Zitty Berlin, 1988, Nr. 14
"The songs of VHK are growing towards a dreamlike ecstasy coming from the heart,
the usual song-structure and singing style are completely missing, the magic dance-rhythm
captures and raptures the audience, which you cannot find in the todays stylised
neon-coolness only at the natural tribes living in other era. Permanent
rhythm-accelerations, abrupt speeding-up of the almost brutal-ancient drums, amorphous
collage of the head-voices, animal voice playbacks and volcanically exploding guitar riffs
- all these things are completed with an unconsciousness jungle of sounds in which you get
lost and cannot come back easily, since the perception of time and space is changing into
completely new forms."
New York Times, February 28, 1990
"the Coroners music is basic and elemental and filled with obsessive,
galvanizing passion."
Forced Exposure, # 16, 1990 American fanzine:
"Had this LP come in 73 in a tiny enough press run, itd be one of the
most legendary lost record of that decade."
Maximum RockN Roll, July 1991, #98
"this band is equal in spirit and grit to faves like SONIC YOUTH or BIG BLACK but
with an identity all its own."
NMI&Messitsch, a German fanzine, July/August 1991 "In all moderation:
this is the best record of last week, month, year, ..."
The Melody Maker, September 26, 1992 és October 10, 1992
"As the singer spins around inside the bands mesmeric voodoo howl like
whirling dervish the effect is almost hypnotising. Incredible. Watching them play in
Cologne, I was fascinated, not just by the bands performance (which was amazing) but
by the frenzied reaction of the crowd. Seeing VHK, I realised just what a dangerous
proposition rocknroll can be."
NMI Messitsch, 08/92
"The VHK is definitively the best from the East. The Coroners are a musical
excess, a 50 minutes trance. They are insane drums, overscrewn guitars, screaming Shamans.
They are a dream. Listen it extreme loud. Get lost in it. Not come back anymore."
Metal Hammer
"If this band is not a cult, I do not know what cult is."
Various Artists, a German fanzine:
"This is a shamanistic ethno-punk. But it is more than music. It is a trip into
the fourth dimension. Close your eyes, feel the Universe and you will find yourself in the
infinite layer of passion again. You forget about your name, your background, your sex
and, for sure, your ratio. What still counts, is the primal instinct. Here you can gratify
it. Psychotherapy from vinyl. A band outer to everyday norms and conformity. A
masterwork!"
VOLT-magazine, a Hungarian journal, 1994
"The VHK is perhaps the only Hungarian band which is able to produce a cathartic
musical attack."
Rockinform, a Hungarian periodical, March 1995
"This recording is one of the highest points of the improvisative music."
Bananafish, San Franciscan fanzine, 1995, No. 10
"Each time I hear a new VHK record I relive this atavistic reverie - its
like reentering the womb. VHK are so improbable, so wonderful and yet so seemingly
necessary (were they not to exist they would have to be invented), that they function for
me like my favourite fairy tales used to when I was a kid. When I first discovered their
1988 LP Teach Death a Lesson, I was bowled over by its combination of monastic
psychedelia, rocknroll codpiece swagger and sheer alien abduction logical
completeness, this wondering is with me yet. VHK sound like theyre from another
world and another time."
Moshable, a Danish fanzine, 1995
"This band have been around for many years now and have played almost everywhere
in Europe but still they remain one of Europes best kept secret. This is one of the
most interesting bands youre likely to come across this year."
Oor, a Dutch music magazin, March 1996, Iggy Pop-interview
"Do you follow the contemporary pop-scene?
- Yes. There are some new bands, like the VHK from Hungary, which I find good. The punk
should sound as if it were invented today! I have to add, that I hear quite a few really
new things. This is why I like VHK. They sound a bit strange, individual, but yet this is
what punk is."
Élet és Irodalom, a Hungarian weekly journal on literature and art, May 3, 1996
"The magmatic VHK-concert entitled Windwhirls and Dreamwells seems to
open new pathways in the history of the band. Their music is again determined by the pagan
and cosmic power, the more bold instrumental improvisation, and the present-time stage
concentration can raise their music to the ethereal heights."
Rockinform, 1997/March, a Hungarian periodical
"Last years concerts already suggested, that the VHK preparing for a new big
shot. Still it is surprising, how much it is fine, cleared, and at the same time a
musically complex material that they produced...At the end of the record there is a real
music delicacy. It is scarcely possible to describe it in words: as the finale of the more
than 70 minutes VHK-music it gives a simply cathartic experience."
VÁGTÁZÓ
HALOTTKÉMEK/VHK
(cca. Galloping Coroners, Rasende Leichenbeschauer)
short biography
The band emerged at 1975, finding instinctively
its path to play instinctive primeval music eliberating the
elementary powers of nature creating ourselves and revolting
to its high completion in a free spontaneity and overwhelming
energy. The VHK discovered a new method of playing music,
which is not a simple improvisation but a completely free
creation of music born on stage, liberating the deepest musical
creative power, as well as playing more or less pre-written
materials. This music is called as shamanistic/psychedelic
hardcore but is in reality an unrestricted outburst of life
energy. This is not only a music, but an attitude to grasp
the essence of life with our deepest nature and grow it by
its own law. The group says it is a magical natural music,
a cosmic vision about the origin of presence. It develops
in a sovereign way as a self-revelation with its elementary
power. The VHK is a distinguished cultic band in Hungary as
well as in Germany. The first eight concerts were interrupted
by the authorities in an afraid from the consequences. The
band were banished for eleven years, nevertheless even at
that time it continuously found spontaneous occasions to act
by chance pushed by the audience of an other group, or simply
playing by pseudonyms, as guest musicians of friend bands
and without declaring themselves as a band at their the concert.
Meantime they won the festival of the experimental film studio
in 1981. The video of this event was presented many times
in the West German TV. Gábor Bódy, the internationally famous
and youngly died film-director made his film "Dog's Night
Song" with them, including the lead howler Attila Grandpierre
in one of the featuring roles. VHK plays from 1984 regularly
in the West. In 1986, when Amsterdam was the "cultural capital
of Europe", the Dutch Queen, Beatrix personally intervened
at the Hungarian authorities in order to allow the guest performance
of the band. A similar event happened in 1987 when Fred Sinowatz,
the Austrian chancellor had to interact with the Hungarian
Ministry of Culture. They played in the "Mythen, Monstren
and Mutationen" festival in Berlin, Tempodrom, 1988, together
with La Fura dels Baus, where VHK was the best surprise (Zitty
Berlin, 1988). Einstürzende Neubauten, Henry Rollins, Jello
Biafra and Iggy Pop regarded VHK as one of the most important
bands. VHK hosted Rollins Band in Hungary where they were
shocked on the overwhelming effect of VHK on the audience.
Rollins Band invited VHK for a tour in England which occured
in 1989. In 1992, our CD "Hammering on the Gates of Nothingness"
reached the 2nd position on the Top-100 list of the year of
a Belgian Radio. Dietmar Lupfer, the first manager of the
band, and later on the famous American cult label Alternative
Tentacles released our records "Teach Death a Lesson" (1988),
"Jump Out the World-Instinct"(1990), "Hammering on the Gates
of Nothingness" (1992). The London chief of Alternative Tentacles
Bill Gilliam described the music of VHK as "primal God-feeling".
Many American managers suggested VHK to play in USA, telling
that "every American band wants to play such a music what
you, do but they cannot." The VHK released the live-album
"Giant Space!"(1994). Dietmar took the band to the New Music
Seminar in 1990, New York. The New York Times wrote "the Coroner's
music is basic and elemental and filled with obsessive, galvanizing
passion." Melody Maker wrote on their show at the Pop Komm!,
the large international festival of Germany, where they get
the greatest power on the audience. VHK played in the Steirischer
Herbst '95, completed with the fellows of Les Tambours du
Bronx, 27 people on the same stage. VHK attracted 40000 people
in 1996 in the Diáksziget (Student's Island) festival, one
of the biggest festivals of Europe, and reached an extraordinary
effect on the crowd. Iggy Pop declared them as the most interesting
band today (1996). Our recent CD's "The Re-conquest of the
Eden - 1st attack, and 2nd attack" (1997, 1998) is of a band
radically improved, with a new guitarist and bassist, and
invited musicians playing on contrabass, violin, flute, hurdy-gurdy
and cymbal. We used basically two sounds: one with the greatest
energy for the electric songs and one which they developed
themselves which is an unusually natural and vital dreamspace
for the acoustic songs. We second part of the album is recorded
in a large hall to record in a live atmosphere in May, 1998.
THE "Reconquering Eden -2nd attack" is released at August
5, 1998. Both of these CDs reached the Top-40 of the Hungarian
best-selling records and stayed there for 3 months. People
are usually very much intensified and surprised when seeing
as alive on stage nowadays, too.
Contact address: Attila Grandpierre H-1068 Budapest, Rippl-Rónai
u. 23, Hungary
Tel/Fax - +36 1 3317859
E-mail: grandp@ogyalla.konkoly.hu
Vhk@hotmail.com
Internet site: www.mediastorm.hu/vhk
VHK discography
1.) A track on a compilation LP "Fix Planet!" An international
record. ATATAK, Düsseldorf, 1981 2.) Galloping Coroners, demo
tape, 1985, Budapest
3.) Siberian Shamans/Galloping Coroners cassette tape, Center
for Shamanic Studies, 1987, Mill Valley, California
4.) Teach Death a Lesson, LP, MC, Sonic Boom (1988), Germany,
Hungary; also released by Alternative Tentacles, USA, 1990
(LP, CD)
5.) Mind-deepening, poem with musical action, published on
tape, Solidart-Minifest, Talentum, Szkárosy Endre &ÚHF, Budapest,
1990
6.) Jump Out the World-Instinct, live LP, MC, Sonic Boom (1990),
Germany; released also by Alternative Tentacles, USA, 1990
(LP, CD)
7.) Hammering on the Doors of Nothingness, Sonic Boom and
Alternative Tentacles, CD, LP, MC, 1992, USA, Great-Britain,
Germany, Hungary
8.) Garage III, Magyar Rock (Hungarian Rock), compilation
tape, No. MK 014, Rockland, Hungary, 1992
9.) Giant Space!, live CD, MC, VHK - Rockland, Hungary, 1994
10.) The Futility of a Well Ordered Life. A Catalogue Sampler.
Virus 147CD.
11.) Reconquering Eden - 1st attack, 1997 March, VHK-MCD,
Hungary
12.) Reconquering Eden - 2nd attack, 1998 August, VHK-Periferic
Records, Hungary
|
Attila Grandpierre: Punk As a Rebirth of Shamanist
Folk Music
(The Magic Forces of Art at Work)
(translation by Csaba Tóth)
Of the new cultural phenomena in the 20th century
the one that has been misunderstood most not only by the average listener but, also by
musicians and music aesthetes is punk music. To such an extent this energetic vital music
such as estrangement from life, etc., that this in itself proves that the case concerns
not simply a new, superficial "wave in fashion" but a radical reinterpretation
of art, punk has gone back to such forgotten, underground layers of ancient culture which
with their cultural impact and consistent radicalism are worthy of the attention people in
different fields of art. What role did music originally play in the
"prehistoric" times? Totem music, the music of shamanistic ceremonies was a
truly working, effective magic force for its creators, which led to ecstasy, and, through
its force, elevated the participant's relation to himself and the world into a symbolic
order, and thereby the first step toward practical action was made, Music meant
preparation, mobilising and accumulating all available force, the rhythmic intensification
of the self and will, reactivating hidden abilities. Music fulfilled its function when it
caused ecstasy. Ecstasy, perhaps it could more fittingly be, called "intasy"
that is empathy, is the highest degree of self- awareness, the elevation of the self
intensified to the utmost from dependency into the realm of independence, the reflection
of the self as an independent, total unity, the direct, personal interference into
essential happenings. Therefore ecstasy is the densely intense' peak of experience.
Ecstasy make possible the empathy of the intimate unity with the forces of nature, the
empathy of this embodiment. Through music we might transcend the framework of our
individual world, empathise with all sensations, the totality of sensations, the realms of
sensations for themselves and in themselves as the elementary unity of the world; and
having empathised the harmony in the boundless realm of experiences we find companions to
appreciate our most personal feelings and realize that ours is a common fate. In these
dimensions the pressure of the material world, the limitations of material existence, the
invincibility of space and time, vanish personal wishes and desires cumulate, undergo a
qualitative change, transform into ones of a bigger order, into, the manifestations of the
sense of community,. and the isolated thoughts shape themselves into ideas. All this made
to explode with the emotional charge endows the individual with such a significance and
responsibility that sweeps aside his awareness of his own. insignificance and gives him a
cosmic stature, and thus man is able to face natural and social forces greater than
himself with success. The appearance of man as an active being inevitably brought. about
the creation of music and art. With the analysis of a concrete example let us now
illustrate what has been said above! "Y o u a r e c o m i n g t o m e, you hear my
voice. Yes, you hear my voice. I am singing for you, You are listening to me. I am dancing
for you, You hear my voice. I am singing, I am dancing for you. you hear my voice, I will
be shouting, with all strength of my voice, I am shouting now, Shouting. Come to me, Come,
come! /The song of Shaman Orocs, in Vilmos Dioszegi: A samanhit emlekei a magyar nepi
muveltsegben /Relics of Shamanism in Hungarian Folk Culture/, Budapest, Akademiai Kiado,
I958. p. 420./ Let us now set aside the descriptive ethnographic methods of the
ethnographers, and, calling textual analysis to our help, try to find out who the person
is the shaman summons. The tone of the text is peremptory, or rather enchanting, the
shaman wants to put a spell on the person called for - this person being some supernatural
force, a spirit according to a commonly accepted concept in the reference literature., Can
a shaman, however, gain command over a supernatural spirit? Not in this way I think, and
it is even less imaginable that a shaman would,. in the above manner, shout at a
spiritoperating in its particular field of reference. However, we get closer to the
correct interpretation of the text if we call to mind a magic procedure called cracking, a
folk custom still in existence, for instance, in Hortobagy. "New Year Eve afternoon,
at about five o'clock; starting out from his own courtyard. every herdsman, herds-boy and
bastard goes to the market place. On their way they all energetically wrack with their
whips. Assembling in the market they burst into violent cracking. The elderly lads sound
the sheep bells and horns, shoot pistols, while the bastards throw sparklers. The infernal
noise reaches its climax when the church is illuminated and three church bells are
rung." /After o. Malanasi: "A szoboszloi juhaszat" /Sheep herding in
Szoboszlo/, Neprajzi Ertesito, XX. p. 18 quoted by Gabor Barna: Nephit es nepszokasok a
Hortobagy videken /Folk Belief and Folk Customs in Hortobagy/, Budapest, Akademiai Kiado,
1979. P. 154./ The aim of the custom is to chase the yesteryear off, "beat off the
worthless year", dispel the old and create room for the new. The maximum amount of
sound is thus a means of deterrence. However, who does the shaman deter and why then does
he summon someone to himself? There is only one possible answer to this: the shaman deters
everybody from himself e x c e p t h i m s e 1 f, that is to say he does not evoke an
"exterior" spirit, but himself he demands the totality of his own powers, the
maximum of his capacities, hence the noble commending manner, And lot the text magically
realizes itself, the shaman intensifies his emotional readiness through reciting the text
and carrying out the actions designated in it, and "shouting with the fullest force
of his voice" he does make his "supraself", that self beyond his self, move
inside himself. This example plastically illuminates the original role of music. In this
light, let us analyze what functions music performs today. Classical or
"serious" music is in fact based on the artificially conceived system of rules
of "harmonics" resulting in a rigid mechanism. And precisely because of the fact
that it followed the rules of "harmony" it has never possessed such an
elementary liberating power as the music of the shamans, or modernist music which is
exempt from fixed patterns and encompasses disharmony as sell. The human tragedies of the
20th century have made an increased application of disharmony inevitable, thus reflecting
the disharmony surging in the nerves. The use of rigid systems of rules /harmonics,
dodecaphony/ has mad' music applying them less and lees authentic, emptier and emptier. In
this context, and at the most in this one, does punk antagonize the so-called serious
music whose designation "serious" in itself shows its estrangement from the life
swelling behind its authority. The continuous rebirth of this estrangement and its
"splendid isolation" behind the bars of "absolute" standards can
indeed be thwarted by some wee healthy, up-to-date disharmony, by replacing this parade of
clichs with a touch of life, by spontaneity and by creating musical drama and
musical plot in a continuous and sovereign manner. What created classical music?
Simultaneously with the transformation of society and with the increasing distribution of
labour more and more people lost control over administering their lives in a sovereign
manner, and this process gave rise to court-music, orthodox music, which, fulfilling its
duty, simply discarded the real needs of the people. Strangely enough, through this the
concept of folk music first established as something defied by the non-folk music,
artificial music, classical music, the narcisstic caste-music of the elite. According to
Bartok /Bela Bartok: A nepzenerol /On Folk Music/, Budapest, Magveto Kiado, 1981/ folk
music "is a powerful, elementary expression of the people's musical instinct, which
comes into being unconsciously, without any cultural influence, and is a pure and
authentic form of music. ... only someone who can probe into his own nation's psyche and
most concealed secrets can create such music that gives an expression of folk music."
After Bartok the criteria of folk music can be set as follows: folk music is the music
that, exempt of any clichs and antecedents, pours forth from the deepest
inspiration, gropes for spontaneous self- expression in all the dimensions of the moment,
develops in a self- contained way and is of elementary power in its impact; in its
capacity to represent a world; in its newness and in its personalness. It is a self-
contained, forceful and elementary self-expression aiming at totality. Ancient folk music
was then universal and authentic, and thus it was not called folk music. Ancient music in
its totality expressed the real and the deepest needs of the people, that is, it was
indeed folk music, Consequently, classical music came into being through a rejection of
certain functions of music, and as such it reflects the division of the world in an
one-sided way, But on this point we have to scan more basic questions. Let us examine what
role art has played in the life of mankind! It is well-known these days that art was born
at the same time as the evolution of the human, that is, it is indispensable in any
societies, that makes art so much indispensable? And does art fulfil its destiny today? To
answer these questions we have to regard art as a totality, as an activity whose aim is
the same as human life's. Work ensures the sustenance of our material existence; art makes
us face the entirety of life. Human life aspires to challenge time and the unknown, secure
durability and totality, and live all the possible and the attainable, now and forever,
and always in a more complete, more refined way. However, we have to take into account
that the realm of art can not entirely be identified with reality /cf. art-ificial/
because it is a sovereign product of imagination, and the laws of imagination are those of
the human psyche and not of material reality. The main characteristic of the realm of
imagination and emotions is fulfillment, not adaptation. And it is precisely this
sovereign imagination that makes possible the creation of real music as a magical act.
What do I mean by magical? An act is magical if it is self-contained and has the power of
magic, Real folk music is always magical, Why is music magical? Since it
transubstantiates; moreover it is a fact that it places man into real cosmic dimensions
/cf. Dr. Elemer Gyulai: A lathato zene /The Visible music/; Budapest, Zenemukiado, 1968;
Maria Sagi: Esztetikum es szemelyiseg /Aesthetics and Personality/, Budapest, Akademiai
Kiado, 1981/. The creation, the birth of music continuously calls forth the conditions for
a self-contained and highest degree working of the imagination. Music is the most abstract
art, thus it restricts the least. In the case of folk music the detachment from the
concrete coincides with gripping the essence, Thug music is the most sovereign act of
imagination. And imagination is exactly that activity of the brain, of thinking which is
the least capable of adjusting, of being confined and being deformed by prescribed, rigid,
prefabricated patterns. "Imagination" capable of adjust is no longer
imagination, rather a mode of rational, empirical knowledge torn out of its contexts.
Imagination can not adjust since, in its essence, it is a creative activity. Thus music as
the most complete and universal functioning form of creative imagination is the most
self-contained and elementary and forceful artistic act. Consequently the most magical
one. The never ending density of accumulating ideas of high energy in the imagination.
inevitable leads to discharge, and this sweeps petty considerations out of the mind, and
elevates man into the realms of communalism. As psychoanalysis teaches it psychic life is
a "battleground" of two forces - principles -: a) of the irrational pleasure
principle /a direct, unrestrained outlet of instincts/ and b) of rational arrest, of the
reality principle. This latter covers all the internal and external obstacles that arrest
the immediate gratification of instincts. The working, of the imagination directly serves
the gratification of desires, the fullest release and uneffected emergence of the
instinct- hierarchy - the reflection of desire as it is totally under the control of
desire itself. Imagination is the force that, in a subjective manner, creates a web of
possible worlds, a web that is as complete and rich as conceivable. And of these it
selects the most complete still within each, which then takes shape in the process of
creation. In the sense of what has been said above, simultaneously with the movement of
mankind in history the realm of reality expands and thus more and more internal
imaginative dynamism is required to reach self-expression and self-realization in a newer
piece of art or work. This makes all the more pertinent the maximal exploitation of
possibilities and sources and the development of imaginative totality From this point of
view of artistic expression reality is interesting only to such an extent that it shakes
and mobilizes the latent energies of the imagination. If we consistently manage to make
use of reality in a most stimulating and creative manner, our actions gain a new
significance. They become important not only in themselves, but in their
interrelationships as well, that is, they transform into the elements of a musical, or
rather, a linguistic system, and in much the same way as in a language the explanation of
one sentence is possible only with another, here, too, actions like the words of the
language of the world, allude to one another and gain their meaning thereby. Through this
"excess meaning" the intensity of empathy on the emotional level grows, and
beyond a critical point a chain-reaction of actions is established. And in much the same
way as the intensity of subsequent events pushes the unimportant details of single events
into the background, the elements of the chain of actions bloom into completion through
the vibration of their subsequence, rhythm of their monotony and through the unlimited
expansion of their intensity. Thus we have reached the characteristics of punk music in a
deductive way - characteristics that we will analyze only later on. Man as a being endowed
with imagination wants consciously or unconsciously to accomplish all varieties of aIl
actions, and deliberately aims at developing their potentials; He handles the world as a
musical instrument, an art object, and he is able to discover and operate all
possibilities of this world, even the most secret mode of its mechanism. He is capable of
forcing the word, under the yoke of his knowledge and power, give meaning to his existence
by playing the anthems, battle-hymns and wedding songs on the "world
instrument"; and thus manifesting his presence, and possesing the vibrant forces, he
is capable of galloping as an embodied will over the break line of events. The human body
itself becomes a musical instrument, the instrument of dancing and singing, from which the
hyper-intensified emotion and force is made to burst forth. Voice is namely nothing else
than an exteriorization of the internal, the transposition of the internal into the
outside world. Music makes the internal automatisms of the imagination work, music serves
the intensification of the instinct of life and the will to live. This explains the
relationship between music and emotions; namely, emotion in itself is an intensified form
of the manifestation of the instinct of life, while impulse is hyper-intensified, until
finally ecstasy is a wave of emotions pulling down all limits. Let us examine now the most
important of all this basic factors of music: the rhythm. The liberating effect of
rhythmic action is based on the fact that through repetition the repetitive unity of the
action gnaws into the mind, its appearance gets automatized, takes the quality of a
reflex, and from then on the execution of an action has no longer to be willed, the mental
energy it consumed gets liberated. It is all the more so since this mental energy is not
only at our disposal and ready to be released, but even its bringing to the surface gets
automatized, thus resulting in a surplus of energies, and this release of energies then
takes form in dancing, singing, screaming. The joy concerns the automatic realization of
the action-phase, its appearance independent of us, the success of creation - this toy
greets the arrival at consummation in a once lost, but now newly reincarnated world where
objects and actions dance the dance of victory in their ceremonial carneval in a
visionary, hallucinatory manner again; Objects arrive at consummation with a force never
suspected, identify themselves with the essence of their existence through experiencing an
intimate unity with the forces of nature. Although I do not intend my writing to be a
polemic, reviewing contradictory views help me elicit my standpoint. According to one such
view there are no magic powers in art, "art is in essence, of mimetic /descriptive/
quality, not of creative one. Ecstasy and mimesis are contraries excluding each other even
though in the reality of the magical period they emerge at the same time /?/. In fact,
aesthetic quality comes into being in. a complicated roundabout way: once more do people
imitate movements and attitudes inherent in their daily activities and interpersonal
relationships, Az esztetikum sajatossaga /The Peculiarity of Aesthetic Quality/ . This
view stands in high esteem only as a document of an age since it defines art as a mere
puppet-show of man torn out of nature, as a many times degraded activity of the human
puppet. To prove the artificial quality of the pseudo-contradictions fabricated by this
author, I need a definition of art as regards its contents and function. Let us see how we
can arrive at one in the simplest way. According to a generally accepted view /Dr. Dezso
Mosonyi: A zene lelektana uj utakon /New Ways in Music Psychology/, intr. Prof. Ch.
Baudouin, Budapest, Bela Somlo konyvkiado, 1934/ pain is the source of music;. singing is
a playful imitation of the vocalization of pain. From this we can accept as much that the
ancient musical sound is a modification of the outburst of pain. The birth of art can not
be simplified to a mere reproduction: Art came and comes into being through an act with
which man is capable of extrac essence from the world, capable of penetrating , grasping
and humanizing it. That is, in contrast to the birth of the ancient musical sound when
the- world rules man, the case here is reversed. Here it is man who rules the world, it is
he who gives orders, acts, and the world only "endures" his activity. Since art
is not only of mimetic quality, it is an activity that extracts and presents the essence,
moreover, creates human, humanized systems of the essence. From this definition of art it
also ensues that an act of magic, rite and dance, too, are regarded as artistic activities
since the energies of the unconscious and their release, their embodiment in external
movements do indeed express, present and realize the human essence /cf. later/. To
illustrate a magical rite quote from Erwin .Rohdems "Psyche" the
"description" of a Thracian dance celebrating Dionysus. From the
"suprematist" position of an "observer" who experiences difficulties
in linking himself with the essence of life does Rohde, "the cultured man"
present this description showing the rite as purely animalistic, barbaric and obscure.
"The rite takes place on the peak of a mountain, in the uneasy light of torches at
dark night. Harsh music bursts forth, the thunderous sound of cymbals, the blunt roaring
of huge drums, the deep tones of pipes, a deranged harmony. ... Excited by this wild music
the host of celebrants dances with an unearthly scream. No singing can be heard, dancing
makes them much too breathless for that. This is no longer that measured dance which, for
instance, the Greeks of Homer dance in Phaeacia. The enthusiastic crowd speeds down the
hill in a mad, whirling, turbulent circular dance. Mostly this crowd was made up of women
who twirled in this whirling dance until they felt totally exhausted. Wore strange masks
... otherwise deerskin over their robes, and probably antlers on their heads. Their hair
Wildly streaming; snakes in the hands; they sway daggers and thyrsi, thelatter hiding
spearheads under the amber's. Thus are they raving, until their passions grow to the
extreme, and then inntheir "holy madness" they hurl themselves on the animals to
be sacrificed ... grab and tear apart the quarry, slash the meat off with their teeth, and
gulp it raw and bloody. This passage clearly shows that Rohde has no idea of the meaning
of magic rites. All communal magic rites aim at assuring the vital factors to the survival
of the community - this is the core from where magic rites can be understood. This is how
Guyau talks about pleasure in art: "Let us imagine that a bird feels when spreading
its wings and cutting through the air as an arrow, let us recall what we felt on the back
of horses g a l l o p i n g /italics are mine/, or aboard a sailing boat diving into the
foams or in the rapture of a waltz; these kinds of racing arouse in us a sense of
infinity, fervent longing and of lusty and wild life, the disavowal of atomized life and
the urge to race along without complexes and get absorbed in the universe." After
illustrating our point, let us now get back to the definition of artistic action, and in
the light of what was said above divide it into three subgroups: 1.) in magical-artistic
activity the unconscious manifests itself in a direct and most active way, and biological
automatism present themselves intactly and in their entirety; 2) in magical-artistic
activity the immediate creative process is hidden, "non-lived" for the creator;
the activity takes place directly after the completion of the creative process; the
changes in the unconscious affect the ego, and the ego mechanism here and there partly
controls, partly directs the mode and measure of the emergence of the unconscious; 3)
totally aestheticised, artificial art, official, "courtly" art - this art is
ordered and consumed to serve the artificially created prejudices "ruling" a
given age, and a desired taste. It is true that with the development of society the degree
of socialisation also extends, that is, the sphere of private life more and more
diminishes, and simultaneously with the fact that human greatness gradually withers away,
the human psyche as such gets depraved and shriveled, the dignity and sovereignty of the
individual gets hurt, simultsneously with all this the mimetic quality of art gets
dominant. But from this on art no longer imitates life, instead it imitates artificial
obîects and processes singled out by fabricated, contrived; theories, and does so in the
genius of these theories. And thus does art become an auxiliary force in areating
domesticated human species reared in the interest of petty aims thus does it become a
means for man-taming, and, in the end, thus does it wither and wilt man's emotional life.
In nature it is only the domesticated animals and man who can be deceived in properly
judging their desires and aims, henceforth they are the ones that are endangered down to
the foundations of their biological existence. The possibilities for a self- contained,
wholesome life are decreasing world-wide, in spite of the fact that it is a matter of life
and death to mankind whether we are able to form, solidify and spread more and more
effective, complete and all-embracing mechanisms of adjustment and internal behavioural
patterns in respect to our biological, psychological faculties, to the social an natural
conditions. Is. this light the so-called subjective realm of human existence gains an
immense significance. Ortega y Gasset says: "History is similar to a giant laboratory
in which every experiment aims at finding the first principles of public life." And
this statement is also true when reversed: psychically the future of mankind depends on
our ability to discover newer and newer first principles, systems of public and private
life and disseminate them on a mass-scale. The uncontrolled, dehumanized expansion of
socialisation, the commercialization of human life, the rise of pettiness and mediocrazy,
the uninhibited manipulation and disinformation have been the reasons that have led in the
end to the gradual imbruting of pop music, or, more precisely, to its radicalization, to a
revival /sirupy dance music, then beat, then punk/. Young people who, in an instinctive
way, still have a sense of the memory of self-defense, life-defense and sovereignty can
create only subculture in the exclusionist culture of a de-functioned,
pseudofunction-endowed institutional structure. But with this, at least on the level of
signalling, they are able to point out the nature of the long-range problems mankind and
the individual countries face. The beat music of the sixties, and now punk, have come from
down under, they have not been bred by the manipulative machine. Now the question is if
this music that has come from the people for the people is in any way related to the
sovereign folk music of the old ages. According to Bartok /ibid. p, 3/ folk music is one
that arises as a spontaneous manifestation of the natural force unconsciously working in
us, without being affected by previously internalized clichs. This definition of
folk music shows an illuminating parallel with the magical art of "prehistoric
times": "The paintings of the Paleolithic Age, have the peculiarity that they
present the visual impression in such a direct, pure and playful form exempt of any
intellectual frippery that nothing can be compared to them up to the birth of
Impressionism. In these old paintings we find such tiny delicacies that we would be able
to discover only through complicated procedures, while the painters of the Paleolithic Age
were capable to sense them directly." /Arnold Hauser; A muveszet es irodalom
tarsadalomtortenete /Social History of Art (title for the four-volume Random House
/Vintage/ edition)/, Budapest, Gondolat Kiado, 198o/ Are such general "natural
forces" still at work - forces that are common in one people, or - some of these
forces, at least - in the whole of mankind? Instead of theoretical arguments, let us now
rely on empirical evidence! If there are such general natural forces independent, or, at
least, partly independent or time and place, then their artistic manifestations, too, must
have identical characteristics. Let us see if it is really so! At t he climax of punk.
concerts a peculiar battle cry burst forth in a rhythmic, demanding manner: oj ! oj ! /In
English spelling: oi! oi! /In light of Vilmos Dioszegi's research we may state that the
punk battle cry is both in its form, function and meaning identical with the calling word
used in shamanist rituals in a general, over-all manner. This word is the only constant
element of the shamanist rituals,. With this word the participants of the shamanist ritual
call for the "spirit", for ecstasy and trance. The moment of being possessed is
always preceded by this calling word. With the Samoyedic shamans this calling word is: ou!
ou! With the Forest Nenets: he! hej! With the Tundra Nenets hoj! hoj! hej! sej! With the
Turkish peoples: kaj ! kaî ! With the Yakuts: hij! With the Eskimos of Greenland: hoi!
hoi! According to linguists, language historians "h" as a guttural sound is, on
the one hand, related to the "k" sound, on the other, as a faint sound, it is
often mute, and is elided in the course of the development of the language. In the
Hungarian lingual area theyare still in use, the hej! haj! huj! hij! sej! aj!
Interjections occur in everyday usage. The Hungarian battle-cry is widely known in Europe:
huj! huj! hajra! The constantly recurring part, the refrain of the Hungarian regos
/approx. bard; minstrel/ song is precisely the "haj! rego rejtem" whose meaning,
according to Dioszegi, is "hai! am raving with rave". Accordingly, during their
ritualistic ceremonies, the punk concerts, punks did rediscover this word on their own,
and have been using it for the same thing as the participants in the shamanistic
ceremonies did in Eurasia in the old days when shamanist belief was wide-spread. At punk
concerts the performers and the hopping, screaming partakers often mate their appearance
clad in clothes with a leopard- fur pattern, or in other leathers, and with their faces
dyed, that is, very much like in s shamanistic ritual where the participants wear leather
outfits, tiger and leopard leathers, and their faces are also dyed. The shaman's headwear,
the antecedent of the crown, is decorated with feathers just like that of the Indians.
Today's punks have the hairdo of the Indians, but instead of feathers they have the
so-called Mohawkcut. Beside this, the essence of the rituals is also common: reaching
ecstasy. In both cases the means to reach it are music and dance, extremely rhythmic music
with a sweeping force, /While the rhythm of beat music is comparable to the beat of the
heart, the rhythm of punk to the orgiastic rhythm of chasing sparrows./ Since these
characteristics came into being not as results of scientific research but in a spontaneous
way, from down under, produced by the people, it must have been identical forces in work
in calling force these two syndromes with two-three thousand years between them. It also
implies that challenging oppression, tragedies in history, defying space and time the
forces that called folk art into being are at work today just as much they were when
people lived in a natural unity with themselves and their environment. To illustrate the
essence of the sovereign folk music of the old days I quote Laszlo Zolnay's description of
the music of the Huns: "Most probably it was the strong rhythm-music of the Huns,
this nonconformist, strange music which was echoed from Pannonia, towards the Orient
through the' Great wall. of China. ... Chinese historians were offended by some
"lusty", "lecherous" music which endangered Chinese ceremonies
..." /Laszlo Zolnay: A magyar muzsika evszazadaibol /Centuries of Hungarian music/./
The wandering Hungarians, when singing to their gods, were screaming vehemently,
"screaming like wolves". From all this it is clear that rhythm and the mode of
singing, these two all-important factors in defining the characteristics of music, have
been similar both in ancient Hungarian folk music and today's punk. Also, concrete
similarities between punk and shamanist folk music can be detected in the contents and
function of the clueword or calling word, in almost all the movements of the ecstatic
free-dance, in clothing, in hairdo, in the way of living music and the world and in the
effort for ecstasy. Hungarian shamanist singing abated only the beginning of the 11th
century. "The poetry of the heathen days submerged in the seeming anonymity of folk
music, folk singing, in their subhistorical layers." /Laszlo Zolnay: ibid./ Classical
music adhering to rigid, life-elusionist rules /harmonics, dodecaphony/ is not able, will
be less and less able to create a new culture. A new culture requires the unity of a new
world view, new imagination, new mythology and new art, requires new patterns of
behaviour, new methods, new means. The bulk of present- day music is simply not able to
make in face his real life, endow him with new energies, a sense of self and
self-confidence. Classical and contemporary music expects some "preliminary
permission" and submission from its audience /here there are no participants, only
performers and listeners/, requires some sort of unclouded transubstantiation. A
transubstantiation, of course, not into the spheres of the divine as in the Middle Ages,
but into the all-forgiving, brotherly "community" of some generalized, vague
goodwill. "Folksy", what is more, "pseudo-folksy" music styling itself
folk music is an industrialized service satisfying commercial needs, and beyond that it is
only "good" for degrading the word "folk music" and frightening more
and more people away from real folk music. To this we may add the soothing hits of popular
music, and then we may say that the bulk of present-day music is simply for making man
surrender his misery, and for manipulating him so that he shall be even more prone to be-
manipulated. Music that was once so vital, so lively that neither man nor animal could
escape its power is these days a disembowelled mammoth on its tiptoes. Man's dignity,
self-respect and sublimity will wither away on a mass-scale if he sees himself only as an
unimportant dot, an atom in the face of the galaxies of the cosmos opening up more and
more extensively, and if he is a subservient consumer of the poison spread by the
pseudocultures of today. A man born among the animals in the wilderness and grown up there
does not learn to speak, his mind is nearer to that of the animals than to the mind of a
man grown up in society. Not even today is a man born to be a man; the struggle to become
a man, make new discoveries, reveal new forces and apply them, and to multiply ourselves
still goes on. This is what science and art do, and this is what music must do. |
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