Some notes on N30: Who guards the Guardians?
N30: Who guards the Guardians? fuses official and unofficial recordings of police transmissions made on November 30, 1999 into a simmering polyglot of radio traffic, polyphonic speech, splashes and sprays of tape hiss, enigmatic numbers glossolalia, and other broadcast anomalies. An oral history made in the moment, this 57 minute radiophonic work depicts how law enforcement acted and reacted on that unforgettable day in Seattle history when thousands gathered in Seattle to protest the World Trade Organization.
Both activists and law enforcement strategists refer to November 30, 1999, as "N30" while "Who guards the Guardians?" was inspired by lines from Plato and Juvenal. In that classic of Greek philosophy, The Republic, Plato called for elite guardians to rule his ideal state: "We mean our guardians to be true saviors not the destroyers of the State...." (Book IV, 1896 Jowett translation). Addressing the decadence, erosion of individual rights, and decline of morality in the early Roman Empire, the satirist Juvenal asked pointedly in his Sixth Satire "Who guards the guardians?"
Do we need protection from those who guard us and our rights? Do our guardians need to be guarded from us?
Anyone may be easily mocked or lionized through the magic of digital audio editing. As I combed through dozens of hours of audio, I felt a profound obligation to let the verbal bureaucracy of law enforcement tell the tale. Canny composers know when to let their material do the work: no voices from that day were edited and no words were resequenced or placed out of context. While culling and collating multiple versions of the same transmissions, I did my best to preserve chronological accuracy.
During the week of November 21-30, 2002, N30: Who guards the Guardians? was also available as a free CD insert in a limited number of copies of the Seattle-based progressive newspaper Eat the State! which appears biweekly at better coffee shops, bookstores, etc. in the Greater Seattle Puget Sound area. It was a gift to the city I love.
photo by Christopher DeLaurenti.
Why insert the CD in a newspaper? Rather than tread the usual path of countless musicians and press 1000 or so CDs only to sell some and bequeath the rest to my basement, I thought it might be interesting to place N30: Who guards the Guardians? in the hands of those who might not otherwise encounter this material. This project initiated my Ulterior Audio series which distributes CDs in unusual ways and unexpected contexts. The Sand Point Sound Gazetteer is the second in the Ulterior Audio series; two more projects are currently in the works.
I hope I skirted the declamatory didacticism that dates so much political music. A singer in a sequined gown ululating "Fair trade not free trade!" seems too far removed from its sonic birthplace to compare with a vivid recording of a couple of kids yelling their asses off while being spattered with pepper spray. Nonetheless, like its predecessor, N30: Live at the WTO Protest (or for that matter any piece!) N30: Who guards the Guardians? may become dowdy and dated anyway.
As I see it, even the greatest symphony is able to do very little about
Hiroshima.
Igor Stravinsky, December 26, 1966
Themes and Conclusions, page 98, University of California Press
1982
Can radical art save the world? No. Music merely is, but people act. I hope radical, experimental music spurs musicians of all stripes to ask "Why does this music exist?" and explore how the machine(s) of mass entertainment rendered previously employable artisans of classical, jazz, rock, folk, and experimental music into a legion of vagabonds, hobbyists, and overly talented (and occasionally virtuoso) amateurs.
It is also essential to explore how some musics remain on the margins while others consistently find favor in newspapers, TV, and radio while more unusual musics lurk in small publications and crop up as one-shot features. I'm a composer, not a social critic, so permit me to generally indicate the obvious culprits such as factory-style education as well as the hijacking and monopolization of radio and television and their results: a society of never quite satisfied consumers sparsely peppered with seekers of social, artistic, and political change.
Why not write a song? The 20th century boasts more great songs than symphonies, oratorios, etc., yet even radical, well-intentioned tunes like The Ballad of Joe Hill remain too aurally close to their corporate counterparts to incite any of my own radical sentiments. To me, rock and its ilk often seem tired, worn out, and no longer threatening or capable of challenging the ear. By their brevity, their hegemony, and their intractable formulae (a prominent voice, a consistent tempo, you know the rest) can songs be radical?
Just as radical politics questions, revolts against, and creates alternatives to established ways of social and economic organization in life itself, radical music contradicts, opposes, mocks... common assumptions, practices, structures, techniques, and styles in music. While we need all forms of music to remind us of our heritage, help us do the dishes, and ease the morning commute, the perpetually questioning, eternally questing, and stubborn persistence of radical, adventurous, experimental music seems closer in spirit to creating a just society than its mainstream, well-intentioned, corporate-cloned kin.
Oh, and the CD also contains two bonus tracks. I just couldn't see the logic or agree with the bad ecology (not that CDs are earth-friendly!) of leaving 15 blank minutes on the CD. If the 56'40" of N30: Who guards the Guardians? seems too intimidating for a first-time listen, the other two pieces are short, easily digested, and will orient the ears to their colossal companion.
DFW is the FAA acronym for Dallas-Ft. Worth International airport. Recorded on February 28, 2001 with a Tascam DA-P1 DAT deck and a pair of Audio Technica Pro 37-R microphones DFW is a field recording of a corrugated walkway in DFW. Originally released on the phonography.org 2 compilation in early 2002, the piece appears in its complete form on this disc for the first time.
I fashioned Adrift in NYC from field recordings made in New York during September 2002 and recently performed it at Composer/Choreographer 6 with the trenchantly limber KT Niehoff. Engineered by Paul Geluso, Adrift in NYC is made possible by Ian Vollmer, Harvestworks' Artist in Residency program, and the Puffin Foundation.
N30: Who guards the Guardians? is made possible by CoCA, the Three Shadows, and the King County Arts Commission. N30: Who guards the Guardians? is dedicated to the memory to Robert F. Graettinger.