What makes music possible? What makes it impossible? These questions inspired curators Candice Hopkins and Raven Chacon to create the exhibit exploring what defines and shapes our very concept of music, and what its boundaries are.
An installation view of Nikita Gale’s “DRRRUMMERRRRRR” as part of"Impossible Music" at Tufts University Art Galleries.
“In developing the exhibition, we initially thought about difficult music, virtuosic music, music that is very hard to play,” said Hopkins. “There are some scores that were written to be impossibly fast, that a human being can hardly perform. We thought about ceremonial songs that had been banned from being listened to, and situations where the musician might not even be a living, breathing person.
The show evokes a kind of minimalism, with little use of bright color, except for the burst of turquoise in Aki Onda’s “Spirits Known and Unknown.” His installation features an assemblage of brass bells found over the years at flea markets, antique shops and online. Bells are hardly used today, and yet they hold so much weight, he said.
Other works ask us to consider music that is impossible because it has literally been repressed from society. At the Potlatch Records Listening Station, “An Anthology of North American Indian and Eskimo Music” is presented in the form of a record player with two sets of headphones. Visitors can hear four songs recorded by Ida Halpern that were deemed illegal because of the Potlatch Ban in Canada.
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