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Music and Categories (II):
Interstitial Speculation from a Record Collector
By Warren Senders
One of the things that I found out about myself was that I seemed to prefer the music of artists who were hard to classify. Words like "eccentric," "oddball," and "uncategorizable" were magnets. The jazz musicians I liked the most were the ones in the "Talent–Deserving–Wider–Recognition" category in the DownBeat polls. When I discovered Harry Partch, who created his own orchestra of 43–tone–to–the–octave instruments to play his richly textured compositions, I thought I'd found the Holy Grail.
Partch is a great example. Defining himself in opposition to the establishment of Western Classical composition and performance, he developed a new and different system of intonation, evolved a theory of composition, and created a repertoire of complex music which could not be played on standard instruments. The closest thing to a violin in Partch's orchestra was a viola with a 'cello fingerboard, played with a single sliding finger and sounding utterly unlike anthing from a string quartet or symphony. The closest thing to a piano was a reed organ whose keyboard now encompassed less than two full octaves — forty–three notes from a "G" to the next higher "G," which means a lot of keys in between. A marimba made, for God's sake, from tuned light bulbs. In his book, "Genesis of a Music," Partch railed against the classical music establishment, defining himself and his work in opposition to the prevailing canons of musical practice (and the prevailing practice of musical canons, needless to say).
Where did I find his records? In the "Classical" department, that's where, which was a clear indicator that something wasn't quite right in the classification department. Partch didn't belong with Wagner, Beethoven and Schoenberg. He didn't belong with Louis Armstrong and Ornette Coleman either; there was no improvisation in his music, and no African–American sensibility either. Problem was, there was no category for people who didn't fit into categories — which meant that record–store clerks under time pressure needed to put him somewhere. And so I found him between Palestrina and Puccini.
Taxonomy in the marketplace is motivated by practical and economic considerations. In order to sell something, it must be where buyers can find it, or they'll go away unsatisfied. A record or CD needs to have a specific location, and there needs to be a mechanism whereby somebody else can track it down, pick it up, and exchange money for it at the cash register. Which means that there are decisions to be made — decisions which are, in their essence, clerical, not aesthetic.
The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis tells us that the language we use to describe our universe shapes our perceptions; once we name something, it acquires shape, boundary, definition. We don't see things that we haven't named — but the act of naming serves to exclude other possible ways of seeing. And hearing, feeling, smelling, tasting, thinking, and imagining.
Which means that when we use a word to describe music, or prose, or visual art, or just about anything, that we're somehow creating a boundary. This is jazz — and this is not jazz. This is poetry, and this is not poetry. This is sculpture — and this is not sculpture.
Remember the Zen Buddhist lightbulb joke? The punchline (not particularly funny, but pretty accurate) goes: "Three. One to screw it in, one to not screw it in, and one to neither screw it in or not screw it in."
The word "interstitial" defines things, not by what they are or are not, but by what they are between. It is an unasking of the question, a neither–screwing–in–or–not–screwing–in of the hypothetical lightbulb. It's a challenge; an interrogation of taxonomy itself. This makes many people uncomfortable; once you know the implications of Sapir–Whorf, you can understand why. To question the default taxonomy is to question reality!
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