EL MAHBOOB

Category: Memoir

  • Dream Decade

    Tuesday, September 11, 1991

    (Journal entry)

    My late grandfather was actually Igor Stravinsky with a changed identity. He did not die in 1971 but continued on in a secret life. When he did eventually pass away in 1986 (as my grandfather did in real life), I was shocked to learn his true identity and was angry at my mother and grandmother for keeping it from me. I was disappointed that I had missed out on a great musical legacy but felt that it somehow explained my influences and habits as a composer.

  • Cage Centenary

    August 12, 1992

    (Journal entry. Transcription by Nehal El-Hadi, September 4, 2012)

    John Cage died today at 79. I have somehow been expecting this news, as if it were confirmation that a certain era of progressiveness or revolution was truly now over. Cage, more than any other single figure in the arts, was one to bring about change in Western culture. And I wonder what effect his passing will have on art and music, if there is one to be felt.

    He was a person who was mysterious to me, and I knew only some of his music and writings, but what I felt for him was something approaching worship. His ideas on music and life were some of the most profound I have yet encountered. I am sure that it will be many more years before I can really appreciate or understand the person or at least his ideas.

    The music, however, has always communicated to me almost instantaneously. I am affected not merely on a cerebral or spiritual level, but on a highly instinctualized one. His prepared piano pieces give a feeling which is new and alien and perfectly “logical” at the same time. His reaffirmation of rhythm was so much more thorough and fundamental than either Stravinsky’s or Bartók’s. Through the innovation of prepared piano (even if it wasn’t his) and his writing for unique grouping of percussion, he reasserted the primitive in our music. This was long before rock ‘n’ roll or minimalism or new age; these genres owe a lot to him even if it has never been acknowledged.

    His willingness to accept the total sound spectrum, including noise, as full of musical potential – not just tempered pitches and orchestral timbres – put Cage (along with Varése and Ives) at the forefront of musical innovation in this century. This was his gift to us: the whole world of sound.

    The man who gave us “Music of Changes” realized there was inner music in outer silence, and inspired a whole community of performers to explore it. He legitimized his non-conformity.

    I find it interesting that he eschewed conventional temporal and harmonic structures early on, and spent the rest of his life rediscovering the role of time in music, and later, the context of non-music.

    I can think of no better goal than searching for the same answers that he was through his music – to learn about this world through art (not to exploit art for shallow ends). When we are confronted with silence in the not-too-distant future, after the media maelstrom, we will find Cage waiting, listening.

  • Li’l Minimalist

    (written in March 2010)

    One sunny late winter evening, I pick up Queen Peace after work. Nattily attired and chipper, she skips just ahead and then whirls around to ask, “Do you want to see my favourite dance?”

    Of course, I answer. Her skip turns into a side to side stride, her arms swinging wide, as she sings an amalgam of various nursery rhymes, laughing herself off balance and half-crashing into some bushes. Then, she stands up straight and walks by my side. Quietly thoughtful for a moment, she looks up and says, “Daddy, I’m actually very interested in Steve Reich.”

    This is a three year-old, who, every few days when I see her, seems to have advanced to a complete new level of understanding and expression of her world. And level of memory – it was a while ago I told her I had tickets to the Cool Drummings concert in Toronto, featuring the composer and his music.

    “Can I go to the concert with you?”

    It will be past your bedtime honey, and it might be a little loud for you. But we can listen to a Steve Reich concert when we get home if you like.

    Later, I put on the Reich at the Roxy album.

    “It’s skipping.”

    “It sounds like soldiers.” Break in music from pulsing rhythm to pillars of sounds and shift of tempo; return to steady rhythm. We count together, dividing the bar by three, then four. This loses most adults. The bass drum and bass end of the piano pound out accents. “More soldiers,” she says. “Marching. March! March!” I begin to worry she’ll confuse this Reich with a more infamous one when her schooling begins.

    I leave the room briefly. A fast movement begins. “Daddy, daddy, she calls out, “It’s playing very fast now! I call him Steve Rush!”

    Voices. “Oh, I like opera.” Steve Reich doesn’t. “Does he like goblins and faeries in his opera?”

    The music stops on a dime. “It’s over, I think.” [Applause.] “The concert ended. Daddy, it was good. I like Steve Reich.”

  • Superscription

    “Sequence, symmetry & simplicity” — my composer’s motto, 1996. 15 years later, inspiration strikes and the same schemes still sparkle.