Marfa Vasina. Clack number one

Clack number one
Marfa Vasina

Publication date: March 21, 2001

In St. Petersburg, the famous American avant-garde artist Meredith Monk gave a concert at the Hermitage Theater . The singer, composer, choreographer and director - all four rolled into one - was so inspired by the attention given to her that she did not leave the stage for a long time, talking about herself and asking questions from the audience.

In the vocabulary of 57-year-old Meredith Monk , a handsome, outgoing American woman with a hundred braids on her head, the main phrase is “my voice.” Monk's voice is truly her pedigree, her philosophy, her patented invention, and, ultimately, the main instrument of her art. Monk uses his voice as if it were a sacred instrument inherited from someone. She sings, clicks, purrs, howls and performs at least a dozen other operations.

Connoisseurs of minimalism call this art “interdisciplinary,” meaning not only the vocal, but also the directing and staging-choreographic experiences of Meredith Monk. However, in the foundation of the thirty-five-year career made by the representative of the New York downtown of the 60s, the main place belongs to the voice - or rather, to the unique system of its exploitation. The system, like everything ingenious, is simple and, like everything living, finite.

Its main result is that, reacting to Monk, everyone in the audience thinks: “I can do that too.”

In reporting that she began to sing before she spoke, Meredith Monk appeals to genealogy: “My great-grandfather was a synagogue cantor, my grandfather was a bass-baritone, my mother sang well, too.” There is a biography turned into a myth. For a student of the Dalcroze method (one of the systems that liberated the body and mind of the early twentieth century - the same as Isadora Duncan's pre-aerobics ), it was probably not difficult to establish a biographical argument in herself. First making money as a rock singer, then as a country singer, Monk soon turned away from everyday roles, explaining this as a “revelation.” That is, the voice of the ancestors literally leaped into Meredith Monk.

He jumped, let us add, at the right moment and in the right place. America in the 60s dreamed of anti-civilization and cultivated post-industrial reflexes. It was much further to the apocalypse - so it seemed to many - than to primitiveness. People who are no strangers to art experimented with their own physics, believing in the limitless capabilities of the body. Rocking the backbone of civilization through the individual efforts of many was reminiscent of massaging the back of a nerve patient - it was important to find the points that still responded to the influence, the search for each of which required a lot of time. In these efforts, with the light hand of John Cage, a whole clan of minimalist composers declared themselves.

Humble laboratory assistants for the spiritual renewal of America, they restored the five senses with an obligatory eye on the inarticulate - the sixth. The Wild West introduced Terry Riley to the transtemporal fluidity of his compositions . The Far East forced one to look into oneself either through the prism of La Monte Young’s engineering asceticism , or through the liquid oil of super-contact (like “The Spell of Buddha”) compositions by Philip Glass . Whether Steve Reich's studio electronics or the insect-like rustling of Meredith Monk's voice - everything moved towards infinity, savoring the smallest processes of a fabulous minimalist route. But there was some difference between Meredith Monk and the others. Listening to them, no one knew how long the compositions would last - such as Riley's famous In C or Reich's Different Trains . Listening to Monk, it is easy to see that she is working in a compact pop format.

Meridith Monk provided the required political correctness to the collective multicultural portrait of the American avant-garde. The only woman in the minimalist workshop, she specialized in primal nature. Her songs are without words (and what else could humanity sing without mastering the language). Her compositions are entirely a synthesis of the body with the bodily instrument of the voice. All she had to do was believe that she remembered those who lived a million years before homo sapiens. To maintain faith, a practical course of vocal exercises has been developed. The main postulate is this: “the voice should be somewhere in the center of the body.” To this day, the sound of Meredith Monk's voice is as fine and pure as Neolithic earth dust.

Meredith Monk's philosophy - relevance in irrelevance - summed up the most charming stage of minimalism. I think that I will not be mistaken in calling it global-memory. Everything sung in the first half of the St. Petersburg concert was just such a femininely packaged primitive past. "Songs from the Hill" (1977) gracefully led the audience into a brief mega-trance with panoramic mirages of southern New Mexico, insects, lullabies and prairie ghosts. Next is a pair of comfortably refined “Cloking Number One” and “Cloking Number Two” (1988). Finally, two “Songs of Volcano” (1994) with a primitive electronic effect arising from the simultaneous combination of throat singing with a harp (Tuvian national instrument) - either computer music, or the northern lights.

After the intermission, the minimalist meanings were lost. Monk sang to the piano, which instantly changed the context and even the ideology of her performance. The fragrant specificity of prehistoric visions gave way to a trivial “epiphany.” "Gotham Lullaby" (1975), "The Journey" (1973), "Vision of a Madwoman" and "New York Requiem" (in memory of those killed by AIDS) were heard only to reveal the modern underside of the former splendor of Meredith Monk's avant-garde. The journey to infinity is over. The aging dynamics of avant-garde finds turned out to be adequate to the effect they produced of cultural rejuvenation. In the end, on stage was not the great number one, but the high-status author of two operas ( ATLAS , Houston, 1991, and The Magic Frequences 's long-running film , Munich, 1998), an honorary university doctor, the aged heroine of Peter Greenaway about minimalism. She is an eccentric, a writer of pop songs and piano opuses, like the nostalgically boring “St. Petersburg Waltz.”