Jon Hassell - 1977 - Vernal Equinox

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Jon Hassell
1977
Vernal Equinox

01. Toucan Ocean 3:42

02. Viva Shona 7:04
03. Hex 6:20
04. Blues Nile 9:51
05. Vernal Equinox 21:56
06. Caracas Night September 11, 1975 2:10

Jon Hassell – trumpet, electric piano (A1, A3)

Miguel Frasconi – bells and claves (A3)

Andy Jerison – synthesizer (A3)
Nicolas Kilbourn – mbira and talking drum (A3)
David Rosenboom – synthesizer (A1, A3), mbira (A2), rattles (A3), goblet drum (B1),
recording
Naná Vasconcelos – congas (A1, B1, B2), shakers (A1, A3), bells (A2), talking drum (A2)
William Winant – kanjira and rattles (A3)

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Additional sounds:
Track 1 - Ocean
Track 2 - Tropical birds
Tracks 4, 5 - Drone: Serge synthesizer
Track 5 - Drone: Motorola scalatron (256Hz pitch standard)
Track 6 - Night creatures of Altamira, Distant barking by Perrasita

Recorded at York University Electronic Media Studios (Toronto, Ontario),

October/November 1976.
Mixdown and additional recording: Mastertone Recording Studios (New York),
September/October 1977.
Released January 1, 1978

" Jon Hassell is more than a superb musician. He is an inventor of new forms of music - of
new ideas of what music should be (...). [His] is an optimistic, global vision, which allows
us to foresee not only 'possible music' but 'possible futures' ” . Word of Brian Eno , who,
after having "stolen" the idea of ​the "Fourth-World Music" (a theft from which the
acclaimed " My Life in the Bush of Ghosts " , created together with David Byrne, but
which was originally conceived as a six-handed job) made him all the honors in an
interview back in 1986. Those were the years when the great American trumpeter had by
now reached an exemplary maturity, in terms not only artistic, but also human and
"theoretical", in the wake of superb records, of which "Vernal Equinox" , the debut
released by Lovely Music Ltd. in 1977, remains, to this day, the unsurpassed peak."
(Pitchfork)

But Hassell had reached that goal, certainly not in a painless way.

It has already been said of the question "theft", an event that deeply engraved on the
psyche of Our, so much to induce him to a further meta-musical reflection, from which
new fundamental works will come out, including "Fourth World Volume Two: Dream
Theory in Malaya " (1981; in which the innovations of the masterpiece undergo a process
of" radicalization ") and " Aka / Darbari / Java - Magic Realism " (1983; slightly less
inspired, but still fascinating) .

Born in 1937 in Memphis (Tennessee), the young Hassell grew amid a melting pot in
miniature, invaghendosi early African-American music. his first love, Stan Kenton and
Miles Davis . later, there was the shock - very common in those days - of the comparison
with the works of Karlheinz Stockhausen (especially that of the historian " Gesang der
Jünglinge "of 1956), whose courses he was able to attend in Cologne in 1965, shoulder to
shoulder with Holger Czukay and Irmin Schmidt , later founding members of the Can .
Hassell could have been part of the German band himself, but in accepting Schmidt's
invitation he apologized, claiming that rock was not on his strings. He had other things
on his mind and it soon became clear that when he returned home, he was able to
participate in the recording sessions of " In C " (1967) by Terry Riley (or the "definitive"
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genesis of minimalism) and in some works by La Monte Young. In this way, he could
prove to himself that he was more interested in overcoming (which, incidentally, will
never be total) of certain Western-style musical conceptions. That his work should be a
synthesis, he guessed after a trip to India, where he came into contact with the world of
Indian music and with the indefinable nuances of the "ragas".

Under the guidance of Pandit Pran Nath (great heir to the "Kirana" vocal tradition), in
1972 he began to study Indian chant, which exposed him to a "micro-world of
connections". What strikes him is above all the aspect defined as "calligraphy in the air",
connected with that almost supernatural ability that the Indians have to construct, with
sounds, "forms" in space.

The first five months of lessons were exhausting. Teacher and student continually
confronted each other, in a game of references and corrections, through a
communication defined as "aural / oral". Pran Nath used to perform grueling vague
ragas, exploring the characteristics of each note in such an obsessive way that it gave the
listeners a true "trance" state.

Later, the master taught him to transfer that sound into the trumpet instrument. Hassell
ended up making a sound very similar to what you get when you blow into a shell. It was
something made of desert, of "psychic" resonances, in which the use of ragas
(considered as a pre-verbal experience of knowledge) gave the possibility to merge in a
new way the "spiritual" dimension and the "physical" dimension "Of Sound, also defining
the boundaries of a space in which a state of grace exists. The latter is obtained through
the abolition of divergences between North and South; that is: western civilization, full of
materialism and rationalism, as well as heir to an incomplete musical tradition, because,
unlike the eastern one (the South, in reference to the lower part of the human body,

The approach of the American musician towards the "Fourth World Music", however, also
had a more "concrete" input, so to speak. His marriage ended badly, Hassell met a girl,
the daughter of African-American and Native American parents; encounter that put him
in contact with two distinct yet converging realities in a single body. The next step was
the juxtaposition to the experiments of Miles Davis , whose " On the Corner "(1972) is
considered by Our - rightly or wrongly - an album in which some characteristic elements
of that synthesis that he was trying to implement are already contained in nuce. The
reflection then shifted to the dichotomy between the "abstract" world of classical
minimalism and that of shadows, of the elusive sensuality that lies behind the
appearance of things. A first experiment in this direction was represented by the
composition "Solid State"(1969), used as a "sound sculpture" in museums or art galleries.
It is a "sound block" that is progressively eroded from the inside through the use of
successive "distillations". In short: on the one hand a "structure" and on the other the
"incessant movement". There are already some characteristic elements of ragas, such as,
for example, the use of drones, or sound drones with hypnotic character. But to be
honest, what was now pushing in the direction of "Vernal Equinox"were some

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fundamental precautions. First of all, drones become electronic, while percussions are
clearly of Afro-Brazilian ancestry (and this is because Hassell was looking for something
more "indefinable", compared to the more obvious use of an Indian "drumming"). The
so-called "solo line" is missing, which, of course, was assigned to the trumpet and its
electronic chiaroscuro (since its timbre was usually digitally altered). The "Fourth World
Music" was so founded.

All this, however, would not have been possible without the help of another fundamental
lesson. We refer to the "universalism" of Don Cherry, which is undoubtedly one of the
cardinal moments in the journey towards a type of musical system built on the
accumulation of increasingly dense and deeply "mystical" musical materials (see
exemplary records such as "Mu" , " Relativity Suite " and the more electric " Brown Rice "
).

That said, it seems natural to see "Vernal Equinox"as a "monumental" work, precisely
because of its ability to reflect, and, at the same time, incorporate different sources and
experiences without distorting them. His greatness lies precisely in the fact of
representing a "sound revelation", whose expressive and imaginative power perhaps not
even the author himself managed to capture in the immediate of its realization and
publication.

For the universal fresco of his absolute masterpiece, Hassell called the Brazilian Naná
Vasconcelos to percussion , the creator of an extremely ritualistic and evocative sound.
Other types of percussion (acoustic and otherwise) were entrusted to David Rosenboom ,
Miguel Frasconi , Nicolas Kilbourn and William Winant. "Special guest" - so to speak ... -
the "Night Creatures of Altamira", which with their distant and almost indistinct barks
give the sound textures a deviant sense of "altered" mysticism. In addition to the "snake
trumpet" (somehow indebted to Don Cherry's "expanded" style ), Hassell also deals with
the "scenographic" aspect, so to speak, cared for through the discreet but perfectly
suggestive use of a Fender Rhodes , whose sound is often transcended by the ecstatic
trails of the Serge Synthesizer.

The very first seconds of "Toucan Ocean" (3'56 ") already highlight the prodigious
measure of things. A rhythmic wander of congas that slides into the breaking of the
ocean on the shore. The choice is not random. As argued by Hassell, in fact, his music
can be seen as a continuous swaying between opposite poles, a continuous entering and
exiting an imaginary framework, in which - we add - the colors are the sounds and the
lines the spiritual dimensions of the mind . The sinuous modulations of the trumpet
evoke inner phantoms, in an empathetic soliloquy with that sick, turbid, humid timbre,
which in turn brings together a meta-discourse on the immutability of music, rummaging
through the folds of a concept very dear to La Monte Young, but that here becomes
something else ... perhaps an image, most likely an ocean of sensations amid the
wonders of a spring equinox.

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In "Viva Shona" (7'08 "), instead, the trumpet coughs almost in fear, insecure. His dilated
hisses space inside a mutant arabesque, built on the intertwining and dispersing of bells,
mbira and tropical birds. Faithful to his musical vision, Hassell sees in these rituals of the
spirit a no man's land in which the best "human" characteristics of different worlds meet
in a "Possible World", generator of "Possible Music". But in this work of subtle
purification, he also ends up chiselling a virgin space, in which the wild jungle meets the
metaphorical one of the industrialized cities. Cities that, in their enormous growth,
ended up completely submerging the sense of "origins". However, the latter ends, in one
way or another, to return,The Residents , Pere Ubu , The Pop Group ) leaves deep traces
even in the musical representations of a world on the verge of collapse. This is a perfect
cultural equivalent of what is being done in "Vernal Equinox" .

The music of Hassell, in fact, gives a little the feeling of a city that suddenly turns out to
be naked, "primitive" beyond its technological shell, as eroded by a millennial wind,
which comes from the most hidden parts of the Earth. They are the "unknowable
aspects of the city" (to resume the title and "artistic intentions" of a historical piece by
Joseph Jarman , on " Song For "), which suddenly come to the surface, mingling with the
monstrous sonic babel of traffic, the chilling indifference of passers-by or the neon lights
running down the glittering asphalt from the recently fallen rain. This conflict is
sharpened in "Hex" (6'29 "), in the impossible embrace between Kilbourn's" talking drum
", the rattles of Vasconcelos and Rosenboom, on one side, and Hassell's sly and"
shamanic "trumpet , on the other. It is incredible to see how the examples of techno /
tribal impressionism that we will find in " Remain in Light " (think, for example, of "Seen
And Not Seen") of the Talking Heads (with Eno in formation) are already widely defined
and "accomplished."

However, that of the Memphis trumpeter is not a particular version of "world-music".

Rather, his music is defined within the limits of a daring experimentalism in which the
goal is the identification of a Universal Sound, capable of communicating emotions and
visions that belong to the "sacred" roots (as rationally "unreachable") of the Land. But in
the choice of technology as a coagulant factor, he states that in the refractions of those
roots one also perceives "futurist" fluorescences, in a collision between past and future
that manifests, in the state of grace reached, the unavoidable presence of existential
distress, through the electronic coding of horror vacui (see, in this regard,

This is what appears even more evident in the next two pieces.

In "Blues Nile" (10'01 "), the distant torment of the trumpet, abandoned in the void,
extends distances like rivers drained by the wind, while the sound erupts in a space /
time diagram. The center of gravity of the piece - the static resonance of the Serge
Synthesizer - twirls in an astral desert, made of dry anguish and atavistic silences. The
feeling is that of a more "psychological" than musical stratification. In fact, in abandoning
oneself to the uninterrupted flow of music, one ends up seeing particularly “sinister”
echoes in the vibrating tremor of the synth, which digs around its borders, penetrating

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towards the center of its unraveling. The multifonia of the "snake trumpet" also reveals
how the slipping inside of the notes takes place in an almost "impalpable" way, a bit like
in the ragas, in which, with a careful listening, one can perceive an infinite change that
contrasts with the apparent static nature of the musical surface. Thus we see an almost
metaphysical connection between the real, pseudo-static, and the invisible forces that
change it incessantly (it is no coincidence that Hassell maintained that "what is invisible is
what surrounds us").

Behind the placid embrace between percussion and the trumpet of the title track(22'07
"), there is still an unlimited space, in which electronics take on more" cosmic
"connotations, while the curves of the trumpet mimic the sinuous body of a dancer
buried by the sunset symphonic flood. In the unsolved confrontation between sensuality
and structure, between ancient and modern, the enchanted ecstasy of a "pure" sound is
generated, without geography and without masters. It is music made of infinitesimal
accents, probably still largely incomprehensible, being dictated by a need too far in time:
that of "music" the Soul (of the world and of man), but in such a way that the spaces
between sound and silence be filled with a prodigious twilight whirring with hisses. In
these 22 minutes of transcendental descriptivism, in which the trumpet touches heights
and timbres of frightening lyricism, Hassell probably gives the maximum exposure of his
great musical achievement. And it really seems, to paraphrase some of his statements, to
be in the presence of perfect beauty in a perfect place. If there is, in short, a sound
equivalent of the "Open" ofRilke , here you will find one of the most magical and
"absolute" versions.

In "Caracas Night September 11, 1975" (2'12 ") we finally hear a hail of rattles and an
insistent buzz of crickets, which slip to the edge of the night, while the trumpet declines
to the September moon a poem made by now only of inscrutable evanescences.

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Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/mPTCXVhJgsE

Recorded in 1976 at the York University Electronic Media Studios in Toronto, Ontario,
Vernal Equinox is Jon Hassell's first recording as a solo artist and sets the stage for his
then-emerging career as a trumpeter, composer and musical visionary. "Toucan Ocean"
opens the album with two gently swaying chords and delicate layers of percussion that
provide a cushion upon which Hassell unfurls long, winding melodic shapes. His trumpet
is sent through echo and an envelope filter, producing a stereo auto-wah-wah effect.
"Viva Shona" features accompaniment by mbira, subtle polyrhythmic layers of
percussion, and the distant calling of birds. Again filtered through echo, Hassell's gliding
trumpet lines sound remarkably vocal. "Hex" features a bubbling, filtered electric bass
part with a denser web of percussion. From his horn, Hassell elicits moans and sighs that
are at first unaffected and later filtered. "Blues Nile" is a long, blue moan. Hassell's
breathy, multi-tracked trumpet lines call and respond to one another, weaving a web of
deep calm over an ever-present drone. This track clearly points the way to his later work
with Brian Eno, in particular, their "Charm Over Burundi Sky." On the title track, Hassell's
"kirana" trumpet style is in full bloom as he dialogs with the percussion. Hassell's most
elegant melodicism blossoms forth here, and his unaffected horn often sounds
disarmingly flute-like. The influences of his study of raga with Pandit Pran Nath are
clearly discernible in the curvaceous melodic lines and overall sense of meditative calm
within harmonic stasis. Throughout the album, percussionists Naná Vasconcelos and
David Rosenboom add subtle, supple grooves and colors. "Caracas Night September 11,
1975" is a beautiful field recording featuring Hassell's plaintive trumpet commentary,
subtle percussion interjections, and the sound of caracas humming and buzzing in the
background. The first several tracks of Vernal Equinox bear the imprint of '70s-period
Miles Davis, in particular the quiet ambience of "He Loved Him Madly" and parallel
passages from Agharta. The envelope filter on Hassell's horn similarly draws a reference
to Davis' use of the wah-wah pedal from that time. Nonetheless, in 1976, Vernal Equinox
was remarkably unique and ahead of its time, and sowed the seeds of Hassell's
influential Fourth World aesthetic, which he would continue to develop and refine.
Decades after its release, Vernal Equinox still provides an enchanting and entirely
contemporary listening experience.

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