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| Photograph © Lillian Elaine Wilson |
The
music of Perry Botkin is unclassifiable. But this is merely a truism.
Today all music is unclassifiable.What, for example, do we mean by "serious"
music? - Beethoven or Duke Ellington? How do we characterize pop music?
Rock? Rap? Ethnic? Folk? Jazz? As mere entertainment? Non-art? Non-serious?
Andre
Previn put it well: "If classical music is serious, then what is
jazz - funny?"Perry
Botkin's new compositions are certifiably electronic. But in his case,
Marshall McLuhan is dead wrong: not the medium but the message.
The musical message. And what a message it is! Botkin's music is exploratory
and wildly romantic -- romantic in the broader sense as defined in The
New Harvard Musical Dictionary: "...the uncontrolled play of the
individual creative imagination, with resulting connotations of the highly
ideosyncratic and even the fantastic." Botkin
follows nobody's rules. He uses any technique that strikes his musical
fancy. He is not afraid to utilize standard everyday synthesizers: Roland,
Yamaha, Akai Samplers, et. al., the kinds of sounds you hear everyday
on any Pop, Rock, or New Age radio station. But he uses these instruments
in his own way. A highly personal way. An intuitive way. (Dare I say it?)
In a serious way.... -
James Harbert |
