Harmolodic Nth World Generator

N.O. Moore / Guitar & Synthesisers

“But the only thing European man has to be saved from is the ongoing task of an always already impossible self-preservation.”
Fred Moten The Universal Machine

How to refer to ‘the world’? Does that subject allow for any meaningful statement? In music, Western/Northern music in particular, ‘the world’ has exercised a certain fascination since at least the end of the 19th Century. Without doubt, this fascination has been marked by exoticisation, orientalism, and expropriation; and it goes on – ridiculously, some today even try to argue that jazz is not ‘black music’!
My project was spurred on by thinking about the ways in which certain Western artists had tried to open their practice up to ‘the world’. In particular Alice and John Coltrane, George Russell, Eno, Joan La Barbara, Miles Davis, Don Cherry, African Head Charge, and Jon Hassell. Of course, good intentions are not enough and, even with some of these artists, questions of appropriation and power arise. This is probably most clear with the now-unfortunate term ‘fourth world’. I don’t mean to offer a defence of anyone here, but I believe these artists to have had a genuine desire to open to (what is still designated) world music, with the aim of valorising such musics, and of relativising Western/Northern practices. As I say, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t problems.
One more thing I’d add: it is easy to forget now just how insular the music ‘business’ was – even German music (‘krautrock’) seemed exotic and suspect! Today, it is easier to be informed about the music of other cultures, and to access recordings. And, in hearing, a question arises – perhaps (at least historically) it is a question the European man has asked, but without truly wanting to hear the answer: what is universal?
When I hear of ‘the world’ I tend to think of Ornette Coleman’s concept of harmolodics. To me, that is a theoretical and practical response acknowledging worlds within worlds, trying to be open as well as humble and modest. ‘The world’ is harmolodic. Harmolodic is a sort of sonorous Koch curve: the infinite locally contained. Nth generation music.

Recorded in Cambridge, UK, 2024
Written, mixed and mastered by N.O.Moore.

Artwork by N.O. Moore
Design by Earshots

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