Keywords

Experimental Music
Canadian Scene
Field Sites
Documentation
Performance Analysis
Dissemination

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Experimental Music

The term ‘experimental music’ was coined to describe the work of musicians who are pushing at the boundaries of what may be considered music, and who may be as interested in the process as in the outcome. Experimental musicians very often blur the boundaries between composer and performer and between music, art, theatre, dance and film. Some artists dislike the ‘scientific’ implication of the term and use related terms such as “exploratory” and “creative.” We’ve chosen to stick to the term experimental because it has quite a long history with the music, but also because of its focus on performance.

In his influential book Experimental Music, Michael Nyman described the importance of performance: “Experimental music thus engages the performer at many stages before, above, and beyond those at which he is active in traditional western music. It involves his intelligence, his initiative, his opinions and prejudices, his experience, his taste and his sensibility in a way that no other form of music does, and his contribution to the musical collaboration which the composer initiates is obviously indispensable [. . .]. Experimental music has, for the performer, effected the reverse of Duchamp’s revolution in the visual arts. Duchamp once said that ‘the point was to forget with my hand…I wanted to put painting once again at the service of my mind.’ The head has always been the guiding principle of Western music, and experimental music has successfully taught performers to remember with their hands, to produce and experience sounds physiologically.” (13)

Click here to read an essay on the relationship between experimental music and the avant-garde: Freak Out: The 1960s Avant-garde Revisited

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Canadian Scene

Mapping Experimental Music in Canada
The field of experimental music performance in Canada has attained a certain maturity. Many of the major institutions of experimental music in Canada have reached significant anniversaries; for example, the Western Front (Vancouver) is celebrating its 30th anniversary, Toronto's Music Gallery is not far behind, while the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville held its 20th season in 2003. Musicworks magazine, the primary source of writing on experimental music in Canada, has been publishing articles and recordings for over 25 years. Performers such as the Canadian Electronic Ensemble, CCMC, Lori Freedman, François Houle, Paul Cram, Peggy Lee, N.O.W. Orchestra, René Lussier, Jean Derome, Joanne Hétu, Ron Samworth, Martin Tétreault, Christof Migone and Dianne Labrosse are veterans of experimental music performance in Canada B criss-crossing the country to appear at festivals under such diverse rubrics as jazz, new music, sound art, and techno. Newer festivals such as MUTEK (Montreal) and Send and Receive (Winnipeg) are exploring recent trends in experimental music performance and digital technology, reaching out to a growing pool of practitioners and listeners whose roots are in popular music. Cutting-edge innovations in performance and technology provide a forum for musicians such as laptop performer Mitchell Akiyama, and electroacoustic composer/performer Steve Heimbecker. The new Suoni per il Popolo festival in Montreal openly declares a social agenda: “The Suoni Per Il Popolo Festival is a celebration of Liberation music. Liberation music is inspired by freedom of expression - improvisation - sonic exploration and resonates with progressive social movements.”

Why We Need to Know More
Despite the rich diversity and high level of experimental music performance in Canada, it has received little treatment in standard Canadian music histories such as Ford, McGee, and Proctor (perhaps because these works deal primarily with music up to the 1970s), and almost no mention in mainstream international texts on new music (Cope, Nyman, Salzman, Morgan). Broad information resources such as the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada and biographical books (for example Ginsberg and Kivi) give useful information, but obviously do not aspire to a deep level of analysis. Sounds Provocative will create a significant information resource on experimental music within the Canadian scene by providing detailed and comparative ethnographic information in the analytical context of performance theory. It is important to note that, while experimental music traditions in the United States, Europe, and Japan have been well-articulated, Canadian contributions to this international practice are largely un-documented and/or under-theorized. This is inspite of innovative contributions in areas such as environmental performance (e.g. Schafer and collaborators), intermedia performance (e.g. Gordon Monahan), collaborative creation (e.g. New Orchestra Workshop), audio collage (e.g. Oswald), and laptop performance (e.g. Tim Hecker).

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Field Sites

Our research is focusing on 8 music festivals and 3 regular season presenters across Canada. This allows us to map the activities of musicians across local, regional, and national contexts. Festivals also bring Canadian musicians into contact with international musicians. By analysing performance in site-specific contexts, this research recognizes the influence of place, space, production, promotion, administration, technical support, reception, and documentation in the formation of musical, and by extension cultural, identities.

Festivals
Sound Symposium, St. John’s, Newfoundland
Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, Quebec
Mutek, Montreal, Quebec
Suoni Per Il Popolo, Montreal, Quebec
Guelph Jazz Festival, Ontario
Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound Art, Kitchener, Ontario
Send and Receive, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Vancouver International Jazz Festival, British Columbia

Regular Season Presenters
Upstream Association, Halifax, Nova Scotia
The Music Gallery, Toronto, Ontario
The Western Front, Vancouver, British Columbia

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Documentation:

In the past, music was documented on scores and stored in libraries. The Canadian Music Centre (established in 1959) was created to archive the works of Canadian composers and today it boasts a sophisticated web-based lending library, and acts as a distributor of Canadian recordings.

Twenty-first century experimental music performance doesn’t always lend itself to documentation on written scores, or even on sound recordings. For example, a given work may include interactions between software and hardware, techniques specific to a particular performer, audience interaction, radio, or the Internet. Performance-based works often use spatialized sound, visual media, dramatic text and movement. Further, we think that all musical performance is a collaboration that involves not only the artists, but presenters, technicians and audiences. A live performance is a unique event, and since many experimental music pieces are only performed a few times (perhaps even once), it’s important to document such events as completely as possible.

One aim of our project is to develop a multi-valence methodology for documenting experimental music performance using digital video and sound recordings, along with interviews with artists, presenters and technicians. We are also conducting audience reception surveys so that we can find out how audiences perceive experimental music performances when they are watching them. We aim to document not only the specific performance, but also the culture of experimental music performance in Canada.

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Performance Analysis

Sounds Provocative belongs to a growing body of critical scholarship on performance that understands music as discourse, illuminating social processes and cultural effects. Because it seeks to expand the boundaries of musical discourse, experimental music is a particularly expressive medium for exploring issues of performativity and identity. By “performativity” I mean to reference that branch of performance studies concerned with theorizing the embodied production of identity. By “identity” I endorse Stuart Hall’s non-essentialist understanding whereby “identities are constructed within, not outside, discourse...[and are therefore] produced in specific historical and institutional sites within specific enunciative strategies.” (1996:4) A focus on the “enunciative strategies” of musical performance highlights the complex of social, cultural, and institutional processes by which music is presented, communicated, and received.

Our methodology takes into account performer histories and artistic intentions, embodied music making on stage (including performer interactions, movement, speech), and musical content (form, style, function). We also consider the material circumstances of the performance: venue, placement in festival program, target audience, price, program and publicity, production and technical support. One innovative strategy is to conduct audience reception surveys in order to take seriously the perceptions and responses of concert listeners/viewers. A focus on performance means that we have to take seriously how people listen to experimental music. There are vanishingly few models for such surveys in music research, yet confident assumptions are constantly made about how audiences react to music. Our focus on performance means that we have to take seriously how people listen to experimental music.

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Dissemination

This website is the first step in a long-term project of disseminating information about experimental music performance in Canada. Despite the admirable efforts of Musicworks Magazine, the Canadian Music Centre, a number of independent record labels such as Ambiance Magnetique and Victo and especially the festivals and musicians themselves, Canadian experimental music remains a well-kept secret.

In the United States, “experimental music” is often described as coterminous with “American music” as the Musical Mavericks project attests. Scenes in Europe and Japan are also well documented. Relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to Canadian experimental music.

Yet Canadians have long been innovators in experimental music - from the pioneering electronic instruments of Hugh LeCaine to R. Murray Schafer’s environmental music theatre; from John Oswald’s plunderphonics to the soundscape art of Hildegard Westerkamp; from the New Orchestra Workshop’s collective improvisational process to the Quebecois improvisation of Montreal’s musique actuelle scene; from Kim Sawchuk’s radio and performance art collective PoMoCoMo to the noise music of the Nihilist Spasm Band; from the live computer music of the 30 year old Canadian Electronic Ensemble to cutting edge developments in laptop performance heard at Mutek.

Scholarly essays, the creation of a performance archive, this website, and a book project with DVD-rom are all part of the dissemination project of Sounds Provocative.

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