Talking about The Mars Volta's alien chaos yesterday got me thinking about music that sends me out of my mind in an enjoyable way. That, and seeing one of their band members with more than one horn slung around his neck, reminded me how much I love Rahsaan Roland Kirk.
A favorite college professor of mine played Kirk's "The Inflated Tear" in
class one weekday afternoon, and 45 of my dormant synapses fired all at
once and opened up an entirely new section of my brain. It's one of those musical moments that changed me.
Kirk was a multi-instrumentalist in the genre of black classical music (a.k.a. jazz) who went blind at an early age due to medical mistreatment and lived a short but vivid life, dying in 1977 at the age of 41. When I say he was a multi-instrumentalist, I mean that tenor sax was his main instrument and he'd also play sax and flute - all at once - and sometimes with his mouth and nose at the same time.
Witness:
You know someone's a serious horn player when they've developed multiple bellows-like air pockets in their cheeks and across the entire span of their neck. Kirk was a master of circular breathing, enabling him to play continuous notes without having to stop to inhale. He worked with Mingus, Quincy Jones and many of the great players of his time, but he stuck so steadfastly to his own vision that he inevitably flew under the radar.
Kirk lived on another plane and just wasn't bound by our rules and limitations.
That was a cover of "I Say A Little Prayer" - recognize it? (Bonus: he often covered Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine").
I think one might be able to discover the meaning of life by listening to enough Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Seriously. He made a great deal of his music, and life decisions, based on dreams he had. If he dreamed a sound, he'd wake up the next day and create it. If he couldn't find the right instrument, he'd make one. He changed his name based on dreams. He made his dreams real. And he lived his life looking for bright moments:
"Now, we would like to think of some very beautiful Bright Moments. You know what I mean?
Bright Moments . . . .
Bright Moments is like . . . eating your last pork chop in London, England, because you ain't gonna get no more . . . cooked from home.
Bright Moments is like being with your favorite love and you're all sharing the same ice cream dish.
And you get mad when she gets the last drop.
And you have to take her in your arms and get it the other way.
Bright Moments.
That's too heavy for most of you all because you all don't know about that kind of love.
The love you all have been taught about is the love in those magazines.
And I am fortunate that I didn't have to look at magazines.
Bright Moments.
Bright Moments is like seeing something that you ain't ever seen in your life and you don't have to see it but you know how it looks.
Bright Moments is like hearing some music that ain't nobody else heard, and if they heard it they wouldn't even recognize that they heard it because they been hearing it all their life but they nutted on it, so when you hear it and you start popping your feet and jumping up and down they get mad because you're enjoying yourself but those are bright moments that they can't share with you because they don't know even how to go about listening to what you're listening to and when you try to tell them about it they don't know a damn thing about what you're talking about!
Is there any other Bright Moments before we proceed on?
Testify! . . . .
Bright Moments.
Bright Moments.
Bright Moments is like having brothers and sisters and sisterettes and brotherettes like you all here listening to us." -- Rahsaan Roland Kirk
In fact, when I get to heaven, or the afterlife, or in the unlikely event that I do someday have a hallucinogenic drug trip, I'm going to The Great American Music Hall to see Rahsaan Roland Kirk perform. Or maybe he'll come perform in my dreams. The Mars Volta can open up the show.
- Download "The Inflated Tear (LP Version)"
mp3 from Amazon, or buy the boxed set Dog Years In The Fourth Ring
, which I own and recommend. John Kruth published a biography of Kirk titled Bright Moments
in 2001, which I'm adding to my reading list.