Anthony Braxton

I chose to reflect on the article about Anthony Braxton’s latest approach to composition, because I have always heard a lot about Braxton without ever checking him out. I am a big fan of his son (Tyundai Braxton), whose recent projects are praised for combining rock and electronic elements in unique ways. I had always heard that Anthony was a well-regarded jazz musician, but had no idea how unique and extensive his different approaches to composition were.

This article is about his latest series of compositions entitled “ghost trance musics”. In the start of the interview he speaks of his past experimentation with schematic musics, coordinate music, serialism and other 20^th century techniques, hieroglyphics and colour and dance in music – this is clearly someone always looking forward, so I am itching to hear what this latest project actually sounds like. While I think I would have to read this article 4 or 5 times to fully understand what it is Braxton is trying to achieve with the ghost trance music, I took away enough to be greatly intrigued.

His inspiration comes from ghost dance music of Native Americans, which was used to spiritually unify them with their ancestors, as well as trance musics of Europe, Persia, and Africa. He speaks of using the music as a tool, or a body of information, looking to “unify large and small time spaces”. It seems to me that he is taking a mentality that arose with minimalism – that music didn’t need to be about melody, it could be about texture or repetition or the concept of time in music or any number of things – and taking it to the next level. He drops other boundaries by stating that instrumentation is more or less irrelevant and that the participation of a “friendly experiencer” along with the designated musicians will help achieve his goal.

Again, he is relatively vague when describing technical aspects of the music.. it’s always analogies and explanations of what he is trying to achieve structurally, or what he is trying to provoke in the listener, etc. So I have no idea what to expect as far as what it actually sounds like, but I am now extremely curious. So I guess this was a very effective article.