Lee Ranaldo
The Suspended Guitar In Quarantine Days
If we believe that engaging with the arts and culture, at individual and societal levels is more and more important in the 21st century, how important it can be during the quarantine days? I think that it is a very exciting time for music, not only new but old too, even though if it counts down on the computer devices and listening/not actually seeing or doing it live. On the Internet, there is a wave of new artists launching their own careers on different platforms, new musicians injecting new life into a classic genres, but also there are established names redefining themselves via the eye of a beholder, writers and art critics like myself. Now when the population of the world is tied to a computer when there’re changes in art and music as major political and global events become even more unpredictable and the world we once knew comes down to a memory, the arts and culture provide a vital grounding force, crucial to wider aspects of our sense of wellbeing, in order to improve socially indispensable cognitive abilities. Now in quarantine days, the talent pool is definitely spreading and getting larger, great for all avid listeners/viewers like myself. But how would I choose someone to discuss today? Yes, by my memory of what I saw in the past years is still alive and kicking, in order to turn my spotlight on a select group of musicians who changed the industry and music history?
For nearly all musicians, performing their music live is a central part of their work, however, there are other expressions in the arts too. Sonic Youth Lee Ranaldo is one of them. It doesn’t matter if someone is a pop/rock star headlining arena or an experimental musician from the previous century as Ranaldo, creating harsh noise; some things transcend genre. Lee Ranaldo, as the co-founder and guitarist of the New York band Sonic Youth, as one of the most original alternative musicians along with another member of the band Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, has became a contemporary cultural icon in the 80s and 90s. His way of handling the guitar defines noise, as the music terminology, which has influenced other guitarists around the globe in past generations, and yet he has recently/meant in the last 5 years, been named as to be the best guitarist of all time along with the other band member Thurston Moore (http://www.sonicyouth.com/). The brilliant sharpness while playing guitar is, in fact, the style he created himself, and for years it has been an inspiration to all different kind of indie bands that do not want either traditional or rock terminology (in music) or maybe punk riff. Ranaldo sounds as unique when it comes to modifications and alternative tones. “I do not mean limitation and boundaries in art,” he said about the approach to art. “I’m thinking about synthesizing what I see around me, absorbing the culture as much as I can, from my point of view, where I’m trying to figure out what I can do.”
I think that no matter how great the abilities of the musician/performer – a pianist, violinist, singer, guitarist, drummer or conductor – no matter how diverse the individual qualities are, character and emotions are himself for how widely differing the various styles of playing and interpretation of the actual ideas; any valuable and artistically justified concert performance or art performance requires from the artist the most careful and deep penetration of the ideas, which equals emotional intentions. The interpreter/musician/artist must present his idea to the listener and viewers as an undistorted whole, and he should see this as his first and foremost, artistic goal.
Lee Ranaldo
In recent years, musician, guitarist Lee Ranaldo of NY Sonic Youth; is an artist whose performances are objectively perceived as a special artistic experience. In addition to his music, Lee performed visual performance The Suspended Guitar-(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGAQaLCVM2s)
performance that he created with his wife, co-author of the project and conceptual artist Leah Singer.
The term suspended guitar has multiple meanings, and I believe that the idea itself came from the suspended chord term, which is, in music theory and practice, one of those types of chords that causes confusion among students of music. According to traditional musical theory, the suspension is an expression that is used when the chord tone is retarded from the previously played chord and then resolves up to a third of the new chord because, in modern music, the suspended chord is considered as a chord on its own merit. Ronaldo is an artist who has managed to maintain youthful enthusiasm and optimism in music and art, generally speaking, and said without cynicism or usual journalistic entanglement is a great artist. In a way, he is the specific artist who, despite everything, manages to retain himself in creative productivity. He managed to redefine the guitar and the idea of “sound”, “music” and “noise” – he crossed the boundaries with his research work, in various spheres of the avant-garde. Curious and unusual performance The Suspended Guitar has a different and far more mature view of art. Here you see an artist with the guitar in front of a big video of the beats where we see, noise, people and time as they pass, randomly filmed the scenes of everyday life: “In art or music, there is always avant-garde somewhere outside. This is not a place that many people watch, it is not heard on the radio or on the television (or the Internet), but out there where you lose yourself. Nobody in the avant-garde thinks about himself in this way.”
Naturally, if a composer/musician can be a performer of his own compositions, the combination of composer and performer in one person is the most fruitful and yields the highest artistic achievements. But in this case, a performaning artist is the author, then playing the main character in the drama written by one or by Lee and Leagh, which is two artists. For the argument’s sake, creation and its concert performance are two different aspects of the art, when a composer relegates his work to another art with greater mastery.
After all, Lee Ranaldo is an adventurer because of the repertoire, the restless artistic spirit, creator with the instinct in art in many forms, from Sonic Youth to a solo career, the endless summons of musical creation of noise, a series of audiovisual installations that he worked with his wife Leah Singer:
“We continue to do our live performances. My wife Leah creates a large-screen projection film, and I’m working on ‘suspended guitar phenomena’, here the guitar hangs from the cable and swings like a huge pendulum over the head of the audience. Each performance is different on another site-specific pro. Our performances are quite exciting, we are trying to involve local musicians and the audience. In Brazil, we had 10 local drummers who played Afro-Brazilian rhythms, which was part of the evening. In Toronto two years ago, we had a gong of players in huge gongs.” Ranaldo explained,”Sometimes we improvise on the spot.”
Lee Ranaldo and Leah Singer have been working together since 1991, with video and music, in a different environment, alive, doing work that explores sound, while the picture works in interaction with the elements of the specific case. Sounds and images emerge from everyday life. The nature of the work has a precedent over clear stories. Attention is paid to things that often go unnoticed if you are close to discovering something new. Does the composer need the artist-interpreter-object of art, in this case, his suspended guitar, a guitar that is in this case not playing music, but taking a visual role as an independent creative personality? Do the exceptions and emotions of the performer not impede our view of the ideas, while images of the work are interpreted? And, finally, doesn’t the art composition potentially contain everything that an interpreter/an artist may present? Is the live sound related to the written ideas in visual art in order to note a cause and effect or is it simply an occasion for a display of the individual features and virtues of a great art performer?
Art performance The Suspended Guitar is a picture and a sound, like a flash video frame. His electric guitar is suspended in the performance space. In this multi-dimensional artwork, the use of value can help to give a shape to the artistic object a guitar, but not musical instrument in which Lee masters. It gives the entire composition a sense of lighting the specific space, in this case, a movie theatre. High contrast refers to the placing of the object area/guitar hanging, directly against a video screen in the back, so differences in shadows and light in the back are showcased, creating a dramatic effect of the living environment of the artist’s background. A mid-range value together here creating visible differences in between, creating in us, a more – subtle mood. Projections are specific to a particular location, layered meaning(full). Suspended guitar and video framework together. Any part of the room can be used as a space for performance, with little separation between the audience and the performer. The intention is to create a sound and specific light environment, where performers and audiences deal with moderate experience, more circular than linear, allowing for personal interpretation, each in its own way, rather than fixed exposure.