• Home
  • Listen
    • List of Compositions >
      • Opera/Music Drama/Film >
        • 1619 Opera Cycle >
          • About 1619 Opera Cycle >
            • About Non-opera compositions for 1619 cycle
          • So Far Behind Now Because of Then
          • Till Paths Be Wrought Through Wilds
          • Opera #3
          • Opera #4
        • Four Freedoms >
          • About Four Freedoms
        • The Grey Land >
          • About The Grey Land >
            • The Grey Land NOTES & INFO
            • The Grey Land WORDS
            • The Grey Land SESSION PHOTOS
            • The Grey Land PRESS_REVIEWS
        • The Loves of Pharaoh >
          • About The Loves of Pharaoh
      • Large Ensembles (18+) >
        • Changing Same
        • The Grey Land
        • The Loves of Pharaoh
        • Vipassana
      • Choir >
        • Everywhere in the World, prologue from Four Freedoms
        • Everywhere in the World, epilogue from Four Freedoms
        • The People Get Tired of Dying from The Grey Land
        • The Undisappeared
        • We Couldn't Wait Anymore from Four Freedoms
        • We Have it in Our Power from To Begin the World Over Again
      • Orchestra >
        • We Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident
        • Pharaoh Scrolls
        • The Loves of Pharaoh
        • Vipassana
        • The Polar Express
      • Band >
        • Climb
        • The Gates of the Wonder-World Open
        • The Long Now
        • Quiet Earth
      • Solo & Chamber Music >
        • The Poet Dreams of the Mountain
        • Bushwhack
        • Limn
        • Fire Quiet
        • Erelong
        • Lovivance
        • Never Has Been Yet
        • Shibboleths
        • Scission
        • Es Stehen Unbeweglich
        • Serendipity
        • The Red Book
        • Pharaoh Scrolls
        • To Begin The World Over Again
        • Unlimited
        • The Distance of the Moon
        • 110 Percent
        • Memory of Red Orange Laid Out in Still Waves
        • Liquid Timepieces
        • Beautiful Thing
        • Usher (Variations)
        • Kelip-Kelip
        • Rihla
        • Race
        • The Lady Who Sailed the Soul
        • Seeker
        • The Eloquent Light
        • Still Love Remains
        • The Spell of a Vanishing Loveliness
        • Tapestry
        • The Sun at Midnight
        • Passion of a Quiet Flower
        • Adrian
        • Sweetness
        • The Polar Express (Chamber)
        • Quantum Fluctuations
        • Keyser Söze
        • Penumbra
        • A Tear of the Clouds
        • Flying
        • Madame Press Never Had to Holler at Morty
        • To Kyoto
        • Lost in the Stars
        • rothko
        • The Smoke that Thunders
        • Urban Sketches
      • Music for Dance
      • Electronic Music >
        • Ernie's Secret Life
        • The Bellagio Fountain Has Been Known To Make Me Cry
      • Miscellaneous >
        • To the Land Touching the Heavens
        • Seeker
        • Into all the Valleys Evening Journeys
    • Recordings
  • Feel
    • The Numinous Experience
    • Photos
    • Videos
  • Think
    • About Joe
    • About Numinous
    • Numinous at 25 >
      • Year 1: 2000
      • Year 2: 2001
      • Year 3: 2002
      • Year 4: 2003
      • Year 5: 2004
      • Year 6: 2005
      • Year 7: 2006
      • Year 8: 2007
  • Know
    • News
    • Press
    • The Numinosum Blog
  • Contact
  Numinous The Music of Joseph C. Phillips Jr.

The Numinosum Blog

Changing Same

2/18/2013

0 Comments

 
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2013
"R&B is about emotion, issues purely out of emotion. New Black Music is also about emotion, but from a different place, and finally, towards a different end. What these musicians feel is a more complete existence. That is, the digging of everything."
-LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), “The Changing Same” (1966)

Changing Same, my composition premiering on the Ecstatic Music Festival on March 16, 2013, is a philosophical and musical departure for me: it is a conscious acknowledgement of my early heritage in black popular music and culture. Previously my work was little interested in specifically or overtly reflecting this background in my musical language; my philosophy was (and still is) representative of a ‘post-black’ artistic freedom to explore any creative interest, unburdened with the obligation of only representing or being influenced by ‘the race.’ I am a composer, not just a ‘black’ composer. My journey ‘home’ began a few years ago when I was taken aback by something writer John Murph stated in an interview: “…there’s the whole idea of what is deemed more artistically valid… [with] artists incorporating contemporary pop music. I notice a certain disdain when some black…artists channel R&B, funk, and hip-hop, while their white contemporaries get kudos for giving makeovers to the likes of Radiohead, Nick Drake, and Bjork.”1

While my influences growing up (and now) are quite catholic—an inter-cultural fluency wherein James Brown and Yes, Eddie Van Halen and John Coltrane, go-go music and minimalism provide equal inspiration—I wondered if John Murph’s statement was really true and if so, why was it true? Regardless of the validity of the charge, this question provoked a challenge in me. Fueling a desire, like Duke Ellington in the 1940s with Black, Brown, and Beige or Wadada Leo Smith recently with Ten Freedom Summers, to create music that speaks to the “dichotomies of high and low, inside and outside, tradition and innovation”2 within black culture and explores the richness and complexity of being black in 21st century America; but also music that resonates a more universal artistic expression filtered through the changing sameness of an intimately autobiographical perspective. 

So-called indie classical/alt-classical is a reflection of alternative rock and other vernacular music as a palimpsest for the creation of new contemporary music of an expansive and open definition and vision. I wanted to express similar aesthetic ideas however using black vernacular music as the main source, testing John Murph’s assertion. From these musings the gestation of Changing Same began. Musically almost every movement  is influenced by a fragment, motive, or chord progression from various black popular music influences I grew up with. I, however, wanted to recognize other sources of inspiration as well—a “digging of everything”—so almost all the movements are connected to various influential classical music and/or personal and cultural memories during my lifetime. This miscegenation is done not in a post-modern sense of ironic collage, but rather as a genuine search to create an organic fusion of artistic and cultural influences, to create a new personal artistic statement that is more than the sum of its parts. This is mixed music.

Check back because in later posts I will be discussing the inspirations behind each movement for Changing Same and for the music nerds out there with a few movements I'll provide some detailed analysis. Hope you to see you in March.

Ecstatic Music Festival
with Imani Uzuri
Saturday March 16th, 2013
7:30 pm
Merkin Concert Hall
129 W. 67th Street
(between Broadway and Amsterdam Ave)
NYC

NOTES:

1. 
Interview with John Murph on Open Sky Jazz “Ain’t But a Few of Us: Black jazz writers tell their story pt2,”  http://www.openskyjazz.com/2009/06/aint-but-a-few-of-us-black-jazz-writers-tell-their-story-pt2/.

2. 
Touré, Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What it Means to Be Black Now, 32 (Atria Books, 2011).

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 10:30 AM 
Picture
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    The Numinosum

    To all things that create a sense of wonder and beauty that inspires and enlightens.

    numinousmusic.com

    Archives

    February 2025
    December 2021
    October 2021
    October 2020
    May 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    August 2016
    May 2015
    August 2014
    December 2013
    September 2013
    May 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009
    September 2009
    August 2009
    July 2009
    June 2009
    May 2009
    April 2009

    Categories

    All
    Album Review
    Analysis
    BAM
    Book Review
    Changing Same
    Composer Salon
    Concert Announcement
    Concert Review
    Ecstatic Music Festival
    Film
    Inside Vipassana
    Interlake HS
    Mixed Music
    Music Announcement
    New Amsterdam Records
    Next Wave Festival
    Opinion
    Performance Review
    Press
    Program Notes
    PS 321
    Pulse
    Remembrances
    The Loves Of Pharaoh
    The Numinous
    To Begin The World Over Again (Thomas Paine Project)
    Truth
    Video
    Vipassana

    RSS Feed

Thanks and credit to all the original photos on this website to: David Andrako, Concrete Temple Theatre, Marcy Begian, Mark Elzey, Ed Lefkowicz, Donald Martinez, Kimberly McCollum, Geoff Ogle, Joseph C. Phillips Jr., Daniel Wolf-courtesy of Roulette, Andrew Robertson, Viscena Photography, Jennifer Kang, Carolyn Wolf, Mark Elzey, Karen Wise, Numinosito. The Numinous Changing Same album design artwork by DM Stith. The Numinous The Grey Land album design and artwork by Brock Lefferts. Contact for photo credit and information on specific images.