Restitutions, Shibboleth or

Aporias
'The general Verstimmung [the word means both 'disgruntlement' and 'out of tune', MC]
is the possibility of an other tone, or the tone of an other to interrupt a familiar music at
any time ... The Verstimmung, if one thus calls this derailment from now on, the sudden
change of a tone like a change of mood, is the disorder or the nonsense of the destination
(Bestimmung)' (D'un ton apocalyptique adopt nagure en philosophie, p.67-8, my
translation).
I want to emphasise that these are different stories of Western culture, that there is no
one story, and certainly not one that is the true story. In a sense they are all true, and in
reading them across and against each other we can discern a multiplicity of
determinations and subject positions (Game, p.66).
[1] Deconstruction within music. Deconstruction at work in the compositions of John
Cage and in the project of Gerd Zacher (cf. The Gift of Silence and Specters of Bach). At
work. But never mentioned (by them). Neither is Derrida. Which is not the same, as is
made clear in Deconstruction In Music. With regard to the music of John Zorn, I found
only one reference to deconstruction. On a poster for Naked City (Zorn's band with Fred
Frith, Bill Frisell, Joey Baron, and Wayne Horvitz) used in 1989 for premier
performances, one can read the types of music that are going to be poured upon the
public: blues, Ennio Morricone compositions, solo, duo, and trio improvisations, and
'hardcore and surf music deconstructions' (Dorf, p.44). It is not further explained (of
course not). It can leave the reader puzzled, curious or indifferent. Perhaps readers
acquainted with deconstruction can think of possible connections. What is striking is the
plural, deconstructions. There is more than one. Which is true. But deconstruction is
always already a multiplicity of voices; speaking with one voice it is no longer
deconstruction.
Occasionally, the word turns up in reviews. Mostly it is used as an equivalent to that
other difficult to define word, postmodernism. Musicians and composers, in talking about
their work, hardly, if at all, express themselves in terms of deconstruction.
And what about Derrida? Is he mentioned? Do musicians or composers know him or his
work? There is at least one pop band (in fact it's only the lead singer of the band) that can
be considered a kind of fan: Scritti Politti's lead singer, Green, dedicated a song to
Derrida. DJ Spooky refers to him in one of his reflective essays that is infused with the
spirit of post-structuralism. And then there is also this band called Deconstruction.
And Zorn? Can one find clear traces of Derrida in his work? I think I've found two, but I
am not sure about either of them. In 1997, Zorn composed the chamber music,
Shibboleth, for string trio, clavichord and percussion. Shibboleth, the password used by
the Israelites in order to distinguish themselves from the hostile Ephraimites who could
not correctly pronounce the word. It's the word by which Jews are distinguished from
non-Jews. It confirms the 'being Jewish' of the Jew. A friendship word. A password. And

the title of a book by Derrida.

In 1998, Zorn released the CD Aporias. Requia For Piano And Orchestra. On the back
cover are three short texts. One is signed by Zorn and printed in block letters: 'An aporia
is an impossible passage, and Aporias, part piano concerto/part requiem, is about those
mysteries and spiritual passages separating life from death. The piece is subtitled Requia
For Piano And Orchestra, but these requia are not for any particular artist or groups of
artists; they are dedicated to all artists and to the indomitable spirit of creativity itself the spark that refuses to die'. Another text comes from the aristocratic Roman elegist,
Sextus Propertius, and is capitalized: 'SUNT ALIQUID MANES LETUM NON OMNIS
FINIT LURIDAQUE EVICTOS EFFUGIT UMBRA ROGOS'. It is the opening sentence
of the seventh poem in the fourth book of his Elegies, a sometimes macabre poem in
which death and eroticism are connected. A translation in italics is added: 'Spirits do
exist: death does not end all things and so the pale ghost, victorious, escapes the flames'.
The specter as a revenant. The spark that refuses to die.
But it all begins with the other citation. But why am I calling it a citation? Nothing proves
it is one. There are no quotation marks. It is not signed. Neither by Zorn, nor by
Propertius. Here it is: 'Is it possible to say our lives, or my death? Can death be a plural ...
is death even possible?' Whose text is this? To whom does it belong? Who is the owner?
Strange questions in the realm of deconstruction where a text is always considered an
orphan (I'll return to this). Nevertheless. It's in italics. Does this mean that it is a
translation just like the Propertius citation? If it is, then the original language is lacking.
Why this mystification? I can only guess. Zorn composed Aporias (or parts of it) in 1994.
Derrida published the English version of Aporias in 1993. I quote (and for once I do this
in italics as it is after all a translation): 'Is my death possible? ... If death (...) names the
very irreplaceability of absolute singularity (no one can die in my place or in the place of
the other), then all the examples in the world can precisely illustrate this singularity.
Everyone's death, the death of all those who can say 'my death' is irreplaceable' (Aporias,
p.21-2). The key problems are the same, but not exactly the same; not the same words. So
it is not a citation. Not from Derrida. It seems like a rewriting of Derrida's sentences,
although he is not mentioned. The return of a specter which is always already a
transformation. The text is a spark (a mark) that refuses to die. It stays behind when the
author is already gone (dead?).
Aporias. This may be what music philosopher Jerrold Levinson means by allusive titles,
titles that refer to other works, other artists, other cultural utterances (cf. Levinson,
p.174). But we are never sure about this.
[2] Where do these preliminary remarks take us? I don't know. I cannot control their
dissemination. However, this quest is not an attempt to legitimize my main subject,
deconstruction in music. Enumerating as many places as possible where deconstruction
and music are brought together - either by composers and musicians or by critics and
musicologists - cannot be the justification for my project. It is neither the beginning of an
elucidation or explanation of Zorn's work. No overall interpretation. Let's leave enigmas
intact.
These opening sentences can be a possible passage, a threshold to a door which is already
ajar. For instance, an opening to some moments of transgression. Intermusical: the
connecting of several more or less separate musical worlds or people working within

these worlds. I will call this de- and recontextualization. The confrontation of several
musical styles in the Naked City compositions can be regarded as a temporary and
rudimentary example. But soon others will appear. Intertextual: music's nomadic
possibilities to attach itself to, and become part of, 'extra-musical' formations. In this
section of the site much attention will be paid to Jewishness.
It is also an opening to discuss the inside and outside of a musical work. To think about
supplements. Parerga. For example, titles, liner notes, texts and pictures on the cover of a
CD. Do these belong to the musical work or are they 'hors d'oeuvre', outside of the work?
Every philosophical discourse on art is centered on the question of how to distinguish
between the internal and external elements of an artwork, Derrida writes in The Truth In
Painting. And it is always a problem. Among others things while parerga have a
thickness, which separates them not only from the integral inside, from the ergon, but
also from the outside, from the space and place in which a musical work is situated
(notated, performed), from the whole institutional field in which the work is produced.
(But what is the ergon of a musical work exactly? The score? The sounds? Both? Which
sounds? All the sounds heard (or made) during a performance, or only the notated ones?
And when there is no notation? Difficulties arise.) The title, the liner notes and the cover
illustrations stand out against two 'sides', but with respect to each of those sides, they
merge into the other. With respect to the musical work they gradually merge into the
background. In this case, the parergon installs an internal boundary. However, it also
installs an external boundary. With respect to the general background (the institutional
field, abstract nd concrete), the parergon merges into the work that stands out against
this background (cf. The Truth In Painting, p.61). Neither simply outside, nor simply
inside. Sometimes or in some way detached, but at the same time very difficult to detach.
Why? Because a parergon is not simply a surplus, Derrida explains; it is there because the
inside is lacking. It seems as though the parergon comes as an extra, exterior to the proper
field (the musical sound 'itself'). However, this exteriority intervenes in the inside only to
the extent that there is a lack in the interior of the ergon. Apparently, the inside needs
these additives, these supplements. Jerrold Levinson argues that a title can be thought of
as part of a musical work, even as part of a work's structure, partly because the music
'itself' is not a fine enough type to properly possess the work's representational properties
(cf. Levinson, p.161. I will not elaborate on the problem of representation here.) And
John Zorn says in an interview: 'Every piece on Torture Garden, for example, has some
kind of subtext to it; a story that is being told ... The titles help with that too, they give the
pieces a cultural resonance, something that can get thinking patterns going, which
someone can identify with or not identify with or get pissed about. My record covers are
involved in this, too. You try to create a package that really tells a story and says
something within a larger context than just the abstract world of sound or pitches'
(Gagne, p.526). Evidently, the covers, the titles and the liner notes, convey something the
music cannot convey by itself. It is lacking and without this lack, the ergon would have
no need of a parergon.
[3] What is on the inside of a musical work, what stays external? This is not only a
philosophical problem, but it is, in fact, also the main issue of controversy between Zorn
and his record company of that time, Nonesuch. Nonesuch wanted to have a say on the
covers of several of Zorn's CD's. The idea behind this could (somewhat speculatively) be

formulated as follows: Zorn takes care of the music, the record company takes care of
distribution and sales (cf. Gagne, p.531). His CD's will sell better if the cover is not too
controversial. For that reason, Nonesuch wanted to collaborate on the covers. Perhaps why not give it some credit - it did not mean to influence Zorn's artistic creativity. After
all, covers are exterior to the musical work. They only come beside, in addition to the
ergon. They're not really a part of it.
Zorn had a different opinion. He considers cover art an essential part of his work: 'I told
them [the record company, MC] that I would not put out a Naked City record without
Maruo Suehiro's [the artist who made the cover drawings, MC] participation; that he was
integral to the packaging of Naked City in the way that Yamatsuka Eye [he does the
vocal parts, MC] is integral to the band ... With me, the packaging is essential - that is my
artwork, making records' (Gagne, p.531-2). Another reaction to Nonesuch: 'If you don't
understand what's happening with the covers, then you don't understand what's happening
with the music because they're both coming from the same place' (Gagne, p.531).
According to Zorn, the covers are part of his artistic product and the cover designer is as
important as a member of the band. The parergon is an essential part of the ergon, the
inside. It is on the inside.
Where is the boundary drawn? Is it possible to draw a clear border? Where does it begin?
Where does it end? What is its internal limit? Its external limit? Depending upon the
point of view, shape and color are added to what I called an internal or an external
boundary, while the other boundary is unavoidably effaced at the same time. If we want
to maintain the field of tension, however, then all that we are left with is the aporia: a
parergon, a cover design or title is (n)either on the inside (n)or on the outside. It
undermines the opposites, inside vs. outside, intrinsic vs. extrinsic, essential vs.
accidental, etc. The idea to consider the parergon merely as an external and subordinate
supplement can only sustain itself when the complexity, the plurality, of the parergon is
ignored. (Titles, covers, and liner notes also have the dual function of closing up and
opening up. For instance, they demarcate a musical work from other works. But at the
same time, within the same move, they present and introduce the musical work.)
I am not at all interested in judging who is right or wrong, Zorn or Nonesuch. It is not
about outlining new borders or maintaining old ones. It is not about subverting any
border at all, just like that. 'Deconstruction must neither reframe, nor dream of the pure
absence of the frame' (The Truth In Painting, p.73). Perhaps, it is only about a sensitivity
to an insoluble situation of instability, of undecidability.
[4] Something on the structure of this section of the site. It has something to do with
Zorn's composition, Spillane, named for the author of the Mike Hammer detective books
and movies, Mickey Spillane. With Spillane, Zorn starts a composing method he calls
file-card composition. After much fieldwork (viewing the films, reading the books:
'Spillane is the distillation of all the books. Each section relates to an adventure in the
picaresque detective novel'), Zorn begins by making lists of impressions, ideas and
snippets of sound, some of which are later transferred to file cards as individual events.
These file cards become the actual score. In the recording studio, he slowly builds the
piece, section by section (cf. Duckworth, p.445). The result is a series of musical blocks
without a traditional development. It is a musical structure or montage involving much
juxtapositioning and discontinuity, a mixture of different musical styles, Zorn's own

contributions as well as quotations from pre-existing music (for instance, he uses the
theme from Route 66 as a kind of icon symbolizing the detective world). Listening to
Spillane means listening to jazz, blues, film music, spoken parts, and rhythm and blues
within a few minutes.
This section on Zorn can be regarded as a kind of file-card composition, too. Although it
mainly revolves around one project, Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach, it has a block
structure as well, a montage of different texts that, taken together, should form a
kaleidoscopic picture of John Zorn and the deconstructions at work within his music.
[5] Positions I and Positions II are sociological explorations of Zorn's position in the
music world of New York and of his opportunity to create a new art world around
himself. In a way, Zorn, Noise, Cage, Pop is also about Zorn's musical position. This
page focuses on the idea that Zorn stands simultaneously inside and outside the popular
culture. This is supported on the basis of Zorn's use of noise as opposed to Cage's. While
listening to and analyzing Zorn's music, the problem of inside and outside is constantly
returning. (Zorn himself is also aware of this. In many interviews he talks about the
different musical languages he speaks which make it difficult to stereotype him.) In
Hymen, I connect the deconstruction of this oppositional pair in Zorn's music to Derrida's
ideas about inside and outside regarding hymen. In my opinion, the songs in Great
Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach can be called hymen, (n)either on the inside (n)or on the
outside of Bacharach's originals. In Zorn's Pharmacy, I liken these inside/outside
problems to a tumor, assuming Zorn's fondness for physical damages that is evidenced in
many of his song titles and on many of his CD covers.
In (D)(R)econtextualization, I explain how Zorn takes the music of Burt Bacharach out of
its 'normal' or 'original' context and places it within several others. Perhaps the most
important new context is revealed by the title of the project, Great Jewish Music. On the
Great Jewish Music page I expand upon the Jewishness of Zorn's music. What does it
mean to call his music Jewish and how Jewish are Bacharach's compositions? In Burt
Bacharach and John Zorn I concentrate on a more deconstructive musicological reading
of several of Bacharach's songs and Zorn's versions of them.
Zorn comments as such upon Bacharach's tunes. In that sense, Zorn can be regarded as a
parasite taking advantage of already existing music. In Saprophyte, I take another
standpoint: Zorn is also contributing to his host, Bacharach, and he is creating something
new, as well.
Up to this point I have been regarding Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach as a project
of John Zorn. And it is his project. However, he is not playing one note on either of these
two CD's. This raises the question of what it means to speak about 'his' music. In The
Signature of John Zorn and The Death of the Composer, I expand upon such questions
as: What is composing? What does it mean to be a composer? How clear is the distinction
between composing and arranging? What is the meaning of the proper name above a
composition? Is it thereby the composer's property? Is he the only producer?
Inside and outside. Either inside or outside. Neither inside nor outside. John Zorn. Great
Jewish Music. Burt Bacharach. Undecidability in music.

(D)(R)econtextualization
[1] Collage. Bricolage. Quotation. Parasitism. Use. Misuse. Decontextualization.
Recontextualization. Deterritorialization. Reterritorialization. Parody. This network of
terms - terms that overlap each other, but at the same time differ - is often made use of to
grasp the extremely versatile oeuvre of John Zorn (cf. Strickland, 1991; Gagne, 1993;
Jones, 1995; McNeilly, 1995; Lange, 1997). In general, it comes down to this: Zorn uses
pieces of music that appeal to him - musical parts, musical styles, sometimes even a
significant part of the complete works of a composer - takes them out of their 'original'
context and puts them into a new one. Confronting them with a new one. Confronting
them in a new one with other musics. Dismantling and reassembling. Following the
diagonal trajectory between what is reified and liberated. Inserting the music into the
stream of a musical history only to immediately dismantle a comfortable historical sense
(cf. McNeilly, p.7). In his own words: 'You could call it stealing, you could call it
quoting, you could call it a lot of different things. Basically, it's like I'd hear a sound
element in a Bartk section and I'd say, 'That sounds neat', so I'd take that section out of
the score and transcribe it into my own notation. Right? Then, I'd hear an Elliott Carter
there that I thought was neat, so I'd take that out of the score and put it someplace else.
And then I'd have my transitions and ... Do you know what I mean? I'd hear a sound; I'd
copy it. That's still pretty much the way I work now. I write music with the TV on or with
music playing, and I work things out. If I hear something on the TV, like in a commercial
or something, I'll say, 'Hmm... that's neat', and I'll just stick it in. The same thing with
records. In a lot of ways, it's got a collage element to it, but it's not so much what you're
taking as it is how you transform it into your own world' (Duckworth, p.449).
Citations. Displacement. Fragmentation. Cut and paste. 'Sometimes in my string quartets
I'll have one of my own lines in the first violin part; the second violin, I'll say, 'improvise
using glissandos'; the viola part will be from Boulez, Le marteau; and the cello part will
be a retrograde inversion of Stravinsky from some orchestra piece. All stacked in one bar.
And the next bar goes on to something else. That's one technique I like to use. Another
one is the use of genres: tango, blues, jazz, country. Also tributes to famous composers in other words, writing in the style of the great masters. Or taking all the pitches from one
bar of L'histoire du soldat and putting them in a different rhythmic matrix. I enjoy codes
and games like that. It gives a piece a strange kind of resonance - a relation to the past'
(Gagne, p.527). A relation to the past. But a disruptive one. Dislocated. Disquieted.
De- and recontextualization. These are the terms with which I would like to make some
groping and exploring movements around Zorn's project on Burt Bacharach's music.
Recontextualize it. But is this process not always already going on when we begin to talk
and write about music? Isn't working on the edge of music, the philosophy of music, and
musicology not already a way of decontextualizing (displacing and multiplying the
identification) and - of course - (re)contextualizing ((re)placing the identification)?
[2] So, although we have already begun, although we are already in the middle of 'it', let's
'begin' with some general remarks.
Every sign, every mark - either written or oral, discursive or musical - has to be

repeatable or iterable in order for it to be communicative. Such iterability structures the

mark. A mark that is not structurally iterable cannot be a mark. This structural iterability
implies that generally a mark must be able to function both in the absence of the sender
(the context of production) and in the absence of a receiver. A mark continues to 'act'
even when the producer (composer, author) no longer answers to what he has said or
written. Any mark can be dissociated from the intentions of the sender. The intention
does not mark out a field that can assure the meaning of a mark, since it must be iterable
in order to be a mark, and, therefore, detachable from intention and context. What holds
for the sender or producer also holds for the receiver for the same reasons. Every mark
must be capable of functioning in the absence of every empirically determined receiver.
The absence, or the possibility of the absence, of the receiver is inscribed in the structure
of the mark. These two possible absences of the sender and the receiver construct the
possibility of the message itself; 'they remark the mark in advance' (Limited Inc, p.50).
A mark carries with it the structural possibility of breaking away from its given context.
In 'Signature Event Context', Derrida distinguishes between two types of context. In a
real context, a mark possesses the characteristic of being audible or readable even if the
moment of its production is irrevocably lost and even if we do not know what its alleged
producer consciously intended to say when s/he produced it. In an internal semiotic
context, a mark by virtue of its essential iterability 'can always be detached from the
chain in which it is inserted or given without causing it to lose all possibility of
functioning, if not all possibility of 'communicating', precisely. One can perhaps come to
recognize other possibilities in it by inscribing it or grafting it onto other chains. No
context can entirely enclose it' (Margins, p.9).
[3] The fact that a mark can be repeated, taken out of its context, decontextualized and
recontextualized is part of its identity. This is no defect; rather, it constitutes the mark as
a mark. The possibility of iteration. Stem: iter, which means 'again'. But this possibility is
also what divides the identity of the mark. Iterated in a different context can and will
change its meaning. Derrida suggests that the word 'iter' comes from the Sanskrit word
'itara', which means 'other'. Along this line, we enter a paradoxical logic that ties
repetition to alterity. On one hand, iterability constitutes the identity of a mark: a certain
self-identity is required to permit its recognition and repetition, a certain consistency
must be maintained in order to be an identifiable mark. On the other hand and at the same
time, iterability never permits the mark to be a unity identical to itself. Because its
context is always different, it is never absolutely the same: 'repeated, the same line is no
longer exactly the same' (Writing and Difference, p.296). Iterability presupposes a
minimal remainder so that the identity of the selfsame is repeatable and identifiable in,
through, and even in view of its alteration. However, iterability implies both identity and
difference, repetition and alteration. It alters, it parasitically affects what it identifies and
enables it to repeat 'itself'; iterability ruins the very identity it renders possible (cf.
Limited Inc, p.76). The iterability of a mark divides its own identity a priori; it is a
differential structure. Alteration is always already at work within the inner core of the
mark when the identical is repeated.
[4] We can only speak of a signifying sequence when it is iterable, that is, if it can be
repeated in various contexts. Repetition is not an accident that befalls an original; rather,

it is its condition of possibility. Repetition. In more than one way. A mark can be cited
and parodied. It may occur in serious and non-serious contexts. It may. It's a possibility.
That's the difference between iterability and iteration. A distinction can be made between
possibility, the fact that marks can always be cited, and eventuality, the fact that such
possible events do indeed happen (cf. Limited Inc., p.86-7). However, it is important to
point out that constant possibility cannot be ruled out.
Iteration alters; something new takes place. For this reason, all conventional utterances
are exposed to failure. This is not an exception, but the condition of a mark. Failure is an
essential risk of the operations under consideration. The possibility of a negativity is a
structural possibility. This opens the way for the 'mis' in misunderstandings,
misinterpretations, the possibility to repeat something with another intention, to say
something else or in a different way 'than what it says'. There is always the possibility of
such 'mis-es'. With this in mind, Derrida, in 'Signature Event Context', wonders if the
'standard', 'normal', 'literal' is not at all times affected by the 'non-standard', the 'void', the
'abnormal', etc. Then what does that tell us about the former, the privileged first term?
So-called 'standard cases' can be reproduced, mimed, simulated, parasitized. They are in
themselves reproducible, already impure or open to parasitism. Indeed, the parasite is
never simply external; it can never simply be excluded from or kept outside of the body
'proper'. Parasitism: a parasite living off a body in which it resides. But, reciprocally, the
host incorporates the parasite to some extent, randomly offering it hospitality, providing
it with a place. The parasite is always already part of so-called ordinary language (cf.
Limited Inc., p.89-90). The risk of failure is an internal condition of every mark. It is an
outside, which is always already on the inside. The anomaly, the exception, the 'nonserious', the citation is 'the determined modification of a general iterability without which
there would not even be a 'successful' performative' (Margins, p.17). A mark is marked
with a supposedly 'positive', 'serious' value. However, as it is iterable, it can be mimed,
cited, transformed. It always carries within itself its other, its 'negative' double.
Applied to the realm of music, it follows from these general remarks that iterability is
always inscribed, and therefore necessarily inscribed, as a possibility in the functional
structure of the musical mark, be it a note or a fragment, a whole composition or a
complete body of works. Iterability entails both the 'faithful' or conventional repetition of
a piece of music, as well as its transgression or transformation. All music can, in
principle, be repeated; thus, it automatically brings its own altering with it, dividing and
displacing in accordance with the logical force of the 'iter'.
It is within this structural possibility of the musical mark that I would like to situate
Zorn's works. 'In a lot of ways it's got a collage element to it, but it's not so much what
you're taking as it is how you transform it into your own world'. This is how Zorn talks
about much of his music, his method of working. (On The Signature of John Zorn, I
elaborate on this reference to one's 'own world'. His music commutes between identity
and non-identity. What exactly is Zorn's 'own world'?) Here, I would like to emphasize
Zorn's remark that his collage technique is not a mere citation, but a transformation of the
citations as well. At the same time. His musical 'commentary' let's listen 'for the first time'
to what already could be heard in the 'original' and it simultaneously repeats what could
never be heard before. Admittedly, something other than the 'original' musical piece is
played, but only with the understanding that it is this 'original' piece that is heard, which
is now completed in a different way.

There is more still to be said about this when related notions are invoked. Could we, for
instance, talk of a 'rhizomatic' relation (cf. Deleuze and Guattari)? The signification of the
cited element is neither univocal nor stable; it is precisely that which is destroyed in
deconstruction. The iterability of each mark undermines any unequivocal meaning. Each
cited element that Zorn uses breaks the continuity of the musical discourse and
necessarily leads to a double reading. By cutting it free and grafting it elsewhere, each
citation, each quotation creates a both/and situation with regard to the cited mark. It
acquires a new meaning in the new context. However, it retains its 'original' meaning at
the same time, even as its new context generates another meaning. The fragment can be
perceived in relation to its musical text of 'origin' (I stress 'origin' because no matter how
a musical text struggles to keep itself pure and different from other musical texts, it
originates as a weaving of prior musics) while it is incorporated into a new whole, a
different environment. It is not simply a matter of colonization; the alterity of these
marks, united in Zorn's composition, can never entirely be suppressed.
[5] Zorn (Who? He? Without playing?) de- and re-contextualizes a number of Burt
Bacharach's hit singles. In fact, I am doing the same with both of them. As well as with
that other who keeps haunting me.
'You are from another part of the world'. A quotation. A quotation from a quotation. Fred
Frith uses this phrase often in his version of 'Trains And Boats And Planes' in the album,
Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach (1997, Tzadik, TZ 7114-2). 'Trains And Boats And
Planes', a sad love song about someone who loses his or her lover who has returned to his
or her homeland in 'another part of the world'. S/he promised to come back, but it seems
an idle promise.
But what if Frith turned this song into a more musical reflection? What if 'you' refers to
Burt Bacharach? What if Frith means to say that Bacharach is from another part of the
musical world? Is this what Frith's version (I won't say interpretation, rather, encounter)
lets us listen to? The text Frith uses continues: 'You had to go back awhile, and then you
said you soon would return again'. Bacharach was a world renowned songwriter, film
composer, arranger, and producer from the early 1960's through the early '70's. He then
disappeared for the most part for some 25 years reemerging at the end of the 1990's.
Younger generation musicians such as Elvis Costello, McCoy Tyner, Eric Matthews, the
Cranberries, Oasis, Yo La Tengo, Stereolab, and the Pizzicato Five began to pay tribute
through cover versions and reinterpretations and allusions to his music. During
interviews, they talked of the influence Bacharach had on their work. This, along with the
deconstruction of his music in Zorn's project, contributed to Bacharach's return. Could
the cited lyrics (also) refer to Bacharach as a revenant? Could they refer to specters of
Bacharach, coming back and coming for the first time? It is evident that there are more
than one. It is evident that 'Bacharach' is a metonym for his music here, something with
which he does not converge, like traces that he left behind in his passing. As soon as the
musical text is there, the composer has already gone, has passed by, has perhaps died.
The music stays on as an orphan. It is dissociated from its producer. However, because it
is a mark it can be reproduced, repeated, iterated. And it can be altered in the same move.
Iterability and/as first time. Repeated, but never the same. Like a specter. And since a
specter is a revenant, it returns. But it is a coming back of something, which is
simultaneously transformed, and not really there; it was never there in this form. 'I'm

waiting here, but where are you?' Although the 'original' song does not end at this point,
these are the final lyrics that Frith uses. 'But where are you?' There is some identification,
but it is not very clear. Is it about Bacharach again? Where in this version are you?
Bacharach, present and absent at the same time? Of course, Frith plays 'Trains And Boats
And Planes'. You'll recognize it. But at the same time, his version is entirely different as
it plays only part of the bridge and the first two bars of the main theme. Moreover, they
are highly modified. The first two bars are continuously repeated, only in the
instrumental, with underlying steady rhythmic patterns and mechanical, industrial beats
that evoke old-fashioned trains, boats, or planes. The vocal is not sweet, not slightly
mellow as in the original, but becomes more aggressive with each repetition, more
desperate, shouting out the frustration over the lover's (or is it Bacharach?) not coming
back. Frith's version of 'Trains And Boats And Planes' is an interpretation of Bacharach's
composition, but at the same time, it is not. It is certainly not a cover version in the
traditional sense. He cites parts of the song, but these citations make up his entire version.
They are not connected with compositions from other parts of the musical world. The
encounter with another musical world lies in the way Frith plays these citations, vamps
them, alters them. His variations are also deviations, restructurings. He cuts them out of
their conventional whole without offering them a new safe haven. They are bared,
stripped, like one who is lovelorn. And Bacharach cannot protect them (himself?). Why?
Because he is not there. He had to leave. He only left some traces.
[6] I return to the first quotation of a quotation. 'You are from another part of the world.'
Suppose this is a reference to Bacharach's coming from another area (another level? I'll
return to this) of the musical world. Zorn introduces Bacharach to other contexts, other
discourses, other musical worlds. Below are three of them, two of which are closely
connected.
1. So-called avant-garde (rock) music. Let's not attempt to clearly define this world. It is
too heterogeneous, too diverse, too pluralistic. Let's assume we all know what it means for example, that the avant-garde artist is not interested in the reception of her or his work
by the general public. Furthermore, that he does not produce art for the sake of the public;
rather, that the public is there for the art. Finally, that art is autonomous. In this respect,
Zorn seems to have 'classical' avant-garde views. He is not interested in pleasing
everyone. He does not care much for the opinion of the general public with respect to his
music (cf. Lesage, p.11. cf. Gagne, p.530). Rather, he seeks recognition among his fellow
musicians who work in the same musical world (cf. Strickland, p.130). Although he
clearly states that his music does not fit neatly into any one scene, Zorn aligns himself for
the most part with the legacy or maverick tradition of the avant-garde. Or, at least Zorn
recognizes that many critics regard his music as avant-garde.
But how classically avant-garde is Zorn? Let's add one more familiar characteristic of the
avant-garde; again, one that will not be elaborated upon. I refer to the problematic, if not
antagonist, relationship to so-called popular culture, in particular, their respective
positions on the autonomy of art and recognition by the general public. Avant-garde. The
word itself (the self-definition of the 'avant-garde') leaves no room for misunderstanding
about its position: at the forefront, the vanguard, the cutting edge of art, and way ahead of
popular culture at any rate. Doesn't popular culture at best follow the avant-garde? And

isn't it true that popular culture will never be able to overtake the avant-garde?
It appears that a kind of reversal of these ideas takes place in Zorn's music. How could
Zorn's Burt Bacharach project be used as an example of deconstructing the opposition
between popular culture and avant-garde? (All sources concerning Bacharach's music
consider it a part of popular culture. cf. for example Lohof, p.74-81.) In Great Jewish
Music: Burt Bacharach popular culture is presupposed as a given. Avant-garde is no
longer a form of artistic creativity that runs ahead of popular culture. Instead, here the
avant-garde follows popular culture! It functions as an heir to popular culture. (And, as
we should know, an inheritance is never neutral. It is not a given, but a task, as Derrida
explains in Specters of Marx. There will always be some kind of transformation.) Given
the fact that Zorn uses aspects from popular culture, that is, his project is a reflective
processing of this cultural heritage, his avant-garde music cannot simply oppose popular
culture (cf. Lesage, p.13-4). Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach is, in one way or
another, part of this popular culture, but stands outside of it at the same time. (N)either
inside (n)or outside. (In Zorn, Noise, Cage, Pop is pointed out that much of his music is
rooted in popular culture, but that it disrupts this culture as well. Rethinking and
reconsidering his position should elucidate the difficulty in classifying him.)
Zorn makes a slice of popular music accessible and acceptable to a public that is more
comfortable with avant-garde music or with music that is situated in the margins of the
musical world. Zorn writes in the liner notes of a similar project, Great Jewish Music:
Serge Gainsbourg: 'It is my sincere hope that this compilation will introduce
Gainsbourg's music to a whole new audience ... I urge you to search out the original
versions. Devour them. Live with them. They will delight and surprise you time and time
again'. It is not difficult to imagine that this will also apply to Bacharach's music.
2. High and low culture. Zorn questions the consolidation of the alleged opposition
between avant-garde art and popular culture. Closely related to this is the oppositional
dichotomy of high and low culture. Zorn adopts a double position that seems to reflect his
attitude towards the opposition of avant-garde versus popular culture. It looks quite
simple at first sight. The liner notes of his 1987 CD, Spillane, read: 'We should take
advantage of all the great music and musicians in this world without fear of musical
barriers, which sometimes are even stronger than racial or religious ones'. This could
allude to a license Zorn takes to let the 'great' music of the low culture enter the realm of
the high culture. Zorn's projects introduce low cultural utterances to a 'higher' part of the
musical world. At the same time, however, Zorn neutralizes the strict opposition in his
struggle for the abolition of music-political hierarchies. Jazz, rock, pop, klezmer,
classical, electronic, concrete, and improvised music need not be viewed as stagnant
compartments, but as potential for interaction. The deconstruction at work within Zorn's
Burt Bacharach project is not a simple deconstruction of the borderline between high and
low culture that would permit the latter to enter the former. This would leave the
opposition intact. If Zorn's project questions the concepts of high and low culture, it takes
place in an area between, or outside of high and low culture. Zorn juxtaposes them in
such a way that they question each other. The concepts themselves become the topics for
investigation: 'This is something I really react strongly against, the idea of high art and
low art. I mean, that distinction's a bunch of fucking bullshit ... There's good music and
great music and phoney music in every genre, and all the genres are the fucking same! ...

People who grew up in the 60's listening to blues, rock, classical, avant-garde, ethnic
music - I think we all share one common belief, that all this music is on equal grounds
and there's no high art and low art' (Strickland, p.128-9). If the concepts themselves and
the use to which they are put are discussed, the boundary between arts and economics or
politics is transgressed. Whose interests are served by the institutionalization of the
existing distinction? In reference to his border crossing music in general, Zorn is quoted
as saying: 'It's a pity writers can't deal with this music on its own terms. But not being
tied to any one existing musical tradition has made it difficult for journalists to
pigeonhole what we are doing - to place it historically - and for businesspeople to market
it' (Blumenfeld). According to Zorn, an erroneous categorization creates an entirely new
layer of misunderstandings. The possibility of a musical categorization seems to
influence economic successes. Without a clear label, marketing becomes very difficult
and large record companies simply will not deal with it. Zorn, however, insists that his
music, and that of many others, does have commercial potential. He pleads for the
addition of an avant-garde or experimental music section in record stores (cf.
Blumenfeld). Is he falling into the trap against which he argues: a categorization of that
which cannot be categorized? (After all, what is experimental? What is avant-garde?) Or
can we regard his plea as a necessary questioning of certain institutions, institutions that
classified high and low culture as absolute categories of identities? (We cannot not
categorize or classify and every de- and re-categorization gets something done.)
Something strange happens with these two points. The re-territoralization turns out to be
a de-territoralization at the same time. Where do the territories of avant-garde art, popular
music, high and low culture begin and end? How rigid are the frames? How clear the
boundaries? Although Zorn argues for more categories (Would there be an end?), his
music does not favor one category over another. His music is located - or better,
dislocated - precisely on the frame, on the border of innumerable already existing
categories and (eventually) new ones. This is what Misko Suvakovic calls exoteric
modernism. On one hand, there are artworks that include the criticism, correction,
application and mass consumption of their high culture effects, inscriptions, tracks. These
are artworks that use the communication channels, modes of expression, effects, clichs,
genres, codes, and modes of mass culture representation in the domain of high artistic
experiment and production. At the same time, however, these same artworks transform,
transgress, and transfigure the values, representations, expressions, and goals of high art
into the domains of mass media and mass consumption (cf. Suvakovic, p.34). John Zorn.
Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach. (N)either high art (n)or low art. In between high
art and low art.
3. Jewishness. Undoubtedly the most controversial recontextualization. Since it is also the
most complicated, I have reserved a special page for this topic: Great Jewish Music. This
text is confined to a few preliminary observations. In the liner notes of his CD, Great
Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach, Zorn writes: 'Burt Bacharach is one of the great geniuses
of American popular music - and he's a Jew. This should come as no surprise since many
of America's greatest songwriters have been Jewish - Irving Berlin, Kurt Weill, George
Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Leiber & Stoller, Bob Dylan, Lou
Reed, Richard Hell, Beck ... It is arguable that the history of the Jews in this century has
produced one of the most richly rewarding periods of culture in American history. Yet,

this fact is somehow kept neatly hidden. WHAT? Compare Philip Roth to Sholem
Aleichem? Kafka to Moses de Leon? Walter Benjamin to Rashi? Wittgenstein to
Spinoza? Steve Reich to Felix Mendelssohn? Allen Ginsberg to Yehudah Halevi?
Einstein to Nostrodamus? Lenny Bruce to Hillel? Burt Bacharach is such a name. A
trailblazer. A questioner. An unbridled genius. More than a great tunesmith he's a
conductor, a pianist and a singer, a bold arranger with an original vision and sharp ear for
detail, a brilliant producer and a sensitive collaborator. ... Thank you, Burt. Thank you for
not changing your name'.
The switching, going quickly from inside to outside, is abundantly clear: Zorn now
speaks of the music (the inside?), then of something quite different (the outside?).
[7] We are entering a complex web of recontextualizations. Bacharach (both the music
and the man) enters into a plurality of contexts. He is introduced to contexts that are not
always clearly distinguishable. And there are always more contexts at work. Furthermore,
no context can be saturated. With respect to music as a mark, music, as such, can attach
itself to other (musical) texts. There is always the possibility of dissemination, of going to
places, carrying meanings and revealing connections that were not only unintented on the
composer's part, but that he could not even have imagined. With respect to the composer,
he composes in a musical language, the proper systematics and laws of which he cannot
fully dominate. A critical reading must always aim at a certain relationship, unperceived
by the composer, between his ability and inability to command the patterns of the
language that he uses (cf. Of Grammatology, p.158). With respect to the institutional
context, each relationship we have with an artwork includes the history of its reception,
which has been determined by the aesthetic ideologies of each consecutive present, these,
in turn, being conditioned by the ideologies of contemporary social groups (cf.
Hadjinicolaou). Zorn's recontextualization could include such questions as: How 'neutral'
can any 'ordinary' reading, interpretation, or performance of Bacharach be? Can we gain
more insight into the conventions and conceptual operations that shape the listener? Can
we gain more insight into capitalist overtones, which are at the service of a political
ideology? Are we able to examine the social factors that frame every mark? By placing
Bacharach in a different context, a controversial context perhaps, we may be forced to
reconsider how marks are constituted or framed by various discursive practices,
institutional arrangements, and value systems. More concretely: by including the word
'Jewish' in the title, the work exceeds the 'purely musical' realm. It may raise questions
about the unwritten (and unexplored) role that religion, or a culture (history and politics)
based on common religious foundations, has in the creation of contemporary music.
[8] Returning to the Jewish context, I will distinguish - roughly, arbitrarily, provisionally,
rudimentarily - four possibilities to examine a difficult matter:
1. A Jewish political context. By explicitly and polemically referring to his Jewish
descent, Zorn draws Bacharach into an ethno-political context, a specific cultural identity.
An important issue for Zorn because he experienced some latent anti-Semitism in a
number of countries where he performed and in some musical scenes in which he had an
interest. Zorn: 'I think it's important for Jews to have positive role models, so that they
want to identify themselves as Jews' (Blumenfeld). Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach

can be described as the 'coming out' of Jews. 'Thank you, Burt. Thank you for not
changing your name'. Zorn seems to turn Bacharach into a hero. Unlike many others,
Bacharach did not change his Jewish sounding name in order to safeguard his career.
According to Zorn, this was a risk: many Jewish artists, in coming out, had to content
themselves with a marginalized position in America's mainstream culture (cf. Wilson,
p.23).
Here, music proves to be an important medium of ideological and political expression. It
is stepping over its own threshold. It insists on a listening or reading of something that
resides beyond music as an (acoustic) frame. (Or is it always already a part of it?) Zorn's
project and his accompanying commentary go beyond music as 'mere' music. It overflows
the musical boundary. An outbidding in surplus value. Debordering. Overbordering. One
might ask, or perhaps one should ask: is this overflowing an intended result of Zorn's
discursive operation or does the music have reasons of its own? Or, to be more concrete:
is there Jewishness in the musical structure? These are questions about limits, of being-in
and being-out. Zorn's music avows what often is disavowed, i.e. that there is no 'mere'
music or 'purely musical' realm.
2. Jewish music. First, some dates. From the early 1990's on, many people in the (white)
avant-garde scene in New York (re)discovered their Jewish identity. In 1993, the Knitting
Factory (longsince the place for the New York avant garde to perform) started organizing
eight yearly concert evenings under the header Radical Jewish Culture. Also in 1993,
Zorn released his CD, Kristallnacht, that consisted of klezmer traces, Jewish wedding
and party music, the extreme noise of breaking glass (no explanation required!), and
speeches of Hitler. A Star of David decorates the cover. Two years later, Zorn produced
his first Masada CD. (Masada refers to the last Jewish bulwark against the Roman
conquerors.) Important influence: klezmer music. Also in 1995, Zorn founded Tzadik, a
label for experimental and avant-garde music. One of the most important series released
on this label: Radical Jewish Culture, a mixture of new Jewish music and disruptive
interpretations of klezmer or Sephardic classics, Hebrew texts, stories on and by Jews,
etc. Part of this series is called 'Great Jewish Culture', a series of discs by composers not
usually recognized as Jewish. The battle of words can begin (and, of course, it is about
more than words alone): what exactly is Jewish music? Does it have any distinguishable
intrinsic characteristics? Or, is it simply music made by Jewish people? These questions
are addressed on the page Great Jewish Music.
3. Jewish musicians. A new chain of connections presents itself. In his liner notes, Zorn
prompts us to draw a 'line of flight' (cf. Deleuze and Guattari) between Bacharach and
other such Jewish musicians as Lou Reed, Steve Reich and Kurt Weill. These are
conjunctions that would (perhaps) be less obvious in a conventional musical context. In
the Radical Jewish Culture series, we find Bacharach linked to such avant-garde
musicians as Zeena Parkins, Richard Teitelbaum, and David Krakauer. All the musicians
performing on Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach are Jewish. Being Jewish is what
relates Burt Bacharach to Serge Gainsbourg and Marc Bolan, two other composers Zorn
honors in the series 'Great Jewish Culture'. Is this all too obvious? All right then, how
about linking Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach to Redbird, a CD which is not usually
associated with Jewishness at all. The chamber music on this CD seems to be a tribute to

another Jewish composer, Morton Feldman, a tribute without naming it a tribute. The
slow, tranquil sequences of chords in Redbird strongly resemble Feldman's Piano and
String Quartet.
4. Jewish identity. What exactly is Zorn doing with Bacharach? His liner notes and the
title (how important, how essential are these parerga?) - indicate that he is rendering
Bacharach his Jewishness. By paying tribute to Bacharach in and through an explicit
Jewish context, Zorn disputes possession of Bacharach's music with an American music
industry and with a cultural mainstream, which, in his opinion, exclude Jews or restrict
their influence when they profess their religion or acknowledge their culture. So Zorn is
(re)reading ((re)presenting) Bacharach within a Jewish context. A process of
deterritorialization and reterritorialization; bringing him back to the territory that he never
actually left ('Thank you, Burt. Thank you for not changing your name'). Zorn assigns
something to him that he had already possessed. He was always on the inside. And yet,
Zorn has to give it back to him. Zorn - as the guest, the visitor, while Bacharach is the
host - gives the man of the house the opportunity to enter into his own house. The host
enters the inside from the inside, as though he is coming from the outside. And it is the
guest who offers hospitality. (This idea of host and guest is elaborated upon in
Saprophyte.)
However, Zorn is not only redelivering a Jewish identity to Bacharach. In fact, he is also
redelivering a Jewish identity to himself. Through Bacharach. He professes Judaism by
paying attention, by paying tribute to a Jewish composer. He testifies in and through his
music. It is a chain of restitutions. As if he were a stranger, he knocks on the door of the
host and asks to be let in. Or, perhaps, he forces an entry. But this stranger (and how
strange he really is, we will have to determine) is the prodigal son at the same time,
returning to the house of his father. Zorn and Bacharach. They both lived in the same
house, under the same roof of Judaism. With the help of the other, they may enter the
inside of the house again.

Burt Bacharach and John

Zorn
[1] It seems obvious to consider Zorn as someone who is quite difficult to stereotype. His
flirtations with almost every type of music make it impossible to categorize or classify his
work. And even when you do finally decide, for example, that his string quartet, 'Cat-o'Nine-Tails', is definitely classical music, it will always be in the margins of this label, this
category, this music world.
To classify Burt Bacharach seems to present less difficulty. Former king of mainstream
popular music. Composer of middle-of-the road hits. Producer of easy listening tunes. He
is at the heart of American pop music, confirming and continuing in the conventions of
the Tin Pan Alley tradition. He can be viewed as a last bastion of this tradition of wellcrafted songwriting. And the content of his songs signifies a world where nothing is
likely to go seriously wrong. His work is a symbol of the uncomplicated part of the
1960's, the musical expression of the 'American Dream', the musical perfection of the
bourgeois ideal.
[2] At the same time, however, Bacharach is outside the tradition and conventions within
which he is located. He profoundly altered the art of songwriting, expanding both the
harmonic and melodic potentials of the popular song. He stretched and redefined the rules
of the Tin Pan Alley paradigm that dictated the structures of pop songs. In the liner notes
of the CD, Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach, Zorn writes of Bacharach, 'Bacharach's
songs explode the expectations of what a popular song is supposed to be. Advanced
harmonies and chord changes with unexpected turnarounds and modulations, unusual
changing time signatures and rhythmic twists, often in uneven numbers of bars. But he
makes it all sound so natural you can't get it out of your head or stop whistling it.
Maddeningly complex, sometimes deceptively simple, these are more than just great pop
songs: these are deep explorations of the materials of music and should be studied and
treasured with as much care and diligence we accord any great works of art'.
Here, another Bacharach appears: a true subversive, a maverick who challenges the
conventions of an entire generation of composers of popular music. At a time when the
three or four chord pop tune is the rule, Bacharach employs more sophisticated chord
progressions that are usually associated with jazz music. But his compositions have not
so much to do with most conventional jazz standards, an A-A-B-A form in 4/4 with many
II-V-I chord progressions. (Forgive this inaccuracy. This is not the place to discuss in
detail the accounts and principles of jazz.) His melodies are often asymmetrical and do
not fit into conventional 4/4 rhythms and harmonic forms. Rhythmically, his
compositions move far beyond the 4/4 swing of jazz. (Perhaps the influence of
Bacharach's teacher, Darius Milhaud, whose music stresses polyrhythms and unusual
asymmetrical phrases, can still be heard here.) Extended harmonies, complex wanderings
of melodies, and changes of meter all sounds like a formula for commercial suicide, yet
Bacharach ruled the pop charts through the 1960's (cf. Heller). (Bacharach talks about his

compositional technique as a 'horizontal' view of a melody in which the tune is allowed to

stretch and breath naturally, unhindered by the strictures of chords and rhythms. The
structure of the songs is generated by the arc of the melody. All other components are
secondary to securing that natural flow.) These intricate compositions are about their own
virtuosity. This virtuosity delights in complexity and craftsmanship, even more so
because it is disguised within just another pop tune: the melodic, harmonic, and
rhythmical turns do not seem forced, but sound very natural.
Bacharach can be considered a transitional character. He can be situated (But should we?
What is the benefit, the surplus value?) in between the past of the Tin Pan Alley tradition
and the forthcoming pop and rock culture. Neither inside nor outside either world. In
between, that is, in the margin. In terms of both music and time.
[3] The cool perfection of Bacharach's songs is deceptive. Under a seemingly unwrinkled
surface, subtle complications are hidden.
Let's consider two songs in a bit more detail. 'Alfie' sounds like a 32-bar song with four
8-bar phrases according to the conventional pattern A-A-B-A. However, the first A
comprises ten bars, the second, eight, and the third, fourteen. Furthermore, the third A
repeats only the first two bars of the other A's before it takes a whole new melodic and
harmonic direction in the next five bars. To end the song, it returns to material already
exposed in the first A, but with a deviating final cadence. Harmonically, 'Alfie' resembles
some conventional jazz standards. It includes several II-V-I progressions; the chords that
are used contain such extensions as a nine and a thirteen, and each phrase has some
modulations. Yet many problems occur in 'the bridge', the B part. First of all, there is this
strange transition to B minor where the A parts might be in C major, a modulation which
is not very common in most jazz standards. But can we really assert that the bridge
modulates to the key of B minor? These are the first four bars of the bridge: I Bm7 / / / I
Eb6/d / Am9/d / I Bm7 / / / I Cmaj7/d / / / I. Neither the Eb6, nor the Am9 nor the Cmaj7
fit in the key of B minor. Not in one single key! These are very uncommon chord changes
not only for a popular song, but for a jazz tune as well. Is this the reason why so many
jazz musicians who play Bacharach's tunes have great difficulties in finding the right
approach? By improvising on the harmonic changes, they may try to tease out unsounded
implications, yet Bacharach's song proves curiously unyielding. As a vehicle for jazz
improvisation, this music seems too tightly constructed to permit much fruitful alteration.
The song stubbornly resists the often used jazz patterns or scales.
Stan Getz contents himself with a virtual singing of 'Alfie' on sax in the album, What The
World Needs Now. No improvisation on the harmonic schema. It is not necessary. His
version already contains some explorations and variations on the musical material.
During his Village Vanguard sessions - between the early 60's and mid 70's - pianist Bill
Evans recorded 'Alfie' several times. Like Getz, he plays around with the melodic part
using rhythmic variations, additions and embellishments. But as a master of the
reharmonization of standard tunes, he added many chords. So, in one of his
interpretations the first two bars, I CaddD I Dm7 I, change to I C6/9 Bb9 Am7 A7b10 I
Dm9 / / G(b)13 I. Taking a closer look, however, these added harmonic progressions are
merely ornamentations of a tune that comes pre-ornamented. The G chord in the second
bar makes the transition from Dm to the Cmaj7 in the third bar a bit easier: a
conventional II-V-I. In the same way, the A7b10 prepares for the appearance of Dm.

Am7 can be regarded as a substitution chord for C. Finally, Bb9 leads chromatically from
C to Am and is, at the same time, the tritonus of E7, the V of Am. So, in fact, Evans'
'Alfie' is not reharmonized. Although extended with additional chords, the harmonic
foundational structure remains the same. His improvisations stay close to the melody and
never extend over more than the first half of the form (the first two A's): approaching the
bridge, he always returns to the theme.
I digressed. Let's go back to that 'other' 'Alfie', the melodic part of the composition. In
many popular songs, the melody is directly derived from the chords. In 'Alfie', the
melody is supported by the chords; the melody note often extends the chord (cf. for
instance bars 8, 10, 21, and 33). Unfamiliar with jazz chords, the use of unresolved
melodic cadences in 'Alfie' can leave the listener hanging. Furthermore, the melody
constantly runs the risk of simply extending outwards in a series of increasingly far-flung
spirals, losing the possibility of circling acceptably back. How far can it drift from the
starting point or opening motif before the literate listener (performer, analyst) loses all
hope that it is ever going to get back? The melody meanders so unpredictably that it is
threatened with unbridgeable gaps and unexpected dissonances. But then Bacharach
abruptly brings it home by using some type of deft shortcut or another (cf. for instance
bars 10 and 25-6). This can be explained in part by Bacharach's remark that his work
proceeds from the lyrics; 'It can take you to different places than you might have gone to
left on your own. The lyric dictated that the melody needed to go there'. But in some
sense, the lyrics hardly seem to matter to this music; are they anything more than an
occasion to let Bacharach play with a very elaborate melodic and harmonic palette?
[4] 'Promises, Promises'. In fact, this song is about false promises, the mental pressure to
keep your pledges to yourself. What does 'Promises, Promises' musically promise? First
of all, a 3/4 time. However, already in the first bar, the melody tries to break this promise.
To be sure, the 3/4 time is maintained, but the six notes divided up in two groups of three
notes ask rather for a 6/8 time. 'Things that I promised myself fell apart' the lyrics tell us.
This kind of introspection can be recognized in the rhythmic part of the song. (Is the
sentiment and meaning of the lyrics that are 'driving' the rhythmic development?) Meter
and time dissociate in this first bar; they fall apart. Chances are very high that the second
bar is indeed a 3/4. But one could read the third as a transposed copy (this seems like a
paradox) of the first (again as a 6/8) while bars 5 and 6 are in 4/4 time. From the very
start, the song has many difficulties in keeping its promise. No, not many difficulties; it
cannot fulfill its pledge. 'Promises, promises, this is where those promises, promises end!
I won't pretend ...'. They end immediately where they started. Here, different than that of
'Alfie' probably, it is difficult to blame the lyrics for the melodic development. It is not
grammatically, nor poetically necessary to repeat 'promises' the second time (bar 3). And
where the sentence ends, with the word 'end', the melodic phrase does not end. Only the
melodic and rhythmic inventions of Bacharach are to blame here. I will not assert that the
melody works against the lyrics. More carefully, more prudently put, it works outside of
it.
The following bars are more quiet. The promise of time is redeemed. Still, the musical
phrases have patterns and pulses of their own as a result of the frequently occurring
syncopations. Sometimes it seems as if this part of the piece was written with a formal
rhythm for the purpose of keeping the performers together.

I come to the end now. A feast of excess. Superabundance, almost dissipation, waste.
Time changes every bar. Time signatures tumble over one another. The end cannot
control itself. Bacharach cannot control himself. Maybe he cannot even control the end; it
follows its own dynamics, beyond any control. Bacharach, however, makes excuses: 'I
don't know they [time changes, MC] are there until I go to write it out'. Maybe Bacharach
is right: maybe it is a bit boring trying to keep your promise, to promise a 3/4 time and to
maintain it throughout the entire song. 'Promises, promises, take all the joy from life', the
text goes on before it ends with: 'My kind of promises can lead to joy'. Whose kind of
promises? Bacharach's? His kind of promise is to break his promise. His kind of promise
is a non-promise. He promises a waltz, but there never is one. He promises a waltz in G
major, but the second and third chords already do not fit this key. He breaks his promise
already in the first bar, after only three notes. But it can lead to joy. We can see him
smile, we can hear him laugh. 'I put them on the wrong track again'. Or, the melodic
development has put us on the wrong track.
At other times, however, he doesn't fail to keep his promise because he didn't promise.
There is no trace, for example, of the standard patterns A-A-B-A or verse-chorus-versechorus-interlude-verse-chorus. Of course, one can expect them in a musical song, a
popular hit. One hopes for it. But they're not there. And he didn't promise: 'I'm all through
with promises, promises ... I feel free'.
I'm all through with 'Promises, Promises'.
[5] His peers were first to recognize his genius. They tended to copy his arrangements
almost note for note amounting to a sort of tribute. But would paying tribute be the same
as imitation, as mimicry? Can it be different? Must it be different, perhaps? Derrida
suggests another perspective in 'At This Very Moment In This Work Here I Am', a text
which honors Levinas by being 'ungrateful', 'faulty', 'violent' to him. (I'm using the
quotation marks to make clear that these words are not used not in the usual sense.) It has
to be ungrateful in order to maintain the ethical structure that Levinas' texts puts to work,
an ethical structure that generously goes from 'the same' to 'the other' without ever
returning to the same. So, in his text Derrida is (has to be) loyal and disloyal at the same
time, avoiding a return to the same, to Levinas (cf. Of the Critics.) In my opinion, Zorn
works in much the same way as Derrida. Consider, for example, Spy Vs. Spy, Zorn's
tribute to Ornette Coleman. Zorn isn't playing any cover versions; he doesn't imitate
Coleman's music or his way of playing. This kind of gratitude would return the work to
the same. In this sense, Zorn is disloyal. But he is loyal to the intense energy and real
'bluesiness' of this music. It shocked people. They didn't understand it. It was mere noise
to them. So Zorn promised himself: 'If I'm going to do a record on Ornette, it's got to be a
punch right in the face, it's got to shock people - the way his music did in the early '60s,
because that was an important part of what that experience was, it was so different'. So I
said 'It's got to go all the way. Let's bring the energy up more, the trash' (Cagne, p.523).
Rather than paying respect by playing jazz 'under glass la Wynton Marsalis' there is a
reinvention of the tradition, a tradition 'that needs to be updated to keep it alive' (cf.
Jones, p.151). Zorn honors Coleman, not by copying him, but by letting other voices
(noises) be heard, in a way that Coleman did in the 1960's.
Updating it to keep it alive. That's what Zorn does with Bacharach's music, as well. How?
Let's return to the liner notes for a moment. Zorn characterizes Bacharach as 'a

questioner' with 'an original vision and sharp ear for detail'. 'Bacharach's songs explode
the expectations of what a popular song is supposed to be ... Maddeningly complex,
sometimes deceptively simple, these are more than just great pop songs: these are deep
explorations of the materials of music and should be studied and treasured with as much
care and diligence as we accord any great works of art'. Questioning musical conventions.
Staking expectations. Examining the materials of music. These are the key phrases. And
according to these standards, we could judge Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach.
Updating it to keep it alive. How? Not by adding some musical aspects (ornaments) to the
surface, but by removing them from the depth, by sifting out what seems unnecessary.
Zorn's project lends credence to the notion that the way to recapture the past is to tear it
apart. Not adding further decoration to the tunes, but stripping away textures and
trappings to find the song's skeleton. To be faithful. To honor him. 'The intention, in all
cases, has been to pay tribute to one of the world's greatest songwriters' (liner notes).
Not adding something to Bacharach's originals, but suppressing certain elements
(sometimes cunningly, sometimes overtly) in order to make space for something new.
Listen to Joey Baron's version of 'Alfie'. On drums. Solo. The melody becomes vaguely
apparent. An empty outline. Toms, snare and cymbals mark the contours of this song. By
playing the melody on drums, Baron is hiding the missing parts of this solo version, but
at the same time, exhibiting the lost parts in absentia. 'Alfie' appears as a specter: blurred,
not clearly recognizable. The opposition of present vs. absent is being undermined in this
spectrality. It appears. But there is something that has disappeared as well, departed in the
apparition, itself a re-apparition of the departed. And it appears with a slight alteration:
The striking four semi-quavers, followed by a minim, do not appear on the first beat of
the bar, but they do appear on the second. But what's it all about! 'Are we meant to take
more than we give, or are we meant to be kind?' Is it a question of choosing, as the 'or'
suggests? Baron took more than he gives back, but he is 'kind' to Bacharach. Not by
imitating him, but by emphatically allowing the meandering of the melody to be heard.
Rhythmically. 'I learned those songs according to how the phrases breathe', Baron says
(Heller). But Baron does not seem to need the lungs in order to let his 'Alfie' breathe; he
needs only the skeleton.
[6] The point is not about roots, but connections. Not arborescent systems, but rhizomes.
How far from its point of origin, from its home, can a version (not a cover!) wander?
How violently can the original be distorted, while remaining tantalizingly recognizable?
(I call it 'violently distorted' because it is not a return to the same, not a repetition of the
same.) One of the difficulties in dealing with Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach is that
of grasping the furtive moment when a certain (border)line is crossed, and of grasping,
too, the step with which it is crossed, the infringement that detaches the music from its
'original' milieu. Sometimes, charting the migration of the musical materials becomes part
of the listening experience. A play between similarities and differences. A shibboleth
between both pieces of music. A shibboleth that guarantees the transition from the one to
the other, in all their difference, within the realm of the same (cf. Shibboleth, p.57).
Let's expand on the strangeness of being-at-home, being-away-from-home, being called
away from the native country, or called away from home within the native country ... 'A
House Is Not A Home'. Anthony Coleman (keyboards, piano, trombone, vocals), Doug
Wieselman (clarinet) and Jim Pugliese (percussion, trumpet). I'm not going to discuss it

in detail. I cannot explain in words what the music tells us so well. Please listen to it.
Listen to how alienating the opening notes of the melody sound when badly played on the
trumpet. Listen to the dissonant accompaniment on keyboards and clarinet. Listen to the
second part of the main theme, stretched out like a rubber band by the piano in indistinct
harmonic progressions. Listen how 'everything' converges again, resolves, on the tonic in
bar 10, but how they extend this 'coming home' (by, for example, a ritenuto) before the
trumpet gives the sign to leave again. Listen, finally, to 'the bridge' that is played in an
entirely different tempo where a sweet clarinet repeats the first two bars (neither
indicated, nor played in the original) accompanied by a discordant pedal point on the
keyboard and dissonant minims by trombone and trumpet. At the very least, this
translation is not a very common version of Bacharach's title song for the movie of the
same name. When you know the 'original' version, this one can lead to a very
discomforting experience. You certainly will not feel at home. It involves a
transformation, if not a perversion, of the way this music is read 'in general' and perhaps
by Bacharach himself. 'A house is not a home when there's no one there to hold you
tight'. Detached from the author, the holder, there is no one to protect the musical text
from dispossession, expropriation, despoilment, decontextualization. This must be taken
into consideration. Once written down (recorded), a (musical) text is irrevocably
detached from the intentions of the author (composer). He must relinquish his text, and he
cannot be present when it is repeated or reread. As an inscription, as a mark, it can be
iterated, cited, parodied, distorted, extracted from its context, confronted with other
marks. Because of its own materiality, a mark cannot prevent connections that the author
did not specifically intend (cf. (D)(R)econtextualization.)
This tune turns out to be a mobile home. Or in a mobile home, like chairs that can be
moved from one house (context) to the next. Never at home once and for all, never for
good embedded in one context, never forever protected against the possibilities of
transformation and alteration.
[7] What is this Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach made by Zorn and his 'inner circle
of noisemakers and deconstructionists'? (cf. Davis, p.4). Certainly, it is not a collection of
cover versions. Neither is it a compilation of interpretations, at least not in the
conventional meaning of interpretation. Bacharach's hits are not newly arranged, but
rather disarranged. In commenting on Bacharach, in rereading him in a certain way, Zorn
deconstructs the opposition between 'same' and 'other'. The accents are changed; surplus
value is added. Sometimes his musical language is almost unrecognizable. The
commentary becomes obscene. Playing the tunes in another way becomes playing other
than Bacharach, other than 'proper'. Zorn does not relate to this music in a humble,
respectful, or timid fashion. He negotiates with it to reveal the richness of the music. The
music is provoked, violated, forced. It is stricken in its weak moments, in its incapacity to
exclude everything it doesn't want to say: folding or stretching a melody, adding
discordant voices or dissonant chords, playing a tune deliberately badly or letting
undifferentiated noises enter, ignoring the structure of the compositions, playing only
faintly recognizable fragments of it. Not at all like Stan Getz and Bill Evans who leave
the tunes intact and only insert some melodic or harmonic variations. Not at all like
'Alfie' recorded by Everything But The Girl in 1988 where it is played just slightly more
'pop-ish'.

In 'Edmond Jabs and the Question of the Book' (Writing and Difference, p.64-78),
Derrida examines two possible positions in relation to textuality and interpretation. He
distinguishes between a rabbi and a poet. Derrida writes: 'But the shared necessity of
exegesis, the interpretive imperative, is interpreted differently by the rabbi and the poet.
The difference between the horizon of the original text and exegetic writing makes the
difference between the rabbi and the poet irreducible' (Writing and Difference, p.67).
Both of them have lost the 'original' text. Both of them interpret. However, the rabbi, the
sage who possesses knowledge and power, strongly holds onto the horizon of an 'original'
meaning. He tries to reconstruct the 'original' text. The poet, on the contrary, writes
without hope of a complete restoration. He considers himself free. But there is only a
minor difference between them. The poet is not in a position to abstract entirely from 'the
horizon of the original text' either. So the difference is that the poet highlights and
accepts the absence of an origin more so than the rabbi.
The analogy should be clear. Where Zorn feels himself free to withdraw from
Bacharach's originals without losing track of them, the others stay much closer to the
original texts, in either case harmonically. They are the rabbis, Zorn is the poet.
So let's continue with the poetry. Sometimes it is just playing the tunes otherwise, more
modern, to make them applicable to the times by bringing the feeling and the essence of
what Bacharach tried to accomplish with this music in a (post-)modern way. Playing with
the notes and playing beyond the notes. Neither attached, nor detached. The melodies and
harmonies are present, but alienated, transformed, distorted. Similar to 'The Man Who
Shot Liberty Valance'. Here Bacharach juxtaposes a country fiddler against a full string
section, and he uses rhythms that evoke images of square dances and horse clops in order
to capture a hint of the Old West. But right from its annunciatory fiddle line, this little
cowboy symphony seems even further removed from any conceivable prairie than any
other Hollywood Western theme. Elliott Sharp changes this soundtrack into a far more
vicious piece of music. (Driven by the lyrics?) The disquieting character is reinforced by
the drone of the C-tone throughout the entire piece. The use of a filter sweep causes the
frequency spectrum of this 'C' to constantly change (although still at home, also on his
way). The scene has changed from the Wild West of a couple of centuries ago to some
desolate industrial area of a metropolis of the 1990's. The desperado, Liberty Valance,
turns into a street criminal, the revolver into a machine gun (listen, for example, to the
drum sections), the fiddle into an electric guitar. The fear of the people when he is nearby
is converted into a squealing, whining guitar solo. Or is it the final gunfight in which
Liberty Valance dies? It does not matter here. It's about playing the same tune and
playing it entirely otherwise at the same time. The melodic themes are present, even
played decently. But as for the rest, this version reminds us little of Gene Pitney singing
Hal David's skilful synopsis of the John Ford movie.
[8] With shameless attention, the periphery (or is it the heart?) of Bacharach's musical
corpus is explored. Following it with meticulous care, the musicians lend it occasionally
unrecognizable echos. They take Bacharach into areas where he would perhaps dwell
reluctantly. They make him part of an incrowd where he could feel compromised. How
can this happen? The materiality and textuality of a (musical) text makes falling back on
an immediate being present at the intentions of the author (composer) impossible. All that
remains is the materiality of the text. This means that each text always runs the risk of

being de- and recontextualized. The risk is inherent in the structure of a text as text. By
its materiality, a text cannot prevent the possibility of connections (with other (re)marks)
that the author didn't intend, that he does not necessarily like or approve. The departure
from a 'proper' context is not an accidental possibility, but a constituent of a text as text.
'The approaches in this collection are as varied as the contributors who participated.
Some will delight you, some will confuse you, some may even annoy you' (liner notes).
Zorn probably addresses himself to the listener, but we cannot exclude the possibility that
his writing is directed to Bacharach.

The Death of the Composer

[1] What is composing? What does it mean to be a composer? How different is it from
arranging, orchestrating or performing? Strange questions, perhaps. We have dictionaries
at our disposal. For example, The Oxford English Dictionary: An inexhaustible
enumeration just for making clear the (alleged) differences. To compose: to put together
(parts or elements) so as to make up a whole. To compose music: to invent and put into
proper form; to set to music. To arrange: to adapt (a composition) for instruments or
voices for which it was not originally written; to place things in some order. To perform:
to complete, to finish (an action, a work, a process); to execute (a piece of work, literary
or artistic); to execute formally a piece of music. According to these definitions,
composing, arranging, and performing seem to be clearly distinguished activities. Also,
with respect to chronology: composing precedes arranging and performing. Maybe we
could even say that performing in particular is a mere supplement to composing. Each
composition has a lack: it needs a performance to appear. A performance is required for a
composition to be audible. A performance is an exteriority, an outside to the
composition's inside, a necessary evil because it can never represent the composition
exactly. On one hand, in every performance, in every interpretation something is lost - cf.
how composers such as Pierre Boulez, Brian Ferneyhough and Frank Zappa in his later
years sometimes notate their music (or, in the case of Zappa, play it by himself on the
synclavier) in order to avoid too much freedom for interpretation, i.e. do the work wrong,
misinterpret it. But it is impossible to control everything; it is impossible for a
performance to function as a transparent and a neutral medium. On the other hand, and
precisely because of the last argument, in every performance there is something added as
well, things that the composer cannot control, cannot avoid, did not think of (cf.
Supplement).
[2] Zorn reduces the distinction between composing and arranging. Let's take as a starting
point 'Once Upon A Time In The West' from The Big Gundown, Zorn's tribute to Ennio
Morricone. In an interview Zorn comments: 'Arranging is more than just saying this
instrument does this, and that instrument does that. It's several things. It's knowing, for
starters, what an instrumentalist can do, and putting him in a context that's gonna make
him shine. In the Morricone record [The Big Gundown, MC], deciding who did what was
more than just deciding this should be two guitars; it was deciding that I wanted this to be
[Robert] Quine and Jody Harris because they're two people who have worked together,
developed a certain rapport. So it's a matter of players and personalities'. What is Zorn
doing when he is arranging, assuming that The Big Gundown consists of arrangements of
Morricone's music, something we could seriously question? He is not only connecting
two electric guitars to perform a version of 'Once Upon A Time In The West'. He is
bringing together, uniting, placing together, two guitar players to transform this tune into
a harrowing, dissonant sound-scape in which now and then fragments of the original
appear. To connect, to bring together, to unite, to place together. To put together this
ensemble. Other words for that word we should actually avoid here: to compose. Zorn's
arranging turns out to be (also) a form of composing.

Should we say that Zorn (re)arranged 'Once Upon A Time in The West'? Should we say to return to Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach - that Fred Frith arranged 'Trains And
Boat And Planes'? (On (D)(R)econtextualization you can find a more extensive
reflection on this composition.) Arranging - to play the same tune with other instruments?
This is not what is happening there. Frith isn't just playing 'Trains And Boat And Planes'
on electric guitar with distortion and electronic organ supported by electronic beats
instead of smooth female voices, acoustic strings and modest percussion. He seems to
quote Bacharach's tune, but not within another musical text. He is not playing the whole
tune, but enlarges and pulls out some parts while leaving out others. (What happens when
certain word-fragments are underlined in a citation? Is it still a case of 'citing', of 'using',
of 'mentioning'? Derrida asks himself in Limited Inc.) He changes the entire structure of
the song so that the same song turns into an other, which is at the same time, the same.
Better said, it is an in-between that does not oscillate between the same and the other, but
a transversal moment that sweeps one and the other away. Frith's arrangement is a
composition. His composition is an arrangement ('I urge you to search out the original
versions'). The more traditional and hierarchical distinction between the 'original' and the
'arrangement' is displaced by Frith. And by Zorn. In the liner notes, Zorn speaks of
'approaches' instead of interpretations or arrangements. An approach. That means a
difference and a deferral at the same time in order to remain an approach. Infinitely.
Diffrance. I would like to call 'Trains And Boat And Planes' a deconstruction in music
of Bacharach's song. Deconstruction does not escape from the language of the passages
that it cites. It is of the same nature as that which it works against. However,
deconstruction is not only a parasite; it is also a parricide. It feeds itself with the hostmusic and kills it at the same time. It suggests the demolition of the helpless music (cf.
Hillis Miller, p.251). Killing. Demolishing. Yes. But as we know deconstruction is not
only destructive (cf. Deconstruction - an Affirmative Strategy of Transformation).
Deconstruction keeps its host alive as well. Alive. An elixer of life. Construction and
transformation. As opposed to preservation.
[3] A composer of classical music in the conventional sense writes down a score that can
basically be performed by any musician. The composer, John Zorn, not only writes down
a score. (Sometimes, as in Cobra, it is an indeterminate score, so the piece assumes the
character of its performers. Sometimes Zorn describes his composer role as that of an
organizer or director who sets up rules so that the people in the band have to make
decisions, have to communicate. Composing turns out to be something more, something
other than 'setting to music'. Zorn is not in control of 'his' music, he does not own it. Once
written down, once in the hands of other musicians, he can no longer master it: 'I have a
general conception of the framework, and what belongs in the frame stays, what does not
belong does not get written down. And the frame is constantly changing ... The frame
starts to stretch. It's my job as a composer not to get in the way of the growth of a piece.
But I have a responsibility to ensure its integrity, to make sure it doesn't stretch so far that
it's not the piece it was intended to be' ... But it is not about expression: 'I'm not trying to
express myself, I'm trying to create expressive music ... I've created a certain body of
work. Each piece has a life of its own and exists and gives new life to other pieces and to
other musicians ... I try to create these children that go out and do their own thing. And
best luck of them'.) He also puts together the ensemble that is performing his music and

he considers this an essential part of composing. This means that to Zorn, making music
becomes more than just playing a score - a performance of his work which could easily
be replaced by another performance, by other musicians. Maybe more so than other
composers, Zorn is aware of the fact that every interpreter lends his own signature to a
performance, making this performance irreplaceable by any other. And he draws a
conclusion from this. Zorn - as arranger, composer, sometimes performer (roles that often
overlap) - puts together a palette of sounds he wants to hear from the singular ways in
which several musicians who are known to him handle their instrument(s). He uses the
Shibboleth, the friend's word. A musical password. Inclusion. The sign of belonging,
belonging to his musical community. The musicians who are admitted can pronounce this
Shibboleth; they speak the same musical languages. They are thus allowed to cross the
threshold where others have to stay outside. Shibboleth as a judgment of exclusion.
Not everyone can perform his music since 'his' music is always already the result of a
collaboration with select others. These others are chosen by him because of the mark they
leave on 'his' music while performing it. Zorn's music is 'his' music to the extent that it is
expropriated by the others, i.e. that it becomes, at the same time, the music of the others.
'His' music only becomes into being afterwards, at the moment it is performed. So it is
not the score that keeps Zorn's music for future generations; it is the recording first of all
(cf. Lesage, p.27-8).

Deconstruction
[1] Deconstruction. The name of a (former) band. They recorded a single album with the
same name and then called it quits. The band never performed live. Members:
guitarist/vocalist Dave Navarro, bass/vocalist Eric Avery (both were former members of
Jane's Addiction) and drummer Michael Murphy. Before the release of the debut album
in 1994, they had already disbanded as Navarro was enlisted by the Red Hot Chili
Peppers. It was a dead band that had risen for a moment from the ashes of another dead
band even before the first CD was released. (You can find more information on
Deconstruction at http://members.home.com/g12241/decon/).
[2] In one of the scanty interviews Avery granted, he says about the band's name: 'The
word deconstruction applied to where I was at the time and also was prophetic about
where I was going to be a year and a half later. It represented the demise of Jane's
Addiction, the final break between David [Navarro] and I, and really signifies that I really
am no longer in Jane's Addiction. That part of my life is really in the past ... The name
Deconstruction fit instinctively without my knowing why. It seemed to dictate exactly
what the experience was going to be about - not only in the relationship that I had with
David, but how I made my music. It fits with deconstructive philosophy, but the choice
was totally unconscious, not contrived or manipulated. We began to write songs, not
paying attention to what was being put out as far as the alternate of sound' (my italics).
[3] Obviously, Avery is using the word deconstruction in its most literal sense, the
junction of a negativism (destruction) and a positivism (construction), the combination of
an end and a beginning, an end as the beginning of something new. Deconstruction is the
solidification in (the name of) a band, the transition from the music of Jane's Addiction to
something else, and finally, the change in a relationship (between Avery and Navarro
when the latter prematurely left Deconstruction).
We have to wait until the last sentence to observe a new layer, another meaning, a shift
from a more personal outpouring in which deconstruction finds its place and significance
to a point where deconstruction takes on a musical meaning. 'We began to write songs,
not paying attention to what was being put out as far as the alternate of sound'. Avery
recalls he was no longer interested in making rock music per se, no coherent wholeness
with regard to sound, as well as structure, in a rough rock style. Using the musical
materials of the rock world (line-up, amplification, (use and function of) instruments, the
contextual infrastructure of this music (sub)world), the band tried mainly to dismantle the
formal structure of a standard rock song (verse-chorus-verse-chorus-guitar solo-chorus).
A deconstruction on the inside from the inside. To Avery, composing for Deconstruction
meant putting together musical parts that do not work together in order to see if a new
relationship happens between them. (He compares his compositions with the paintings of
collagist and creator of assemblages, David Salle. Salle juxtaposes iconography, objects,
styles, and techniques from the antipodal extremes of high and low art. For example, in
Landscape with Two Nudes and Three Eyes, he appropriates an historical masterpiece of
art by the Dutch master, Meindert Hobbema, with a picture of a nude woman in a

provocative pose.) There is no cyclic structure in which the chorus often returns to secure
the unity of the composition; one cannot hear a stylistically closed-off whole. The songs
on the album, Deconstruction, are characterized by a linear approach, a sequential
construction of different types of sound and music. Not a complete whole, but a principle
openness, an essentially infinite succession of distinct sound-scapes or musical fragments
(a cut-and-paste monument as it is referred to by a review), more A-B-C-D than A-AB-A. The illusion of a possible unity (it is always difficult to determine the boundaries of
a text) is provoked by making musical dissemination the principle of composing.
[4] Avery: 'I did indeed have the abruptnesses intentionally in mind. It interested me to
try making a record that mimicked the audio/visual randomness of daily life in any major
metropolis. Like TV. I was thinking about how incredible the human faculty for making
sense is. That we are able to make order out of the barrage of images and sounds that
assault us all the time is amazing ... The record title refers to the post-modern architects
and thinkers who played around with things being defined by what they are standing next
to rather than by themselves. I wanted to try to pair up seemingly unrelated musical parts
and see what kind of music would be produced'. This process, for example, lead to 'L.A.
Song'. 'The first and second parts of 'L.A. Song' have no real connection, but the fact we
put them together does make sense because we allow them to exist side by side', Avery
says.
[5] To what is Avery referring when speaking about post-modern architects and thinkers?
There is no further explanation, so we can only guess. But he uses these people, he uses
some post-structuralist notions, to clarify (maybe to legitimize) Deconstruction's way of
working. Avery is suggesting at least an analogy between the work of some academic
philosophers and his ideas on composing. How do their theoretical explorations translate
into a musical language? Maybe Avery is talking about this diagram:
12
AB C
14
The middle mark means nothing in-and-of itself. It has no essential feature, but gains its
identity only through the difference from other elements in its system. The mark gets its
meaning in a certain context, i.e., it is impossible for a mark to have meaning outside of a
context. There is always context. However, no context can be entirely marked out and
there are many contexts. Meaning is context-bound, but context is boundless. 'This is my
starting point:', Derrida writes, 'No meaning can be determined out of context, but no
context permits saturation. What I am referring to here is not richness of substance,
semantic fertility, but rather structure, the structure of the remnant or of iteration' ('Living
On. Borderlines', p.81). Meaning comes into being and changes through context; a mark
means something in relation with other marks. (And why not call a musical part, a mark?)
As the context, the environment changes (because of iterability, the possibility to repeat a
mark in a different context), a mark does not get a non-meaning but a (partial) other
meaning. The first and second parts of 'L.A. Song' did not have any prior connection; the
musical parts came from different contexts, perhaps even different musical languages, but

putting them together gave them a different meaning. (The middle mark in the diagram
changes meaning depending on the horizontal or vertical way it is read.) Not a totally
different meaning because each mark always already bears traces of other contexts within
it. The different musical parts are at once related and unrelated. Like Deconstruction:
freed from the general concept of traditional rock music, but at the same time working
with and within this tradition. An exteriority on the inside.
[6] The manner in which some musicians invoke (appropriate) Derridas philosophy of
deconstruction has been shown here. Not only by using the name 'deconstruction';
departing from their music and texts a space opens where deconstruction appears in an
altered form. Certainly less philosophical, maybe less profound, but, in any case, grafted
onto an other discipline. No explicit imitation of Derrida's intentions and thoughts. Not
only would it be impossible to translate a discursive language into a musical one, but it
would also be a betrayal to the work in which he expresses himself.
Sometimes we encounter him without recognizing him.

DJ Spooky
[1] Several quasi-philosophical essays by the versatile artist, Paul D. Miller (alias DJ
Spooky), can be found at the DJ Spooky website (www.djspooky.com). In
'Uncanny/Unwoven Notes towards a New Conceptual Art', many famous names from the
canon of Western philosophy and high art turn up regularly. From Ovid to Deleuze, from
Kant to Freud, from Duchamp to Artaud and Beuys, from Chomsky to Hegel and
Derrida. The references whiz past one's ears.
Main theme of Miller's essay: An analysis of the condition of contemporary art and its
engagement with the real. Miller wants to open some alternative perspectives on the
reality in which we live. For Miller, reality is a social construct and we need to rethink
this construct from the perspective of our global tele-mediated culture. Today we live in
an 'electric-modern reality', a 'proscenium of presence and absence'. (It is not so difficult
to imagine that virtual reality in particular raises questions about presence and absence.)
New technologies have led to fragmentation, continuous transformation, and a 'plurality
of reals'. ('In the electronically accelerated environment that we call home, a turbulent
cloud of paradoxical meanings arises whenever the notion of consensus is engaged'.)
Miller writes that art was, and is, our guide to these new terrains because of its special
and rapidly changing relationship with reality. He mentions the conceptual art of Bochner
and Duchamp as a starting point. Their recontextualization of everyday objects (an
ordinary urinal turned into a work of art) meant a transformation and an extension of
meanings of these objets trouvees or 'ready mades'. According to Miller, conceptual art
opens up a world of cross-referenced double meanings, 'a world of Derridean
textuality where the double ... becomes the foundation for art and the way we experience
its textuality'. The binary opposition art versus reality, art representing the real, is
contested, perhaps even deconstructed. Art is not representing reality anymore, art is
reality. The opposition is no longer adequate. Furthermore, art teaches us that no
signifier, no object, has a fixed meaning. Meanings are floating, continuously changing.
And so are we, living in an 'electric-modern' world of multiple realities, playing different
roles in different situations. No fixed identity. ('The 20th century has bequeathed to the
creative mind a panoply of identities'.) What only a few decades ago was the exclusive
domain of the arts - playing with different identities and meanings in different contexts has become a part of the everyday reality in which we find ourselves immersed. All this
because of technological innovations and the opening of alternative perspectives that
reflect on and affect mankind (post-structuralist philosophy, the linguistic turn). In
Derridean style, Miller writes, 'the 20th century has been a realm of disappearance and reinscription, an electro-magnetic dance between the real and the unreal - a place where
presence and absence become two signifiers of a condition of dispersed identity'. Neither
subject nor object has a stable unitary reference point, but are counters [pawns] in a
system of relational, associative, and referential meanings. Il n'y a pas hors contexte
['There is nothing outside context'].
[2] A confused story ('If you're looking for a smooth clean linear analysis ... look
someplace else')? Superficial? Not very innovative despite Miller's own opinion about

this ('This essay will engage in radically different perspectives on the reality we all live
in')? Of course, there is a lot to be said against Miller. For me, however, he serves
primarily as an illustration. An illustration of someone who uses post-structuralistic
views, Derridean language and analyses in trying to make clear his idea on how presentday disjunctions in reality and in identity have had their predecessor in artistic
developments. For Miller, philosophy, art, and modern technology are three equal
domains through which the world in which we live can be analyzed. He places the
thoughts of jazz musician Charles Mingus next to those of Freud, the poetry of Phillis
Wheatly ('One of the first African Americans to write a book') next to a quote from
Derrida's The Truth In Painting, a Richard Wright haiku next to a discussion on Hegel's
thesis about the end of art. (Could we compare this to Derrida's Glas in which he
juxtaposes the philosophy of Hegel and the literature of Jean Genet and where he
questions philosophical notions of how knowledge should be passed down through
rigidly controlled channels?) 'Uncanny/Unwoven Notes towards a New Conceptual Art'
can be regarded as an example of different cultural utterances (different levels?)
interacting with one another, assuming different meanings when recontextualized, as they
say in the DJ world, 'in the mix'. The ideas of Derrida and others are used (misused?),
borrowed, grafted and (thereby) transformed and disseminated. Iterability. (cf.
(D)(R)econtextualization). Although music is mentioned, it is neither an essay about
music, nor an essay about deconstruction in music. However, let's say in a Deleuzean
way, there are many 'lines of flight' or 'rhizomatic structures' (and this page is one of
them) that connect Miller's writing to (his) music, Derrida and deconstruction. Lines of
flight: the movements by which 'one' leaves the territory and makes new connections,
differential relations internal to deterritorialization itself.

Great Jewish Music

[1] From the liner notes of Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach
'Burt Bacharach is one of the great geniuses of American popular music - and he's a Jew.
This should come as no surprise since many of America's greatest songwriters have been
Jewish - Irving Berlin, Kurt Weill, George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen
Sondheim, Leiber & Stoller, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Richard Hell, Beck. The Jews are a
tribe who continue to believe that if they devote themselves to a place they love and
contribute to the society selflessly that they will be embraced and accepted into it. In
many cases this has proved to be a fatal error, yet there they go again, stubbornly
believing in their own ability and vision. It is arguable that the history of the Jews in this
century has produced one of the most richly rewarding periods of culture in Jewish
history. Yet, this fact is somehow kept neatly hidden. WHAT? Compare Philip Roth to
Sholem Aleichem? Kafka to Moses de Leon? Walter Benjamin to Rashi? Wittgenstein to
Spinoza? Steve Reich to Felix Mendelssohn? Allen Ginsberg to Yehudah Halevi?
Einstein to Nostrodamus? Lenny Bruce to Hillel? Burt Bacharach is such a name ... I
hope this set can in some small way repay Burt for the inspiration he has provided for
generations of musicians in their battle to be creative and keep producing in the face of
what often seems like insurmountable odds. Thank you, Burt. Thank you for not
changing your name. We will always love you'.
From the liner notes of Great Jewish Music: Serge Gainsbourg
'Born to Russian-Jewish parents, Lucien Ginzburg was to become a sex symbol as Serge
Gainsbourg ... Gainsbourg's poetry slyly combines his Jewish sense of humor with the
French romantic tradition and the perverse twists inherited from Grard de Nerval,
Baudelaire, Genet, Bataille and Sade ... Like many Jews who were raised in an
atmosphere of mild-to-violent anti-semitism (Fritz Lang, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Nathanial
West) Gainsbourg downplayed his Jewish roots. Jewishness was not an active part of his
public persona. But Jewish identity is a complex thing. Accept it as a blessing or curse it
as a disease, it is part of you whether you like it or not. And it is there in Gainsbourg's
songs. At times certain inflections, lyrics or turns-of-phrase sound strangely Jewish, but I
will leave the provocative discussion of just how Jewish his music is to another time and
another place'.
[2] Great Jewish Music. Part of the Radical Jewish Culture series. Released by Tzadik.
Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach and Great Jewish Music: Serge Gainsbourg. Liner
notes from John Zorn. About Jews. About Jewishness. About Jewish music. This is what
interests me here. But where do we begin? Too many matters need to be discussed. Too
many questions can be asked. What does this radical Jewish culture reference mean?
What is Jewish culture? What is Jewish music? Does it mean that the themes of this
music are either Jewish in nature or that they have many influences from that culture? Or
is it simply the fact that these men are both musicians and Jewish, and, therefore, must
make Jewish music? Perhaps their music isn't characteristically Jewish. But then what
exactly is 'real' Jewish music? How does it sound? Does it have any specific harmonic
and melodic structures? And conversely, why is that music 'actually' Jewish, while other

music made by Jewish musicians is not? Is Jewish music something entirely other than
music written by Jews?
How can we relate these Great Jewish Music projects to some of Zorn's other works, for
instance Kristallnacht, the Masada series, Bar Kokhba, and his chambermusic with
Jewish titles? And to the works that have no apparent connection with Jewishness on first
thought?
Maybe we should start to think from another position. Does the work become something
other than 'merely music' by putting the word 'Jewish' in the title? Is it Zorn's aim to force
people to rethink their notion of Jewish culture or identity? Is he asking us to examine
this music in a different context? Is it a political or ethnic statement ('a bizarre example of
ethnic proclamation', as Peter Niklas Wilson writes)? Is Zorn simplifying the problem of
'Jewish music' by invoking an atavistic form of identity politics, as New York Times
columnist Adam Shatz contends (cf. Cuthbert, p.22)? Or is he expanding and
reconsidering certain categories? This is what interests me here.
[3] The question of Jewish music. Or, more broadly, the (definition) problem of
Jewishness. I won't solve the problem here. The only thing I can do is offer some
considerations, some thoughts to avoid rash and premature conclusions or opinions. So
let's proceed carefully, meticulously, not too hastily. For instance, with some utterances
by Zorn. 'I am not religious, but interested in everything that has to do with Jewish
thinking. The question of what such a Jewish identity can mean to me, exploring and
renewing it, plays a central part in my life. The answer to the question of whether 'Jewish
music', as such, is recognizable, I find less interesting than the question itself; it is the
presentation of the question that is directive to me'. This is a translation from a Dutch
concert program from 1999. Three items are worthy of our attention here. First, following
Zorn, these projects are rarely, if ever, based on Jewish religion, and more often on more
general Jewish traditions. How general and how traditional we have to find out. Works
presented as Radical Jewish Culture, both on CD or as part of the several festivals with
this title that Zorn has curated, seem to have no relationship to Judaism as a religion, but
rather to a broader range of lived experiences shared by Jews. I'll come back to the
question of whether these experiences are exclusive to Jews. As yet, we have to content
ourselves by noticing a certain displacement from a possible religious orientation to a
more theoretical or even philosophical exploration of Jewish identity. This brings me to
the second point of interest. How is (t)his Jewishness explored? By posing questions. So
the answer to this question is itself a question. Are we already approaching a certain trace
of Jewishness here? Is some characteristic of being Jewish cautiously unveiled here? I
make this proposal: Suppose it is precisely an inexhaustable reference to an alterity, an
openness to otherness that is connected to Jewishness here (by Zorn). Derrida puts
forward this hypothesis in several passages in Writing and Difference and in Shibboleth.
'The Jew's identification with himself does not exist. Jew would perhaps be the other
name for the impossibility to be himself' (Writing and Difference, p.75. The second
sentence is only to be found in the French version, p.112). Could it be that the openness
to any alterity precisely reveals itself in asking questions? Perhaps questioning is (also) a
certain (temporary) deferring of one's identity. Or risking it. On the wrapper of
Kristallnacht, one can find this quote from the French Jewish writer, Edmond Jabs: 'The
Jew doesn't ask questions: he has himself become questions'. I'm going too fast. We are

entering a new domain of thinking Jewishness. Let's leave it for a while and come to the
third point. Above, I spoke of Zorn's orientation towards 'more general Jewish traditions'.
I have to reconsider the word 'traditions' because Zorn speaks about exploring and
renewing the question of Jewish culture and identity. All of his Masada CD's contain the
following quotation from Gershom Scholem, founder of Kabbala studies and professor in
Jerusalem. 'There is a life of tradition that does not merely consist of conservative
preservation, the constant continuation of the spiritual and cultural possessions of a
community. There is such a thing as a treasure hunt within tradition, which creates a
living relationship to tradition and to which much of what is best in current Jewish
consciousness is indebted, even where it was - and is - expressed outside the framework
of orthodoxy'. With Scholem's voice, Zorn seems to want to ease our minds; the
(re)discovery of his Jewishness does not lead to some reactionary retrospect. He not only
wants to give shape to a Jewish identity anew, he is reshaping it at the same time. In a
similar manner, he tries to rethink a definition of Jewish music and confronts it with a
drastic metamorphosis. I have to be careful here because a metamorphosis suggests that
something has changed. But what is that something when we are talking of Jewish
music? Even when we assume for a while that Jewish music is equal to Klezmer music (a
fault that is often made), it won't solve the problem. Klezmer doesn't imply unity of style.
It is influenced by gypsy music, folk music from the Balkans and Slavonic countries and,
especially in the USA, it mingled with jazz. (Gypsy music, folk, jazz: heterogeneous
musics like Klezmer. An abyss. Is there any unity of style? Any stabilized, self-identical
style? Is the concept 'Jewish music' blurred by Zorn precisely when he uses it?) And what
about the identity of the Jew? Is this an easily determined site or position? We'll have to
come back to this.
[4] Some say it all started with Kristallnacht and speak about a turn towards Jewish
culture, to give full breadth of it (Wilson; Cuthbert). This CD from 1993 is an exploration
and a rethinking of Jewish identity in a musical way. It is not just about the Holocaust, so
says Zorn in an interview. Some music is about what happened before the Holocaust:
'Shtetl' (Ghetto Life), which confronts Klezmer-like style with early propaganda speeches
of Hitler, and 'Never Again', the harrowing and painful musical expression of the
'Kristallnacht', the night in November 1938 in which the Nazis destroyed and devastated
Jewish stores, synagogues, and other properties in Germany. Other compositions are
about what happened after the Holocaust: 'Gahelet' (Embers) is a soft plaintive mourn
over the atrocities of the Holocaust. And according to Zorn, Kristallnacht is also about
the foundation of the state of Israel - Zorn here probably refers to 'Gariin' (Nucleus - the
New Settlement) -, about Jews today, and about the problems occurring when orthodoxy
goes too far (cf. Blumenfeld). Perhaps the latter idea is expressed in various compositions
where a combination of modern and traditional music can be heard. (For example, at the
beginning of 'Tzifia' (Looking Ahead) hardcore industrial noises are contrasted with old
recordings of a classically trained Jewish singer.) In Kristallnacht, Zorn relies on many of
the same techniques he used in earlier compositions: game pieces, file card pieces, free
improvisations, fully notated music. It is, however, his first project in which he employs
more than one of these compositional methods at the same time (cf.Cuthbert, p.7). It is as
if the Jewish identity is so diverse, so complex - am I already allowed to say nonexistent? - that Zorn needs to take advantage of all his musical experience and qualities,

all kinds of musical languages which perhaps are not his own.
For the second time, I anticipate an idea of an other Jewishness (another idea of
Jewishness), take an advance on an other model of Jewishness, that is, 'the Jew-as-other'
(Derrida). Jewishness as the other of identification, Jewishness as the other of a clear
individuality, even the other of a Jewish religious and cultural tradition. A Jewish
dimension of non-identity and non-individuality, as opposed to a certain Jewish tradition.
I turn to Jabs, again on the cover of Kristallnacht: 'The Jew has always been at the
origin of a double questioning: questioning himself, and questioning 'the other'. In truth,
there is no way of avoiding the ability to cease being Jewish; he is forced to question his
identity ... This may seem paradoxical, but it is precisely in that break - in that nonbelonging in search of it's belonging - that I am without doubt most Jewish'. Can we say
that Zorn is a composer and musician without a marked identity, without a certain
individuality and that precisely in this elusiveness his Jewishness can be marked out?
Let's postpone these ideas again. For just a little longer.
[5] If Kristallnacht is the first recorded musical expression of Zorn's (re)discovered
Jewishness (and I emphasize 'if'), then the pamphlet, 'Was genau ist diese Radical New
Jewish Culture?' [What exactly is this Radical New Jewish Culture?] from 1992,
published in the Art Project Festival program in Munich, can be regarded the first written
statement of it.
The manifesto opens with the thesis that the American Jews make a great contribution to
the diversity of American music. However, this contribution has practically stayed out of
sight up to now. According to Zorn and co-signatory, Marc Ribot, this is due to the fact
that Jews who are and have been very important to the development of popular music (for
instance, Bob Dylan and Michael Landon), often changed their names and identities.
('Thank you, Burt. Thank you for not changing your name'.) Conversely, the ones to
whom Jewishness openly appealed had been excluded from the cultural mainstream and
banished to the margins. Zorn and Ribot want to make this Jewish contribution more
overt, more visible, more manifest. But it is not the Jewishness, as such, that they are
trying to emancipate. Their main interest is in Radical New Jewish Culture, which
describes the position with regard to the mainstream American culture, as well as the
relation to the mainstream Jewish range of thought.
Clear assumptions and provocative statements, typical of and important to a pamphlet.
Less usual and perhaps more profound are the many questions Zorn and Ribot pose. Not
rhetorical ones, quasi-questions which already hold their answers, but open questions
(Jewish questions?) that lead to more than one answer, which is never final. Here are
some. Are there explicit Jewish musical values that are shared by all musicians, despite
the fact that they are often not religious, do not have any contact with Judaism, and do
not occupy themselves with Klezmer or Jewish liturgical music? Must Jewish music
necessarily include Jewish scales or themes, or is Jewish music simply music played by
Jews? Does this ideate an endpoint of Jewish music or a new beginning? Or both?
Then the questions change. To another plateau I might say. They turn towards the subject
I came across twice, but didn't finish, didn't really start, in fact. I continue. Is the
contribution of the Jews to the American music motivated by the wish to insert
themselves into the American culture or is it a sign of alienation of their own origin? Or
both? To what extent has the specific Jewish quality to defend and to embrace suppressed

elements from other cultures contributed to the 'patchwork-music' that was produced in
New York in the 1980's? Can music that is controversial, critical of the social structure,
and that is operating in the margins be connected with the archetypical Jewish history of
exile and oppression, with an indictment of iniquity?
[6] One last stop before we reach ... reach what? This place is Peter Niklas Wilson's
critical essay on Radical New Jewish Culture. According to Wilson, Zorn's turn to Jewish
music and identity (What is Jewish music? What is Jewish identity? Is it really a turn?) is
'a catalogue of symbolic operations' that accomplishes something that his music did
without before, that is, cultural identity. Wilson refers mainly to the Masada series and
Bar Kokhba, which he describes as adaptations of well-known more recent jazz-patterns,
interlarded with supposed melodic phrases from the Near East. Wilson shows more
sympathy for Zorn's earlier works. Precisely in these 'quick change collages' Wilson
descries a play with identities, an unrestricted decontextualization and a recombining of
musical data. Uninhibited and bold, 'reserved only to someone without roots' (a Jew
perhaps?). Some interesting sentences follow: 'The conversion of such a deconstruction
to the essence of Judaism - patchwork-aesthetics as principle of the Jewish Gestalt - was
a first step ... on the way to this Radical New Jewish Culture. The second stage is the
creation of a new, integral, homogeneous 'Jewish' music as an expression of a cultural
self-assurance. As brilliant as Zorn deconstructed a (music)cultural identity, he pitiful
failed in his reconstruction of a unbroken Jewish music' (Wilson, p.24, my italics, my
translation).
[7] First station: and what if we do not or cannot restrict 'Jewishness' to Jewishness?
What if we give up a racial definition of Jewishness, even when this makes every attempt
to define it almost impossible? What if we deny that 'Jewishness' has something to do
with the original characteristics of the race or the particular structure of the Jewish
religion? In his interview with Richard Kearney, Derrida seems to differentiate between
Jewish and 'Jewish'. 'I consider my own thought, paradoxically, as neither Greek nor
Jewish. I often feel that the questions I attempt to formulate on the outskirts of the Greek
philosophical tradition have as their 'other' the model of the Jew, that is, the Jew-as-other.
And yet, the paradox is that I have never actually invoked the Jewish tradition in any
'rooted' or direct manner. Though I was born a Jew, I do not work or think within a living
Jewish tradition. So that if there is a Judaic dimension to my thinking which may from
time to time have spoken in or through me, this has never assumed the form of an explicit
fidelity or debt to that culture. In short, the ultimate site (lieu) of my questioning
discourse would be neither Hellenic nor Hebraic if such were possible. It would be a nonsite' (Kearney, p.107).
Leave the autobiographical insights aside for awhile and let's concentrate on the two sides
(sites) of Jewishness. On one hand, the 'living Jewish tradition', the Jewish roots, religion,
and culture: Jewishness. On the other hand, the 'Judaic dimension', the 'model of the Jew',
'the Jew-as-other', the 'non-site': 'Jewishness'.
Could we call Zorn's work a musical expression of a non-religious or cultural rooted
'Jewish' sitelessness as Derrida describes it? Wilson calls Zorn a man without roots. Zorn
confirms this idea in several places. 'J'ai l'impression d'etre plusieurs' ['I have the
impression of being several'], he says in the very heterogeneous collage composition,

'Godard' in the CD, Godard a vous chante. In the liner notes of Spillane, he writes:
'There's a lot of jazz in me, but there's also a lot of rock, a lot of classical, a lot of ethnic
music, a lot of blues, a lot of movie soundtracks. I'm a mixture of all those things'. And in
an interview: 'I like to say that I'm really rootless. I think that the music that my
generation ... is doing is really rootless in a lot of ways, because we listened to a lot of
different kinds of music from an early age ... We listened to all different kinds of shit, and
as a result we don't really have a single home' (Gagne, p.516). But in fact we need only
listen to his sizeable oeuvre in order to establish that he uses many kinds of musical
languages at once without belonging to one musical world. He is like the emigrant who
adapts himself to a culture that will never be his own, in between this foreign culture and
his own. The occupier of a non-site. Zorn's music can be regarded as an exponent of a
Jewish culture inevitably containing material derived from cultures that have interacted
with Jewish culture. Is Wilson, however, correct when he writes that Zorn has shifted to a
clearly recognizable musical identity, to a rumination of his Jewish roots with Masada
and Bar Kokhba? In other words, has Zorn switched from 'Jewishness' to Jewishness?
This is what Zorn says about his Masada project. 'The one thing that really surprises me,
and is a symbol of how limited critics' ears are, is the way critics describe it: klezmer
meets Ornette [Coleman]. Of course, there's klezmer. Of course, there's Ornette. But there
are as many influences in that music as went into the composition of Naked City music or
any other music I've done - like surf music, movie soundtracks, Sephardic and Arabic
music, modern classical, modal jazz. I play them with Joey [Baron] and Dave [Douglas],
and they say, 'Ornette meets klezmer'. When I do it for the Masada String Trio, everyone
says, 'Wow! It's so deeply rooted in the Jewish tradition of string music'. Then I do it with
a sextet, and people say, 'Yeah, it's a real loungey, easy-listening Les Baxter type of
thing'. I mean, I could do it with a hardcore band. It was a revelation to take those pieces
outside of the context of a steady quartet that was playing them and give it to smaller
groups to play in different ways' (Blumenfeld). The rootlessness is still there. Maybe one
could decide it is 'Jewish' music and Jewish music at the same time.
Can we find the same 'doubleness' in Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach? Of course,
Bacharach is a Jew and so are Zorn and his fellow-musicians. So we could call it Jewish
music. But more important is the 'Jewishness' of this tribute, this musical non-site, in
between a low popular culture in which Bacharach's hits can be situated and a high avantgarde culture to which the versions of Zorn, et al, are referring (cf.
(D)(R)econtextualization.)
We should not accept without question the proposition of a certain breach in Zorn's
musical activities, non-Jewish music on one hand and Jewish music on the other. We
have to rethink what being Jewish means. I present and defend the idea that the Masada
series is no more 'Jewish' music than Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach, Spillane, or
Naked City.
[8] Second station: disidentification. What is Jewishness? Is 'the Jew' (Derrida)
something? Or is his essence to not have an identity? Does the Jewish identity consist of
renouncing any identity? These are questions that arise in Derrida's texts on Edmond
Jabs, Emmanuel Levinas, and Paul Celan. In Writing and Difference, Derrida writes:
'The Jew's identification with himself does not exist. The Jew is split, and split first of all
between the two dimensions of the letter: allegory and literality' (Writing and Difference,

p.75). Between allegory and literality, between 'Jewishness' and Jewishness. What is
essential to the Jew is perhaps the vacancy, the split, in French, brisure. The Jew is the
brisure, non-localizable, beyond every permanent setting. The Jew is without foundation
and therefore a threat to each foundation. Before (re)turning to Zorn, I would like to
quote Anthony Coleman from his CD, Selfhaters (keyboardist Coleman belongs to the
inner circle of Downtown musicians who often work with Zorn): 'Do they [Jews?] show
the rest of the world the picture that they believe anyway, or do they strip away an
element of false consciousness implicit in a sense of 'belonging' to a 'culture'. And which
culture? Jerusalem, Belz, the Lower East Side, or Rockland County? Or the culture of
wandering, the culture of acquisitiveness, of having-no-voice-of-one's-own, of
mauscheling in any and all languages. Well, this disc doesn't purport to answer. Some say
that's Jewish, too...'. This non-identity again, this non-belonging to one site. The culture
of wandering between many cultures. It is this that characterizes Zorn's music as well. It
can be a threat to the existing musical world because it is subversive, crossing
conventional musical borders. It is not clearly classifiable because it lacks an identity.
'I'm inherently rootless. I don't fit into the jazz tradition. I don't fit into the rock tradition
... There's a certain set of rules which you have to obey. And with most scenes, the most
important rules are the least important to me: attitude; stance; posture; the clothes you
wear; where you play. All the trappings of the music. I'm not a skinhead with tattoos on
my arm, who goes and slamdances at CB's. I'm interested in the music those people are
making. The same thing with the jazz scene: Their trappings are not my trappings. The
classical scene too: I don't obey those rules. I'm interested in music, and not the bullshit
trappings that surround so many of the scenes, and which people are convinced are the
tradition of the scene ... You can't put what I'm doing or what Elliott [Sharp] does or what
any of these guys do into any kind of a box like that. Inherently, it's music that resists
categorization because of all the influences we've had' (Gagne, p.524).
I would say that Zorn's music consists of 'Sons briss', broken or fractured sounds (Cf.
Sons briss - J. Allende-Blin), not only because it changes very abruptly from one style to
another, but also because it gives the music this unpredictability, this non-identity.
[9] Third station: 'the Jew-as-other' (Derrida). Zorn's music-as-other. This other, however,
that contrasts with conventional (musical) traditions has to pass through these same
musical traditions, through these musical languages, in order to avoid complete
inaccessibility (cf. also Music, Deconstruction and Ethics). The other has to follow in the
footsteps of the same despite the risk of self-loss and of being veiled in something it is
not. But this doesn't mean that it disappears. It leaves traces, references to an alterity
within the conventional domain (cf. Sneller, p.224). These traces, these references,
Derrida calls 'Jewish'. The Jew is not opposed to the Greek, but is right at the heart of him
(cf. Writing and Difference, p.153). Being 'Jewish' means being dominated and drowned
out by a culture that is never able to fully absorb it. Could this be 'Jewishness': an
inexhaustable reference to an alterity within culture itself, an openness towards the
always already present (and at the same time absent) other? Could 'Jewishness' mean
between the other and the self, between alterity and identity, between difference and
connection, between familiar and unfamiliar? Is the 'Judaic' experience an experience of
diffrance?
I return to Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach to make this proposition. The Jew that

Zorn is plays the 'Jew' in the music world. All the versions in this CD play the part of
'Jewishness' within a well-known musical language. Zorn brings in elements of alterity.
He wants to confront this language (of Bacharach, of popular music) with the other, with
what is not composed or played, but with which it is still permeated. A heteroglossia, or
even a cacophony of incongruous strands of musical discourses, is the result. Great
Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach sets scores with the idea that an interpretation should
account for every detail of the work within the same framework; it sets scores with the
idea that details that don't fit are ignored or set aside as unimportant. Rather, Great
Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach is working the opposite way. Details that don't fit in the
conventional framework of interpretations, details that don't fit in the conventional
language of popular music, are exaggerated and are made very important.
Sometimes a version is 'Jewish' and Jewish at the same time, assuming for the sake of
convenience that the latter has something to do with certain scales (for instance, C-Db-EF-G-Ab-B-C). Listen to Eric Friedlander's version of 'Promises, Promises'. The
arrangement of cello, clarinet, bass-clarinet, and double bass give it a flavor of Klezmer
music. However, what initially attracts attention is the improvised part. On a steady
rhythmic and melodic pattern of bass and bass-clarinet, the cello (and later, together with
clarinet) improvises on the basis of some scales that are often connected with Jewish or
Klezmer music. Jewishness entering 'Jewish' music, this music that moves between
conventions and deviation from these conventions, an in-between that does not designate
a localized relation going from the one to the other and back again, but a transversal
movement that sweeps one and the other away (cf. Burt Bacharach and John Zorn).
A circumcision of music. Through Zorn, Bacharach and his music accede to a treaty, both
a Jewish and a 'Jewish' community. But especially in 'Promises, Promises', Friedlander is
circumcising the music, bringing it into a Jewish context by making it Klezmer-like.
Circumcision: the infliction of a wound. So being Jewish here is the experience of being
wounded. (There is more than one resemblance between certain Jews and certain
Muslims.) However, it is at the same time a matter of 'circumcision': the music is being
cut, something is excised. In Zorn's project, the wounds remain present. Mutilations of
the 'original' text. One can hear the violence. Being Jewish, as well as being 'Jewish',
means to suffer. (By advocating (and warning against) an excruciatingly loud level of
'Never Again', Zorn wants some small part of the pain that was endured by the Jews to be
felt by the listener; not emotionally, or through artistic and musical resonance, but
actually physically.)
[10] Fourth station. A delicate question. Are these Great Jewish Music projects, despite
everything, a matter of 're-Judaicizing' Jewish composers and musicians (Bacharach,
Gainsbourg) by a Jewish artist (Zorn)? There seems to be a tension between this apparent
classification and the above commitment to openness. Does the discovery of his
Jewishness lead Zorn to a kind of Zionist imperialism or exclusivism? How should we
interpret his rather strong preference for Jewish musicians, shirts bearing Magen Davids,
Jewish song titles, Jewish interviewers, etc.? It seems to be a Shibboleth, a 'friends word',
a word of alliance or covenant on one side, a sign of exclusion on the other. But a
Shibboleth for whom? The title, Great Jewish Music, tells us more about Zorn than it
does about Bacharach who never made an issue of his religion or ethnicity. And
Gainsbourg, although he didn't particularly hide it, never put his Jewishness in front

(maybe only as a provocation). Their inclusion is, at the same time, an exclusion.
A paradox. Zorn's early claims to openness, to the use of multiple musical languages, to
otherness, appear in a closed, excluding discourse. (It always and necessarily appears in
an excluding discourse. The otherness of the other means a certain exclusivity. That is the
paradox.) 'Jewishness' repeats itself in Jewishness. The general articulates itself in the
particular. Maybe we can understand the general idea of openness only against a
background of a particular Jewishness. Maybe the mixing of multiple compositional
methods within one piece arises with or as a result of his latent Jewishness. And as a
result, the difference between 'Jewishness' and Jewishness may not be that clear. Because
the opposite is true as well: Zorn's Jewish music and themes repeat his 'Jewishness'. Let's
take Kristallnacht as an example. Can we decide what repeats what? Is the background,
the history and future of the Jews given musical expression in the use of Klezmer-like
themes, Jewish scales, quotes from a Jewish singer and the sound of breaking glass
within an alien context of free jazz, hard core, and modern classical composition
techniques? Or is the background constituted by a very heterogeneous musical language
in which Jewish music has just a place for its own? Maybe Kristallnacht is Zorn's first
musical exploration of his Jewish heritage as Cuthbert and Wilson suggest. But it is not
only a break with the past; it is also a continuation, a continuation of his 'Jewish' heritage,
the 'Jewish' music he previously made. And how open, how 'Jewish' is Jewish music? The
concept of Jewish tone scales is somewhat odd. Jewish music always already contained
material derived from cultures with which Jews have interacted: Greek, American,
Spanish, Eastern European, Ethiopian, Western European, etc. Jewish music has a
structure that resists every inclination to a final formation of identity, to seclusion and
determination. Sometimes it refers to the Eastern European modalities, sometimes to
gypsy music, sometimes it has similarities with some Arabic music, the hijaz. These are
only small corners of Jewish music though. Jewish music that originates from different
parts of the world shares no common characteristics; it is not consistent. 'Jewishness' is a
part of Jewishness and Jewishness is a part of 'Jewishness'. Both Jewishness and
'Jewishness' refer to expropriation, having no fixed identity. (Or do we have to say that
this is their identity?)
[11] How explicitly Zorn is referring to the Jewish cause? To what extent does this
Radical Jewish Culture restrict itself to well defined archives? How Zionistic is the
appropriation of the myth-laden names such as 'Masada' and 'Bar Kokhba'? It is
undecidable. Ambivalent. On one hand, Zorn explicitly addresses himself to Jews. With
the Masada book, a collection of over a hundred tunes, he wants to give Jews something
positive for the future: 'I think it's important for Jews to have positive role models so that
they want to identify themselves as Jews ... After [Kristallnacht], I wanted to do
something that was not about the history of pain and suffering, but about the future and
how bright and beautiful it can be ... This is my answer to what new Jewish music is. This
is my personal answer. That's why I wrote the Masada music' (Blumenfeld). These
remarks seem to make clear that his intended audience for Masada would be American,
European and Israeli Jews. The titles of the Masada series - Alef, Bet, Gimel, etc., the
initial letters of the Hebrew alphabet - confirm this. On the other hand, however, Zorn is
defying these (his own) ideas: he originally released these Masada albums with liner
notes in Japanese only. Through the use of this language he is only making the discs less

accessible to most western Jews (cf. Cuthbert, p.18-9).

And what are we to think of the dedication of the Masada book to Asher Ginzberg,
founding father of Cultural Zionism who, in the late 1880's, called out for a New Jewish
Cultural Renaissance, 'one in which all Jews everywhere could find pride and meaning'?
Is this an openly avowed form of Zionism or should we pay more attention to the word
'everywhere'? 'Everywhere', it could be meant as a contrast to constructions of Jewish
identity that bind it closely to the modern state of Israel. 'Everywhere', which means
having no fixed place, a non-site. Jewish becoming 'Jewish' again. The 'Jewish' site is an
empty site. 'This Site is not a site, an enclosure, a place of exclusion, a province or a
ghetto. When a Jew or poet proclaims the Site, he is not declaring war. For this site, this
land, calling to us from beyond memory, is always elsewhere. The site is not the
empirical national Here of a territory' (Writing and Difference, p.66).
Last meditation: Tzadik, Zorn's record label. Many Jewish musicians find a home here.
And Radical Jewish Culture: one of the largest series formats under this label. Jewishness
seems very important. But on the other hand, if Zorn feels that a musician is getting too
much press for being a Jewish performer and not enough for his compositional activities
he may find his next disc issued in the Composers Series (cf. Cuthbert, p.23). Tzadik. A
tzadik is a Jewish spiritual leader. Zorn? Is Zorn not only a poet, but also a rabbi (cf. Burt
Bacharach and John Zorn)? He is an important person in New York's music scene.
Almost all musicians who determine the sound of the Jewish Alternative Movement, a
Knitting Factory CD label, have at some time worked with Zorn. So he is a kind of
leader. And a Jew. But in Hebrew tzadik also means righteous, just. A strange name for a
record company. Or maybe not? 'Founded in 1995, Tzadik is dedicated to releasing the
best in avant-garde and experimental music, presenting a worldwide community of
contemporary musician-composers who find it difficult or impossible to release their
music through more conventional channels', says an advertising brochure. Who does
Tzadik serve? Those who have no permanent address at their disposal. Homeless in
double respect: musically (these experimental and avant-garde musicians usually mix
several musical languages in one work), and institutionally (no major record company is
interested because their music is not commercial enough). They are a kind of outcast.
'Jews'. Like Jabs's quote on Kristallnacht: 'It is precisely in that break - in that nonbelonging in search of it's belonging - that I am without a doubt most Jewish' [in fact
most 'Jewish']. Tzadik is doing justice to music that cannot be specifically classified,
giving the homeless a home, the voiceless a voice. Tzadik is a Shibboleth, a place where
a decision is made about the right to enter a legal community, a sign of belonging.
However, as the mark of a certain pact, it also intervenes: it prohibits, sentences,
excludes. Somewhere between sharing and dividing (cf. Shibboleth, p.109-111).
[12] Zorn's dedication to the Jewish cause seems to be in opposition to more narrow
versions of Zionism, both in his insistence on going beyond 'conservative preservation'
(Gershom Scholem) and his constant playing with identities and contexts. His Jewishness
is also a 'Jewishness', dominated by a loss of identity, security, safety. Zorn is the thorn in
the side of conventions and apparently uncomplicated assumptions and not only on a
musical level. He asks questions. He questions (his) identity, and questions 'the other'.
Hence, from the start he is confronted with the discourse of the other. And he disorders it.
He disorders it by revealing that every endeavor toward determination and conclusion,

every attempt toward a final formation of an identity, is doomed to fail. This means that
not only Zorn is a 'Jew'. It is not the privilege of a few. The 'Jew-as-other' is inside of
non-Jews as well, inside of music. It reflects a more 'original alienation', a structure of
every music as a music of the other, the impossibility to possess music, the impossibility
to return it to the same.

Hymen
[1] Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach is not Zorn's first, nor is it his only tribute to a
composer. His interest in and admiration for several musicians and composers from very
diverse musical worlds are shown in a number of his recordings. In the series, Great
Jewish Music, Zorn pays attention to Serge Gainsbourg and Marc Bolan, in addition to
Burt Bacharach. With the occasional quartet, Total Loss, he pays a tribute to Dutch
pianist and composer Misha Mengelberg in October Meeting 1987. 'Der kleine Leutnant
des lieben Gottes' in Lost In The Stars is Zorn's self-willed transcription of a Kurt Weill
song from his opera, Happy End. News For Lulu (named after a Sonny Clark
composition) contains arrangements of the works of four (and almost forgotten) hard bop
musicians: pianists Sonny Clark and Freddie Redd, trumpet player Kenny Dorham, and
tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley. (According to jazz critic, Joachim Berendt, this record
contributed more to their rediscovery than the 'classicist' tributes that should, in fact, have
been responsible.) Undoubtedly, his best known homage is The Big Gundown (1985).
With many fellow musicians and some notable others (among them, organ player, 'Big'
John Patton and harmonica player, Jean 'Toots' Thielemans), Zorn plays the film music of
Ennio Morricone in his own (deconstructive) way.
I add one more. Spy Vs Spy. The Music of Ornette Coleman. In a more detailed
explanation of this CD, Zorn says in an interview: 'The idea of doing Ornette in a trash
style started to germinate in my mind and I began pushing it - especially when I realized
we were going to make a record. If I'm going to do a recording of Ornette's music, I want
it to be the way I did the Morricone. I've got to bring something new to it, I've got to
bring it up to date; but it's got to come from the inside - not a totally alien agenda
imposed on it from the outside ... I think it's the best tribute that I could have done to
someone who was absolutely one of my biggest heroes. And whether he likes it or not, I
don't care. I really feel I did his music justice' (Gagne, p.523).
I include this quote here for three reasons. First, I think that this citation can be applied
equally as well to Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach. Second, it says a lot about the
relationship between the original music and Zorn's tributes. This quote lays open the
whole problematic nature of inside and outside, which is so important in the work of
Derrida as well (as a theme and as a strategy). Third, once more it becomes clear that
deconstruction is not a linguistic tool to get a grip on musical utterances, but that
deconstruction articulates itself within music, in a musical way. (cf. Deconstruction In
Music and my comments and criticism on the New Musicology). Here, the problem of
inside and outside does not exist primarily in a discursive discourse among musicologists
or music theorists; it is a musical task that Zorn has to resolve within music. Through the
philosophy of Derrida, I want to establish the analogy between a textual deconstruction
and Zorn's musical deconstruction (Can we say it is 'his' deconstruction?) in his homage
to Burt Bacharach.
[2] The opposition of inside vs. outside is a frequent returning point of Derrida's interest.
An example is found in his writing about the hymen. Hymen, the virginal membrane, but
also the consummation of a marriage. (In Greek and Latin mythology, 'hymen' refers to

the God of matrimony and to a hymeneal song.) As a protective screen, as an invisible

veil, it stands between the inside and the outside of a woman, and consequently between
(male?) desire and fulfillment. As a (con)fusion between two people (marriage), however,
there is no longer any difference between desire and satisfaction. So, hymen both implies
communion and hinders this communion; it is both barrier and interaction. Hymen is a
fusion that abolishes contraries, for example, the difference between desire and its
accomplishment. But hymen is also the fold of a mucous membrane that keeps them
separate (cf. Dissemination, 209-18).
It is not a matter of choice here. If we would choose between the two, there would be no
hymen. Hymen is neither fusion nor separation, but stands between the two. Neither
inside nor outside, but between the two. 'It is an operation that both sows confusion
between opposites and stands between the opposites at once' (Dissemination, p.212). And
it is the 'between' that counts. It outwits, as Derrida says, all manner of dialectics.
[3] Why am I connecting hymen to Zorn's project on Bacharach? Why should I? Am I
trying to explain this music by means of certain linguistic, semantic, or philosophical
ideas (and with that - reduce it to these ideas)? No, I am paying attention to this hymen
because it is not about the word hymen. Derrida: 'What counts here is not the lexical
richness, the semantic infiniteness of a word or concept, its depth or breadth, the
sedimentation that has produced inside of it two contradictory layers of signification
(continuity and discontinuity, inside and outside, identity and difference, etc.). What
counts here is the formal or syntactical praxis that composes and decomposes it. We have
indeed been making believe that everything could be traced to the word hymen. But the
irreplaceable character of this signifier, which everything seemed to grant it, was laid out
like a trap. This word, this syllepsis, is not indispensable ... It produces its effect first and
foremost through the syntax, which disposes the 'entre' in such a way that the suspense is
due only to the placement and not to the content of words' (Dissemination, p.220).
What I want to present is a kind of analogy between hymen and Zorn's tribute. They are
both about the 'entre', the in-between, about undecidability. They are both undecidables.
This undecidability is not only at work when we look at the different meanings of hymen.
This in-between articulates itself within one meaning as well. (Can we speak of one
isolated meaning or are the other ones always resonating, present in their absence?) In
order to explain this, I return to the meaning of hymen as marriage. In this case, hymen is
a sign of fusion, the identification of two beings. Between the two, there is identity.
Derrida, however, generalizes his meditations on hymen as marriage in his statement: 'It
is not only the difference (between desire and fulfillment) that is abolished, but also the
difference between difference and non-difference'. To Derrida, hymen shows itself in the
articulation of meaning in general. 'Non-presence, the gaping void of desire, and
presence, the fullness of enjoyment, amount to the same. By the same token, there is no
longer any textual difference between the image and the thing, the empty signifier and the
full signified, the imitator and the imitated'. It is the fusion that is important, not the
different poles of the pair. But it does not follow, Derrida continues, by virtue of this
hymen of confusion, that 'there is now only one term, a single one of the differends ... It
is the difference between the two that is no longer functional ... What is lifted, then, is not
difference but the different, the differends, the decidable exteriority of differing terms.
Thanks to the confusion and continuity of the hymen, and not in spite of it, a (pure and

impure) difference inscribes itself without any decidable poles, without any independent,
irreversible terms' (Dissemination, p.209-10). So although hymen represents fusion, it
also, by the same movement, leaves the difference intact.
[4] The songs in Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach are (like) hymen. Some aspects of
the originals are unveiled, others veiled. (And to be taken out of the song, they must have
already been within it). There is a (partial) contact, but no (complete) assimilation. Both
fusion and separation, and neither fusion nor separation; (n)either inner (n)or outer. It is
connected to and cooperates in its inside operation from the outside. Great Jewish Music:
Burt Bacharach moves between difference and identity, but the difference between these
two terms, the two poles, is no longer functional.
In Fred Frith's version of 'Trains And Boats And Planes', the musical elements are all
present, but nevertheless the listener can only catch a glimpse of the original. The original
song remains partially hidden behind his 'interpretation'. (Of Interpretation discusses the
problems using this word while writing about this kind of deconstruction in music. 'Of
Interpretation' is specifically about Gerd Zacher's Die Kunst einer Fuge, but certain
analogies with Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach are possible). So, on one hand
Frith's music (Is it his music? Or Bacharach's? Or both?) brings one into contact with the
compositions and musical world of Bacharach; on the other hand, Frith makes a (real or
direct) contact impossible because he stands in the way. The perverted repetition of the
first two bars (a de(con)structuration of the composition together with the repeated drum
pattern generating the idea of a passing train), the squealing infringements of the guitar,
and the ever increasing shrillness of the voices are but three examples that maintain a
distance. However, everyone who knows Bacharach's 'Trains And Boats And Planes' will
recognize it in Frith's version. And yet, it is so different from the original. It absolutely
puts no effort into resembling the original (no imitation, no mimesis). And yet, it is the
same song. This 'representative of the outside' is nonetheless constituted in the very heart
of the inside. Frith's 'Trains And Boats And Planes' is located at the boundary between
the inside and the outside. Outside from a certain perspective, inside from another. It is
not a matter of deciding; that would destroy the working of hymen, the area of tension in
which Frith's play between identity and difference takes place.
Concepts such as interpretation or arrangement are no longer adequate to describe
projects like Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach unless we redefine, refine or
accentuate them. That's why I propose in Of Interpretation the term encounter instead of
arrangement or interpretation. But more important than suggesting new terms is the care
and attention that should be paid when writing on music that in its development escapes
from and passes by the discourse about music as it is still generally used. For that,
attention to deconstruction can contribute in my opinion, although Zorn seems to
eliminate any possibility of writing or talking about his work: 'This music has progressed
far beyond the capabilities of our language to describe or notate it'. However, maybe
deconstruction is not about description but about de-scription. Writing on music can be
considered a hymen: it mediates our contact with the musical world and establishes a
distance at the same time.

Positions I
[1] In 'Coordination and Convention: The Organization of the Concert World' (1987),
American sociologist Samuel Gilmore describes the relationship between the
organizational structure of a musical (sub)world and artistic conventions. For this, he
compares the music world surrounding the grand concert halls and famous orchestras of
Midtown Manhattan ('repertory concert music') with the music world of Uptown
Manhattan that is concentrated, to a large extent, around Columbia University ('academic
composition'), and the music world of Downtown Manhattan ('the avant-garde milieu').
(Is this the world of John Zorn? I'll return to this.) 'I examined the production processes in
one type of art world, the 'concert music world', which is the name used by performing
rights organizations (e.g., ASCAP and BMI), to designate what is generally considered to
be classical or art music and differentiate it from jazz or popular styles', Gilmore writes
(Gilmore, p.212). Gilmore does not name John Zorn as a member of the Downtown
avant-garde scene. (Is it because he is more of a jazz or pop musician?) Instead, he
mentions minimalists such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich.
'Each sub-world is a wholly encompassed organization of concert producing activities
with a relatively distinct identity from the other sub-worlds' (Gilmore, p.213). The link
that relates them is the degree and type of musical conventions used in concert activities.
He points to the inadequacy of explanations of musical activities that focus exclusively
on the individual, and that neglect the complex web of social relationships in which
individual identities are formed and transformed. Participation in either the Uptown or
the Downtown world leads to different musical values (interpretation and technical
virtuosity versus innovation and radical challenge to established conventions). Gilmore's
proposition: The more complex the concert organization is, the more constrained the
artistic innovation; the simpler the organizational structure is, the more innovation is
allowed (cf. Gilmore, p.210). Midtown productions are large-scale, incur high costs and
require a large number of concert collaborators. Downtown concerts, on the other hand,
are small-scale, the costs are (therefore) low and can operate by maintaining a small,
interpersonal organization of collaboration (cf. for instance Gilmore, p.215, table 1).
According to Gilmore. And he mentions Glass as a representative of the Downtown
concert world.
[2] Let's digress here for a moment. For instance to recall that Glass' opera, Einstein on
the Beach, was performed at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1976, the year in which
the opera was written, after more than 30 successful performances abroad. (Gilmore
writes about the Downtown scene: 'Few composers have more than 10 performances a
year, and even composers who have immediate access to their own concert spaces
perform infrequently.') 'This was hardly one of the many experimental works predestined
for the lofts and galleries of downtown New York', Glass writes about his first opera
(Glass, p.32). His third opera, Akhnaten, had its American premiere in 1984 at the New
York City Opera and was performed some 20 times within six months.
Glass recalls that preparations for this mammoth production, Einstein on the Beach,
started as early as 1974. In Music By Philip Glass, he cannot resist drawing repeated

attention to the enormous organizational worries. 'Putting on opera is a tremendous

enterprise involving literally hundreds of people - orchestra, chorus, soloists, sometimes
dancers, all the backstage people, designers, builders, fitters - the list goes on and on',
Glass writes (Glass, p.138). This meant that Glass worked with a team from the inception
of each project. 'To produce an innovative work on a large scale requires organization
and skills that its authors have no time for' (Glass, p.46). 'Division of labor' is a key
phrase found in his memoirs. The composer, theater producer and choreographer are all
supported by directors, administrative staff, stage managers, international theater agents
and producers ('As such, the musical division is collapsed,' Gilmore writes, describing the
Downtown scene.) And let's not forget that Einstein on the Beach sure was an innovative
work within the concert music world. The work marked a turning point in the history of
American music-theater. Innovation and organization go hand in hand; they support each
other. One is a condition for the other.
Do I have to go on? For instance, to compare Gilmore's remark, ' events tend to be
small and production costs are fairly minimal' with Glass' refutation that Einstein on the
Beach cost 'about $900,000 on salaries, travel, living costs, equipment expenses,
administration and so on - actually a very modest amount for the number of people, time
worked, distances traveled'. Or should I compare Gilmore's statement that most
composers 'are not paid or are paid only small amounts for concerts' with Glass'
remarks concerning the commission, i.e. the money for the composer, that had to be
found in the Netherlands when the Netherlands Opera commissioned him to compose
another opera (Satyagraha). To be sure, Einstein on the Beach was written for Glass' own
ensemble and this supports Gilmore's observation of a small community with small
collaborative concert groups, illustrative of the Downtown concert world. This makes the
coordination of innovative practices more feasible. Glass' second opera, Satyagraha,
however, was scored for a more conventional orchestra: strings, woodwinds, organ, six
solo singers, and a chorus of forty. 'It should be for my orchestra, chorus and soloists,
people trained and practiced in the singing of traditional operas,' Hans de Roo, the
director of the Netherlands Opera, told Glass (Glass, p.87). Gilmore: 'There is a highly
specialized division of labor between composers and performers. Performers start to
specialize very early in their careers and have little or no contact with living composers'
(Gilmore, p.217). An utterance, perfectly applicable to Glass and the Netherlands Opera.
However, Gilmore writes this when he begins to describe the Midtown sub-world,
whereas Glass was offered as an example of the Downtown scene. One more example.
According to Gilmore, the organization of interaction between composers and performers
in Midtown takes place through open, formal distribution processes. Composers of new
pieces lose touch after they publish, and often do not know who performs their work (cf.
Gilmore, p.218). His description of the Midtown concert world seems to agree quite well
with Glass' remark that he is often not involved in all the productions of theater works
containing his music (cf. Glass, p.163).
[3] Maybe Glass' operas are exceptions. Maybe Philip Glass is an exception. But once
more, call to mind that it is Gilmore who mentions Glass explicitly as one of the core
members of the Downtown scene. And, according to Gilmore, it is precisely these central
figures that can be examined separately in order to explore the internal relationship of
social organization and aesthetic practices, in order to compare the differences between

subworlds. His own example, however, seems to prevent Gilmore from proving his thesis
that artistic innovation and complex organizational structures tend not to occur together.
With particular regard to Einstein on the Beach, a solid and extensive organization was
the precondition for creating an innovative opera.
I'm not intending to reverse Gilmore's argument by claiming that Glass is actually a
member of the Midtown or the Uptown scene. By giving a short comment on an example
I want to show that the tri-partition Gilmore makes is not discrete. Gilmore, though, is
also aware of that: 'Each sub-world is a wholly encompassed organization of concert
producing activities with a relatively distinct identity from the other sub-worlds. This
does not mean that these sub-worlds are completely separate and autonomous' (Gilmore,
p.213). They have overlapping peripheries and only partially distinct cores; Gilmore only
shades his first statement, thereby creating an opportunity for escape through which even
the core members can disappear.
[4] Is this non-discreteness of the musical sub-worlds the reason he does not mention
John Zorn? Or, did Gilmore have foresight, anticipating the moment when it would be
very difficult to categorize him? He must have known Zorn. His most famous album up
until the year Gilmore wrote his essay, The Big Gundown. John Zorn Plays the Music of
Ennio Morricone, was released in 1985. Cobra, together with some 43 other albums to
which Zorn contributed, had already been released.
Why did he not mention Zorn? Because Gilmore would have had great difficulty
maintaining his idea about core members and periphery. Let's read Gilmore's findings
regarding the Downtown sub-world once again. Even more closely this time. And
confront them with information about Zorn. (Here, I have deliberately chosen the time
until 1987 in which to write about Zorn and his work.)
(a) In the Downtown scene 'many concerts are produced by only one musician, a
composer/performer who plays his own music exclusively. As such, the musical division
of labor is collapsed' (Gilmore, p.219). Recalling his career in music, which started in the
mid-seventies in downtown New York, Zorn says in an interview, 'I started promoting
my own concerts. I'd just go into a coffee shop and say, 'Hey, can I play here on Friday?'
And they'd go, 'Well, yeah, why not?' I'd make my own posters and put them around.
That was 1974. I kept making my own posters until something like '83 or '84. And it was
really a great period. No one would come to my gigs, but I just loved the opportunity to
be able to play, and to compose and then perform it' (Duckworth, p.457).
Zorn may be regarded as a paradigm of the 'composer/performer'. But can we say - more
generally - that being a composer and performer simultaneously is a characteristic of a
music sub-world (classical or art music) clearly separated from jazz and popular music as
Gilmore says (see above)? Does not this criterion subvert the division of the music world
in three sub-worlds? Being composer as well as performer is very typical in the jazz,
blues, and pop traditions; it was there all along, while in the classical world the separation
between composer and musician became more distinguished. So the core of the
Downtown classical sub-world is already infected by a characteristic which places it in a
twilight zone or on a boundary between classical music, jazz, and pop music. The outside
(jazz and pop influences) is already on the inside (classical music); the inside (the very
heart of the Downtown scene to which Glass and Zorn, for example, belong) is already

on the outside (both Zorn and Glass find themselves on the outside or on the edge of the
Downtown concert world).
(b) 'Downtown concert practices are not conventionalized. Notational practices are highly
varied and change frequently ... The primary musical activity is radical innovation in both
compositional and performance techniques' (Gilmore, p.214).
Zorn promotes rather unconventional relationships between performers and their
instruments and, especially in his solo performances, he introduces some alternative
musical instruments (honking, squeaking and tweeting toys, duck calls, water whistles).
His composition (Is it a composition in the traditional sense? Zorn questions the
dichotomy of improvisation versus composition. According to Zorn, both are ways of
putting music together. Also, there is not a great difference in the opposing ends of the
linked opposition, spontaneous versus carefully considered because both improvisation
and composition are based on a concept, a style with which the performer/composer lives
(cf. Duckworth, p.461).), Cobra, consists of an elaborate set of rules recorded on index
cards that determine who plays when, but does not determine the resulting sound. Colors
and (abstract) information on the index cards indicate what will happen; cues mark the
transition from one musical adventure to the next. Zorn acts like a prompter, in between a
conductor and a referee, holding up and changing the cards. Somewhat similar innovative
composition and notation techniques are also to be found on Spillane: there is written
music, but much of it is not notated in any conventional sense. Zorn uses numbered file
cards sometimes only marked with certain indications: 'Harlem nightclub', 'blues guitar
and backup', 'shoot out'.
(c) Another characteristic of the Downtown concert world is that 'composers know who
they are writing for, and thus can explain, face-to-face, the techniques and intentions of
their composition' (Gilmore, p.220).
Direct contact with musicians plays a very important role in Zorn's working method.
While composing, he imagines not just the instruments, but first the musicians. Zorn
says, 'On the Morricone record [The Big Gundown, MC], deciding who did what was
more than just deciding this should be two guitars; it was deciding that I wanted this to be
Quine and Jody Harris, because they're two people who have worked together, developed
a certain rapport. So it's a matter of players and personalities' (Lesage, p.27-8). Zorn
knows the musical languages his fellow musicians speak. On that basis, he tries to find
the right balance for a band. Not always in terms of the instruments or, sometimes, not
even just in terms of the sounds that they make. More important to Zorn are the
personalities (cf. Duckworth, p.462). In another interview he confirms this strong
emphasis on personal contribution: 'I work with musicians and I try to get the best out of
them ... I play the game according to their rules' (Gagne, p.525). This even means that
once he has chosen the players and the right chemistry turns out to be missing, he will not
go ahead.
His face-to-face contact is very apparent in Cobra. With expressive gestures, Zorn
commands this game piece. He communicates the parameters of this work to his players
by eye or by cue. His role is to set up rules so that the people in the band have to make
decisions; they have to communicate - with Zorn and with each other (cf. Jones, p.146-7).

(d) 'When larger performing groups are called for, the performers recruited are also often
composers. Not surprisingly, these performers frequently contribute to the compositional
development of a piece' (Gilmore, p.219). In The Death of the Composer, I expand upon
the great interest with which Zorn chooses the right musicians to play his compositions
because he is aware that each interpreter leaves his own signature on a performance. In
fact, they become a kind of co-composer. Cobra especially - as an indeterminate score acquires the character of its performers. It is a composition that allows the players to
devise and invent musical situations. 'Each performance will be drastically different in
sound and structure as the participants bring in their own private perceptions, past
experiences, instrumental techniques, and interpersonal attitudes', Zorn says. (One
example: on the CD version of Cobra, turntable player Christian Marclay inserts a
Wagner quotation. In an interview, Zorn points out that he did not tell Marclay to use
Wagner. 'That particular piece was chosen by Christian right then. He wanted to use it, he
used it. I had nothing to say about it. In Cobra, the musical materials are completely up to
the performers' (Strickland, p.133).) There are a lot of reasons to call somebody into the
band in a game piece. One very important reason Zorn gives is that a particular musician
has 'a lot of compositional ideas' (Gagne, p.521).
'The performers recruited are also often composers'. It is difficult to find a musician with
whom Zorn works who is not a composer. Elliott Sharp, Anthony Coleman, Eugene
Chadbourne, Ikue Mori, Derek Bailey, Eric Friedlander, Bill Frisell, Joey Baron, David
Moss, Charles K. Noyes ... The list is endless.
(e) 'In terms of scale, the number of potential participants available for a given concert in
Downtown is much smaller than in Midtown. Several composer/performers characterized
the sub-world as a community where everybody knows everybody else ... Downtown
performers tend to participate in only a few groups and establish long-term relationships
in these ensembles' (Gilmore, p.220).
Over the years, Zorn has become a central figure in the Downtown scene, a dedicated and
tight group of musicians playing in ever-shifting bands and improvisational circles. When
he arrived in New York in 1974, he began networking with musicians throughout the
East Village. 'I was performing in my little apartment on Lafayette Street, meeting
musicians one by one. The downtown improvising scene didn't exist at that time. I met all
the musicians I work with one by one over the years' (Strickland, p.139). Contemplating
the results of his social activities, Zorn concludes: 'I really feel like I've created a small
society: a way of working. People fit into it - they like it - they have time off and then
they're called to perform ... It's like Hakim Bey's concept of a TAZ, a Temporary
Autonomous Zone: a moment separate from society, which creates its own rules ... Some
people can enter it and some can't, but regardless of that, it has validity, it's organic, it's
alive, it has life in it' (Gagne, p.514).
Do permit me a slight diversion, a (lateral) branch (as in that of a river or an olive tree).
'Some people can enter it and some can't'. That is the implication of Zorn's meticulous
screening. To play with him, every musician needs a musical and social password, a
Shibboleth. Shibboleth is about the difference between inside and outside, about crossing
a threshold. This threshold, this Shibboleth, is John Zorn. He gives access to a certain
community, or better, he is the place where the decision is made about the right to enter a
certain society. (In Great Jewish Music, I consider at length my choice of the Jewish

word Shibboleth. This password used by the Israelites to keep their enemy on the outside
seems to apply very well to Zorn: like Zorn himself, almost all his fellow musicians are
Jews.) Shibboleth is both a word of benevolence and a word of violence: a sign of union
and a verdict of exclusion and discrimination. Some people can enter and some cannot.
(f) 'Concerts in Downtown are produced under much less economic pressure than
Midtown. Events tend to be quite small and production costs are fairly minimal. Many
concerts are held in 'lofts' where Downtown musicians live. In addition, most
composers/performers are not paid or are paid only small amounts for concerts' (Gilmore,
p.221).
Zorn has been toiling away in the performance spaces and lofts of the Lower East Side
for close to 14 years (cf. Jones, p.149). 'My first performances in New York were in his
theater [Richard Foreman's Theater of Musical Optics at Broome street on lower
Broadway, MC] and in my own apartment', Zorn recalls (Gagne, p.514). This
experimental theater producer, Foreman, taught Zorn the love for doing things under
adverse conditions and on small budgets. And although he was making next to nothing
(Duckworth: 'Were you making any money by this point?' Zorn: 'No, nothing. Nothing at
all' (Duckworth, p.459)), Zorn seemed to be quite happy and willing to make hardly any
musical concessions. In a burst of nostalgia, Zorn says: 'We were working on our own
music, in our own little clubs, putting our own little posters up, and developing our own
audience'.
[5] Why all this information? Why try to prove that Gilmore could have labeled Zorn a
core member of the Downtown music sub-world? One possible answer: to make
something clear about the position Zorn has in this sub-world, to situate his position.
Why not take advantage of the findings of a serious researcher to give Zorn the position
he deserves, at the heart of a dazzling music world? However, look at the title: Positions.
There is more than one. Zorn can be situated on the inside of the Downtown concert
world, a name given to a music sub-world that differs from jazz and popular music
worlds (cf. Gilmore, p.212). But the specific albums I mention above - Spillane and
especially Cobra - as well as the performances I'm referring to, are all about
improvisation, improvised music, usually closely related to jazz music. And can't we say
that a tribute to Ennio Morricone also means a tribute to popular music? Even Gilmore
himself, talking about performers who are shown to be co-composers (see 4), introduces
with this a musical element generally not associated with a music world that is clearly
separated from the jazz and pop scenes.
Zorn is in the center of the Downtown classical music world, although he barely has any
connection to classical music. He is on the inside, but as an outsider. In order to protect
the inside, to make clear that what is located, not on the edge or in an overlapping
periphery, but - almost ideal typical - in the core of the Downtown concert world, we
could position a person who comes from the outside, who always operates from a place
(or non-place) situated between classical music, jazz, and pop music. Zorn (like Socrates)
is a pharmakos. When Gilmore wants to accomplish his mission ('The cores of concert
production in each sub-world can be analyzed separately'), he has to drive Zorn out of the
center. He has to chase away the outsider who brings in many aspects that do not or
cannot belong to the core of the Downtown concert world. He has to expel John Zorn (an

a-poria, a no entrance, instead of a Shibboleth, a password), an almost exemplary model

of this inside, because the core of the core of the Downtown sub-world is already
permeated by its own periphery.
Gilmore has to expel Zorn because of Spillane. Because Spillane is also about
improvisation, jazz and rock. Because Spillane is released by Elektra Nonesuch,
ostensibly a classical music label and more closely related to the Uptown scene. Because
Spillane contains the composition 'Forbidden Fruit' played by the classically trained
Kronos Quartet that I presume Gilmore would classify among the Uptown concert world.
Because in Spillane, the borders between jazz, pop and classical music dissolve, the
dividing line between the emphasis on continual innovation and the development of
virtuoso techniques (a difference between Downtown and Midtown according to
Gilmore) is abolished, and the cooperation of Uptown and Downtown musicians
('Forbidden Fruit' is a piece for string quartet, turntables, and Japanese voice recorded by
the Kronos Quartet, Christian Marclay and Ohta Hiromi, the latter two representing the
Downtown scene) reveals that the boundaries between the three distinguished concert
worlds is not discrete, even when we take an exemplary model of the core of one of these
worlds (and I tried to demonstrate that a composer proposed by Gilmore is not a good
example any more than Zorn is).
Positions. Of course, a musician like anyone else holds more than one position (guitarist
instead of pianist, jazz instead of pop musician, performer instead of composer, etc.).
Here, however, it is impossible to talk about different positions in this sense. Zorn's
position as a musician differs within itself. He is both at the heart of the Downtown
concert world and on the periphery. That means he is neither in the center, nor on the
periphery. Or, when he is on the inside Gilmore sketches (performers being (co)composers at the same time), he is already on its outside (performer/composer as a
stronger characteristic of the jazz and pop worlds, worlds Gilmore tries to exclude but
seem to resonate at the very heart of the Downtown concert world).
[6] Why this modest initiative (modest because a great deal more could be said if we had
more time, if Gilmore's work were the central point of this essay) to deconstruct
Gilmore's theoretical framework? I turn to Jonathan Culler's book, On Deconstruction,
for some help and insight. Following Derrida, Culler states that reflection upon
theoretical results and institutional frameworks is necessary. The questioning of these
theoretical and/or institutional structures can be seen as an act of politicizing what might
otherwise be thought of as neutral frameworks or neutral research (cf. Culler, p.156).
Classifications such as Gilmore's are produced by acts of exclusion (for example, the
division of the music world in a classical, pop and jazz sub-world). Of course, one
frequently finds general agreement, but a consensus adduced to serve as foundation is not
given, but produced, produced by these acts of exclusion. Since deconstruction is
interested in what has been excluded and in the perspective it offers on consensus and
convention, there can be no question of accepting consensus and convention as the truth
or restricting truth of what is demonstrable within a system. It tries to keep alive the
possibility that attention to the marginal, the periphery of a system, might yield ideas that
contradict the consensus, ideas that are not demonstrable within the framework yet
developed (cf. Culler, p.153). The inversion and displacement of hierarchical oppositions
open for debate the institutional arrangements that rely on the hierarchies and thus open

possibilities for change. Deconstruction's most radical aspects emerge precisely in a

theoretical reflection that contests particular institutionalizations of a theoretical
discourse. It's analyses have potentially radical institutional implications (cf. Culler,
p.159).
Deconstructive strategies do not lead to new foundations. They have no better theory to
offer, but are attuned to the aporias that arise in attempts to reveal the truth. For instance,
the truth about the Manhattan concert world. Deconstruction does not lead to new
foundations. However, working within and around a discursive framework, producing
reversals and displacements rather than constructing on new ground, it can definitely lead
to changes in assumptions, institutions, and practices (cf. Culler, p.154-5).

Positions II
[1] Two justifications for this page on the institutional world around Zorn and his music.
Two justifications for writing around music. Just in case.
(1) In The Truth In Painting, Derrida talks about the frame, the surrounds of the artwork,
its fringes: discourses, the market, the institutional frameworks, everyplace where one
legislates on the right to produce art by marking the limit, the limit between art and nonart. Of course, talking about the surrounds of an artwork means talking about something
that is external to art. External and, thereby, marginal, peripheral because the work of art
is (at) the center. At the same time, however, these frames are often essential to the works
of art. It is here that the decision is made as to whether or not an object or an (acoustic)
event can be called a work of art; here, the boundary is drawn between art and non-art.
So, in fact, it is the frame, the discourse, the institution that can be called the artworld,
that 'produces' the art, that sets something off as art. Thus, the frame can be considered
central; for without it, art is not art. The artworld is an essential supplement to works of
art.
(2) In almost all of Zorn's interviews, he talks about his experiences with record
companies, about the politics and economics of the music industry, about the difficulties
he used to have distributing his music, about how his work is classified (for instance, in
record shops), about the wages he could or could not pay his fellow musicians, about
record covers and liner notes, about the intentions of his work, in short: about the
surrounds of his music. (And let's not forget that the interview itself is part of the fringe
of the work of art.) Apparently these subjects are important and they supply a need that
(his) music alone cannot fulfill. Sometimes, it is even difficult to consider these
surrounds external to Zorn's works as is the case with the record covers: 'With me, the
packaging is essential - that is my artwork, making records', Zorn says (Gagne, p.531)
(cf. Restitutions, Shibboleth or Aporias).
[2] Enough now. Time to come to the main point of this page. Time to introduce some
remarks by sociologist and musician Howard Becker in order to clarify Zorn's position in
the contemporary world of music. Why? Because Zorn seems to be an illustrative
example of what Becker describes as an absolute prerequisite of success when talking
about an innovative artist: the crucial importance of organizational development to
artistic change. In other words, Zorn represents the possibility that successful innovators
can create around themselves the apparatus of an art world (cf. Becker, p.300-1). (Just
how innovative Zorn is, is not my concern here. Becker distinguishes between continuous
and revolutionary innovations, but, elaborating on the two, he comes to the conclusion
that the distinction he first proposed is not so clear. Neither of them changes every pattern
of convention-mediated, cooperative activity. Furthermore, a change may be
revolutionary for some involved in the existing system, but not for others (cf. Becker,
301-8). Becker seems to dismantle his own analytically constructed opposition by saying
that the one is always permeated by the other. A form of auto-deconstruction?)
And in the year 2000, John Zorn is successful. 'Zorn was able to rise to the top of the
'Downtown Crowd', a group of musicians playing in ever shifting bands and

improvisational circles' (Cuthbert, p.2). 'He is a lightning rod for new music talent in New
York' (Jones, p.143). But his fame is not restricted to New York, nor to the USA. 'Zorn
became a central figure in the realm of free improvisation, networking with musicians at
first throughout the East Village, and eventually throughout the world' (Gagne, p.509).
(Zorn as a central figure is also illustrated in Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach, the
CD that bears his name although he does not play a single note on it.) He is an esteemed
guest at important international music festivals; his records sell worldwide and his
compositions are performed all over the (western) world. ('Even my father looks at me
now like a success.') And he is fairly famous not only in the inner circle of modern jazz
and avantgarde enthusiasts. His versatile oeuvre has made him well-known in the
(alternative) pop circuit and in the world of contemporary composed music as well.
Famous string quartets and orchestras play his works in concert halls in which Beethoven
and Schubert are usually performed.
It all started differently, laboriously, and not very promising when Zorn came (back) to
New York in 1974. 'I started promoting my own concerts. I'd just go to a coffee shop and
say, 'Hey, can I play here on Friday?' And they'd go, 'Well, yeah, why not?' I'd make my
own posters and put them around ... No one would come to my gigs, but I just loved the
opportunity to be able to play, and to compose and then perform it'. He gave
performances in his own appartment for two people, he received miserable reviews until
the 1980's, and was not making any money with his music (cf. Duckworth, p.457-9).
[3] What is the source of his current success? His great musical talent? His ability to
create new musical forms and to obscure musical boundaries? Of course, his musical and
compositional skills have influenced his reputation. Becker, however, disputes - or at
least puts into perspective - this highly individualistic theory of art made by specially
gifted people who create works of exceptional beauty. According to Becker, this theory
arises in times and places and under social conditions that emphasize the individual over
the collective and needs some reconsideration. 'The theory of reputation says that
reputations are based on works. But, in fact, the reputations of artists, works, and the rest
result from the collective activity of art worlds' (Becker, p.360). Becker mentions the
influence of critics, aestheticians, historians, scholars, editors, and participants in the
distribution system. (Introducing the notion of an art world gives rise to as many
questions as it offers solutions. Becker is aware of that himself, but avoids a discussion
by falling back on his pragmatic position. In this way, he tries to prevent questions about
the boundary of an art world. Which people and which activities can still or already be
considered part of an art world and which do not (yet or any longer) belong to it? In much
the same way, he avoids a definition of art. But how can we speak about an art world
when we do not first know what art is? By what does one recognize an art world or works
of art if one does not have a sort of preconception of the essence of art? Again, questions
about the problem of inside and outside arise and although I put these remarks in
parentheses - putting them on an outside as it were, but an outside which is on the inside
at the same time - they should resonate throughout this text.)
What applies to reputation, also applies to art in general. The main point Becker wants to
emphasize is that all artistic work involves the collective activities of a number of people.
Every art rests on an extensive division of labor and the artist works in the center of a
network of cooperating people, all of whose work is essential to the final outcome. (This

is not the place for in depth questioning of Becker's idea of the artist as the center of an
art world. I confine myself to refer to the remarks made in the first justification: what is
considered marginal can become central and vice versa.) Producing works of art requires
elaborate cooperation among specialized people. So, works of art are not the products of
individuals, artists who possess a rare and special gift. Rather, they are joint products of
all the people who cooperate in an art world of which the artists are (only) a sub-group
(cf. Becker, p.1-39).
In The Signature of John Zorn and at the end of The Death of the Composer I indicate
more emphatically Zorn's regard for his work as the outcome of varying collectives of
individuals (cf. also the liner notes of Spillane). To Zorn, the hierarchical difference
between the actual Genius and his assistants seems to dissapear. Perhaps the idea of a
genius still exists for Zorn, but it exists in the plural: he emphasizes that his fellow
musicians are geniuses, too. Instead of analyzing the oeuvre as the final result of a
creative process connected with one proper name, Zorn asks musicologists and music
theorists to pay attention to the whole production process. The signature with which an
oeuvre is supplied conceals the complexity of the production process underlying this
oeuvre (cf. Lesage, p.4-6).
[4] I return to my question: What is the source of Zorn's current success?
According to Becker, success, reputation and recognition depend to a great extent on an
artist's ability (and probably a certain amount of luck and coincidences) to create a (new)
art world around himself or his artistic product. Artistic changes succeed when 'their
originators mobilize some or all of the members of the relevant art world to cooperate in
the new activities their vision of the medium requires ... Their success depends on the
degree to which their proponents can mobilize the support of others ... Innovators who
command the cooperation of everyone needed for the activities the innovation requires
have an art world at their disposal, whether they take over existing institutions or simply
create an entire new network' (Becker, p.308-10). Becker goes on to describe in broad
and general terms how such a new network can come into existence. 'Experimenting
groups cluster locally because they communicate largely face-to-face, hearing or seeing
each other's work In addition to experimenting with new possibilities, the pioneers
also begin to construct the rudiments of an art world - networks of suppliers, distribution
facilities, and collegial groups in which aesthetic questions can be argued, standards
proposed, and work evaluated' (Becker, p.320). Little by little, the informal circuit
professionalizes (Becker mentions, as an example of this professionalization, the
development of stable contractual arrangements for performances) and becomes more
familiar over a larger area (for example, through performances in other parts of the
country and through the distribution of recorded material). New and professional business
and distribution arrangements help a small, local art world, one in which a circle of
cooperation does not go beyond the face-to-face interaction, to spread over a larger
territory.
[5] An exciting book for a young boy? Maybe, but it is also Becker's sociological
description of the development of jazz music in the USA. And it seems befitting to
describe Zorn's career (and that of his fellow musicians from the Downtown scene) as
well. (The parentheses are used because it is Zorn who attracts most attention. He appears

to be the center of the network, an idea that Zorn confirms in an interview. 'Question: We
live in a time when the music press encourages either that kind of adulation, or else a
total denial of a composer. The scene is constantly being reduced to a few heroes and
heavies, who's in and who's out, in order to sell newspapers and magazines - that is, if
anyone gets written about at all'. Zorn's answer: 'Yes. It's a shame when they pick out one
or two people from a whole generation of musicians to turn into gods. It happened with
Reich and Glass; it happened with Cage. God forbid it should happen to me, but of all
those musicians - Elliott [Sharp] and Wayne [Horvitz], Anthony Coleman or Chadbourne
- I'm the one that keeps getting the play, and it's not fair. I come from a pool of musicians
that collaborated, that shared ideas ... I think it is important for people who find
themselves in the public eye to try to diffuse some of the attention to other places, and
give support back into the community that nurtured them in the first place. It's a
responsability I became very aware of years ago when the press started jumping on me in
the mid 1980's' (Gagne, p.517-8, my italics). Analogously, Becker points to the
possibility that one locale may become dominant, while the others model themselves on
its example.)
I do not think that Zorn created a whole new art world. However, I would like to call him
one of the most important originators of a new subworld within the Downtown scene of
New York, a subworld that now receives worldwide recognition. To elaborate on this,
let's concentrate on four keywords: The scene, clubs, record companies, and a book.
[6] The Scene. By the mid-1970's, when Zorn moves to New York, he finds a city where
it is both hard to find musicians with whom to play and a place in which to perform his
music. 'So, starting from where I dropped out I just said, 'Okay, I'm going to meet people,
write, perform my music, and play wherever I can play'. I played on the street for years.
And I had met musicians on the West Coast who eventually gravitated to New York, and
we began working together. But in 1974, '75, '76, there were maybe two people I could
play with [Polly Bradfield and Eugene Chadbourne, MC], so I booked trio pieces', Zorn
recalls (Duckworth, p.457). And he continues: 'That was at the beginning. And then Tom
Cora and then Toshinori Kondo and then Bob Ostertag and then Ned Rothenberg - bit by
bit, people came together from all over the country and gravitated to New York and
somehow got involved in the maelstrom of the downtown improvisers. That was what we
were back then; even more so now ... I really feel I created a small society: a way of
working. People fit into it - they like it - they have time off and then they're called to
perform' (Gagne, p.514-6 and Duckworth, p.459). A quick glance at the enormous list of
musicians with whom Zorn worked over the years gives the impression that he manages a
kind of database or runs a temp agency. In the ever changing line-up of performers (that
at times does not include Zorn), musicians from this network collaborate in very diverse
musical projects. Zorn seems to satisfy Becker's description of a successful new art
world: 'The history of art deals with innovators and innovations that won organizational
victories ... mobilizing enough people to cooperate in regular ways that sustained and
furthered their idea' (Becker, p.301).
[7] The clubs. After Zorn's rough start, things improved slightly. 'We were finding places
to play on our own. We were working in our own little clubs, putting out our own little
posters up, and developing our own audience. And it was a very exciting time. Clubs

would come and go within a few months', says Zorn (Duckworth, p.459). Clubs would
come and go within a few months. This changed in 1987, when three men (Michael Dorf,
Louis Spitzer, and Bob Appel) founded the Knitting Factory. In Knitting Music. A FiveYear History of the Knitting Factory Dorf recalls: 'The NY music scene, from jazz to
rock, was desperate at this time for a new venue'. Downtown musician Elliott Sharp
confirms this: 'Before the Knitting Factory there was this huge well of musicians with no
venue for their musical extremes. It gave them a means of dissemination' (Dorf, p.10 and
p.66).
Dorf, coming from Wisconsin, neither knew much about jazz and improvised music, nor
did he know the musicians of the Downtown scene. Through an advertisement, he came
into contact with Wayne Horvitz who introduced him to others on the scene. By April
1987, Dorf was booking every single night, mostly improvisationists or artists in a jazz
vein who needed work. Zorn, in a 1987 article from The New York Times: 'Michael came
along just at the right time. The Lower East Side downtown scene had been starving for a
place for a year. After 10 years, we were finally getting our due in the press, and people
were paying attention to us. But the Knitting Factory helped us take that extra step into
the limelight' (Dorf, p.17-8). And in a 1989 issue of the New York Magazine: 'Those guys
were really great; you could say, 'I want to play something I'm working on tonight', and
they'd say, 'Sure, we'll do a midnight set ... The Knitting Factory reinvoked the music
scene in New York. We fed it and it fed us, and it became bigger than both of us' (Dorf,
p.59). We fed it and it fed us. Musical innovations and a new organizational initiative
came to fertilize each other. 'Innovations begin as, and continue to incorporate, changes
in an artistic vision or idea. But their success depends on the degree to which their
proponents can mobilize the support of others' (Becker, p.309-10).
'New business and distribution arrangements help the growing art world spread over a
larger territory. This involves the sale of finished work, for object-producing arts, and the
development of stable contractual arrangements for performances', Becker writes
(Becker, p.325). Something similar happened to the Knitting Factory scene. Dorf booked
a series of concerts at Lincoln Center with a rather large budget. (From The New York
Times, 'The Knitting Factory Goes Uptown' and 'It's a chance to take this music and put it
in the mainstream media and give the larger population access to it, to experience it,
which, given the mostly underground nature of the scene, is a welcome opportunity'.)
Attention from Holland led to the 'Knitting Factory Festival' during the 'Jazz Marathon'
held in Groningen, The Netherlands in 1988, in which about thirty Downtown musicians
collaborated; the Japanese press and music industry started watching them closely. And
as a continuation of the success in The Netherlands, Dorf was able to arrange a European
tour in 1990.
In 2000, the Knitting Factory opened a branch in San Francisco. (It already had, for a
number of years, a branch in Amsterdam exclusively for the sale of records.) (Note:
Becker does not write about arguments and quarrels that can cause a split in an art world.
In 2000, John Lurie of The Lounge Lizards, a band that often played in the Knitting
Factory, sent a letter to The New Times LA Music Editor. In it, he decries 'the injustices
commited by the notorious Michael Dorf and the hideous Knitting Factory'. Lurie accuses
Dorf, in no uncertain terms, of getting rich at the expense of a lot of musicians. He
continues, 'In New York getting screwed is known as getting Dorfed ... Dorf is Frod
backwards'. Zorn, who remarkably enough almost never mentions the Knitting Factory

during his interviews, had also been avoiding this club for a couple of years. ('I was
unhappy about the way things were progressing at the Knitting Factory. I felt that
musicians were being mistreated'.) 'We fed it and it fed us'. The past perfect. Both seem
to be mature enough to feed themselves. Zorn helps to nurture a new inventive Lower
East Side club where he can promote his music and that of his fellow musicians: Tonic).
[8] Record companies. Many musicians of the art world to which Zorn belongs, benefited
by Dorf's next steps. He starts recording the shows at the Knitting Factory and
succesfully tries to interest radio stations for this music. ('We had more than 200 stations
carry the series in 1990', writes Dorf.) The music industry becomes interested, and, in
1989, Dorf signs a contract with A&M Records. As early as 1990, he buys back the
European rights from A&M in order to license the Live at the Knitting Factory CD's to a
more interested European label, Enemy Records. In 1991, the first CD on Dorf's own
record label, Knitting Factory Works, is released, the first CD outside of his A&M deal.
And with the financial help of his Japanese distributor, Dorf is able to expand the record
company.
By the time Dorf begins exploratory talks with A&M, Zorn has already had a contract for
a number of years with Elektra Nonesuch, a label that supported artists outside the
mainstream. His Ennio Morricone project in 1987, commissioned by The Brooklyn
Academy of Music, landed him a six-album deal with Nonesuch that released the project
on LP as The Big Gundown. Although this deal means a definite breakthrough for Zorn
(the Naked City album sold over 60,000), he is not very happy with his contract. He
accuses Nonesuch of unwanted interference with artistic matters, i.e., the packaging (cf.
Restitutions, Shibboleth or Aporias). They had difficulties with Zorn's scandalous covers
containing violent or politicized pictures and they wanted to change them. After licensing
Film Works 1986-1990 for North American release in fulfillment of his contract, Zorn
leaves Nonesuch and looks east to Japan. Although several subsequent CD's are released
by Eva Records in Tokyo, Zorn forms his own label, Avant, in 1991. He intends for
Avant to become a home to an important repertory of recordings produced with complete
artistic freedom by composers that he respects, composers whose work he feels is
undervalued and ignored elsewhere. In 1995, Zorn founds a new label, Tzadik. The
opening lines on a flyer make it clear that Zorn still wants the same thing: 'Tzadik is
dedicated to releasing the best in avant-garde and experimental music, presenting a
worldwide community of contemporary musician-composers who find it difficult or
impossible to release their music through more conventional channels'. In March 2000,
the discography for Tzadik numbers over 150. A worldwide community. 'No one small
locality, however metropolitan, can furnish a sufficient amount and variety of work to
serve a national or international market. For that reason ... the organizations that
distribute work begin to look everywhere for material, and thus breach the walls around
the local, provincial art world', Becker writes (Becker, p.329). According to him, the
development of new art worlds frequently focuses on the creation of new organizations
for the distribution of work. Fully developed art worlds provide professional distribution
systems.
[9] The book. Arcana. Musicians on Music. Edited by John Zorn and with the
contribution of 29 musicians/composers. Arcana: mysteries, secrets. From the title it is

impossible to deduce whether or not this book is meant to veil or unveil some mysteries.
But in the preface Zorn writes that it should provide a 'helpful insight into the artists'
inner mind', more direct than a manipulated interview.
How well this title is chosen. In alchemy tradition, arcanum means a secret medicine (a
pharmakon?), an elixer of life, a tonic (!). Maybe it is primarily a medicine for Zorn, who
writes in order to rid his system of the disappointment he feels about the lack of an
intelligent analysis of the music produced by the Downtown scene. 'This is almost
entirely unprecedented for an artistic movement of such scope and involving as many
important figures as it does' (Zorn, p.v). Through Arcana, with this pharmakon, he is able
to use writing to flush the frustration out of his system. 'This book exists to correct an
unfortunate injustice, the incredible lack of insightful critical writing about a significant
generation of the best and most important work of the past two decades' (Zorn, p.vi).
However, within the context of this page, Arcana, seen as an elixer, is perhaps more
important. An elixer of life is supposed to extend life. It gives new life to someone or
something. ('Putting it together was not a 'labor of love', but an act of necessity', writes
Zorn.) Arcana is probably not a real resuscitation, but a new way, another way to create
and define the musical subworld in which Zorn works. In his commentary on the book
jacket, Steve Reich recommends the book because it maps the 'historical sociobiology of
the Downtown music scene'. Not on a musical level, nor on a distributional level, but this
time on a discursive level, Zorn is able to attract a group of sympathizers, and, in this way
he consolidates and reconfirms the existence of (t)his art world. Although Zorn
emphasizes the impossibility of classifying or categorizing the music of the Downtown
scene, and although he stresses the differences between the works of the musicians
concerned, Arcana works as a kind of Shibboleth - a sign of belonging and association,
but along with that, also a sign of exclusion and discrimination - thereby marking the
(indefinite) borderlines of an art world, thereby defining that art world. With his book,
Zorn strengthens the bonds of this musical community, (re)creating a group with its own
standards, expectations and conventions, in which individual members will account for
the course of their own activities: the other members constitute the 'reference group'.
Here, Zorn puts himself in the position of an aesthetician as Becker describes:
'Aestheticians (or whoever does the job) provide the rationale by which art works justify
their existence and distinctiveness, and thus, their claim to support. Art and artists can
exist without such a rationale, but have more trouble when others dispute their rights to
do so ... A coherent and defensible aesthetic helps to stabilize values and thus to
regularize practice' (Becker, p.164 and p.134).
[10] Creating an (international) community of musicians, a continually expanding
network of collaborating musicians. Providing professional distribution channels to bring
this music out into the limelight (places to perform and record companies to release
CD's). Legitimizing the artistic choices made by the Downtown scene in a discursive
discourse which helps to stabilize its values and thus to regularize its practice. Zorn can
be regarded as an successful innovator who was able to create around himself the
apparatus of what could be called a new music subworld.

Saprophyte
[1] Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach. John Zorn pays tribute to someone whom he
considers a great composer. He takes advantage of (exploits?) existing music. He
parasitizes, he feeds on Bacharach's music. However, he also creates something new.
Bacharach's compositions are the source of new ones; but at the same time they are
disregarded and passed by.
At least two ways of reading are possible here. A double bind. Zorn enters the musical
world of Bacharach, but Bacharach's music simultaneously enters into Zorn's musical and
socio-cultural environment as well. (Is a citation an alien parasite within the body of its
host, the main text, or is the new composition the parasite that surrounds and strangles its
host, the citation?) Each reference to Bacharach's music can be regarded as an alien
parasite within the body of its host, i.e., Zorn's music; at the same time, Zorn's music is
the parasite that surrounds and strangles the host, i.e., Bacharach's greatest hits. Zorn's
project is parasitical on Bacharach's music and, simultaneously, the sinister host that
destroys it by inviting it into its home. Host. At once, warm supplier of hospitality and
enemy. All of this exemplifies the undecidable oscillation of the relation between parasite
and host. It cannot be decided which element (which music) is the parasite, which one the
host (cf. Hillis Miller, p.223-5).
In both cases, however, the parasitical represents the uncanny, the alien who breaks into
the closed economy of the home, although it is difficult to speak about anything being
closed, especially with regard to Zorn's music. (In general, one could say that any
composition parasitizes on earlier compositions; it contains earlier compositions as
enclosed parasites within itself. This means that the opposition original vs. derived loses
its pertinence from the moment we recognize that everything begins by following a
vestige or trace, i.e. a certain repetition or textuality. So, whenever I use these traditional
concepts, it should be understood that the duality between the original text and a derived
version is swept away. It is not a matter of a simple hierarchical relation between two
texts, but rather of a displacement of a constellation or a labyrinth. This interweaving of
elements, this system of differences and traces of traces in which no single musical mark
is original nor simply present or absent, could be called music about music. (Music about
music: a form of intermusicality.) (Zorn's) intentional composing of music about music
becomes an act of reflection. In his music, the separation between music and thinking
about music is abolished. Zorn thinks about improvisation, composition and arrangement
through and in his music. He does not use post-structuralist thinking. Post-structuralism is
articulated in and through his music. Post-structuralism as music. Moreover, (his)
intermusicality affects music history. It demonstrates that music history is not a linear
process of a single thread but always a multiplicity of histories. Intermusicality is no
arborescent system but rhizomatic; it has multiple entryways. Zorn uses or invents these
histories; they become his stories.)
I presented two readings: Bacharach as Zorn's parasite and Zorn as a parasite of
Bacharach. In the following, I will focus on the latter (keeping in mind that the other
reading is also always there, following the first as a shadow, a specter). What does it
mean to say that Zorn's project is parasitical on Bacharach's music?

[2] A few definitions to start with. A parasite is 'any organism that grows, feeds, and is
sheltered on or in a different organism while contributing nothing to the survival of its
host'. A parasite is 'a person who habitually takes advantage of the generosity of others
without making any useful return' (cf. Hillis Miller, p.220). Aside from these biological
and social descriptions, 'parasite' also means noise in French, the static in a system, or the
interference in a channel (cf. Noise as Undesirable Sound). Closely resembling the
parasite is the virus. The genetic pattern of the virus is coded in such a way that it is able
to enter a host cell and violently reprogram all the genetic material in that cell (cf. Hillis
Miller, p.222).
This is strong language, in both cases. Is it appropriate to use such pejorative terms in
describing Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach? Is Zorn not giving anything in return?
Also, can this project be considered noise in the sense that it hampers communication (for
instance, between Bacharach's original compositions and the listener)? Is Zorn's
deconstruction of this music a ferocious reprogramming of the host texts in order to make
it express its own message, the uncanny, the alien? I defer possible answers for now
because there is more to be said about parasites. Something more positive, this time.
There are many cases where the presence of a parasite is absolutely required for the well
being of its host (cf. Hillis Miller, p.228). Many parasites maintain fully symbiotic
relations with their hosts. They are called saprophytes and co-exist in a mutually
beneficial relationship with their hosts. The symbiosis leads to new forms of life.
Therefore, it is not always true that parasites destroy their hosts, nor does the host always
enable its parasite to live by feeding it and losing his own life in the process. The noise
on the original work can open ways to a new composition, a new interpretation, a new
outlook.
[3] The English prefix 'para', Hillis Miller writes, indicates 'alongside, near or beside,
beyond, incorrectly, resembling or similar to, subsidiary to'. In Greek, 'para' furthermore
means wrongfully, harmfully, and unfavorably (cf. Hillis Miller, p.219). Hillis Miller
continues, ''Para' is a double antithetical prefix signifying at once proximity and distance,
similarity and difference, interiority and exteriority, something inside a domestic
economy and at the same time outside it, something simultaneously this side of a
boundary line, threshold, or margin, and also beyond it, equivalent in status and also
secondary or subsidiary, submissive, as of guest to host, slave to master' (Hillis Miller,
p.219). There is some resemblance here to the way Derrida writes about the par-ergon in
The Truth In Painting (para ergon, beside or outside the work). Derrida elaborates on
Kant's examples in his discussion of Kant's use of the word parergon in the Third
Critique (paragraph 14). According to Kant, the colonnades of a palace are parerga,
whereas the building land is not. But why would a column be a parergon while a natural
site chosen to build the palace, or the artificial site with its crossroads and other buildings
would not be, Derrida wonders. His answer: 'It is not because [the columns] are detached,
but on the contrary because they are more difficult to detach ... What constitutes them as
parerga is not simply their exteriority as a surplus, it is the internal structural link which
rivets them to the lack in the interior of the ergon' (The Truth In Painting, p.59). What
fascinates Derrida is that the colonnades' status is at once proximate and distant. Kant

places them in the exterior, banishes them to the margin, while they certainly belong to
the interior as well.
[4] There is a remarkable similarity between the parergon and the parasite. Like a
parergon, a parasite is neither simply outside nor inside. In 'The Critic As Host', Hillis
Miller argues that the parasite is always already present within the host, the enemy within
the house, heterogeneity within homogeneity. So, the parasite is inside, but it is not an
insider. It is an outsider inside. Hillis Miller speaks of a relation of intimate kinship and
of enmity at the same time. The same goes for Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach. All
the songs on this album are closely connected to Bacharach's originals. (Sometimes the
parasitical music, that uncanny alien, is so close that one does not think anything strange
about it - cf., for example, the opening tune 'Close To You' by Wayne Horvitz. Opening
tune. In a certain way we could call it an ouverture, the French word for both beginning
and opening, an unlocking. 'Close To You' is the beginning of a guided tour, an invitation
by a host - who is simultaneously a guest - to enter his house, an open door to something
strange, but familiar at the same time, to something we have heard before and
simultaneously have never heard before.) Bacharach's music is the food, the raw material
with which something new is created. However, in this new construction, some of the old
text is destroyed as well. (De)(con)struction. The process of destruction and construction
is only possible when the invader can come infinitely close (or already is) and remains
infinitely alien at the same time. Maybe this distance is the difference between Zorn's
project and most of the conventional cover versions of Bacharach's tunes. (Could we say
that these cover versions keep Bacharach's music alive only as a monument, as a dead
relic?) Although the instrumentation and arrangements may be altered, although chords
and melody may be different, the conventional cover versions still represent the originals.
However, without changing chords, melody or structure, Horvitz' 'Close To You' does not
represent, rather, it presents something. It stays very close to the original (the inside) and
yet it sounds entirely different (the outside). Parasitism here is the driving force for
change and invention.
Moreover, there is always room for parasitism because of an openness in the interior of
the music, a possibility available in the materiality of the music itself. No (musical) text
is closed upon itself. The possibility of parasitism - parasitism regarded as (mis)use,
quotation, or imitation, i.e. repeating and presenting the music in a different context - is
always present. The parasite can feed on (parts of) the host, and the (musical) mark
cannot prevent this (cf. (D)(R)econtextualization); it is, in fact, constituted on this everpresent possibility of parasitism. And, as mentioned before, every host is a parasite in
turn; there is no beginning, no origin.
From one perspective, one could say that Bacharach is asymmetrically involved. The host
(Bacharach) becomes a kind of a hostage when Zorn forces him into his musical world.
(The reception or insertion of another always involves a certain amount of violent
subjection or subjugation.) The inviting host becomes a hostage. The parasite, on his part,
invites the one that invited him; he becomes the master of the host. In other words, the
parasite becomes the host of the host.
[5] Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach. Feeding on almost-forgotten hit records from
the past. Certainly a kind of parasitism. Certainly? Why a parasite and not a guest,

assuming that the difference lies in the right of hospitality? Without this right, the
stranger can only break into the home of the host as an illegal, surreptitious guest (host,
here: parasite). How can Zorn obtain this right? First, by asking Bacharach. Asking for
hospitality. However, there is a question of whether any stipulating conditions would, by
definition, ignore the principle of hospitality, so that asking would render the hospitality
incongruous. And secondly, by being granted this right, for example, because he offers
something in return. A reversed welcoming gift. Does Bacharach get something in return
as well? Of course. His music not only serves as a host in the sense of being a victim, a
sacrifice. He is eaten and he eats himself. For example, he benefits from a renewed
attention for his music in the media. Perhaps, the host (Bacharach) was expecting the
stranger. (And for more than one reason I could add, 'on the threshold of his house'.
Musically, he needs to open the door to let others in and play (with) his music on the
border of the inside and outside, since his name is on the edge of obscurity.) Perhaps, he
sees Zorn coming as a liberator, offering him his hospitality. He might take advantage of
a new audience that comes to know his music through Zorn's project. At least, Zorn
promotes him in his liner notes. 'An unbridled genius. More than a great tunesmith, he's a
conductor, a pianist and a singer, a bold arranger with an original vision and sharp ear for
detail, a brilliant producer and a sensitive collaborator'. He has been a source of
inspiration for generations of musicians, Zorn writes. His pop songs are 'deep
explorations of the materials of music and should be studied and treasured with as much
care and diligence we accord any great works of art'. Although this is important, I would
like to focus on the symbiotic relationship between Bacharach's tunes and Zorn's project.
In Dissemination, Derrida writes that each quoted text continues to 'radiate back toward
the site of its removal, transforming that, too, as it affects the new territory. Each is
defined (thought) by the operation and is at the same time defining (thinking) as far as the
rules and effects of the operation are concerned' (Dissemination, p.355). Although it is
difficult to assert that Zorn's project consists of quotations (the recorded songs are
(n)either quotations (n)or interpretations), it should be noted that there is not a one-way
relationship between the original (the host) and the derivative (the parasite). By returning
Bacharach's hit records in a deformed way, by sending them back to their owner (Are
they send back?), Zorn transforms (the perception of) them as well. In and by using the
host texts, they appear in a different way: certain features may come to the forefront that
we did not hear before. Other aspects that were previously believed to be important
characteristics become less so. The small accompaniment in Horvitz' 'Close To You'
provides the listener with a better understanding of how the harmonic and rhythmic
structure is already present in the melody than conventional cover versions. Both
Bacharach's music and Zorn's project (re-, de-, trans-) form each other, contaminate each
others content. Zorn is not a parasite; rather, I would call him a saprophyte. The noise
(literally and figuratively) produced on Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach is a
pharmakon, poison and cure at the same time. On one hand, it hampers communication
between Bacharach's originals and the unsuspecting listener; on the other hand it makes
this communication possible again, as it is presented, for example, in a new form to a
younger audience from another musical and cultural field (rock, and/or avant garde).
[6] Parasite. There is a connection to deconstruction. A deconstructive strategy is
accomplished by borrowing the very terms utilized by the host work itself. Derrida often

works this way, for example, when he uses 'pharmakon' from Plato, 'supplement' from
Rousseau, and so on. Borrowing. Here, it is another word for parasitizing. (Derrida
describes grammatology as a parasitical economy.) Staying very close to the host text
while saying something very different. Derrida makes clear that 'the near' is not opposed
to an 'elsewhere' but to another form of 'the near', something that would theoretically
illustrate the relationship between Zorn's project and more conventional cover versions of
Bacharach's songs. With the greatest attention and accuracy, Derrida rewrites
philosophical and literary texts, but in a different context or framework, so that the
emphasis changes. He enacts or performs the compositional structuring of the host which
results in another text of the 'same kind'. This parasitical relationship brings about
something new. He remotivates certain key words, he removes them from one contextual
field and reassigns them to another, but always with the utmost systematic attention to the
potentials available in the word itself (cf. Ulmer, 1983, p.93-4). However, host and
parasite supplement each other, enable each other to live on, to survive.
This deconstructive strategy, this participation without belonging, this taking part in
without being part of, is characteristic of Zorn's homages in general and of Great Jewish
Music: Burt Bacharach, in particular. 'Close To You' could be taken very literally on a
musically analytical level. It refers to nearness and also to distance ('you' as opposed to
me, 'close' but not identical, the preposition 'to' that always invokes a difference, a
distance). Especially in the bridge of this song, which was reworked by Horvitz, the
mellow voices of The Carpenters resonate. At the same time, however, no one can
mistake this version for the original. Enough alien elements reside, although it is quite
difficult to indicate exactly where the differences begin.
[7] Zorn is famous for his homages. And there are many (cf. Hymen). But each project,
each tribute, evolves differently and with a different musical language as a result, because
the host demands these different approaches. Even if the host transforms into a hostage,
even if Zorn's tributes have a violent side, it is the host who sets the rules. However, the
host cannot sovereignly absorb this specific parasite; it is kicked off balance by it because
the parasite has reprogrammed all the genetic material.

Scritti Politti
[1] The third track on Scritti Politti's debut album, Songs to Remember, is called 'Jacques
Derrida'. (Not a fall back to soul language, but a re-reading of it using some of that style
as Scritti's lead singer and guitarist, Green Gartside, emphasizes.) The lyrics (both music
and words are written by Green) of this song express a deep sympathy for Derrida. (It is
definitely not a bossa nova as the opening words 'I'm in love with the bossa nova' could
suggest, but rather it is a pop song with a slightly artificial sound and an uncommon
compositional structure.) Here is an excerpt from it:
I'm in love with a Jacques Derrida
Read a page and know what I need to
Take apart my baby's heart
I'm in love
I'm in love with a Jacques Derrida
Read a page and know what I need to
Take apart my baby's heart
I'm in love
[2] Are there other (contemporary) philosophers who have a song named after them? I
don't know. And what would Derrida think about this explicit declaration of love? There
is a story that his students played the song for him when it first came out. Thereafter,
Derrida invited Green to come to Paris where they had dinner at the Beaubourg. Topic of
the conversation: the notion of spontaneous and unmediated expression. Green always
distanced himself from expressionist ideas in the arts, from anything that mythologized
thoughts of spontaneity and immediate improvisation, often cherished in the (free) jazz
world. Given his enthusiasm for and knowledge of Derrida's work that is expressed in
almost every interview ('For me, you can't forget Derrida'), it is probable that these ideas
originate from Derrida's critique of the so-called metaphysics of presence, the notion that
there is a transcendental signified that lies beyond everything and guarantees a stable
meaning. This metaphysics of presence seems most obvious in speech; speech often
stands for the direct expression of the thoughts, emotions, and spirit of a subject
completely identical with itself. The transfer of an inner experience of the presence of an
ideal object in a complete intuitive thinking to the external domain of language can only
succeed if the linguistic utterance does not interfere with what the rational subject wants
to say. According to logocentric tradition (Western philosophy), this is achieved by
speech, rather than by writing, which is less immediate, haunted by absence, and thereby
unable to guarantee a stable meaning. Especially in Speech and Phenomena and Of
Grammatology, Derrida comes to terms with this metaphysics of presence or
logocentrism. First he makes clear that both speech and writing are supplements,
supplements of eidos (ideas), audible or visible signs that (re)present something in its
absence. But this is the classically determined structure of the sign. Derrida also puts into
question the provisional secondariness of the (spoken or written) sign. Signs always defer
the presence of what they (re)present and this deferral is endless. There is an endless

chain of signifiers, each signifier referring only to other signifiers. This means that there
is no presence before and outside the sign. Signified concepts are never present in and of
theirselves. Every concept is inscribed in a chain within which it refers to the other, to
other concepts, by means of a play of differences.
[3] In pop music, too, the voice is often considered an index of soul and authentic
expression. Green tries to pervert this idea by the use of his voice. A producer recounts
how Green spent hours in a studio trying to create authentic, 'spontaneous' vocal
inflections. So he delivers up a perfect simulation of his own voice, a simulacrum, an
artificiality of authenticity, a quasi-spontaneity (cf. O'Reilly,
http://www.figure4.co.uk/scritti/intervie/independ.htm). And, as he sings on Wood Beez,
his voice is 'the gift of schizo' instead of a purity of consciousness. 'It's a little bit a voice
of innocence. It's somebody else doing that. I'll step aside and let somebody else have a
go', Green says (cf. O'Reilly). Maybe Green's comments bear some resemblance to
Derrida's critique of Husserl's use of the term 'I'. According to Husserl, someone speaking
uses this term to indicate himself for himself: absolute presence. On the contrary, Derrida
reasons that 'I' is the word by which a speaking subject indicates to himself his own
absence. A subject completely present to himself would not feel the need to speak to
himself. Derrida concludes that a subject is always already permeated by an other.
Green presents no transparent presence of a subject to himself, no pure and unmediated
interiority, but a fragmented subject who is always already manipulating his expression.
Most compositions on Songs to Remember reflect this fragmentation of the individual in
the many different needs, desires, and energies that conflict with one another (Green's
soft, touchingly feminine vocals can be regarded as an example of this). And about
'Jacques Derrida' in particular, Green says: 'It's about how powerful and contradictory the
politics of desire are. About being torn between all things glamorous and reactionary, and
all things glamorous and leftist. Then in the rap it dispenses with both in favor of desire'
('desire is so voracious') (Dwyer, 1982). According to Green, pop music is of the other; it
is the least shut away or hidden otherness. It is the antithesis of sameness. (It's about
criminality, sexuality, madness.)
[4] Language is about meaning, about sense. Viewed in this way, Green sets music
opposite to language. 'I don't think its meaning or its sense are determined by language',
Green says in an interview. Music lies outside the limits of language and logocentrism; it
is disruptive to meaning. Like music in general, rhythm is without meaning and it
transgresses sense. The acquired grammar of rhythm is at once constructive and
destructive joy. 'I do not think that I am 'knowledgeable' of [beats], nor that I've somehow
caught them or tamed them and can put them to my services. The exact opposite: this has
to do with my awe of pop music as measured against the endless signatures and closures
of more idiosyncratic music'. With pop music, there is a flooring of drives, knowledge is
swept away. There is no 'knowledge' of beat, only the unmonotonous insistence of
difference. That is its power; that is why it is 'violent' (Green in: Hoskyns, 1981).
According to Green, pop's assertion of rhythm, its interruption of language, its sexuality,
the way in which it presents identity and dissolves identity, and the means with which it
does so, converges with many postmodern philosophical concerns. 'It is possible to think
about music as something that undoes. In as much as it is not semantic, does not have that

bedrock of meaning, other than having other ways of circumscribing it, it is a

deconstructive mood' (Green in: Toop, 1988, my italics). 'When I met Derrida he said that
what I was doing was part of the same project of undoing and unsettling that he's engaged
in. He's written that what sets the musician apart is the possibility of meaninglessness.
That unsettling has always been my experience of pop, from the earliest moments - pop is
about the abuse of language' (Green in: Reynolds, 1988).
[5] Of course (pop) music has meaning; it has political, economic, social, cultural and
psychological meaning (and I am not only referring to its lyrics here). In this sense, we
can approach music through language, through all kinds of discourses on music. But
Green points to something, a non-localizable place, where music transgresses the power
of language. We cannot understand music in the same way we understand language.
Music is a language, music is text, but it is not the same as a spoken or written language.
Because something in music always escapes comprehension, understanding. Language
fails to make music completely transparent. Music appeals to something that exceeds the
semantic part of language; it appeals to a non-discursive sonority.
In Justification, I examine the way in which Derrida seeks out this non-discursive
sonority, the non-semantic aspect in language, by focusing on the spatial visibility and
audibility of words, thereby creating a disquieting opening in the philosophical discourse
because it is beyond (intended) meaning (signifieds) and about the material differences
(signifiers). Derrida hesitates to call this 'musical', but the mere fact that he suggests a
possibility of connecting meaninglessness to music indicates a correspondence between
his thinking on this subject and what Green says.
[6] How should we judge the remarks of a pop musician, expressed mostly in interviews
for pop magazines? Occasional attempts at in-depth interviews in what are usually
superficial conversations? Up until now, Green did not seem to feel the need to express
his ideas in a more profound and elaborate way. Maybe he does not want to; music is his
means of expression. What becomes immediately clear is the way in which his utterances
are saturated by post-structuralistic and deconstructive jargon ('I am influenced by, or
interested in the work of modern French philosophers'). Although I briefly discussed one
example (Green's use of his voice), closer examination is needed to determine if and how
deconstruction is at work in Scritti Politti's music. However, this is not the right place.
Not the right framework.

The Signature of John Zorn

[1] In Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach, Zorn de- and recontextualizes the music of
this famous songwriter. Or are we already going too fast here, too inaccurate? Who is deand recontextualizing? John Zorn? He is neither the composer (in the ordinary sense of
the word) of this CD, nor is he one of the performers. How do we know it is Zorn's? 'John
Zorn: executive producer' the package divulges in small letters. Is he actually involved in
the recording of the material, or is this just his stamp of approval? Or both? It is unusual
and odd that his name is linked to this album. Not the composer, not one of the
musicians, but the executive producer. I don't know of any other example, not even in
house music.
[2] I take a side road for a moment (Is there a main road? Or are there only side roads?) to
show how Zorn thinks about composing. 'Whether we like it or not, the era of the
composer as autonomous musical mind has just about come to an end', Zorn writes in the
liner notes of Spillane. What Zorn wants to say is that artistic works, in general, and
musical works, in particular, are the results of a collaboration among specialized
individuals. So, the music bearing the signature 'John Zorn' (In fact, it is a
countersignature ending a process and referring to a promise made once, confirmed by a
signature under a contract.) is more than the work of the individual, John Zorn, alone; it
is the outcome of a varying collective of individuals. His body of work is not (only) his
body of work. It only exists from the moment that other musicians appropriate it, fill it in
and (with that) transform it (cf. Lesage, no page number). His gamepiece, Cobra, can be
regarded as another example. As a prompter, Zorn roughly determines the structure, but
has no influence on what exactly is played by the performers. Moreover, the players may
choose at any moment to change the direction of the piece and to alter the type of
interaction. Zorn's function then is merely to pass on these changes to the rest of the
performers. Cobra is thus simultaneously reproducing the composer-conductor-performer
hierarchy of traditional 'classical' music and subverting that hierarchy from within the
'composition' itself.
Zorn makes a plea for a less teleological thinking in which the composer is no longer
considered the dominant source of power, the causa prima in an artistic field where
performers, musicians, and also intermediaries, such as critics and organizers, are just
parasites. He wants to draw attention to a larger context, to a complex network of powers
that interact temporarily and are connected very differently, in which music comes into
being.
[3] Zorn implicitly disputes a music history that consists of nothing but a canon of
famous proper names. He invites the music historian to broaden his focus. For the music
historian the stress is on the analysis of a composition as the final result of a creative
process that is connected with one well-known proper name. Zorn demands attention be
paid to the whole production process. To sign a composition with just one name veils the
complexity of the production process that underlies the realization of that musical work;
it veils the non-hierarchical cooperation among various specialized individuals.

Furthermore, it narrows the definition of a musical work (cf. Zorn's remarks on

packaging in Restitutions, Shibboleth or Aporias). In other words, relating an oeuvre to
one single name, the name of the composer, is always arbitrary and inaccurate. Besides,
Zorn is not always the composer in the traditional sense of the word, i.e. the writer of a
score that can then be performed as well as possible. Sometimes he is (just) the deviser of
a concept, the musical designer, the planner (cf. Cobra).
However, in either case the question remains the same: if this collective is so important,
why is it that only Zorn's name is linked to the final product? Why is his name on the
cover in spite of the fact that he is neither the composer, nor one of the performers? In
Het lijk van de componist [The Composer's Corpse], Dieter Lesage suggests a possible
explanation. In his opinion, an artwork is more than just an artistic product; it is also a
commodity. Regarding this, Lesage refers to Walter Benjamin's 'Fetischismus der
Meistername', the fetishism of the master name. Depending on the aura of a composer,
musician, or even an executive producer, 'music of' becomes 'music with' or 'music
produced by'. So, the 1985 album, The Big Gundown, received the subtitle, John Zorn
Plays the Music of Ennio Morricone. The name and picture of this very successful
composer of film music on the cover was probably quite important, at least commercially
alluring. But in the year 1997, Zorn himself was obviously famous enough to link only
his name to CD's on which he does not play a single note.
One could conclude that on the commodity level the proper name 'John Zorn' undergoes
some changes, the principles of which the artist, John Zorn, does not seem to support (cf.
Lesage, p.6-9). 'John Zorn'. Is it a trade name? Zorn is claiming the commodity, the
product, as his, while acknowledging that neither he nor anyone else could make the
same claim about the 'music'. Thus it does become Zorn's music in a certain way,
although it is not his music: he has claimed and acquired property rights to it. And he gets
the credit (the money?).
[4] One more thing. Listen to 'his' music. More than with any other artist, people who
write about Zorn's music stress the eclecticism (Strickland, 1991; Gagne, 1993;
Duckworth, 1995; McNeilly, 1995; Lange, 1997; Blumenfeld, 1999). 'I'm not afraid of
styles; I like them all' (Duckworth, p.444) is but one possible quote that illustrates Zorn's
non-exclusivism. In Great Jewish Music, I connect this incorporation and assimilation of
so many musical styles to his Jewishness. In Shibboleth, Derrida, following poet Paul
Celan, meditates on 'the Jew', having nothing of himself, having no identity of his own,
whose identity consists of having none (cf. Shibboleth, p.62 and p.90). However, what
does Zorn's (counter)signing of a CD mean? It means that he declares the musical
product (and this exceeds the recorded music) his property, although he in fact admits
that it is not 'his' music. His signature is, in a way, the signature of others. So what do we
mean by speaking about 'Zorn's' music? Who is John Zorn? To what does this word refer
if music signed with his name has no identifiable borders and no interior walls? It has no
edges because it has been invaded from all sides, as well as from within, by other names,
other musical powers, other musics. (What is the musical equivalent of quotation marks?
What about parts that do not clearly appear as citations?) Though the word 'Zorn' may be
printed on the cover of several CD's, it must name something without identifiable
boundaries since the music incorporates so much outside within its inside. The parasite
structure obliterates the frontiers of the texts it enters (cf. Hillis Miller, p.243). The name

John Zorn means the loss of all essence, individuality, security. When a CD is, in one
way or another, signed by Zorn, made his property, one can never be certain of its
content; it is not closed in upon itself. It is never 'his' music. What is 'his' music? Does it
exist?

Zorn, Noise, Cage, Pop

[1] In (D)(R)econtextualization, I subsume Zorn (with some strong marginal notes) under
the musical avant-garde, but not an avant-garde which is opposed to popular culture. In
'Ugly Beauty', Kevin McNeilly starts the other way round: he examines the ambiguous
position Zorn holds with regard to popular culture (cf.
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.195/mcneilly.195). On one hand,
this could be explained as a confirmation of the non-localizable position Zorn occupies.
On the other hand, McNeilly's essay opens up new perspectives on Zorn's music. Both
possibilities justify a closer reading of his work.
According to McNeilly, Zorn is working within the context of popular culture and a mass
consumer-oriented audience, but disrupts and upsets them at the same time. He is both
exploiting and exploding (popular) musical conventions and the commercial forms
connected with them. For Zorn, exploding these conventions often means using noise,
abrasive, disjunctive, deafening sounds, McNeilly writes. In other words, he is exploiting
the achievements of punk, hardcore, and heavy metal. But unlike musicians who operate
in these relatively autonomous, and with that, innocuous worlds, Zorn brings noise into
the realm of more innocent types of music such as country and surf music. He simulates
the attributes of popular culture; he is perfectly willing to maintain the trappings of
popular musical culture. However, he arranges those reiterations of musical styles in a
disturbing and confrontational manner, for instance, in his collage and montage
compositions where different styles are put alongside each other. The noise that Zorn
inserts neither cuts across nor undoes these styles; rather, noise becomes a style in itself,
another form of sound to be appropriated.
[2] This can be heard very well in the compositions that Zorn wrote for his band, Naked
City. Trademark: musical blocks without a traditional development, a musical structure
involving a lot of juxtaposition and discontinuity. 'The biggest influences I had were
Stravinsky, who worked in block forms; Ives, who was also interested in weird
juxtapositions and discontinuity in a certain way; and what came off the tube, which I
was brought up on ... The music is put together in a very - 'picaresque' is an interesting
word - I would use maybe 'filmic' way, montage. It's made of separate moments that I
compose completely regardless of the next, and then I pull them, cull them, together. It's
put together in a style that causes questions to be asked, rather than answered ... So it's
put together in blocks and moves from one thing to the other really quickly, and draws
upon many elements or traditions' (Strickland, p.127-8). In another interview, he further
mentions the influence of film and cartoon soundtracks.
Naked City uses all kinds of musical styles, often interspersed with blocks of noisy
improvisational statements. Listen, for instance, to 'Snagglepuss' (a Hanna-Barbera
cartoon figure) from the CD, Naked City. Within the first minute of hearing this tune, the
listener is flung to and fro between a funky riff, rock and roll, Webern-like piano sounds,
and mainstream jazz; musical blocks that are continually interrupted and separated by
noise sections, free jam and loose sounds, bleeps, growls, and roars. Another example
from the same album: Zorn's version of 'The James Bond Theme' is, from the beginning,

defiled and thwarted with a howling electric guitar, an organ and a saxophone. After just
a short time of more than one and a half minutes, the theme explodes into shards of
hardcore punk aggression, a noisy bridge before the theme reappears. In 'Den of Sins', the
roles seem to be inverted. An undertow of violent sound and the wildest barrages of noise
form a base in which a funky theme then joins in for seven seconds. Here, the tempered
music is used as raw material on the same level as any other noise.
This disjunctive form of composition in 'non-sequitur' blocks distinguishes Zorn's music
from noise (and/or noise compositions) per se. Noise becomes musical material just like
melody, harmony, rhythm, and quotations (literal and stylistic). It is given a clear position
within a musical framework.
[3] McNeilly discusses the difference between Zorn and John Cage's attitude to noise. I
will follow his line of reasoning, but with some modifications, adjustments, extensions or
reductions. For Cage, noise is the other of music, an other that has the same status as a
parergon, not simply outside music, and not easily detached from it. At once separated
from music and part of every musical experience, on the outside and on the inside
simultaneously. Noise threatens music, and it threatens the inside of music ceaselessly
when one does not accept these extraneous and non-intended sounds that are always
there. The hierarchical opposition between noise and music is deconstructed in Cage's
work. First (not necessarily in any chronological order), noise is admitted into the realm
of music. Then the situation is reversed: conventional musical sounds appear in
surroundings determined by noise. So, in his work the hierarchical order between noise
and music disappears. And then, this conceptual order is overturned and displaced: his
work consists of a certain - often minimal - organization of sound in which music is just
some (special) kind of noise among other noises. A deconstruction of the border between
noise and music. But also an emancipation of noise, of non-intended sounds, of sounds
that are usually excluded from music (cf. Cage and Noise).
When we consider Zorn as working with noise, we can establish a shift of emphasis. Zorn
does not wish to dispense with the trappings of 'music itself' and its many styles. He is
not so much aiming for an emancipation of noise; at least, this is not his political goal.
For him, noise is not simply haphazard sounds or natural sounds, the audible background
that encroaches on a composition. Rather, Zorn treats noise as a usable musical style
among many other musical styles, another form of sound to be appropriated. Zorn's use
of noise consists not in the dismantling or disabling of music by noise, but in the stream
of cross-talk between noise and other musical styles. Cage's compositions force the
listener to move away from the conventions of traditional music. For Zorn, noise is not so
much the other of music, noise is already part of the musical world. It is reproduced on a
compositional level. Zorn's noise manifests itself in two distinct, though contiguous
forms: collective free improvisations within clearly defined limits and imitations of
existing noise music. Both, however, are intentional and structured, and with that,
different from Cage's approach. Cage obliterates the creative will by using chance
operations, while Zorn adopts the creative powers of both composer and performer ('I
don't appreciate his [Cage's, MC] chance approach - that is the antithesis of what I'm
trying to do. I'm interested in decision making; he's interested in giving the decision
making up to chance, and I think that's a cop-out') (cf. also The Signature of John Zorn).
And where Cage's collocated noises (intended and non-intended) meld together into a

more or less unified soundscape (listen, for example, to Waiting), Zorn's block structures
collide with each other and threaten to come apart from within (cf. McNeilly, p.5).
[4] Exploiting and exploding popular musical conventions. Zorn's music never attempts
to abandon its generic or conventional musical ties. His work is never quite
unrecognizable or alien to an accustomed listener. Rather, those ties are exploited and
disjointed to the point of throwing such a listener off balance while still remaining
recognizable. The listener who knows her or his pop-culture has her expectations jolted,
scattered, smashed and dis-arranged. This music relocates her or his aesthetic perspective
to a moveable feast of possibilities. Zorn thwarts her or his musical expectations; he defamiliarizes the listener. Anticipated elements are absent or transformed. In this way, his
music motivates the listener to act; it activates the listener. This is the purport of the story
that McNeilly confronts us with. And I agree, although I would avoid speaking about
Zorn's music in such general terms. This alleged effect is much less apparent, for
example, when listening to his Masada or Bar Kokhba projects. However, here I want to
delve more deeply into an apparently logical conclusion that McNeilly draws from these
reflections, a conclusion I do not want to subscribe to without question. According to
McNeilly, Zorn uses and abuses the 'old' order, the status quo of popular culture, in order
to shock the listener to an awareness of her/his/its corroded conditions. By going against
convention, Zorn makes the listener aware of her or his norms. His noise politicizes the
aural environment. I want to point out this subtle shift in position from listener to
composer. McNeilly leads us to believe that it is Zorn's purpose to provoke the listener.
Without a doubt, that is what happens to many people who are introduced to his music
for the first time. And, of course Zorn, will smile meaningfully. But I wonder if this is a
purpose, rather than a consequence of his music. Previously in following up on
McNeilly's comments I wrote on the difference between Cage and Zorn and here I
could establish yet another difference (and different from McNeilly as well). For Cage,
bringing noise into the realm of music is (also) a political provocation, an attack on the
establishment and on the conventions of the music world. For Zorn, the insertion of noise
serves, first of all, a musical purpose. The possible de-familiarization is at best an effect
of this purpose. 'The point of [Naked City] was not to confuse people ... although a lot of
people think it was ... For me, it was about writing; it was about having a machine that
could play back anything that I came up with', Zorn says emphatically (Gagne, p.533, my
italics).
[5] Perhaps Zorn's de- and re-territorialization of musical styles has the effect of
dismantling a musical history and categorization (although you can only debate these
categories when you've first accepted them). Maybe (probably) it alters how people tend
to listen. But Zorn does not seem to be that interested in the effects that his music has on
an audience. The listeners 'don't even have to like it'. He is primarily interested in his
music ('Instead of dealing with pitches, I deal with phrases, shapes, genres, quotations,
gestures') and in his musicians. The music must be challenging and attractive to them.
'When they talk about that 'Serious Fun' shit, I think they've got it completely assbackwards: They're talking about the musicians up there being serious, and the audience
having fun. Forget it. I think the musicians should be having fun, and the audience should
be taking it seriously. That's really what my music is about in a lot of ways' (Gagne,

p.526).
Perhaps with this relatively minor attention to his public, Zorn relates more to the
classical avant-garde than to the popular culture, although, at least according to
McNeilly, his music moves within the economies of consumption and repetition that
characterize the mass media and the mass-market at work within that popular culture (cf.
(D)(R)econtextualization). Does Zorn belong to both worlds? Or none of them? Or are
the borderlines between avant-garde and popular culture beginning to disappear?

Zorn's Pharmacy
[1] Elsewhere on this site, I elaborate on Zorn as a parasite or saprophyte (see:
Saprophyte), or compare his projects to a part of the female body (see: Hymen). The
(obscure) boundary between inside and outside is constantly at the forefront. In thinking
and writing around or beside his music, another connotation comes to mind. A tumor, an
abnormal or morbid swelling or enlargement on the inside of a living organism, an
excrescence caused by the autonomous growth of the organic tissue. It manifests itself
under the influence of pathogens or injuries and can be separated into two different
phenomena. Hyperplasia is an excessive cell-formation or cell division, an abnormal
multiplication of the cellular elements. Hypertrophy is the excessive growth or
development of cells and the enlargement of a part or organ produced by excessive
nutrition.
A tumor acts like a housebreaker threatening some internal purity and security. In this
sense, Zorn's music works like a tumor. Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach works like
a tumor. 'Trains And Boats And Planes' works like a tumor.
[2] Why this attention to biological terms, sometimes or almost invisible things present,
but present as an outside on the inside of the human body? Let's say it is because
references to physical, bodily elements, for example, the morbid illustrations of Maruo
Suehiro that embellish many of his CD covers, have supplemented much of Zorn's music.
The cover of Naked City shows a face distorted with pain, a hand reaching the left side of
a face where a red tornado has blown away the ear. (Or, is it an external tumor caused by
hyperplasia coming from the inside?) One cannot tell by looking at the picture whether or
not this red thing belongs to the body, whether it is on the inside or the outside of it. (The
same holds true for the Chinese or the Japanese characters painted on the head and the
hand - tattoos maybe. Do they belong to the body or not?) Some song titles, for example,
are manifestations of Zorn's preoccupation with the openings of the human body, places
(or non-places because an opening, in fact, takes no place) where the outside is on the
inside and where the inside can touch the outside. 'Rectal Mucus', Zorn's contribution to
Absolut CD #2 - The Japanese Perspective, 'Sweat, Sperm + Blood' and 'Copraphagist
Rituals' in the CD, Heretic. Jeux des dames cruelles, 'Igneous Ejaculation' in Naked City.
Returning to my introductory remarks on tumors, one can find more explicit references to
brain damages in Rituals. Live in Japan ('Abscesses') and in Filmworks VI ('Mechanics
Of The Brain', and especially, 'Brain Scan').
[3] His almost excessive attention to pain and suffering ('The Ways Of Pain', 'Victims Of
Torture', 'Asylum', the album, Torture Garden, and in more than one sense, 'Never Again'
in Kristallnacht) seems to regain a sense of balance in some of the medicine Zorn offers.
Painkiller. The promising name of a band in which he plays. And indeed, in a certain
sense this band acts like a painkiller. The hard core and trash rock - amply present in the
CD's and in live shows - can have anesthetic or narcotic effects. I don't know if the cure is
worse then the pain here. But let's look at it from another perspective. Painkiller widens
the margins of the most dense rock and jazz by its eclectic approach. Zorn does a healthy

job (Zorn as pharmakeus), changing the rusty costumes, injecting them with his
revitalizing sap like a modernizing medicine. Painkiller acts like a purifying tumor,
growing on the inside of a sick organism, breaking it open, enabling a contact with the
outside. Like a tumor, Painkiller is located on the inside without really belonging to it.
But even if it is external, it affects and infects rock and jazz music in its very inside using
its power of maleficent penetration. Maleficent. Threatening. Disturbing. However, it is
also a cure, beneficent and revitalizing.
Zorn's pharmacy contains one more medicine, absinthe. One can either eat it or drink it.
But be careful. The plant, absinthe (wormwood, artemisia) may drive one to madness
when ingested in excess. And the same is true of the brandy that is based on oil of
wormwood and the bitter chemical, absinthe. Excessive indulgence destroys body and
mind and can lead to epileptic paroxysms (cramps). Chronic absinthism, a serious and
well-known disease, resembles alcoholism. For that reason, distillation of absinthe is
forbidden in many countries.
Absinthe (track 5: 'Artemisia Absinthium') is the ambiguous name of a CD by Zorn's
band, Naked City: a fairly sweet liqueur and a dangerous drug at the same time. Listening
to Absinthe is more an intoxicating than disturbing experience. Those who know the
preceding Naked City albums will certainly be surprised. No sharp and short tunes in
which different styles alternate at high-speed, but long-drawn-out sound-scapes without
clear melodies. Only 'Artemisia Absinthium' strikes a note of warning. Here, the noise is
very blatantly present; loud, harrowing, disquieting. Too much listening will contaminate
you or turn you into an addict.
[4] Both Painkiller and Absinthe can be considered a pharmakon, the possibility of both
remedy and dangerous drug. Zorn's music plays within these two opposing values, within
the unity of the same signifier. (Could we say that Zorn's music plays a game analogous
to Derrida's reading strategies?) The remedy is disturbing in itself, it is never simply
beneficial. The beneficial virtue of a pharmakon does not prevent it from hurting. (Listen
to the noisy music of Painkiller.) It partakes of both good and ill, of the agreeable and
disagreeable (the purifying, but almost painful experience of listening to 'Artemisia
Absinthium'). But with Painkiller the pharmakon seems a helpful remedy, whereas it is
harmful, while in Absinthe, it is initially offered as harmful, whereas it is beneficial.
However, both Painkiller and Absinthe, presented as a kind of poison within the rock and
jazz world, are transformed into means of deliverance, cathartic powers, antidotes. Music,
installing itself inside of a (sick, old, but) living organism to distort its well-known
language in order to resuscitate it by introducing something new. A pharmakon, added
and attached like a musical parasite.
[5] Deconstruction: the concentration on passages in which the subject (the author) no
longer has control of the (musical) text, places in which the text can transgress it's own
laws. (And doesn't Zorn, as well as Derrida, show that this is always possible?) The
desire for unity in a text forces both author and listener (reader, interpreter) to keep a
certain balance, for example, between a possible meaning and its externalization.
Deconstruction undermines this by pointing to the places where a text can lose its
balance, primarily by playing with and blowing up the externalizations.
'Trains And Boats And Planes', this meticulous constructed A-A-B-A scheme, 48 bars

equally divided into 4 parts of 12 bars, loses its balance in Fred Frith's version in Great
Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach. Frith plays only two of the twelve bars of the A part, but
he continually repeats them (hyperplasia), instrumentally, so one gets the impression of
listening to a (too) long stretched intro. (If we could call this a horizontal stretch, there is
a vertical stretch as well. The second part, the characteristic third under the main melody,
has changed into a fourth above the melody (hypertrophy), thereby establishing a great
harmonic vagueness.) While the A part fades out, the B part fades in and is repeated six
(!) times. During the sixth fading recurrence, the A part fades in again, thus giving the
suggestion of some sort of A-A-B-A scheme. Frith, however, inserts the melody of the
bridge on top of the melodic part of A, thereby turning the melody of the A part into the
accompaniment pattern of the B part (though without any hierarchical order).
Furthermore, the strict division between A and B (realized in two distinct melodic lines
and two different keys, B flat and G minor, respectively - although one could question
just how different in fact these two keys are) is removed (aufgehoben). No longer
opposites, but one wrapped up in the other.
Frith does not maintain the classical A-A-B-A scheme. His version does not neatly
consist of 4 times 12 bars. He is playing with the musical elements, omitting some parts
while blowing up others so that some parts rise above or project beyond the general level
or surface (taking our departure from the original).
Blowing up. Distending. Hyperplasia. Results: swelling, an increase of bulk, new growth
of tissue. A kind of synonym for a tumor. A kind of synonym for deconstruction. A kind
of synonym for Frith's 'Trains And Boats And Planes'.