Moondog revival

Spotlights 01.07.2021

Moondog (1916-1999) is a fascinating figure in the history of music, resolutely outside the box, both in his compositions and in his atypical personality. This composer, who immersed himself in the music of the past, nurturing a passion for Johann Sebastian Bach and for polyphony, mixed these influences with Amerindian music and jazz, inaugurating before anyone else the trend that is now called "minimalist music".

As the son of an Episcopalian minister, Louis Thomas Hardin Jr. met many Indians on the Apaho reservation where his father preached and became familiar with their music, particularly their very particular use of the drum and song. He also listened to the ragtime and military marches of his father's discotheque and was introduced to the keyboard by his mother, an organ teacher. The family moved around a lot as the father was posted. At the age of sixteen, an accident with a stick of dynamite left along a railway line deprived Louis Hardin of his sight, and also of his faith. After a period of despair, he immersed himself in music and benefited from extensive tuition at a school for the blind: violin, viola, piano, organ, choral singing, harmony. He decided to become the greatest living composer.

Moondog moved to New York in 1943 with very little money in his pocket, choosing a deliberately modest, even Spartan, lifestyle. It was there that he adopted his artist's name in 1947, as a tribute to the howling at the moon of his childhood dog Lindy. There he assiduously attended the rehearsals and concerts of the Philharmonic Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, conducted by Artur Rodziński, with whom he became friends, as well as with Leonard Bernstein, his assistant, and the musicians of the orchestra, who would regularly play his works. He also met the jazz avant-garde, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus and Charlie Parker, with whom he was to record an album. After his death in 1955, he composed the very famous "Bird's Lament" as a tribute to the latter, which became his most famous piece, written in 1957 and released on Columbia in 1969, and then taken up and remixed excessively.

In the meantime, as a precursor of the beatniks, Moondog went back on the road between 1948 and 1949, notably to meet the Navajo Indians. Back in New York, he decided to live on the streets to get as close as possible to the nomadic life of the Plains Indians. This choice of lifestyle lasted 25 years, with a few stays in flats where he was given shelter. He gradually adopted a curious Viking outfit, with a horned helmet and a spear, imagining himself to have Nordic roots and above all tired of having his Christ-like figure pointed out to him all the time. It was in this context that he wrote his poems and his numerous works, based on a constant rhythm of percussion, often resting on five- or seven-beat rhythms and cultivating a refined art of the canon.

For almost three decades, Moondog became a New York icon. The "Viking of Sixth Avenue" was frequented by such luminaries as John Cage, Benny Goodman, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Lenny Bruce, Bob Dylan, Ravi Shankar and many others. In 1968, Philip Glass took him in for a while, even recording with him and with Steve Reich. Moondog made his own instruments, such as the trimba, and his growing fame led him to record two albums for Columbia in 1969 and 1971.

Moondog grew tired of life in New York and the streets. He went on tour in the United States in 1971. He dreamed of Europe and took advantage of a trip to Frankfurt by his organist friend Paul Jordan in 1974 to settle in Germany for good. He resumed a vagabond life, without knowing the language, but was supported by the young geology student Ilona Goebel, who took him in and helped him relaunch his new career. He made three excellent records with Kopf: In Europe, 1977, H'art Songs, 1978, New Sound of an old Instrument, 1979).

Meetings and trips followed, such as those with composer and conductor Jean-Jacques Lemêtre in France in 1976, and with Swedish percussionist Stefan Lakatos in 1980. Moondog abandoned his horned helmet after learning at an exhibition in Sweden that it was a fanciful historical re-enactment. In 1983, he went to Salzburg, Austria, the city of Mozart, where he composed three symphonies at a frenetic pace. After a performance at the TransMusicales in Rennes in 1988, Moondog returned to New York the following year at the invitation of Philip Glass for a triumphant concert with the Brooklyn Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra. He was sought after by European pop artists: Stephan Eicher in 1989, Andi Tomas of the German duo Mouse on Mars in 1991 for the album Elpmas, then Elvis Costello, who invited him in 1995 for the Meltdown Festival, of which he was programmer. During the decade, Moondog travelled four times to England, where he recorded Sax Pax for a Sax in 1993 with the London Saxophonic (released in 1994).

Increasingly ill with diabetes, Moondog chose to perform only with the pianist Dominique Ponty, whom he had met in 1995. It was with her that he gave his last concert in Arles, on1 August 1999, at the close of the MIMI festival. He died on 8 September in a hospital room in Münster.

Stefan Lakatos and Dominique Ponty, two faithful performers, playing a duo in the same conditions as the last Moondog concerts.

Moondog has never been as popular as he is today. His rediscovery in France was made possible in particular thanks to the work undertaken by Amaury Cornut, author of a book on the composer published in 2014 by Le mot et le reste. We also meet two young passionate musicians who bring Moondog's music to life through various stage and recording projects: Stéphane Garin (ensemble 0) and François Mardirossian. We will focus on the project ElpmasThis is a project that takes the gamble of having instrumentalists play on stage a record entirely conceived for computer, reissuing this beautiful object in the form of a sumptuously illustrated book-disc.

Guillaume Kosmicki

Drawing by Nicolas Moog, from the album "Underground" byArnaud Le Gouëfflec and Nicolas Moog.

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