Call & Response.
Perhaps the oldest structural form to musical communication.
Stimulus – Response
Tension – Release ... “
I am Here ...
Me Too ...
Sharing an example of this signalling here: a landscape video, documenting a wind brass bass sounding of the Last Post. A traditional bugle call to rest and reflection. Expected to be (officially) recited into the Australian dawn, in public ceremonies celebrating ANZAC (Australian New Zealand Army Corps) Day. A military musical tribute to commemorate “fallen comrades”. In this case the sacrifices of WWI & WWII etc al.. Public holidays, led off by parades and speeches, taking place annually across the country – city, town, suburb, rural properties and in the bush – this has mostly gone on for just over one hundred years, with one exception in the 1919 Spanish Flu pandemic.
Again in 2020, responding to the C-19 pandemic, and the banning of large group gatherings, a virtual “Call” went out within a consensual community of musicians - Come out at dawn into your yard, driveway or street to Play the Last Post. A Call to sound, this most essential of musical salutes, in solidarity to abstract concepts as: Community, Remembrance, Respect and Resilience. However, within the socially shared context of the Corona event (with its equally strange, abstract concepts of politically mandated, public health mediated ‘stay in place isolation’ and active “social distancing”), the notion of communal camaraderie resounds again through informal, and spontaneous musical expressions. Call and Response becoming an essential, if poignant and transiently relevant event. The old becomes made new; again.
So, it was, that people came out to listen that ANZAC day, as musicians sounded their singular calls across the land as the dawn light progressed over the continent. Musical calls, coming out of silence, re-sounding, each uniquely resonating in its surroundings, touching others at a distance; passing a signal, a message for each to receive, perceive and comprehend. A Call to “come together in unity” - Community – in service to collective and personally held Ideals; simply conveyed through harmonically musical sounds.
There is no “player” in this ANZC video. The bugler remains invisible, hidden in the landscape. This was the tradition that I was brought up within when requested to play Taps at military funerals (which were held locally in the sixties) during the Viet Nam War. A casual, yet semi regular gig (ironically, or not, being my first paid performances) A young musician’s induction into social obligations, of performing a community “service” that had traditions and protocols; as well as high performance expectations. A cultural initiation that came with the guileless reward of suitable drinks and masculine bonding at the Veterans of Foreign Wars League Hall (following the bombastic 21-gun military graveside salute).
So it goes ... Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-V (1969).
There were found in 1922 to be two trumpets in the burial treasures in King Tut’s tomb. One made of Silver and the other of Bronze. They were assumed to be “War Trumpets” in the collection. Myth and superstition surround them, with only conjectures as to when and how they were played– winded - sounded – over 3000 years ago.
Did these horns call out at Tutankhamun's entombment ceremonies?
No one has documented that they were ...
However, if a horn were handy at a ceremony, someone’s going to blow it ... I
probably would.
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