A cozy late afternoon in a green Grafinger refuge with a view of an enchanted section of the Urtelbach. And while you’re sitting here on an ordinary garden chair and listening to the ingratiating voice of Carlton Bunce listening, you are suddenly very, very far away. In the middle of the desert. On the banks of the Nile.
Sounds and stories are among the earliest means to bring people together in community and peacefully tie them around the campfire. Bunce and his partner Gabi Sabo have nothing else – and at the same time much more – in mind: On Sunday, September 11th, you can experience how they imagine it at Gut Sonnenhausen.
For 17 years, the music and acting all-rounder and the director, dramaturge and Culture PR expert in Grafing, are involved in a wide variety of artistic projects. “Organon” is probably their most personal – in which they have put a lot of heart, dedication, time and, above all, private money since 2016.
It all started with a lithophone
The origin of the whole thing was her voluntary commitment to the association based in Upper Bavaria “Friends of Hilat Al Bir“, who cares for people in Sudan. So Bunce pricked up his ears when he heard about excavations not far from the eponymous village where a team from Arizona State University had found a lithophone, i.e. a rock gong or chime stone. The first was followed by other specimens – all on the banks of the Nile.
The thing, three and a half meters wide and weighing just as many tons, lay in the sand for thousands of years, reports Bunce, and Sabo adds with a laugh: “Because of the indentations all around, they initially thought they had used it to grind grain!”
Based on this polyphonic instrument, the couple came up with an idea: Isn’t it possible that there was a kind of precursor music to rock’n’roll as early as the Stone Age? And what if this style of music, which also has a very clear political connotation, had repeatedly broken out in one way or another over the course of thousands of years? Couldn’t this history of music and the events that caused it be made visible to the public as part of a major project? With a performance that combines music, drama, dance and, last but not least, visual arts? Because the native Welsh Bunce is not only an actor, singer, director and photographer, but also a sought-after sculptor and model maker, who has set himself the goal of nothing less than the reproduction of a lithophone made of fiberglass.
International musician collective
A name was quickly found: “Organon” – according to Aristotle, the “instrument of understanding”. And thanks to the good networking of the duo, it was soon possible too the first stage of implementation of the ambitious project: a series of four concerts with a collective of musicians of international provenance. Through a cooperation with the Munich Cultural Department, some of them were even invited to the Villa Walberta as scholarship holders of the “Artist in Residence Program”. They were able to improvise together, creating new sounds and rhythms. Their playing includes microtones, scales most people aren’t very familiar with, entirely new circles of fifths “to open your ears,” as Sabo explains.
Since these artists all come from very different styles, from classical to jazz and world music to contemporary music, “otherwise they wouldn’t have met in a million years,” Bunce emphasizes the singularity of the ensemble. The scholarship holders had just arrived at the Pasing factory’s summer festival to give them a first taste of what was to come. The reactions to the sometimes experimental music were very different: “Some were completely enthusiastic, others disturbed,” says Bunce.
Also to be heard: a Carnyx, the Roman fright
More musicians are now joining Gut Sonnenhausen, some of them at very short notice, which is why the concert will not be preceded by a long rehearsal period. The variety of instruments is also extremely exciting, some of which are extremely unusual and only rarely heard. For example, the eight-foot-long carnyx, a Celtic war trumpet, asterix– Well-known to readers as “Roman fright”.
It is played by the exceptional musician John Kenny. In 1993, the trombonist and expert on ancient instruments was the first to elicit sounds again after thousands of years from a replica of the Deskford-Carnyx with the head of a boar, which had been reconstructed with the help of representations. A complete instrument could never be recovered, individual parts and another reconstruction can be found in the Scottish National Museum in Edinburgh.
Other rare instruments can also be heard: the French-American composer Etienne Rolin also contributes a bansuri flute glissotar with, a kind of wooden saxophone that has only been around for a short time. The Belgian free jazzer Peter Jacquemyn again, bassist and woodcarver, has a little dung with him, a Tibetan longhorn. Pianist Michael Wehmeyer, on the other hand, is known to many as a long-standing member of embryo. World music is also made by percussionist Michael “Bidi” Setz from Berlin. Also there: Udo Schindler, who plays tubax in addition to saxophone and electric guitar.
Political aspect important
horn player Robyn Blair from Scotland not only masters the forest and alpine horn, but also the conch horn. This was blown on the Caribbean sugar cane plantations whenever a slave had escaped. The political context mentioned at the beginning also becomes clear, from the slave trade, through which black music ended up in the USA, to the Rolling Stones enough. Because, according to Sabo: “Even if Elvis Presley tried to open the doors to Chuck Berry, what had happened up to then was cultural appropriation. It was only the Rolling Stones who said clearly: We will give your music back to you!”
This replica skull belonged to a young journalist who was imprisoned and murdered by Chinese authorities. She was awarded the honorary title “Queen of Bavaria” for her services to freedom of expression.
(Photo: Carlton Bunce/oh)
The naming of the concert, “Songs for the Queen of Bavaria”, is also deliberately political. According to organizers as a tribute to a journalist murdered by Chinese authorities, called Dania in the project. Her bones were sold to a company that makes models for medical students. The replica of her skull adorns the poster because “Organon” is designed as a work of international understanding that unites all forms of music and all cultures.
“The history of rock ‘n’ roll is the history of mankind.” With what Carlton Bunce tells with contagious enthusiasm in the Grafinger Garden, one often does not know exactly: what is reality? What felt truth? What wish? Because with the sound of his words, time and space dissolve, become one, every turn of his 70,000-year, fantastic story seems more than believable.
But maybe facts and figures are completely irrelevant in the face of a project like “Organon”. If appropriate financing is found, the next stage is planned to be scenic work with regional groups. That could be dance and theater people from Grafing in the district, and adults and children from South Africa on tour. Or from Sudan.
“Music for the Queen of Bavaria” on Sunday, September 11, 8 p.m., Reithalle Gut Sonnenhausen, Glonn. Information and tickets at [email protected] or (08093)57770.