#4558, My Tongue-Tied Muse - Music About Stuttering
Listen to works by poet and composer JJJJJerome Ellis, American composer Alvin Lucier, and composer and educator Andrew Norman that deal with disfluent speech, most specifically, stuttering.
JJJJJerome Ellis describes himself as a “blk disabled animal, stutterer, and artist” (jjjjjerome.com/about.) On his 2021 album The Clearing, the sax player, electronic musician, producer, composer and poet recasts stuttering as a way of changing and breaking up the linear experience of time. The music stems from and sets his 2020 essay, “The clearing: Music, dysfluency, Blackness and time” and uses hip hop drum sounds, deep bass, and experimental electronics together with references to Bernie Mac, W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk, and the writing of Harriet Jacobs, ultimately positing the idea that the looping sounds of Black music, and the looping syllables and silences of the Black stutterer offer a loophole of retreat, (NNA Tapes.)
Then, hear Alvin Lucier's 1969 piece "I Am Sitting In A Room," where Lucier uses a room's natural acoustics of the space to gradually eliminate some frequencies and gradually amplify others. Lucier also used the piece as a way to smooth out his own stuttering (which is woven into the piece in the initial explanation of what takes place.) Plus, listen to stuttering instrumental works for viola by Andrew Norman, inspired by Shakespeare’s Sonnet No. 85, and a work for cello and cello as percussion instrument by David Lang, performed by the cellist Nick Photinos (also co-Artistic Director of Eighth Blackbird.) - Caryn Havlik
ram #4558, My Tongue-Tied Muse - Music About Stuttering (First Aired 11/4/2021)
ARTIST: Alvin Lucier
WORK: I Am Sitting in a Room [1:00]
RECORDING: I Am Sitting In A Room
SOURCE: Lovely Music, #1013
INFO: lovely.com
ARTIST: JJJJJerome Ellis
WORK: Loops of Retreat [10:32]
RECORDING: The Clearing
SOURCE: NNA Tapes
INFO: nnatapes.com | jeromeellis.bandcamp.com
ARTIST: Olafur Arnalds, ft. Arnor Dan
WORK: A Stutter [5:09]
RECORDING: For Now I Am Winter
SOURCE: Mercury Classics 4810150
INFO: mercuryclassics.com
ARTIST: JJJJJerome Ellis
WORK: Punch Line [3:39]
RECORDING: The Clearing
SOURCE: NNA Tapes
INFO: nnatapes.com | jeromeellis.bandcamp.com
ARTIST: Alvin Lucier
WORK: I Am Sitting in a Room (the John Schaefer radio edit) [15:25]
RECORDING: I Am Sitting In A Room
SOURCE: Lovely Music, #1013
INFO: lovely.com
ARTIST: Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti
WORK: Andrew Norman: My Tongue-Tied Muse [5:49]
RECORDING: in manus tuas
SOURCE: New Focus Recordings
INFO: annelanzilotti.bandcamp.com
ARTIST: Nick Photinos
WORK: David Lang: Stuttered Chant [3:46]
RECORDING: Petits Artefacts
SOURCE: New Amsterdam Records
INFO: newamsterdamrecords.bandcamp.com
