WW III Has a Soundtrack

My world was broadened again today while listening to WFMU on the Web. DJ Brian Turner played an MP3 of Mazen Kerbaj, a Lebanese improvosational trumpeter, interacting with the sounds of war going on outside his window in Beirut. Kerbaj calls it "Starry Night" and this snippet was culled from its full 40 minutes. He also keeps a blog, Kerblog, on Blogger. Here's an Israeli take on the conflict also hosted by Blogger, Kishkushim. Thanks to WFMU's Beware of the Blog for the links.

I would have posted this regardless of the preceeding posts about art--here and here, but now it seems germaine to those discussions as well. Perhaps "Starry Night" is a work that plows through the difficulties, constraints and preconceptions that so many feel when visiting museums or just interacting with art in general. Given the curatorial heavy lifting of a description as technical as "this is a guy who lives in Beirut. He stuck a microphone out his window while bombs were falling and played along with it. Sometimes he just kind of listens," before hearing it, I think many listeners would be freed from the paralyzing notion of needing to have "the right reaction" to it.

The piece allows, or perhaps forces, people to move beyond the problem of "what should I feel or think about this" and into the realm of "what can I think about this," or "this does something to me." It's obviously very immediate, and experiencing it isn't analogous to standing around looking at something "important enough" to hang in a musuem or "valuable enough" to be sold in a gallery. It just is, both in its presentation and in itself. To hear it for the first time is to feel it, even if it is strange and unknown.

Kerbaj has created a difficult work that frees itself from the realm of art with a big "A" by inviting everyone in, at least initially. How do the listeners feel or think about the piece on subsequent listenings? It doesn't really matter. The victory here, in terms of art and the public's interaction and experience of it, is that "Starry Night" manages to break through the notions of what art is supposed to be. By breaking free of these bonds, Kerbaj also creates an opportunity for "Starry Night" to be utterly human with all that entails. I don't know if that counts as art for most people, but I expect it's at least something--and that's a start.