Listening to Brendan Power's wonderful "Lament for the 21st
Century", I found myself wondering: who will carry this forward in
future? Brendan is using non-standard instruments in unusual ways.
How will future players acquire those instruments and learn the
techniques?
The question isn't limited to Brendan's music. Tony Eyers, Jim
Conway, PT Gazell, and myself, to name a few, are all using non-
standard instruments for lots of stuff. My tunings are at least
available from manufacturers off-the-shelf (well, most of them).
What about the others?
One of the things that made blues harmonica endure, I'm sure, is the
fact that the players were using the same basic instruments. You
could figure out what they were doing once you knew the instrument
well enough. How does that work when you have no idea what kind of
odd and rare instrument is being used to play a piece?
Perhaps this music will simply go away when we do. I don't know if
that's sad. After all, the music exists in recordings, and the
recordings may outlive all of us by hundreds or thousands of years.
But I do think it's a real possibility that 50 years from now,
nobody may be playing the stuff live, because they won't know where
to start.
Regards, Richard Hunter
latest mp3s and harmonica blog at http://myspace.com/richardhunterharp
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