SELF-INTERVIEW
After a long pause, I once again feel the time has come to conduct a self-interview. The one asking the questions: Bálint Szabó.The one answering: Gosheven.
BSz: Did you invent the Kamenawai people?
G: They are entirely my own invention, but of course their world is earthly through and through, of this world – even if, through their ritual music, we often get the impression that something otherworldly is present as well.
BSz: Why them in particular, and what is the point of creating fictional communities?
G: In truth, everything is fiction – the facts are, the universe is as well. Although we have tried to elevate our scientific methods above fiction, we must admit: with limited success. I say this despite the fact that these methods have led to many practically realisable results, though the true value and merit of most of them remain debatable.
Working with fictional peoples and creating their music is useful because it allows us to question many things we tend to take for granted. It lets us hold a vast mirror up to our culture, and opens up possibilities for experimenting with and speculating about alternative presents, futures, and pasts. In this sense, it is also a genuinely critical practice.
But to return to your question: the Kamenawai are a simple and modest community. Their technology is simple, their clothing is simple, and they do not live in an exotic place – they inhabit the region where the Bodrog and Tisza rivers meet. They possess no extraordinary objects, at least not in comparison to what a Neolithic community would generally have.
What is exceptional in their case is the central importance of sound and music within their culture. Both act as core driving forces: the ideas and patterns that emerge from them fundamentally and pervasively shape the entire culture. Their instruments are technically simple, yet possess overwhelming power – their potential soars sky-high. Moreover, their sounds are the voices of mythical bird-beings, so their ritual music is also a kind of mythical theater: in essence, a cosmology put into practice, danced, played, and performed.
BSz: So their music cannot be equated with the European musical practice often referred to as “absolute music”?
G: Exactly – it differs from it entirely. In their case, the branches of art that have since fragmented and specialised take shape as a single ritual whole. Thus, music is an organic part of movement, masks and costumes, objects, and the mythic cosmos – something that the members of the community actualise with their bodies and their minds.
BSz: To what extent can their instruments be considered unique?
G: They primarily use wind instruments which, as constructions, are simple, yet produced in astonishing numbers. On the recording, for example, roughly eighty (!) instruments can be heard, all individually built by hand and played.
Another remarkable aspect of their music is that it serves not only to connect with non-human or more-than-human forces, but also to synchronise the community. Musically, this is achieved through alternating and synchronised modes of playing. One might imagine it like a summer field filled with crickets: from afar, it is a dense sound, but listening closely reveals complex patterns of alternation and simultaneity. This means that individually they produce relatively few sounds, but since they typically perform in large numbers, a unique form of structural complexity and immense volume can arise simultaneously.
Another interesting aspect of their instruments is that they can be divided into two major groups: there are everyday instruments, which anyone may play and which are not subject to visual restriction, and there are secret instruments, which require initiation and are subject to visual prohibition. What is true of all instruments, however, is that each embodies and gives voice to non-human mythical entities.
BSz: What kinds of music can we hear on the recordings?
G: The album features music from various rituals of the secret flute ritual-complex, most prominently and at greatest length, a male initiation ritual. At the end of the album, however, there are also two performances associated with marriage rituals, as well as a short excerpt from a funerary ceremony held in one of the caves of the mountain today known as Tokaj’s Kopasz Hill.
Although these latter rituals often take place within the framework of the secret flute ritual, their instruments (various pipes and panpipes) are not considered secret, and may therefore be seen by anyone.
The instruments of the male initiation ritual, however, are all secret, and one of the key elements of the initiation is the revelation that the voices of the mythical beings are in fact instruments. The initiates not only learn to play them, but also learn how to make them.
BSz: Did you develop anything beyond their music?
G: Ritual music remained my central focus throughout, but many other aspects had to be invented alongside it: for example, the place where they live, the time in which they live, and I also sketched out their language. But to demonstrate just how central music is for them, their language itself was in fact derived from their imagined music.
BSz: You mentioned that the Kamenawai live along the Bodrog and Tisza rivers – but exactly when do they live?
G: Roughly around the year 2500, two hundred years after a global cataclysm swept across the planet, as a result of which nearly all cultures vanished, and the few survivors had to restart human history from a blank page. Consequently, the Kamenawai culture has absolutely no connection to the cultures or languages of present-day or recent Central Europe.
BSz: So does this mean you see our future rather pessimistically?
G: Yes, very much so. And yet perhaps not entirely – for without this cataclysm, the kamenawai could not emerge, and we would not be able to hear their music and their mythical bird-beings speaking through shimmering voices...
After a long pause, I once again feel the time has come to conduct a self-interview. The one asking the questions: Bálint Szabó.The one answering: Gosheven.
BSz: Did you invent the Kamenawai people?
G: They are entirely my own invention, but of course their world is earthly through and through, of this world – even if, through their ritual music, we often get the impression that something otherworldly is present as well.
BSz: Why them in particular, and what is the point of creating fictional communities?
G: In truth, everything is fiction – the facts are, the universe is as well. Although we have tried to elevate our scientific methods above fiction, we must admit: with limited success. I say this despite the fact that these methods have led to many practically realisable results, though the true value and merit of most of them remain debatable.
Working with fictional peoples and creating their music is useful because it allows us to question many things we tend to take for granted. It lets us hold a vast mirror up to our culture, and opens up possibilities for experimenting with and speculating about alternative presents, futures, and pasts. In this sense, it is also a genuinely critical practice.
But to return to your question: the Kamenawai are a simple and modest community. Their technology is simple, their clothing is simple, and they do not live in an exotic place – they inhabit the region where the Bodrog and Tisza rivers meet. They possess no extraordinary objects, at least not in comparison to what a Neolithic community would generally have.
What is exceptional in their case is the central importance of sound and music within their culture. Both act as core driving forces: the ideas and patterns that emerge from them fundamentally and pervasively shape the entire culture. Their instruments are technically simple, yet possess overwhelming power – their potential soars sky-high. Moreover, their sounds are the voices of mythical bird-beings, so their ritual music is also a kind of mythical theater: in essence, a cosmology put into practice, danced, played, and performed.
BSz: So their music cannot be equated with the European musical practice often referred to as “absolute music”?
G: Exactly – it differs from it entirely. In their case, the branches of art that have since fragmented and specialised take shape as a single ritual whole. Thus, music is an organic part of movement, masks and costumes, objects, and the mythic cosmos – something that the members of the community actualise with their bodies and their minds.
BSz: To what extent can their instruments be considered unique?
G: They primarily use wind instruments which, as constructions, are simple, yet produced in astonishing numbers. On the recording, for example, roughly eighty (!) instruments can be heard, all individually built by hand and played.
Another remarkable aspect of their music is that it serves not only to connect with non-human or more-than-human forces, but also to synchronise the community. Musically, this is achieved through alternating and synchronised modes of playing. One might imagine it like a summer field filled with crickets: from afar, it is a dense sound, but listening closely reveals complex patterns of alternation and simultaneity. This means that individually they produce relatively few sounds, but since they typically perform in large numbers, a unique form of structural complexity and immense volume can arise simultaneously.
Another interesting aspect of their instruments is that they can be divided into two major groups: there are everyday instruments, which anyone may play and which are not subject to visual restriction, and there are secret instruments, which require initiation and are subject to visual prohibition. What is true of all instruments, however, is that each embodies and gives voice to non-human mythical entities.
BSz: What kinds of music can we hear on the recordings?
G: The album features music from various rituals of the secret flute ritual-complex, most prominently and at greatest length, a male initiation ritual. At the end of the album, however, there are also two performances associated with marriage rituals, as well as a short excerpt from a funerary ceremony held in one of the caves of the mountain today known as Tokaj’s Kopasz Hill.
Although these latter rituals often take place within the framework of the secret flute ritual, their instruments (various pipes and panpipes) are not considered secret, and may therefore be seen by anyone.
The instruments of the male initiation ritual, however, are all secret, and one of the key elements of the initiation is the revelation that the voices of the mythical beings are in fact instruments. The initiates not only learn to play them, but also learn how to make them.
BSz: Did you develop anything beyond their music?
G: Ritual music remained my central focus throughout, but many other aspects had to be invented alongside it: for example, the place where they live, the time in which they live, and I also sketched out their language. But to demonstrate just how central music is for them, their language itself was in fact derived from their imagined music.
BSz: You mentioned that the Kamenawai live along the Bodrog and Tisza rivers – but exactly when do they live?
G: Roughly around the year 2500, two hundred years after a global cataclysm swept across the planet, as a result of which nearly all cultures vanished, and the few survivors had to restart human history from a blank page. Consequently, the Kamenawai culture has absolutely no connection to the cultures or languages of present-day or recent Central Europe.
BSz: So does this mean you see our future rather pessimistically?
G: Yes, very much so. And yet perhaps not entirely – for without this cataclysm, the kamenawai could not emerge, and we would not be able to hear their music and their mythical bird-beings speaking through shimmering voices...