(source Loose History of Avant Music #3)
JOHNATHON BOROFSKY -- Radical Songbirds of Islam
The idea for this music came while I was living and working in Jerusalem for an extended period of time. I became very interested in the simplicity and beauty of the Muslim chants, which could be heard daily broadcast through loudspeakers in different areas of the city. What interested me the most was the a cappella voice, with no accompanying instrumentation, and more important, the lack of the traditional western drum beat in the background. Without this incessant western drum beat, the silence or spaces between sung phrases often lasted for five to ten seconds. This was a challenge to someone who always expected the notes to fall into
regular time patterns. The Radical Songbirds Of Islam (Opus For Voice) grew out of a collaboration between myself and another artist-musician, Ed Tomney, in 1987. At that time, I had been counting continuously from zero to over three million numbers. Ed's custom made computer program translated these numbers into a musical score for my voice. The resulting music, taken from a library of sampled notes sung by myself, is then constructed from a series of tape edits. (Distributed by Reachout International Records, Inc., New York )
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