In a previous dose, I said the music of Meitei evinced certain scenes, moods, experiences (crunching footsteps) and colors (like the yellow glow of street lamps reflected on snow)
Coincidentally enough, the musician behind Meitei (Daisuke Fujita), gave an interview where he described the recent discovery of his synaesthesia
And that he had consulted with researchers at Kyoto University, who advised him to devote more time to music!
And its associations of particular notes and chords with colors
The author of today’s dose, Robbie Basho, was also a synesthete
And man was he really into it
Not just in a “blue note” type of way
He devoted tomes to charting the relationships between each chord, its color, mood, and “concomitant properties”
He developed entire tables like these
He was really into a lotta shit
Sufism, peyote, blues, gods, animals, Bartok, spirits, buddhism, scales, modes, poetry, you name it
He was orphaned as an infant (like another musician whose dose is coming)
And adopted by the Robinson family – so for his youth he was known as Daniel Robinson Jr
At the University of Maryland, he started getting into guitar, and met John Fahey and Max Ochs
Fahey would help him put out a bunch of his records on Takoma, and of course achieved much more acclaim
At UMd, he also got into Japanese poetry, and renamed himself Robbie Basho after the 17th century Edo period poet Matsuo Basho
His music didn’t have the same cache as Fahey or Leo Kottke
But he was nice on the 12-string
This is the title track of his 2nd LP from 1966, revisited in 1979
Here is the original
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lqdg99o-_4I
Vibrato vibes very much in evidence on all his vocals
E.g. “Death Song”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a34ELYISVyQ
Or his most well-known, Blue Crystal Fire from what is generally considered magnum opus, “Visions of the Country” from 1978
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYaGChm8RWw
He went to India in 1969, and spent years studying classical indian guitar (e.g. with Ali Akbar Khan in Berkeley)
“The superego isn’t satisfied with meat and potatoes music anymore, it really wants the best it can get… Music is supposed to say something, music is supposed to do something”
I swear I did not make this quote up
It’s from a radio interview he did on community station KPFA in Berkeley
He was a devotee of Meher Baba
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meher_Baba
Per wikipedia, the one responsible for introducing “don’t worry, be happy” into the american cultural lexicon
Though he didn’t physically utter a single word between 1925 and his death in 1969
Basho didn’t see much in the way of sales or critical plaudits during his life
Even Fahey apparently kinda thought he was full of shit
A bit much
Some of his interests do seem to have been a little over the top
He died in a chiropractic mishap
At the age of 46
But his music is being newly appreciated by listeners in this century
And I’ll be damned if his intermodal associations don’t hit the mark
Listen to The Grail and The Lotus
And pay attention to what you see, feel, smell, and taste
Or rather, don’t “pay attention”
Maybe, taking a page from Jonathan Crary’s work on modern art history, you could try “counter-modes of attention” through methods of inhabiting time or altered cognitive states that Basho would have undoubtedly preferred, like trance or reverie
His chords are surely conducive
“Basho died unexpectedly at the age of 45 due to an accident during a visit to his chiropractor, where an “intentional whiplash” experiment caused blood vessels in his neck to rupture, leading to a fatal stroke.”
The haiku on death from the genre’s master:
Sick on a journey–
in my dream staggering
over withered fields.
Sometimes alternately translated as
On a journey, ill:
My dream goes wandering
Over desolate fields
Or
Sick on my journey,
only my dreams will wander
these desolate moors
Fascinating how the meaning and imagery changes depending on the translator’s decisions
traduttore traditore
And all that
They’re all pretty breathtaking, to be honest
He’s a cool compendium of some of Basho’s most famous and their different English renderings:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.uwosh.edu/facstaff/barnhill/es-244-basho/hokku.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiZmIKkgLnpAhUJXM0KHTwtAqMQFjABegQIAhAB&usg=AOvVaw11DuWUw9Z9z9h-JNbGWLuD&cshid=1589653621149
Even for only 17 syllables!