artist Hyoomik

(March 26, 2010) Written to some ancient meter taken from Horace. I like meters. About the beginning of the world, the beginning of human life, and our present state of being dots.

I recently discovered Buck 65, through a connection to Language Arts of Vancouver. Now, I was in Halifax in the late 1970s and heard a fiddler from Cape Breton who died a fast more or less spoken song called "Driver McGyver". It was a rap with a feeling that Buck 65 draws on, but it is something very old and rooted, like the Newfoundland Song "Kelligrews Soiree". Fast, witty, strong beat. Everything old is new again.

Recorded live at the Spring Street Legion, March 21, 2010. The band is the Country Classics Sunday Band, and there are always several excellent musicians standing in. Hyoomik is permitted to perform at an open mike there. Hyoomik here sings the traditional number "Man of Constant Sorrow", and Hyoomik's Mom sings "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands". She started singing at the Legion just before her ninetieth birthday! She says she likes Eminem. I don't know what radio channel she's got on, but its a different one.

Most of all, the song is inspired by Phillip K. DIck's novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", later made into the movie "Blade Runner". Musically, I was listening to a lot of John Lee Hooker that day, and it shows up in my vocal meanderings. Otherwise a regular 12-bar blues in a minor key. Key signature would be like this |6\4 |6\4 | 4\4 || 6\4 | 6\4 | 4\4 || 3\4 | 3\4 |3\4 | 3\4 | 4\4

I made a track where I counted, singing a melody line, which I intended to erase, but then I like the sound in the background, so it is still there.

I wrote both songs with different melodies, but I like to play with the old-time country band at the Legion, and put them to traditional tunes. Refugee City is to the tune of "Sitting on Top of the World", and St. David's Cannery is to the tune of "Angel Band".

Refugee City refers to a passage in the Old Testment, and to St. Alphonsus Liguori's interpretation of the city as the Blessed Virgin Mary.

St. David's Cannery is about the cannery that closed in the town of St. David's, and the song is critical of unrestricted globalization. We are sitting on the best farmland in Canada, but are wasting the land in order because we want frangible gadgets cheap from China. Connect the dots if you will.

Both these items are reworked from the Childs Ballads. I concentrated on a different meter for the words. New Diverus, for you ancient Greeks, is recast into dactylic hexameter.

I just upload "Michaelengolo". The English words need no explanation. The Latin words probably do.

Michaelengo paints a Fresco

This world is moving, moving around him

High on the Scaffold Wearing a Blindfold

Michaelangelo paints a Fresco

More Things are done by prayer in this world

More Things than this world can dream of or scheme of

Dream of or scheme of

(these lines are derived rather closely from Sir Walter Scott)

State super vias et videte et

Interrogate de semitis antiquis

quae sit via bona et

ambulate in eis et

Invenietis refrigerium animabus vestris

(Book of Jeremiah: Stand above the ways and see, and ask about the old ways, and walk in them, and you will find refreshment for your souls).

I just uploaded 3 in the morning "So Still". I have a lot of words put to rhythms lying around. So more than half the work is done. A real composer told me a method to go on from there. Create a loop and record on top of it. I had only a vague idea of loops, but loops are great. I never figured out before how to do music in little pieces, a few bars at a time. I hope it is getting better. Thanks for the advice.

On March 6 the Vancouver Band Language Arts came to the News Cafe here in Niagara Falls. I would like to express my profound gratitude and admiration. Right now, they are on my lost-on-a-desert-island list of music, possibly along with John Dowland, Ralph Stanley, and Mozart. They can be heard at Language Arts.

All the recordings here (so far) are done since March 7, 2010. When I get sick of a version, I replace, so it is all in flux.