as with any time period dominated by a particular cultural paradigm, in the midst of the 60s and 70s when rock&roll was hegemonic musically, there were other subterranean coeval rivers.  szabor was not least among them.

nor was ralph towner and company [this was what i once heard when i was 16 at colby college back in 1973, in a very small, intimate auditorium, and afterwards, i went up and talked to the band members, having no clue as to who they were… the next year, while still in high school, i enrolled in courses at colby, in ‘cultural eugenics with professor gustav todrank, even… a professor of religion turned aestheist! we became life long friends and he lent me his house in the famed seaside maine village of kennebunkport to get married in when i was 22…  noah attended, aged 4 months]

interesting how the album covers are so deeply memorable…

and with, right, paul winter: note the english and french horns… baroque jazz.. with tablas… way before kronos…

note: Paul Winter has made music in the Grand Canyon, dueted with a wolf in Minnesota, and seen his songs taken to the moon by the Apollo astronauts, who named two craters after his songs.

skip to 6.15 mins in: such a time cut… yet not at all… not the 6.15 jump, but that between the 70s and this in 2014… irish, baroque jazz fusion , whales, riley and beyond… i first heard winter with towner, playing whale sounds in bath maine in 1974 or 75. 🙂 if this isn’t ‘conceptual sonic art’, i don’t know what is. human-animal collaboration… no wonder i went to study with haraway…

okay, it was in fact painful, so i’ve deleted it…

and then there is the inimitable jon ambercrombie, who sometimes played with towner

structure vs lyricism… ser y estar

yeah, the list of the forgotten goes on and on….

this particular jag wouldn’t be complete, and it could never be complete, as an excavation of my own musical unconscious, but in with these cats, unless i added something by larry coryell… the parallel track of blues/funk/etc will have to wait, and i’m sure you’re happy about that… you’ve had to bear a bit of that. but just a bit…

coryell was then, still is as far as i know, considered one of the greatest guitarists every…

right, more and more and…

well, who else but stanley clark… interesting how most of the music in this post hovers around 1974… in that year, i had won awards for my prowess in advanced biology… been kicked off the ski team because it was discovered i had smoked pot, i admitted that my very long hair then, was indeed a statement… but i had at my back all my teachers who were then themselves at least half hippy… or, aspiring…

in retrospect, it may have been clarke’s album that infiltrated my brain most… i have always want to learn to play the base… 🙂