They don't use amplification but scrape, rattle and rub percussion instruments with stone, metal, polystyrene or paper objects, and tap guitar strings with marbles or massage them to produce squeals. They also use a stopwatch to impose pauses of up to 20 seconds. You only improvise if you don't know the other players at all. In chorus, they insist that music can express more than language. For Renkel and Beins, music has become like a dialogue between a married couple who finish each other's sentences, while for Schulkowsky it is an unrepeatable event.
Music is unique and that keeps it vital.
We have forgotten about this because of the record industry and the idea that everything can be kept and owned. She's talking about music that can't be written down, follows no rules and has no before or after, only a perpetual now in which the choices are infinite. Perhaps that is the description of a true freedom song. 2001 Time Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.