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Famous Explorers
The re-issue series that Nonesuch have embarked upon to put all of their Explorer albums back into circulation is a major world music event. Garth Cartwright talks to one of the Nonesuch pioneers, David Lewiston.
There is a copper phonograph record floating in outer space. The record contains musical excerpts of Javanese court gamelan, Japanese shakuhachi, and Bulgarian songs from the Nonesuch Explorer series. The record, which was shipped into outer space by NASA in 1977 in an aluminum container aboard a Voyager spacecraft, is expected to last over a billion years. Awesome as this seemingly-infinite gesture for posterity may be, the Explorer series' greatest achievement was more humble and earthbound: it set new standards in presenting the globe's music to Western audiences in terms of recording quality, written documentation, repertoire, and even cover artwork.
The Nonesuch Explorer series, recorded between 1967-1984, needs little introduction to those who have been listening to world music for longer than the last quarter century. Yet for the rest of us the forthcoming reissue of the complete Explorer catalogue is akin to unearthing lost sonic treasure. And in September 2002, Nonesuch began unloading their entire 92-title series on CD. Wisely they are doing this by global region. First up were 13 volumes of African music. In January they follow it with ten titles of music from Indonesia and the South Pacific. Subsequent releases over the next three years will group music from Tibet/Kashmir, Latin America/Caribbean, East Asia, Central Asia, Europe, and India.
The 13 African CDs that begin the reissue programme focus very much on Anglo Africa (Ghana, Zimbabwe, Kenya/Tanzania): Central Africa being represented by a single Burundi album, while West Africa is dominated by two-and-a-bit CDs from Burkina Faso. Mali exists as two Tuareg tracks, Niger with five tracks, there's one Hamza El Din album for all of North Africa and nothing from Senegal, Guinea, Ethiopia, Nigeria or any of the former Portuguese colonies. Still, what is available will be of interest to African connoisseurs. The East Africa: Witchcraft & Ritual Music album is a raw document of a musical heritage almost extinct. The mbira CDs from Zimbabwe are Shona music at its most pure. And the two Ghanaian CDs are a study in contrasts -- Ghana: Ancient Ceremonies, Dance Music And Songs is field recordings of griots from around Ghana, while Suka Aquaye & His African Ensemble finds the noted playwright's band demonstrating an early form of fusion -- jazz and soul influences add flavour to their exuberant highlife. And this being 1969, it marks Aquaye as a pioneer contemporary of Fela Kuti. What the CD does not tell you is where Aquaye's album was recorded -- Ghanaian expert Dr. John Collins believes it was cut in the US, as Aquaye left Ghana in the 1950s and remains largely unknown there as a musician.
Ironically, the individual I'm assigned to interview as a representative of the Explorer series announces as soon as he answers the phone that he's never recorded in Africa and thus can't answer any questions on the albums. There goes the feature? Not at all. 73-year old David Lewiston is an engaging interviewee, his questing nature representing the spirit of Nonesuch Explorer. Born in London, Lewiston studied composition at Trinity College of Music. In 1953 he migrated to New York to study with the Russian composer Thomas de Hartmann. Hartmann is best remembered for composing with the Greek-Armenian mystic, George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, and he introduced Lewiston to the music of Central Asia. Lewiston was hooked and quickly became a champion of non-Western music. In 1966 he travelled to Java and Bali, recording the music of the islands with one of the first portable stereo tape recorders. "There were only 20 westerners on the island, a far cry from today," notes Lewiston days before the nightclub bombing which emptied Bali again. "I was unprepared for the island's artistic richness, and in particular, for its musical splendour. With a population of some three million, there were at least a dozen different musical styles, ranging from the 25-man gamelan of metallophones, gongs, drums and flutes, to small chamber ensembles and the kecak, Bali's unique music drama."
Back in New York he purchased the first Nonesuch Exlorer albums. Prompted, he sent Nonesuch a brief letter, asking whether they were interested in new recordings of Balinese music. He was immediately invited up to meet label boss Teresa Sterne. Nonesuch was founded by Jac Holzman of Electra Records (then a pioneering folk label), in 1964, as a classical label. The Explorer series began when Peter K Siegel -- a young record producer, engineer and banjo player -- returned from the Bahamas with recordings of Brucie Green, Joseph Spence, and Frederick McQueen. "Peter went off and listened to the tapes and came back and said to Teresa 'you've got to hear these!," recalls Lewiston. "They loved the music, and I left with a contract offer for an album drawn from my Balinese recordings, including a $500 advance!"
The resulting album was Music From the Morning of the World -- The Balinese Gamelan. "When the album was complete it was quite unusual. At that time it was still the custom to present the musics of the non-western world as ethnomusicological curiosities -- one Balinese album, I recall, contained some 30 tracks, each lasting less than two minutes. Teresa's approach was entirely different. She had the rare ability to treat music from an unfamiliar culture as music, not as a curiosity, and her programming of the Balinese album reflected this sensibility, presenting an enjoyable sequence to introduce the listener to the beauty and variety of Balinese music."
Lewiston spent much of 1967 and 1968 in South America, recording the Andean music of Peru, and the Black music of Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil. "Soon I was in Teresa's office discussing my exploits. She promptly accepted four new albums -- one of Peru's Andean music, another of South America's Black music, as well as a Javanese album, and a second Balinese album (Golden Rain). Here again she broke new ground, for the first time devoting an entire LP side to an extended excerpt from one work, Balinese ketjak."
What characterised Lewiston's recordings was the clarity and the warmth of the sound. He claims this is because he refused to employ the ethnomusicologist approach of simply setting up the microphones and recording the results. "I'm not an ethnoid, I'm a musical tourist who learned how to twiddle knobs, and one of the important things about the Explorer series is that it was the first attempt to record world music as music, not ethnomusicology. Ethnomusicologists tend to treat music as an anthropological exercise. I wanted to record music that moved people the way it moved me. They wanted to control the music, academicise it. Some of them used to review my work and it was like they were grading a graduate..."
Back in New York, Lewiston began producing albums for Nonesuch of Asian musicians from Korea, China and Japan who were visiting the US. Since 1972 he has travelled extensively in the Himalayas and Karakoram, documenting the music of the high mountains from Darjeeling and Sikkim in the East, to Himachal Pradesh, the Vale of Kashmir, Ladakh, Gilgit and Hunza in the West. In 1972 he made the first extended recordings of the rituals of the Gyuto Tantric College, featuring its celebrated chordal chanting. In the same year he first visited Khampagar Monastery, whose rituals combine chanting of great beauty and spiritual power, with a majestic ritual orchestra. In the ensuing three decades he has visited this monastery many times, documenting its rituals extensively. Lewiston's eight-album Tibetan music series is a superb document of Tibetan Buddhist rituals. "I'll never forget the day I went into the remix studio to lay down the chordal chanting of that remarkable Tibetan institution, Gyuto Tantric College. Teresa had agreed to an entire album of Tibetan rituals, which seemed really adventurous, considering the standards of that time. Instead, I laid down not one but two LPs, one of the Mahakala rite which included some of the ritual instruments, the other containing 41 minutes of the Sangwa Dupa tantra, which is performed unaccompanied."
In 1975-76 he visited Central America, documenting the marimba music of Guatemala and the fiestas of Chiapas and Oaxaca in southern Mexico. "It was never easy to scrape together the money to pay for all this travel and recording, but time after time Teresa came to the rescue. In late 1975 I took a busman's holiday, recording in Guatemala and Mexico, and Teresa backed me with $3,000, a substantial sum at the time. By the time that Teresa's tenure at Nonesuch came to an end in 1979, we had collaborated on 28 albums of world music."
In the late 1980s Lewiston conducted a joint project with the Dalai Lama's Council For Religious and Cultural Affairs, recording the rites of the great colleges of the Gelugpa, the Reformed Church of Tibetan Buddhism; these institutions of advanced religious studies have chanting styles which date back to the 15th century. He returned to Bali in 1987 and 1994, spending eight months digitally recording the island's music. Albums drawn from these recordings include Bali -- Gamelan and Kecak (Nonesuch); Kecak -- A Balinese Music Drama (Bridge); and Trance 2 (Ellipsis arts), which contains trance music from Bali Hindu temple festivals.
Lewiston is proud of all his recordings while feeling special affection towards his Tibetan recordings. "Meeting the Tibetan lamas and hearing their music just blew me away and their music affects so many people -- this is reflected in my royalty statements as the Tibetan albums have continued to sell in the low five figures annually, especially in Europe." Speaking of royalties, how does Lewiston arrange payments for the musicians he records? "That's what Gurdjieff calls a material question," he replies with a chuckle. "When I go into a mountain village I scratch my head and want everyone's contribution to be recognised. Generally I try and find what a labourer's daily wage is, I then double this for every hour of recording. Nonesuch cut deals with me and so I offer a modest sum to the musicians I'm hoping to record. Usually it's a few hundred dollars to the Tibetan monasteries. In Bali the musicians know me so they tend to charge $250 a session which is half the going rate. I feel I've always dealt respectfully with the musicians and you must remember the Nonesuch albums have never been huge sellers -- Music From the Morning of the World only sold 2000 copies in its first year of release. Also, not everything I record gets released; I have 400 hours of unreleased tape!"
Lewiston travelled the world recording music for little financial, academic or critical reward: what, I wondered, drove him? "It's the music, not the culture, which drew me. But as the music comes from a culture it becomes a synergy of sorts. I always had the feeling that I'm a seeker. After finishing at the conservatory I looked around and thought 'is that all there is?' and it was discovering Gurdjieff that set me on the path of searching for evolved beings. I make this point as it was witnessing Chomgyam Trungpa giving a seminar in New York in 1969, when I suddenly thought, 'ah, so this is an evolved being'. That set me off to the Himalayas and my whole Top Ten lama trip."
Lewiston admits to having passed through a Buddhist phase and even lived in Puna with the Rajneesh -- for whom he remains full of affectionate anecdotes -- for several years. And, yes, he dressed in orange. Today he admits to percolating on all he's learned, while subscribing to no single belief system. As for the Tibetan refugees he worked with, well, he empathises but, no, he's no campaigner. "They're my friends and I'm in complete sympathy, but I'm not an activist. I'm a lazy bum rather than an activist. A lot of what I've done was tourism bound up with music."
Lewiston's laconic honesty is apt -- most people involved in the world music industry being motivated as much by commerce as cultural issues. And it was commerce which brought The Explorer series to an end in 1984: Nonesuch's new label head decided to focus on bigger projects. "David Hurwitz took helm and he had his own idea of Nonesuch," says Lewiston philosophically. "He picked up the Gypsy Kings and that kept the label afloat. He also signed The Kronos Quartet."
Now 73, Lewiston is a resident on the Hawaiian island of Maui ("I like not having to wear anyting but shorts and a T-shirt") and still actively engaged in fieldwork. He still visits his favourite Himalayan communities and has begun to record Moroccan Sufi musicians and polyphonic folk songs of the Caucasus. Although happy that world music, a term he's always employed, now gets much greater recognition, he has no time for ethnic musicians attempting a fusion with Western sounds ("it doesn't turn me on. I like the real thing"). Being a convert to Hawaiian slack key guitar, Lewiston eloquently enthuses over the great (and underrated) Keola Beamer. With his 400 hours of tape, he hopes to create a subscription series -- six albums a year will be released to subscribers -- which means the Nonesuch Explorer reissues are just the beginning of an ocean of sound David Lewiston has for adventurous listeners to explore.
For info on the subscription series go to www.lewistonarchive@soundcurrent.com
01/01/03
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