Vedran Ružić's program text for Music Beyond Zen
MBZ "Music Beyond Zen"
Music of instability
"Everywhere we are, we hear mostly noise. When we ignore it, it bothers us, when we listen to it, we think it's enchanting." (J.Cage)
The theme of this project, which I would call "6 meters - final act", is demolition of houses, land requisition, forced abandonment of one’s home, and in my opinion the worst of all – not knowing what the future will bring till the last day. As an overture, the project "6 meters" consisted of several segments (film, music, artworks) shown recently at jazz and film festivals and in exhibition galleries. Building on the same theme, the final project MBZ – Music Beyond Zen, refreshed in sound and video installation, will have its premiere 20 April in Močvara Club in Zagreb, and a second performance in Rijeka 29 May. In author’s words: "As the project is relevant, experimental and activist, I decided to present it to the audience as the first, and also the introductory part of the whole story that takes place at the address B. Laginje 28, i.e. the home of my family, as well as in the studio that is soon being demolished and such a split is inevitable due to "higher goals". In the same studio named "Highway" my brother Zvjezdan recorded numerous albums, both his and mine, but also other musical colleagues who came there, and I can freely say that this is one of the important studio spaces in which a lot of jazz albums recognized on the Croatian scene were created".
Since through the last few projects and series of works I always deal with current issues either on a global level (migrants, pandemic, war) or on a personal level (demolishing the family home) in which I have a multimedia approach, it is logical for me to continue in this tone. And the current issue is still the demolition of the family home, shrouded in a veil of uncertainty and anticipation that are, surprisingly, currently worse and harder to endure than they were when I started the project.
The backbone of the MBZ - Music Beyond Zen project, which is multimedia in character, contains the concept of connecting a visual story with sound. Thus, the musicians are placed behind an installation resembling a noise-insulating wall, on which the author's experimental film "6 meters" is projected at the beginning. The wall is covered in cross-discarded tailored sheets which white color symbolizes acceptance of forced relocation as well as the abandonment of one's own land.
After the end of the film, which shows the uncertainty of a family’s future in one day, from morning to night, denied appeals (and drawings) of "convicts" whose homes are demolished and land taken away, as well as those whose land and houses are right next to the new road, are projected on the tin structure. The music premiered for this occasion, carries fragments of traffic noise created by the drummer and percussionist, while, by combining electric bass and double bass with piano parts, we get a tangle of creating music of instability derived from elements of chance and improvisation. The music is conceived in four movements with intermezzo. Each movement has a separate meaning, and they are connected by the unfolding of the story: "the theatre of coexistence of mental anguish of individuals and the noise of traffic at a distance of only a few meters is an experience that many have been through living next to the road. Through the "archaeological" layer of oblivion, I made a feature film about the experience of people who experienced the injustice of the former political system, and many, still go through the same experience even today - when it's supposedly better. Or maybe it's not better. Through the composed sound and video projection of confessions and traumas of people on the Matulji – Tunel Učka section who are going through this exact experience right now, and who also went through the same experience, forty years ago, during the former government's rule…”
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1st MOVEMENT (13:00)
With construction pipes, the quartet of musicians will, at the beginning, invite the audience to listen in the spirit of the sound of Tibetan tubes as a representation of connecting Istria with the rest of Croatia through the time capsule of the Učka Tunnel. In the sound of everyday life there will be the sound of Istrian melos carried by the wind.
A picture showing a situation from everyday life along the highway. Life day in and day out. A life where one does not know oneself better, in which one lives in an inconspicuous conducting of traffic to coexist with them.
A "normal" situation where the conversation is regularly interrupted by the noise of traffic that conducts the spoken audible-inaudible sentences of the speaker. A life where the first thing a man sees, at the window view level, is a caravan of trucks which trailer, while passing on the highway, creates the sound of thunder that creates the feeling of passing in the room.
The movement lasts for 13 minutes exactly – that is how long it takes for a vehicle to go from Matulji to the Tunel Učka if it follows the speed limit. As there are already two lanes, and soon two new ones will be made, so the following movements will last just as long.
2nd MOVEMENT (13:00)
The memory of the former days of living inside the stonewalls of greenery, where a man lives on his own land in the silence of nature without a highway, when a sudden turn takes place and the winding and crowdedness of the road can be heard by the beginning of the development of the 2nd movement where the melody form the four already played bars should be repeated, reading from the last bar backwards. Thus, we get a mirrored image of the repeating numbness of traffic as a repetitive, never changing story. The first bars appear here from a distance as well as vehicles passing by houses, so with each beat the dynamics increases from the first to the fourth bar and, read backwards, the repetitive mirror is repeated also from a quieter to a louder sound. The story of the mirror also deals with the innocence of childhood. We are beings of time, everything in us is transient and imperishable at the same time, we are witnesses of our own architecture of memories. (Tarkovsky)
Here we recount the story of how it used to be when there was silence of the forest next to the stonewalls; of meadows while there were still no roads, expressed through the sound of padels, pots as sounds of workers' meals, as a depiction of the former communist system.
This is a short cross-section of the transition of the first to the second movement (like the movie "The Godfather" where in the first act we have a plot in the present, while in the second installment there is a memory of former days).
Intermezzo (free impro):
"BED DEED AS DISEAsE"
The letters of the composition make up individual musical tones that will play the theme exactly in the way the name is read. While I play the melody of the name on the bass, Zvjezdan Ružić joins with chords as words which we gradually develop into free improvisation within which Riccardo Staraj joins us with the sounds of drums as a narrator reading unsatisfied complaints of people.
The letters of the composition make up individual musical tones that will play the theme exactly in the way the name is read. While I play the melody of the name on the bass, Zvjezdan Ružić joins with chords as words which we gradually develop into free improvisation within which Riccardo Staraj joins us with the sounds of drums as a narrator reading unsatisfied complaints of people.
Intermezzo is in the form of blues, inspired by the protest work "Tears for Johannesburg & Triptych" by Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, shows the weight of the necessary fight against it.
3rd movement (13:00)
Raising the dynamics of the development of improvisation created by the free line of the drum, which in this case signifies power – a decision that ruthlessly determines the boundaries with it. It is a representation of the draft of the decision to determine the boundary where the cold draft does not look at stable life on that section but rather shows it by playing the rectilinear aspect of the system. The winding line marks the life in this case the sound of the piano, which will, alongside the sound of the bass, show the game of skipping this "tense rope" with its wiiiiiiiiinding game of up – down – up –down.
4th movement
The last movement as a final act that we can call "AAAA" denotes highways A1, A2, A3..., specifically the A8. As we are interested in the sound of the highway, in this composition all the strings of the electric bass are tuned to A-A-A-A to sound repetitive – whatever is played on any of the strings, we get the same sound - the concept of irritation, instability, repetition, boredom, noise.
The meditative sound of the piano appearing in quiet sections such as those looming from Zvjezdan Ružić's soon-torn Highway studio is obstructed by sudden drum sounds as a depiction of excavator sounds of demolition and digging. After a few sudden changes of music under the zen and those out of any control, through the noise of drums and destructive playing on the construction of sheet metal, we come to the culmination of the final movement, where the question is no longer asked because the answer is known.