Streaming Wisdom/In the Wind (2004)
When you watch flowing water, you see it is alive. Its moving waves, over millions of years, have evolved into the wavy motions of its creatures.
Similarly, when birds are flying against the sky, the intelligence of the air becomes a visible kind of music — the flocks are like chords, and their flight patterns like atmospheric chord progressions.
The cross-rhythms of African music evoke the streaming wisdom of these fluid elements in an extraordinary way. The Shona cross-rhythmic techniques that abound in this album were first shown to me by Paul Berliner, in person and through his book, Soul of the Mbira (University of California Press). West African kre-kre rhythms were shown to me by my life-partner in percussion, George Marsh. From the early 1970s I became entranced with their deep, secret metabolism, and began incorporating them into my music.
The first two albums of such music were Streaming Wisdom and In the Wind, recorded from 1979 through 1982 on a TEAC 4-track 3440 in my small studio near Sebastopol, California. This was in the early days of home access to multi-track technology, and it was hugely satisfying to have the time — the months and years needed — to work out the performing and recording techniques. Now, twenty-five years later, it's equally satisfying to re-master and re-release the material combined as a single CD.
Streaming Wisdom/In the Wind (2004)
a CD compilation of the 1979–1982 albums, is available from
Cold Mountain Music