Second Nature (2004)
I like the idiom “second nature." The first nature is the soul; by second nature someone does something, like throwing a baseball or playing the piano, as if it were part of himself. I live in an exquisite valley I look at 365 days a year, and somehow the beauty of the valley turns into music. The wind in the tall grass makes green waves by nature; by second nature these become flowing chords. The growth patterns of tress become a musical composition.
When I recorded this album in 1983, I'd already been experimenting with the cross-rhythms of African music, especially the Shona music of Zimbabwe, for about ten years. These rhythms and their attendant harmonies arose from the African earth and spoke through its people. When I first heard them I felt a great musical resonance, but inside that I sensed an even greater kinship. We're all exiles from an Africa we've never been to or seen, and playing these rhythms while watching the seasons change from the slopes of Barnett Valley was like discovering a homeland.
Second Nature,
a CD reissue of the 1983 audio cassette, is available from
Cold Mountain Music