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1980 saw the
release of a project that illustrated the multiplicity of the musical
experience: compositional creativity, percussion virtuosity, study, research,
and performance. This was Indian Tapes, a self-produced, three
record box set of a substantial body of solo works surpassing all Centazzo's
previous releases. This was not just improvised music but a selection
of compositions and sound fragments recorded over the years - nurtured,
developed and re - recorded over the prior seven years, the realization
of a precise, clearly conceived sound project.
Indian Tapes is not, as one might be led to think, an album inspired
by the music of native Americans (which consists mostly of simple monodic
and monorhythmic forms of expression) but an original work of art which
pays homage to these peoples, to their philosophy of life, and to their
relationship with nature.
It was on the banks of Lake Michigan in 1976, on seeing the monumet to
the Native Americans, the first inhabitants of those lands, that Centazzo
decided to undertake his next impossible mission; to alone produce a work
dedicated to the Native Americans. On his first U.S. tour in 1978, Centazzo
visited the Indian reservations in search of a legend that had always
fascinated him. "Ever since l was a small child, I hated John Wayne
and the adventurers of the West-it always seemed that the Indians were
the victims of one of the most devastating injustices in the history of
mankind. As no adolescent I read all I could find on the subject, in order
to get closer to the philosophy of that people."
It was two years after his fateful visit before be could begin this extensive
musical work-using all the audio-technical means at his disposal, re-discovering
old recordings, re elaborating them, and composing new material.
The preparation had actually begun in 1973, when al the outset of his
musical career, Centazzo started experimenting in his home-built recording
studio, using percussion and early electronic musical instruments. It
had been a spontaneous project, without preconceptions, where random factors
and artistic determination met and blended (with the help of reels and
reels of tape) in experiments of all kinds. The resulting recordings were
stored away to await fruition at a later date.
For the first time, the texture of the music is enriched by noises and
natural sounds, chants from other cultures, bird calls, crickets, frogs,
in communion with sounds from their natural world and sounds created by
the musician.
Armando Gentilucci wrote, "In Indian Tapes Centazzo appears
to lay himself open to all the possibilities of the situation, accenting
the anomaly of the percussion instruments, on their belonging to diverse
musical cultures and territories. It is the wealth of instrumentation
that leads us to different echoes, tckles the layers of ones memory, induces
different images, yet despite all this there is a clear synthetic force
and working cohesion. Therefore, we are not witnessing a mixture of musical
genres in the sense of a collage, but the presentation of diversity, of
heterogeneity.'," This imposing work, full of music that is technically
strong, mysterious, pluralist, encompasses "all the ercative musical
experience, ex-machina, avant-garde, jazz and more, that Centazzo has
accumulated in a year of untiring activity." I Indian Tapes was
awarded the Italian Record Critics' prize for its "noteworthy artistic
and publishing enterprise and its commitment to the furthering of research
in the field of percussion."
Immediately thereafter the famous American publication, Downbeat gave
Centazzo First Place in its poll for Best Solo Percussion Record, classifying
him the Nino Rota of percussion.
"With Indian Tapes, Centazzo enters into a wide open space,
justifying this freedom with a series of truly noteworthy poetic creations,
musical propositions, and technical solutions which give weighty validation
to the 19 compositions. It seems as if Centazzo is principally an untiring
researcher, if one can intend by this term a mentality which moves the
musician to perceive and reorganize every type of sound event, to provoke
emotions via artificial or natural means.
On the three records the percussion instruments are mixed with voices,
natural sounds, synthesized sounds, all captured by a manifestly attentive
ear, which fuses these thousands of everyday impressions into a coherent
argument.
You can actually physically feel the close ties between the day to day
life that Centazzo leads in his home studio and his travels around the
world in search of new musical experiences; the link between the artist
and the recording studio kept under his pillow at night. On listening
to these records one has the sensation of making a long journey, going
far off into abstract worlds, yet at the same time remaining in the company
of our own innermost reality. Thus, we meet the 'Indians', in a fabulous
and somewhat hallucinatory way. Yet the encounter is filtered by the patient
and creative use of instrumental technique and recording equipment."
In view of its particular use of ambient sounds, and the fact that it
represents itself as a creative link between environmental issues and
musical composition, Indian Tapes could well be considered a New
Age work (ahead of its time and the first actual New Age work in Italy).
By now Centazzo had chosen to follow the path of the unlimited experimentation,
collaborating with musicians on the contemporary improvising music scene,
underlining the more varied tendencies, and using the most disparate approaches
to sound material.
One of the many approaches Centazzo employ, was to work in collaboration
with other artists on their own exploratory, journeys. As early as 1977,
when commenting on working in duo with artists such as Alvin Curran, Derek
Bailey, Pierre Favre and others, he summarized: "The composite experience
of the New American School, the particular expression of 'free music'
and, finally, the creative universe of percussion represent for me three
new ways to consider the use of music, of one's instruments, and a new
way to offer oneself to the public.
Music that is therefore not for gratification, not a commodity, but an
attempt at mutual growth, a stimulating and difficult aural form that
is obscure yet useful and essential for the widening of the dialectical
semantics of mass communication. "Why the due? The answer is simple.
Duo is meeting, it's conversation, trying to make oneself understood.
Duo is friendship, reciprocal gratification, direct experience. Lastly,
due is the willingness to stimulate each other and to assimilate (going
beyond the tired conventions of soloism) the stimulation of who is listening
to you."
From this point of view, it is easy to understand the prodigious activity
of concerts and recordings in duo. Percussionist David Moss, saxophonist
John Zorn, violinist La Donna Smith, trumpeter Toshinori Kondo, saxophonist
Evan Parker, guitarist Derek Bailey, and many others, are the co-protagonists
in an artistic adventure, individualistic in its stylistic coherency and,
al the same time, pluralist in its inspiration.
This was an exciting period. Music was played everywhere, from the little
theatres to the large arenas like Villa Borghese Park in Rome, where Centazzo
in duo with Guido Mazzon was enthusiastically applauded by a crowd often
thousand. In those days the involvemerit of the audience was complete
and stimulating. These were not just musical events, but also, and most
importantly, social happenings. The music was the element of cohesion,
as testified by a remark made to Centazzo on one of these occasions: "I
don't understand much about music, bar I understand that with You-Your
instrument is alive and talks."
Another duo collaboration was added some years later (1982), that with
clarinetist and saxophonist Gianluigi Trovesi, in which Centazzo searched
for new solutions and openings towards a more "Italian and accessible"
approach to improvisation. (Trovesi would later become one of the most
important soloists of Centazzo's Mitteleuropa Orchestra; a brilliant collaboration
from which would evolve the Ictus album, SHOCK! which is discussed
in subsequent pages.)
The last chapter in the improvisation saga came from the area of contemporary
composition. "Solo" de la passion selon Sade, written
by Silvano Bussotti, was rearranged by Centazzo for soloists and percussion,
taken on tour to major contemporary music festivals and, ultimately, recorded
on LP. On adapting himself to Bussotti's cryptic language, Centazzo explains
in the sleeve notes that: "from the vibrant mists of creative improvisation
procedures, and the genetic matrix of my musical persona came the inspiration
and impetus for this interpretative reinvention of Bussotti's score."
In the composer's notes on the same sleeve, we find Bussotti's reply:
"The free interpretation for similar instruments of my old work,
Solo, brings about a new and unexpected definition, which I believe we
can call scientific since it puts in evidence the analysis for this music,
the writing proposes for interpretation fleeting arid ambiguous traces,
a process of awareness equal to the challenge of working Solo."
This exciting period of improvised music (from'76 to'83) saw Centazzo
active not only in Italy but also, and with great success, touring the
United States on three occasions, and on tour in Europe in England, Austria,
Germany (West and East), Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, France, Portugal,
Yugoslavia and Holland. Concurrent with the frenetic concert activity
abroad, there was a corresponding period of decline for avant-garde music
at home, during which Centazzo performed less and less in Italy. Artists
were no longer given the spaces or the opportunities to present their
work. Centazzo comments, "The fact is that around 1977, the Left
realized that even in music pecunia non olet, and with its festivals
and other events (sausages, polenta, matrioskas, flags, Russian watches,
Vietnamese carpets, the International Anthem, The Red Flag, folk dancing,
tortellini, records by leftist singers and friends and everything else!)
discovered rock concerts.
The definitive collapse of music of the political avant-garde took place
at Bologna Stadium in 1977 where thousands of delirious left wing activists
came to see a tone-deaf idiot named Patty Smith. Since this young lady
from New York was manifestly unable to sing or play, the critics dubbed
her a poetess of rock! Somehow overlooking in the wake of these few banal
texts, everything from Ginsberg to Kerouac, the real American rebel poets.
From that moment, for creative musicians (both the genuine ones and the
fake ones with just the party membership cards in their pockets and the
clenched fists) the good times of big audiences and cultural consensus
were over.
Sometimes dreams do come true. While musical avenues were evaporating
at home, Centazzo found himself on the eve of his first United States
tour, October 19, 1978. Centazzo's mind was filled with the mundane problems
of everyday life as well as with hope and aspirations for the tour but
without particular expectations. Prior to Centazzo, with the exception
of a few concerts by Pierre Favre and Han Bennink, no European percussionist
from the jazz sector had ever been invited to the States to perform as
a soloist. Yet another of Centazzo's adventures born from his willingness
to delve into all new experiences.
Centazzo first stopped in England, where he gave a series of solo percussion)
concerts at the request of the English Drum Association, with the sponsorship
of Premier Drums. Then he made the big leap, and arrived in New York on
a cold November's day, to be greeted by the musicians with whom he was
to work: John Zom, Eugene Chadbourne, Polly Bradfield, Toshinori Kondo
and Tom Corra. The concert activity of these months was intense and the
recordings prolific. Among other performances, these artists performed
a live concert for radio station WKCR, which would later become the Ictus
release, Environment For Sextet. After concerts at the Eriviron,
the temple of the New York avant-garde, Centazzo headed to Virginia, then
on to Alabama, where he appeared with guitarist David Williams and violinist/vocalist
La Donna Smith in Tuscaloosa.
Centazzo won great acclaim shortly after at the University of Birmingham,
where at the end of his concert he was given a ten minute standing ovation.
After this southern concert tour, he visited the Creative Music Studio
al Woodstock to conduct a seminar on new improvisational techniques.
In California, he worked with Henry Kaiser to record the album Protocol,
and recorded the album, The Bay with the Rova Saxophone Quartet.
He went on to work with Alex Cline, Diamanda Galas and to perform as soloist
in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco.
The Calgary Herald described his music as a "Surprising new language"
and in a subsequent interview Centazzo explained, "In fact, the Calgary
Herald has defined it as a new language precisely to underline the commitment
I have put into organizing the music to be performed in the research for
new sounds, new types of tone colors and instruments, and in the
quest for an expressive equilibrium which is always organic. My music
is avant-garde. It even breaks the jazz tradition. It is creative music.
It is precisely at the point of creation that I live to the fullest the
most important moment of my music. It is for that point that I am stimulated
to create and to continually search for that which is new."
Centazzo's first tour experience in the United States is chronicled on
the album USA Concerts, released on Ictus in 1979. Only
seven months later ho was on tour again in the United States, giving seminars
performing in concerts and recording, among which was a two hour recording
of a live performance with clarinetist John Carter and saxophonist Vinny
Golia on radio station KPFK in Los Angeles entitled, Special Live.
Centazzo also performed as percussionist in a 14 piece ensemble directed
by John Zom al Columbia University in New York.
A third United States tour ended his great creative turmoil. Once again,
ho went to the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, where he conducted
a course in the history and use of percussion instruments, instructed
in technique of improvisation and collective performance exercises, and
held an orchestral workshop.
Ho played and recorded with David Moss and Tom Corra, and at CBGB, the
icon of New York punk rock, ho experimented with electrc rock improvisation
with guitarist Eugene Chadbourne. Finally, ho recorded a new album for
Parachute Records with the participation of the high priest of noise guitar
Fred Frith (ex Henry Cow).
In Europe a very different wind was blowing, so much so that any artists
were abandoning this genre for good. In fact from 1977, as has already
been noted, large scale commercial interests began to prevail, and avant-garde
music was pushed to the sidelines while more and more space was given
to rock concerts.
"The experiences of 1980 were truly conclusive for me," says
Centazzo "After ten years of passionate dedication to jazz and everything
that revolved around it, after years of the American Dream, I suddenly
realized that this was not what I was looking for; l understood how much
of my cultural background had been sacrificed in order to arrive at a
language that wasn't mine; l saw the originality and intensity of European
music, both composed and improvised. I rediscovered my roots and wanted
to study and compose at home. To put it simply, I realized how much it
pleased me to live and play in Europe, even if not particularly in Italy.
I turned down various invitations from musicians for me to stay in New
York; even saying no to the offer of a free apartment. Bringing to a close,
this phase of my personal and artistic life."
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