Sunday, November 15, 2009

Hip-Hopping with Violins

In any art form or self expression field [including literature] we have to deal with codes and standards that we are told to respect or even to abide by. But what will happen if we defy those rules? what if we try to break them... not necessarily out of rebellious attitude but maybe of a simple need to experiment.

One of the reasons I love listening to "Nuttin' But Stringz" is due to what they did with the violin. They took the violin out of its comfort zone without abusing it, setting new grounds to how to deal and play the violin. For my ears this is challenging.
One of their pieces "Broken Sorrow" was my musical soundtrack when walking alone in the streets of US... Another piece that I love is "Thunder"... in this piece I can see how the violin is dancing up and down in the street like a crazy spirit running around the city...

Another example of breaking the norms with music is what Nam June Paik did with his TV Cello. In his experiment Paik defied the way a cello is being constructed and consequently played. When Charlotte Moorman played it she said that the sounds being produced are not those of normal cello but of a TV cello! And one time they took another extreme by making Paik himself her cello!!

So what really happens when we defy the rules and standards?
We find new grounds that we were brought up to think they didn't exist. We liberate our minds from worshiping rules that some other people set for us. We interrupt the mainstream and maybe create a new one... or at least we create choices!

Someone once told me that when art seize to be dangerous, it seize to be art!

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