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Sonata Homophobia

from ORDO by Philip Blackburn

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    Includes unlimited streaming of ORDO via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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about

Homophobic rants grace America’s airwaves every day by profiteering pseudo-religious virtucrats. While perhaps laughably misinformed, their words cause real damage, especially to young people coming to terms with their sexuality. They are part of the culture that drives queer kids to suicide in staggering and heartbreaking numbers. So when I was asked to write a piece for openly gay student Zachery Meier, graduating from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, I wrote Sonata Homophobia as much for him as for the flute. It is a manifestation of internal psychological struggles, crisis and overcoming, and discovering one’s true emerging voice.

The player wears a set of electrodes on his forehead and is blindfolded. His flute is in pieces at his feet. The EEG sensor starts spewing sampled fragments of speech (triggered by his own thoughts) and he reaches for the headjoint and reacts to what he hears. He struggles to break out of a cycle of internalized messages of hate and find his place in the chaos that he himself is partly regurgitating.

As the stress level builds up, the performer (who by now has assembled a complete functioning flute) has had enough and cries out defiantly the names of those known personally to him who have attempted to take their own lives. After calling them out, the mood begins to shift as he chooses to hear other more life affirming voices of reconciliation. The music becomes an elegy to those who are gone and for those who overcame, as well as celebrating the role of music in finding a place of peace for our life journey.

The choral texture that emerges from afar is based on the sacred madrigal by 16th century English composer Thomas Weelkes, setting David’s lament over his beloved Jonathan (the text taken from the very same Bible used to bash us with elsewhere):

O Jonathan, woe is me for thee, my brother Jonathan.
Very kind hast thou been to me; thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.

credits

from ORDO, released October 21, 2023
For flute and brainwave-triggered
Right Wing hate speech
Zachery Meier, flute and neural activity
Philip Blackburn, electronics

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Philip Blackburn Saint Paul, Minnesota

Philip Blackburn was born in Cambridge, England, and studied music there and at the University of Iowa with Kenneth Gaburo. He is a public artist specializing in sound — a composer/environmental sound-artist. Blackburn’s works have been heard in ships’ harbors, state fairs, forests, and coming out of storm sewers, as well as in galleries, parking lots, and on concert stages.

philipblackburn.com ... more

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