Landfall 219
Edited by Bill Dureen, Otago University Press, $29.95
Remember when radio stations protested they were never going to play a decreed percentage of New Zealand music in their programmes? It all seems ridiculous, that protest now, because our airwaves are full of the stuff.
Music weeks became music months and
the gamut of composition and performance has become an annual rite. Belatedly, Landfall, our premier literary magazine, has turned over its pages to a wide consideration of music in New Zealand.
Editor Bill Direen is a man of musical variation. He has studied all varieties, through classical to rock. As a former student with Douglas Lilburn, Direen includes a perceptive essay on Lilburn's electro-acoustic composition by Dugal McKinnon. Lilburn's head of faculty Frederick Page, was not in favour of the genre but McKinnon relates Lilburn's electroacoustic to the natural environment in a way which sheds new light on a sensitive subject.
Some of the contributors, such as Keri Hulme, struggle with the prescribed topic.
Others such as David Eggleton with his Barnes Dance poem evoking Auckland's choreography at pedestrian crossings, amuse and acutely observe.
Brass, jazz band photography by Marcel Tromp meld with classical string images reminding a reader that music is not only an art but a language which promotes emotion, evocation, joy and harmony in both players and listeners.
Michael Harlow's contribution produces a difficult academic study of the deep springs of discovery, reminding that he is not only a serious poet but a Jungian analyst.
As usual, Landfall's critical review section offers good things, in particular a discussion of poet Diana Bridge's exploration of Zen Buddhism and Bryony Jagger relates words to music. And Katherine Mansfield's stylistic echoes of her cello-playing days. That was a revelation by Kate Kennedy.
Don't think this is all high-brow stuff. 4ZB's Jim Wilson writes affectingly of his father, Hank Williams, and the disappointment of the world.
