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Weft Sutra

from ORDO by Philip Blackburn

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about

Spinning a yarn seems to be a human thing to do. Sometimes it’s a story, sometimes an impression, a texture, open to imaginative interpretation. Either way, we are caught up in the flow, dwelling in patterns and colors as they emerge, noticing the touch and sheen. In the case of Weft Sutra, I have set up the framework and let the weavers do their work. It may have something to do with my ancestral family background in the Cheney Brothers silk mills of Manchester, Connecticut – the warp and weft of the looms that created such richly nuanced fabrics and textures spun from fresh cocoons. ‘Sutra’ in Sanskrit literally means string or thread; the dance of these threads might also be a prayer, a conjuring of sacred harmonic worlds.

The electric guitar has been touched before, but never by me. I wanted to approach it afresh, as much internal Tai Chi as outward sonic manifestation, as much scordatura hurdy-gurdy as ambient drone pleroma, as much beginner’s mind as practiced virtuosity. The score for Weft Sutra is not written but delivered by instructional video: the oral tradition begins anew with each performance. This is how stories live and spread. The music has structure like the Northern Lights; swirling shapes, spectral threads, shimmering and alive, unpredictable in detail but recognizable as a whole, ever shifting. Any number of electric guitarists (with rosined fishing line threaded through the strings and played as though you were flossing your instrument) can play it at the same time for any duration.

For this recording the blend has become an elaborate tambura drone for the obbligato South Indian veena, an ancient instrument under the intense, passionate hands of Nirmala Rajasekar who takes the meditative sutra to another level.

I am grateful to guitarist, Dr. Colin McAllister for requesting the original work.

credits

from ORDO, released October 21, 2023
Nirmala Rajasekar, veena
Bowed electric guitars:
Philip Blackburn
Glen Whitehead
Michael Miller
Ryann Daisy Swimmer
Haley Olson
Jeff Johnson

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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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