abj@IDA.LiU.SE (Andreas Bjorklind) (01/15/90)
Article from the Swedish "serious" magazine MusikDramatik's (Musical drama) fourth issue 1989. It is written by Ola Stensson. The translation is mine, with help from Ms. Carina Skytt. I hope you'll be able to follow the translation; I think I've eliminated most of the Swedish-isms... _Of_course_ I've used _British_ spelling... Comments? /Andreas --------------------------------------------------------------------- | Mr. Andreas Bjorklind, Department of Computer and Information | | Technology, Linkoping University, S-581 83 Linkoping, Sweden. | | Tel. +46 13 28 26 79, Internet: abj@ida.liu.se, | | UUCP: sunic!liuida!abj, Bitnet: abj@seliuida | --------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ T h e A r t i c l e ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Preamble: "Much can be included in the conception of musical drama -- eg rock videos. Might this be an art form belonging to the future? Ola Stensson have studied one rock artist with artistic ambitions -- Kate Bush." The article: "There is one enormously vital art form that have been ignored in Swedish arts pages during the eighties -- the rock video. It is possible that this means of expression already has changed our perception, our view of a dramatic course of events, our sense of rhythm, and also our view of man. The rock video is nothing new -- it's nearly as old as the form of music itself. The interesting thing is that while this music has stepped back after the reshaping years of 1966-1971, rock, in it's capacity of visual medium, has developed and is at the moment most creative, vital, and often experimental. The situation today is really paradoxal. Sometimes it can almost be as if Harry Kupfer should produce Laurel & Hardy film. There are exeptions where music, lyrics, and visuals are a synthesis, and where we are at the Complete Work of Art. An example of an artist with ambitions as well as means of creating something like this is Kate Bush. It's not a question of comparing her to Wagner, Alban Berg, Karl-Birger Blomdahl, or someone else with their ambition. But, she is an example of what could be done and what always can be done. Most of the innovation remains. WUTHERING HEIGHTS Kate Bush is English, and was born in 1958, made a hit in 1978 with "Wuthering Heights", a song based on Emily Bronte's novel. She has since released six albums. The music is sometimes superficially very difficult to access, with complicated arrangements and dared shifts in rhythm, especially on the LP "The Dreaming" form 1982. This dosen't hinder a strong influence from folk-music, not the least the Irish, like in "Hounds of Love" (1985) or the Bulgarian as in "The Sensual World" (1989). If you go through Kate Bush's videos from the beginning you find a development that pretty well correspond to the one her music has undergone. Here follow some examples. In the beginning it was not a matter of illustrating lyrics and music. It was more a matter of pure promotion ((emphasized in the original --Andreas)). If one, as an example, choses videos from Kate's first album one finds her videos decorative, elegant, but dramatically highly stylized. There are exeptions, though, like "Hammer Horror" from the second LP "Lionheart". The lyrics are about the depression that always seems to lurk in the singer's soul, and hinders the I she shows among the people. Kate performs with an aura of innocence, she wears brightly coloured flowers, but she is wearing black clothes and is constantly followed by another black clothed figure that imitates her movements. After a while she throws the flower decorated hat away and the black shadow gets more power over her. They enter an erotic dance, which ends with the black clothed masqued shape strangling its victim. This is perhaps the first Kate Bush video where the producer's ambitions were beyond creating a mere promotion. Kate's ideas are now developing, and the result is shown in full by the 1982's "The Dreaming", where an enormous amount of work has been concentrated on her visual language. The result is very gifted and most peculiar. Take, for example, "Breathing". Kate is here enclosed in a transparent bubble, which strongly reminds of a womb. She tries to break out of this bubble, but succeeds only in moving it. She imitates the embryo's movements in the amniotic fluid "I've been out before. But this time it's much safer in.". Suddenly the bubble starts rotating and rolls without control. It bursts, and a birth takes place in strong lights like from an atomic explosion. In the next sequence one sees Kate wade out of a river (the water returns as a symbol) together with other survivors -- breathing ((emphasized in the original --Andreas)) -- and the A-bomb mushroom shrinks. So, life is appearently possible, even for the one who manage to break free from herself. A very sophisticated video, not only technically, is "Sat In Your Lap". The lyric is philosophical and deal with the impossiblitity about knowledge. Kate roller-skates, in a cone-formed idiot hat, together with similiarly clothed people. In come fools and heathens in brutal bull masks. The urges and the joking is reality, we don't have any other knowledge. Kate is now clad in "the White Ballet's" attribute, and dances on the clean parquet, as the Cultural Human surrounded by reality. STONEHENGE LANDSCAPE "The Dreaming" is one of her most famous videos, and is taking place in a dreamt Stonehenge landscape, obviously located on another planet. Kate falls out of the sky in a space suit. But everything from her original civilization seems to have been forgotten, since she starts working on a rock with a wedge and looks watchfully around like a human -- a prehistoric human -- surrounded by a thousand dangers. A laser beam cuts through the landscape, and she caresses it with her hands. Thus she and the "primitive" aboriginies conjure on the planet a thunderstorm, which buries them in sand. But one of the beings, previously mute, can suddenly speak. So, the human doesn't change. The primitive can develop, and the civilized can go back, but a change is in fact not possible. "Suspended In Gaffa" has a abandoned stable as the scene. "Can't have it all" is a maxim in the lyric, which is illustrated by Kate building a bird out of nothing -- out of the thin air -- which then flies. In the end the bird is captured, but it's not a usual bird, not of flesh and blood, but consisting of one feather which is caught by the wind. "I'm much more of that girl in the mirror between you and me" -- so it's her own view of herself that hinders her real contact with other people. In the end a mother figure appears in this stable. This mother is real and doesn't disappear when Kate hugs her. These songs about no contact and ignorance about the reality, were in some sense exchanged by sturdiness in her next album, "Hounds of Love". The perhaps most famous video from this production is about "a deal with god" and is called "Running Up That Hill". Is it possible to make a deal with God -- a deal implying that the Man and the Woman in a relationship change places, change identities? The answer is of course no, and is first illustrated by an intense dance between Kate and a man. Then she leaves on her own, but wherever she walks she is met by her opposite -- people with her beloved's mask. She gets desperate and soon meets people wearing masks identical with her own. Humans may change identity, they might even look like her, but she herself cannot change with anyone. HOUNDS OF LOVE In the video for the song "Hounds of Love" she works as a guide in a factory, where she finds a man who draws her to him. They flee into the forest, but the "Hounds of Love" hunts them. They come to a house in the woods, where a merry party is going on. Kate chains herself to the man, they dance out, but it's not a question of love, the "Hounds of Love" get tired and give up hunting them. She's afraid of love as a frightful possibility, and attach herself to a man only to be able to renounce. A video with a lot more hopeful tone in it is illustrated by "Cloudbusting", based on a novel by Peter Reich which deals with the child and the father -- the father has built a rain-making machine. Everything is seen through the eyes of the child. The father (played by Donald Sutherland) is caught by brutal police men in civilian clothes. The child (Kate) sees him being taken away, but runs to the machine and makes it start raining. She rejoices -- the machine is working -- and the peoples creative power is stronger than the oppression. The sky opens and the water pours down over Cornwall. Thus can Kate Bush's world look -- anyhow in the video version, even if she sometimes herself expresses a fear that it might seem too narcissistic. It would carry to far to deal with all the details around colouration, choreography, and cutting rhythm. But the rock video surely opens new perspectives, and also a multitude of interpretation possibilities, at least when it's in the hands of very gifted people. And we have seen far from the end yet. The conclusion is: Don't be afraid of the rock culture, and, particularly, don't be afraid of the Bush lass. She has much to give us, regardless to which generation we belong. And the rock video, as has been said, is a very vital part of musical drama which we now must not look down on. Don't content yourselves with reading about this: See it and form your own opinion!" ----------------------------------------------------------------------