ASUNTA STORY ANONIM
WORD is at first sound which floats in the air. Sound is a rhythm which sets in motion. It’s not important whether such music is rock’n’roll, classical or jazz. What is important is meeting, togetherness, experiencing the same emotions.
From very beginning the ASUNTA group has been trying to avoid superficial classification of artistic archievements. Their music played at live in concerts is different from what they record in a studio. For each of the musicians inspiration means something different, and their individual actives come in a diversity of forms.
We are differently prepared for listening. And we recived music in various ways. But there is a possibility that sounds and their energy alone make contact possible. And then we see visions, thanks to music.
And paths along which our thoughts travel, and our longing for a place where we can be together, and revealed.
Theatre is a meeting place. It is here that paths of creative quest cross.
We are looking for means of stage expression in which, through using various movement techniques, fine art, colour, light and music, we give theatre a different charakter, enrich it with new ideas and value.
ASUNTA, as a project, was establish in Wrocław in 1986. In the very begining was participated in rock and alternatives music festivals. After that began experimental and underground way for ambient and dub music space, and now is esential sound of new age.
Music in the space of the theatre in not the results of creative search alone. It is a natural source of messages spoken in the language of Art. Though his sensitivity, intellect and knowledge the viewer participates in creating the artistic message, irrespective of intentions which inspired artists actions. This possibility of free interpretation is determined by rhythm and movement. Even if it is only a slight flutter of the heart.
In the musical landscape of today’s world acoustic situations which not long ago were considered outdated and archaic are found more and more often. Today the archaic is redolent of authenticity, so increasingly lacking in the progressively louder noise of civilization and the growing information static. The archaic has become autonomously valuable because of its connections to the source and the elemental rule which governs of the world, which endure despite ever–changing cultural trends and fads.
Our music is rooted in the source elements of Western Slavic melodies and forgotten tradition of interpretations. We feel that the ancient themes of this music are proof of the emanations of the New Age. Traditional Slavic tunes make it possible for our inspiration to gain primordial power and reach a new harmony.
The art of sources has never been particularly respected or appreciated in our country. Admiration for technique excluded the possibility of doing something with love, and the pejorative shades of meaning not long ago attached to the words amateur and fan give proof to this. Progressive professionalization, turning away from real life, gave art the status of abstract technique. And the primordial meanings and sounds were forgotten.
Sound was present at the very down of the world. Sound accompanied its creation. That’s why harmony became the model, supporting the world in its existence until this day.
Folk art has always had the value of a classic. That was the reason for its great popularity in the middle ages: today it remains a favorite pastime of childhood. So perhaps there is nothing strange about the fact that today in front of our very eyes folk enters the realm of pop culture, taking on forms which are new for some, and so called New Age, for others traditional and thus named ethno or folk; others still hear in the sounds of their environment and call it the eco–sound.
The music of Asunta takes place on the borders of these styles and has that characteristic borderland sound.
Among this diversity of existing artistic genres and performing styles the word folk retains its symbolic value, which the other names have alredy lost. Symbolic value is, in other words, the power of meaning, which resonates in our hearts as well as in our minds. But that which moves the heart does not always find its image and likeness in the mind. When we want to, for example, translate the folk into Polish, we find that its closest synonym is Tradition. The identicality of the Tradition and the Message? Is called the Succession? Therefore the soccessor? Is one who knows the Tradition or studies it, as well as the one who forgotten it, as well as those who have never encountered it to its power and strength.
ASUNTA opens the flow of news between various levels of this world and between worlds, bringing the Tradition alive and making it present in our lives. The succession of opening and closing the? Flow is an artistic call to take part in the creation of the Image of the World. The Way construed thus is the question. The answer is music.
The metaphors of the garden and the journey are particularly well fitted to describe the art of Asunta. The garden – as a place and as a journey – as time.
A journey in the garden: a place of reflection, of place of dance, a place of what has been and what will be. The transformation of time into space, which, filled with sound becomes a regon of dream and reverie.
The music of Asunta is performed on acoustic instruments. State of the art technology serves to convey the message of sound. Thus does the New Age make itself known: the pinnacle of technological thought and the deepest sources of inspiration coexist in the service of what had only a short time ago seemed rooted out and forgotten – folk themes from various parts of this so broad land, which had once been alive with thousand voices, a thousand tougues. Asunta brings alive the memory of the once.
The history of the world is more and more clearly present beccause it is increasingly a personal history. The sound landscape is, in its proper meaning, a cultural landscape. So if culture is all that people claim as their own spiritual equipment, then speech, song and dance are the natural expression of the world. That is why the proper place of culture is the one that is filled with music. Today the statement that Art is a criteria of Truth is as obvious as saying that Earth spins around the Sun. But after all, before this view came to dominate, the issue of the Music of the Spheres took the central place in the cosmological view of the world. Asunta’s music reflects its echo. Like a shadow. Archaic songs and ethnographic documentation coexist side by side with the work of contemporary artists; living or dead, in our imagination they are silent witnesses of what has been and what is. Asunta places our native culture on par with archaic cultures. The question of whether we can identify with the primordial in our culture is a different one, to be tackled in a different time and separate place.
Successive returns – light emerging in the dark.
More and more often it turns out that, in the external world so familiar to us, music is a chaos we fall into unconsciously. After a while the thought occurs to us that this chaos seems to have some internal balance. For instance, we realise it resonates with the voice of our heart or as a kind of echo chiming in with our every breath.
The type of work represented by Asunta is usually defined as meditation expressed in music. Asunta perceives improvisation as intuition. This view not unknown in the old school and more and more often assigned to tradition, expressed by John Coltrane, and held as far back as ancient civilisations, perceives misic at first as a voice and then by its sound music becomes time. Asunta achievements are a perfect example and reflection of this.
Thought the word meditation is inevitably associated with the Orient – in the case of Asunta we are dealing with a representative of the western school as started by John Cage. The pretext for the performance is bio–fonic sound, as a kind of musical exercise. The discovery and use of this kind of breathing is a fundamental part of the cultural exploration and achievements of the new century or, as some call it, the avant–garde or new age. And yet there wouldn’t have been all this if it weren’t for jazz.
If at the starting point of any chosen artistic practice we put a label it will immediately imply techniques and technology and then names, forms and style. Asunta gives his encounter with theatre as a source of inspiration – mayby this explains his tendency for performances? And at the same time the question is directed at the listener, should they, as a participant of the recording, perceive it as music or rather an audio–play? And how would poetry sound with it?
The expression of the spirit has no definition, name or style. The title Landscapes acquires a symbolic meaning; the composer leaves his work open to this possibility, making his message a mystery. Because even if a computer was used to try and reveal this mystery the space thus constructed would automatically become subject to the limitations of the computer’s memory. And the limitation of memory is the end of creativity. The memory of questions and answers.
Talking about practice, if at the start we place a sound which is not yet a word, in the answer we can hear a cry or laughter or a breath – the wink of an eye. And it may happen that a man who not only has no idea about music but also is without an ear can still hear this. Similarly nowadays science can replace hearing as a physicall felt resonance. This seems to be assumption and such is the feeling that emerges from this performance.
At the time when jazz stopped being avant–garde and became a generally understood language and a kind of contemporary clasic, this tool of cultural communication exceeded the space so recently reserved exclusively for art. We can find most examples of this in music. Though maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to mention the current discoveries of certain sciences, with a bow to antropology certainly not unknown to today’s critique.
Music has always been a vehicle for philosophy feeding our imagination as it shapes the script of a film played in our heads. Even today it remains a secret how all this happens. Sometimes even the personal story of an artist does not reveal anything. That’s how we should understand Marley’s message our story will never be told, becouse we will try to transmit it by our actions through media. And among the known media of this world, the power of moving hearts and imagination is retained in music, thus it is that the revelation of ancient sources by contemporary artists is recognised as the avant–garde.