Demetrio Stratos - Cantare La Voce - 1989 (1978)

Of the five solo recordings vocalist Demetrio Stratos recorded during his short lifetime, Cantare la Voce stands as his highest achievement. Issued in 1974, it reflects Stratos' deep fascination with John Cage's music, and his wide-ranging study of interpreting it for solo voice. Here, the techniques of diplophony and triplophony are deeply and widely articulated – long investigations in working the voice out of its monadic heremiticism. "Investigazoni" is the perfect articulation of these discoveries, as the glottal imprint of "speech" completely dissolves into the much more heterogeneous exploratory of "language," which also breaks down into groups of sounds, some being articulated simultaneously without the use of multi-tracking or artificial amplification (other than a recording microphone). This piece is over 14 minutes in length and presupposes nothing; it breaks down utterance, vibration, and sonic interlocution into elementary units that spread themselves over the sonic spectrum and become groups of tonalities juxtaposed against the backdrop, first of the human body's limits in regards to the voice, but then against the construct of western "music" and tonality itself. In "Passaggi 1, 2," breath becomes the way inside rather than out. Most of the sounds here are made by the various techniques of opening, widening, and constricting the flow of air into the lungs rather than out. But perhaps the most groundbreaking work here is "Criptomelodie Infantili." Clocking in at six and a half minutes, it is a primal exploration into the very elementals of sonic expression. In fact, it would not be too generous or outrageous to suggest that Stratos' vocalizing here is similar to what may have been the first sounds ever uttered by the "developed" human instrument. This is delightful and scary, raw and powerful, and utterly charming in its primitivism and articulation. Cantare la Voce is still the standard for exploratory work with the human voice, almost 30 years after its issue. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide

Stratos refers to the aulos, the double-reeded flute used during the old rites in the ancient Greece; it produces two sounds and it is able to keep persons in a state of trance. In his "Flautofonie ed Altro", a track that it is featured on his 1978 album, Cantare la voce,[43] there are two not harmonic voices that cause to the listener a state of trance, similar to the trance during the religious rites, and a sense of estrange. So, the Stratos' voice-music is a sort of lay rite that produces to the listeners the ability to reach their primordial origin.

“The Stratos' flute-voice plays a circular theme, a modal inspiration that brings us filler to an experience of communion, ritual interaction and sacrifices. That repetition suggests something of hypnotic that should be propitious to the trance state. Stratos seems to wish a participated, spontaneous and also generous listening. Through these, always different, repetitions, he aimed to abolish, to dissolute, to dissolve the "ego", as the basic element for the sacrifice. In this dissolution of the identity we (the group of listeners) are in communion with gods (divinities), Earth and life.” — Janete El Haouli (translated from Spanish to Italian to English)

In the years of the desecration and secularization of the Christianity, Stratos proposed a new lay sacredness, in the name of the ancient Greeks, a return to the true rituality. The binomial voice-music had forgotten that rituality because in today's world it is only used to propose human's thoughts, ideas, and ideologies rather than the sacred experiences of the intimate communion between humans and the nature that surrounds us.

The search of the triplophonies and quadriphonies is used by Tibetan's monks and some knights of Mongolia. "It is a ritual use of the voice", wrote Stratos, and this purpose is maintained in his works. There are four ritual elements: the repetition, the escape from the ordinary, the loss of the ego, and the communitarian dimension. Perhaps, reading Gilles Deleuze, Stratos had been convinced that the repetition was not the ill-famed co-action to repeat the obsessive neurosis, but it should become a technique to escape from the ordinary, from the temporary flux, to access to another order of truth. Therefore, the trance with the abolition of the ego and the known world increased the horizon on other worlds. The result was a collective scene, an estranging and mystic performance at the same time.

In Stratos' works, we can find the standard-bearer of the lay rituals in the rock mega-concerts, where the audience is not exhausted by the spectacular of the mimetic model of the super star, but in the nearly to religious fruition of the voice-music that allows to feel us in the scene the ice cold shiver chilling of our belongings to life - Wikipedia



Tracklisting:
1. Investigazioni (Diplofonie E Triplofonie) (14:41)
2. Passaggi 1, 2 (5:16)
3. Criptomelodie Infantili (6:23)
4. Flautofonie Ed Altro (6:17)
5. Le Sirene (6:19)


Nova Musicha n° 19 - Cramps Records - Originally released on LP in 1978


Recorded at Studio Sciascia, Rozzano
Digital remastering: RDS Milano


Label: Cramps Records
Catalog: CRSCD 119