Sound??

Rahsaan Roland Kirk
12.5 x 7 inches, oil on board, 2018

The focuses of the top 100 for months have been on the origin of music and that of shamanism. In this context the film Sound?? (Dick Fontaine, 1967, 25m) is especially insightful. Featured musicians in the film are Rahsaan Roland Kirk and John Cage. Cage is seen rehearsing with David Tudor and Merce Cunningham. Cage also narrates the film in which he asks existential questions about music and sound. "What is sound?" he asks and muses on the answer. Kirk is seen live in concert performing Three for the Festival and Here Comes the Whistleman. The pairing of the two is natural as Kirk illustrates the concepts of Cage. Cage was influenced by Zen Buddhism and the Chinese I Ching, the Book of Changes, Kirk, as I wrote a few years ago, the embodiment of a twentieth century western performer with characteristics of a shaman of the ancient tradition. The film is a great introduction to a deeper understanding of that thing called music where the whole world is so infatuated with.