Dreaming as Artistic-Critical Activism

“The idea of light emerging, dying, emerging again is a sensual one and it is done here with great beauty and avocation” – Review: Title of CD. New Music Connoisseur, NYC. (Lead with quote and then cite source.)

Dreaming: The state of Dreaming, imagining is for an artist as tangible and forceful as the phenomenon of nature. It is the way my mind functions, the source of my creativity and spiritual existence. I can describe it as an inherent mental disposition, lucid in open awareness, absorbing or internalizing any inner or outer experience, as raw materials to be transformed into an artistic expression.

“What we draw on from our memories, and think, imagine and create in our daily lives is our dreaming.” – Djon Mundine, Australian Aboriginal Bundjalung artist, curator, writer, activist.

As artists we often seem isolated from what is generally considered “reality.” However, I believe that the opposite is true. Being inside creativity we are often sensitive to the emotional and mental pulses of individuals, communities, social, and political surroundings. From example, while I compose and perform film scores to Weimar Republic era silent cinema (c. 1918-1933), I imagine/feel that I collaborate with film makers who created groundbreaking aesthetics displaying premonitions through dystopias that unfortunately became real. Thus, I believe that a serious artistic work can mirror our inner and outer conditions, and such reflection and awareness can bring about individual and collective healing.

Dreaming as a critical action: I am inspired by the prioritization within indigenous cultures of the art of dreaming as a form of healing and empowerment for individual and collective well-being. I understand Dreaming as a free-spirited, empowering, and emancipating collective human phenomenon, which defies effortlessly and peacefully any normative thinking. Inherently altruistic, the gift of dreaming, or lucidity, or creativity is everyone’s birthright. Moreover, I believe that the artistic and conceptual results of dreaming are meant to be shared and used for the benefit of all. Therefore, I am motivated to share music not only with audiences at concert venues but also with people from all-walks of lives, especially including marginalized individuals and communities, and at concerts that benefit humanitarian causes.

Flute and Composition: The flute sonority is in the core of my art. I fell in love with the openness of the flute since childhood and I started training in Classical flute in the tradition of the legendary French Classical-Flute School aesthetics. Within this rich foundation of inspiration, finding my true diverse voices is an ongoing process, both as an interpreter and as a composer with acoustic flute, electro-acoustic flute, and electro-acoustic music composition. Like a choreographer or a visual artist, continuing a lineage of serious artworks while re-examining their rules, as a sound-artist I challenge my own heritage of conventional concepts about tone structure, tonality, rhythm, harmony, melody, etc.

Multiplicity and hybridism: From a broader perspective of sound and expression, I use a multilayered palate of sound and noise, deriving from universal eclecticism and improvisations. Although I consciously differentiate between the distinctive musical aesthetics that I work with – such as urban jazz; contemporary-classical; electro-acoustic music for film and choreography – I translate some elements from one genre into another. In the process of translation these elements become transformed into a new hybrid of yet undefined expressions. Since hybridism has always been part of an evolutionary organic process, I perceive it as natural for my work as well.

For instance, I transform and exaggerate segments of free jazz improvisational and rhythmic patterns into the aesthetics of contemporary solo flute improvisational pieces. On the other hand, I implement elements typical of twentieth and twenty-first century modern and contemporary music (i.e., impressionist tonal coloring, atonality, polyrhythm, free form, and electronic tracks composed of noise) into jazz composition. The approach of Musique concrete, pioneering composers of sound-art, is an essential source of inspiration.

I use the medium of electro-acoustic composition for film soundtrack and modern choreography, as a multimedia art form, creating diverse sound textures with diverse audio sources, also including samples from ritualistic and spiritual music of indigenous cultures, as well as all eras of Western classical orchestral, vocal and chamber pieces. These electro-acoustic compositions combine audio that is both sound (exact, pitched like musical instruments) and noise (not-exact, pitched like machines), as different “instruments” in a grand hybrid orchestra performing a symphonic audio collage.

Electro-Acoustic Flute Soundscapes & d r e a m   c o l l a g e is my multimedia solo performance telling abstract stories that resonate and pulsate with our collective and individual consciousness. I merge audio and visual expressions/impressions through contemporary electro-acoustic audio, masks, stage-lights/shadows, and video/image-collage screening. The combination of compositional and improvisational audio with visual and theatrical-mask elements is meant to provide a mental space that blurs the distinctions between performer and audience.

By implementing diverse performative elements, I mean to communicate egalitarian social meanings that exist both in modern and indigenous cultures. I am inspired by interactive ritualistic traditions that promote social wellbeing and equality by presenting symbolic expressions manifested through song, rhythm, dance, and masks. For example, the Gẹ̀ lẹ̀ dẹ́ society’s annual masks festival in Yoruba culture, and the Native American Pow Wow festival.

“The arts are not merely life-enriching. They are life-sustaining.” – Carolyn Bereznak Kenny, PhD, MT-BC