Derek Bermel: Dust Dances by Mic Holwin appears on NewMusicNow, the American Symphony Orchestra League's website on new American works NewMusicNow website: click here for article Introduction to Dust Dances At certain times of the year, below the southern edge of Africa's Sahara desert in a region called the Sahel, a forceful dust-laden wind covers people, goats and what few bushes there are with sand and dust. Called the Harmattan, the wind lends its name to one of three seasons in northwest Ghana: the dry season, the rainy season, and the Harmattan season. It was in Ghana that composer and clarinetist Derek Bermel came to study the gyil, a marimba-like West African wood and gourd xylophone. Named for a visual effect of the Harmattan, the ten-minute-long Dust Dances successfully mixes the gyil music of the region's Daghati and Lobi peoples into the Western orchestral tradition. Notes on Dust Dances Dust Dances is a ten-minute orchestral work based on the African gyil music prevalent in northwestern Ghana, southern Burkina Faso, and northeastern Ivory Coast. The gyil is a 14- to 18-key instrument resembling a Western marimba. Tuned slabs of carved mahogany wood are bound with animal hide to a sturdy wooden frame. Each key has its own gourd resonator; crushed and flattened spiders' webs are seared with rubber over holes carved in the gourd, creating a buzzing membrane as the keys are struck. In Dust Dances, Derek Bermel translates into orchestral idioms a typical session of two gyil players and a drummer, as they string together recreational and funeral songs. More than either African or American music, the piece is a bi-continental hybrid that joins the rhythmic complexity of West African music with the harmonic structure of American concert music. Keeping true to gyil music, which is always in the same key, the entirety of Dust Dances is in D and employs a pentatonic scale, the tuning the gyil approximates. Several of the gyil's notes fall between the pitches of the Western chromatic scale, and two gyils may differ widely in pitches. To produce the "in-between" notes, Bermel at times calls for two clashing pentatonic modes to be played in different octaves. Polyrhythms, fluidly employed by African musicians, are also implied in Dust Dances. Its predominant 3/2 meter allows for a flexible beat that suggests other pulses, such as 12/8. Dance beats often surface, revealing roots in African music's preeminent societal practice. Dust Dances is in four main sections. An introduction of the main theme, a funeral song entitled "Saayir Kyena Dakpol" ("My Father's House is Empty"), ends with a trumpet cutting across the beat in a feeling of metered four. Variations then begin on "Dondome Nye Ka Wulle" ("I am the Greatest [Gyil Player]") with bassoons playing a swaggering bass line under the oboes' angular melody. The echo or hocket effect created by the trumpet and piano near the end of the section is an imitation of a difficult gyil technique in which one player mirrors the other's melodic improvisations an eighth note behind. A "recital" follows, during which the names of ancestors and of Bermel's gyil teachers, Baaru and Na-Ile, and of the composer himself are called. Musical gestures in this interlude carry the meaning of spoken words or phrases. The third section features the funeral praise song "Kukur Gandaa Bie, Kuora Gandaa Bie." Here the trombone soloist plays a melody containing quarter tones that are closer to the true pitches of the gyil. In the final section, clarinets jump into the playful "Luba Pog Nung Wa Da Bin Kobo" ("The Lobi Woman Bought Feces for One Penny [at the Market, Thinking It Was Food]"). Songs from the previous sections return and are combined as Dust Dances drives toward its rousing conclusion on a praise to Baaru's full name, "Togo Ngmen Baaru Missele." Instrumentation: 3 flutes, 2nd doubling piccolo, 3rd doubling alto flute, 3 oboes, 3rd doubling English horn, 3 clarinets (2nd doubling Eb clarinet; 3rd doubling bass clarinet), 2 bassoons, contrabassoon; 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 2 trombones, bass trombone, tuba; timpani; 3 percussionists (Percussion 1: xylophone, suspended cymbal, slapstick, maracas, ratchet, chimes, triangle mounted on timpani head, whistle, flexatone, gong, woodblock. Percussion 2: marimba, triangle, suspended cymbal, flexatone, cowbell, Chinese cymbal, glockenspiel. Percussion 3: bass drum, anvil or brake drum, vibraphone, mark tree, windchimes, suspended cymbal, conga drum, 3 tomtoms); piano; harp; strings. Duration: 0:10:00 Commission/Premiere Information: Dust Dances was the composer's thesis for his Masters Degree from the University of Michigan. It was first performed in 1995 by the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra, Vincent Danner, conductor. It was given its professional premiere by the Norwalk Symphony Orchestra on May 9, 1998, Jesse Levine, conductor. Publisher: Dust Dances is published by Peermusic Classical. About Derek Bermel New York City composer and clarinetist Derek Bermel finds inspiration in everything from the eerie vocalizations in a contemporary chamber piece to a striding bebop piano to the sounds of hip-hop pulsing from the street in his own neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Equally at ease writing and playing classical, jazz or pop, Bermel, who was born in 1967, has studied composition with William Bolcom, William Albright, and Louis Andriessen; clarinet with Ben Armato and Fred Ormand; ethnomusicology and orchestration with Andre Hajdu in Jerusalem; Lobi xylophone with Ngmen Baaru in Ghana; and wrangle uilleann pipes with Mick O'Brien in Dublin. In keeping with Bermel's global persona, each of his compositions invokes a distinctive world. Some are humorous, some cinematic. The clarinet in his Voices (1997) first provokes the orchestra into an occasionally argumentative dialogue, then evolves into achingly beautiful Irish keening before careening into a Mancini-like funk jam. Dust Dances (1994) recasts polyrhythmic African xylophone songs as a Western orchestra piece. The baritone in Old Songs for a New Man (1997) theatrically oscillates between homeless man, bluesman, and preacher. The piano suite Turning (1995) conjures quiet repose punctuated by bursts of playfulness. Bermel cites the dexterity, technique, and timing of Charlie Chaplin as a major influence, along with Peter Maxwell Davies' Eight Songs for a Mad King; the jazz compositions of Thelonious Monk; the orchestral works of Gyorgy Ligeti and Claude Vivier; and the rhymes of rapper Rakim. As a composer, he uses whatever medium best communicates an idea, whether that's an orchestra, an African drum ensemble, a theater group, or a jazz trio; the needs of a work will determine its form and language. Bermel thinks of composing as an attempt at problem-solving. "If you're taking a leap and don't know where you're going to end up, then you arrive at the point of discovering something," he says. "I like to think of innovation as the failure of imitation." Bermel has received Guggenheim, Fulbright, and Javits fellowships in addition to several ASCAP awards, the Brian Israel Prize, the Quinto Maganini Award, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Creative Artists Fellowship. His commissions range from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center to De Ereprijs (Netherlands) to Birmingham Royal Ballet (U.K.), the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, and Jazz Xchange (U.K.) Stylistic Connections: Works by Other Composers None of Derek Bermel's music is currently available on CD. Mic Holwin provides these suggestions for listening: Colin McPhee: Tabuh-Tabuhan American Composers Orchestra; Dennis Russell Davies, cond. Argo 444 560-2 (1995) American composer Colin McPhee wrote Tabuh-Tabuhan in 1935 after four years of studying gamelan technique in Bali. Tabuh incorporates Balinese music into a Western orchestra piece much in the same way Bermel's Dust Dances recasts African xylophone music. This disc also includes works by Lou Harrison and Chinary Ung. Silvestre Revueltas: Sensemaya: Music of Silvestre Revueltas Los Angeles Philharmonic; Esa-Pekka Salonen, cond. Sony Classical SK 60676 (1999) Bela Bartok: The Miraculous Mandarin, Op. 19. New York Philharmonic Orchestra; Pierre Boulez, conductor, cond. Sony Classical SMK 45837 (1991) Disc also includes Four Orchestra Pieces, Op.12 and Three Village Scenes David Lang: Are You Experienced? CRI/Emergency Music CD 625 (1992) New York City composer David Lang shares Bermel's sense of musical irony. Randy Weston: African Cookbook Koch Jazz (original release date: 1967) Pianist/composer Randy Weston was one of the first American jazz musicians to explore African influences in jazz. His compositions weave together the styles of T.S. Monk, Duke Ellington and African music. Farafina: Faso Denou EMD/Real World (1993) Burkina Faso-based group Farafina consists of balafonist Mahame Konate and djembe player Paco Ye. The following are selections from African Rhythm Traders (Portland, OR) website at http://www.rhythmtraders.com/html/africa.html (Catalog numbers given are this site's ordering numbers; labels are not listed.) Xylophone Music from Ghana Joseph Kobomo, xylophone AL-056 Africa: Lobi Games and Rites (Ghana) Various artists AL-053 Sounds of West Africa: The Kora & the Xylophone-Music of the Lobi and Dagarti tribes of Northern Ghana Various artists AC-017 Back