12 September 2009
rhizome - the spread of music
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City as Biotope - the book
The methods, investigations and proposals developed and put into play at our master studio City as Biotope are now edited into a book!
You can order it from us by mailing firmapost@70n.no or buy it from BAS by contacting line@bergenarkitektskole.no for 200,-. It is also possible to download as low res pdf here: City as Biotope PDF (44,5M).
Thanks to all the students and contributors!
4 comments:
Hei Stine
Fine with your new entry. When BY:Larm was in Tromsø in 2005 I gave an opening speech titled "Charging the Elephant" on how BY:larm and events related to it could be seen as Discovery Channels on new and surprising urban spaces, an urban platau of another kind lies inherent in "the spread of music". Music also has a fluent dimension which the marvellous Jazz musician Eric Dolphy said in this way: "When you hear music its gone in the air"
And think of the Fado as a temporal urban legend.
Check out MUSICON in Roskilde.
Knut Eirik
"...has since their start for five years ago spread their music all over the world."
This phrase reminds me of the initial sequence of the movie "Contact" (based on a book by Carl Sagan), in which the earth's TV transmisions of music, olympiads, etc., had effectively left the atmosphere and were spreading across the universe at the speed of light.
Would be interesting to know more about fado as a temporal urban legend - what did you actually mean by this? Could fado be characterized as a distinctively urban phenomenon? Intriguing! I had to do some searches. Born in the streets of Lisboa, Porto and Coimbra, it seems however it is difficult to trace down the origins of the music. One text concerning the history of fado describes Portugal a cultural crossroads, and several lines of influences can be found: Moorish songs for their sadness and melancholy, Lundum, the music of the brazilian slaves for the longing for the lands beyond the sea, or the love songs from the Middle Ages sung beneath the windows of pretty girls. Is the uncovered origins of fado one of its strengths, enabling the music to reach the listeners far beyond Portugal?
The undescribable longing for something is a feature that connects fado with Argentine tango, a more wide-spread urban form of culture. Also this music, this culture, is born in the streets - of Buenos Aires and Montevideo. And the mixed, unveiled and foggy pre-history of the music has similarities with that of the fado.
The word "tango" probably has its origins in the languages of the African slaves brought to Argentina, meaning a closed space where the negroes go to dance, later the dance itself (in short). Further, tango develops in the brothels, bars and cafes of the periphery of Buenos Aires in the late 19th century. The city is a true cultural melting pot, crowded with immigrants from Europe and earlier settlers from other parts of South America. Tango emerges in this mixture of influences and innovations, amongst lonely, longing men imitating the African dances on the streets. The dance itself, that of the immigrants, is then immigrated to Europe, now by the sons of the rich families of Argentina. It becomes a huge fashion, and returns to Buenos Aires in a socially acceptable form, accepted now widely. Tango continues to spread in Europe and North America, gradually resulting in such versions as the ballroom tango and Finnish tango to name some.
Today, Argentine tango is indeed spread in the most surprising places of the globe and is increasingly popular. What makes this interesting in the context of our study of Malmö, is that the tango community here is exceptionally strong and large and of high level for a Scandinavian city of this size. The tango from Malmö is indeed widely known in the tango sub-cultures of Europe. The video below is a nice sea-side clip from an outdoor milonga in Västra Hamnen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCQhf2NdSHI
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