later, I could not choose a monthly selection from the Columbia
Record Club. There just was nothing in the monthly booklet that interested
me. Just before the deadline, I chose a double record set by a jazz
saxophonist named John Coltrane, partly because it was cheapest and the best
deal of the selections.
I had never heard jazz before and did not have the slightest idea who John
Coltrane was. But I did get a good deal.
John Coltrane literally tore up my mind with the intensity and variety of
selections on that double record set. I was astonished by what I heard, and
I was immediately converted to jazz.
I did, however, branch out to classical music, as I browsed that music store
in Hempstead, after viewing foreign films in the rundown theater three doors
away.
The first classical record I bought was Beethoven’s Third Symphony. I bought
the usual name brands, Beethoven, Brahms, the symphonies, simply because I
didn’t know anything about classical music. I was happy because I did like
the music.
So, here I was in my early twenties, no longer listening to commercial
American pop music. I had Ravi Shankar, John Coltrane and Beethoven. I was
held most firmly in the arms of jazz improvisation, even though I did love
Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring,” which, you will admit, seems to have some
jazz orientation.
At that time I also purchased Bela Bartók’s “Music for Strings Percussion
and Celesta,” which was my favorite classical piece for many years along
with Debussy’s “Afternoon of a Faun.”
Those strange music recordings I bought in Hempstead stretched me beyond the
limitations of American commercial music and broadened my cultural
perspective beyond the borders of America.
At one point, I collected all the Bela Bartók I could get my hands on. I
loved his “jagged edges” simply because I felt this embodied the present
spirit of the age. I also had an affinity for avant-garde composers such as
Iannis Xenakis and the great French composer of electronic music, Edgard
Varese.
I collected Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans. Then I went to avant-garde jazz
artists like Ornette Coleman and Sam Rivers and Cecil Taylor. I loved Cecil
Taylor’s early hell-bent-for-leather piano and even heard him play in
Portland, Maine, a few years ago. Small in stature, he is a giant among jazz
artists and improvisers, with an intensity that is phenomenal.
Anthony Braxton is another jazz composer whom I collected.
And then I hit John Cage (talk about wild music!), which was labeled
classical, but no one is really sure what category the inventive composer
belongs in. Surely Cage is a one-of-a-kind in the world of music.
And I have also gone through a period of collecting folk and blues as well
as Asian music. This did not last long for some reason although I still have
the tapes and CDs.
Who are my favorites?
Give me Thelonious Monk. I love to move with him as he takes apart a tune.
In my mind, he is unbelievable, and he is the one composer I would take with
me to a desert island. He has left behind all the others, Beethoven, Bartók,
Evans, Taylor. Even Coltrane, although I am uncertain about this at times
because I do love his work.
Monk has the space and time thing that seems to suit my personality. And he
seems to be exploring sound, as he creates a tune, yes, at the keyboard. If
you watch him play, you see him move with the music, as if the music does
not come from his mind but from his whole body. Not the same as some
classical or jazz pianists who move for the Monk music. Instead, improvising
seems to come right from his body rather than just moving for emphasis.
And Monk resonates with me this phrase—open the mind, open the mind, open
the mind— which, to me, is the primary direction of modern civilization. We
are explorers par excellence.
I have two favorite recordings that are in line after Thelonious Monk: One
is jazz, the other classical. A CD, originally bought as a record, New
Air, Live at the Montreal International Jazz Festival, by Air, a jazz
trio of Henry Threadgill, Fred Hopkins and Pheeroan akLaff. The first two
selections on the CD, “Sir Simpleton” and “Difda Dance” are favorites.
The classical CD by Elliott Schwartz, who teachers at Bowdoin College here
in Maine, whose music I heard many times at the Charles Gamper Contemporary
Music Festival at Bowdoin when I was able to attend a few years ago. The
sound is wonderful on this CD and emphasizes Schwartz’s separation and
percussion of sounds to create a composition.
And, of course, live performances have electrified me as well.
I think of a summer concert at the University of Maine at Farmington ten
years ago when a piano quintet played a yet unpublished Lukas Foss quintet
that ended in something of a marvelous joke. It was a surprise ending,
although he did hint at the ending throughout, and it was uplifting for me
as well as others, so refreshing since modern classical music is so very
serious. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find this particular
composition on CD.
Another concert took place during the Gamper festival over fifteen years ago
at Bowdoin, with a George Crumb piece when the performers were placed in the
corners of the room with the audience stationed in the middle. The light in
the room was lessened and the eerie night sounds of the composition were
heightened by the lack of light. The piece was one of the most haunting
classical music compositions I have ever heard.
So, music has played a strong role in my personal and intellectual life,
especially when I began to move away from American commercial pop music,
toward what I consider the very best of music human beings have created. I
have received much pleasure from music during my life. There is so much
wonderful music in this world, in America and in other nations, that we
can’t help but find some kind of music to suit our intellectual state of
mind for any particular day.
We are able today to roam century after century and culture after culture to
enjoy the music of all generations and nations.
Music is wonderful!
