On ‘Zamfir’, Track 7 from the album
Belo Horizonte, by John McLaughlin
Belo Horizonte is an album I remember very well getting and listening to soon after it was released. I remember that I was disappointed. It came after Johnny McLaughlin: Electric Guitarist (1978), and Electric Dreams (1979), which I loved, especially the former. The change to a kind of mellow acoustic sound floored me and I wasn’t particularly taken with the melodies. Well, that is no doubt a vast simplification of the process that actually took place, but, at the very least, Belo Horizonte marked a kind of dip for me in listening to McLaughlin’s weird and wonderful outpourings. Yet, thankfully, that impression did not persist or prevail. I came back to it again and again, re-listening to it and becoming excited by the music, half because I was such a fan and half because I was wary of missing what he was saying to me. Like a student who may disagree with a teacher, I eventually wandered back and saw the album as it was meant to be seen, or heard, and from that moment, felt a kind of love for it, which, to be honest, I had never anticipated. Anyway, I still have my other fave McLaughlin albums and moments, but I can now feel that Belo Horizonte is certainly a great album by any test of musical exploration.
‘Zamfir’ is not my favourite song on the album. That’s probably ‘La Baleine’, but, then these things change, according to feeling etc.. But ‘Zamfir’ is a song that I like very much, and, as I have been feeling recently, is a song that I can actually write about. Why? Because it has a narrative that lends itself to words, but after reading what I have to say, you’ll no doubt wonder what he was on about. All his songs have narratives. All songs have narratives, but how well they might morph into the medium of words is debatable. Then again any attempt to ‘describe’ any song or musical piece will inevitably get me into the difficulty. But, then, we do these things as steps toward something not as something, so whatever we attempt to say can be OK. I hope.
Cut to the chase. I just Yahoo-ed ‘Zamfir’ and came up with Gheorghe Zamfir, who is a Romanian pan-pipes player. He is reputed to be one of the greatest, so I apologise for my ignorance. I never knew any of that shit. I
just listened to the track and loved the cool, exotic name. I listened to a little of his stuff on YouTube and I could see maybe what might have been the musical spark thing going on there, but I still have question marks a go-go. I didn’t put pen to paper to write about Gheorghe Zamfir’s possible influence on the music of J McL. Others may want to, not me.
just listened to the track and loved the cool, exotic name. I listened to a little of his stuff on YouTube and I could see maybe what might have been the musical spark thing going on there, but I still have question marks a go-go. I didn’t put pen to paper to write about Gheorghe Zamfir’s possible influence on the music of J McL. Others may want to, not me.
Cut to the chase once more! OK. So it is a slow piece. It begins with a variety of very atmospheric sounding things going on (pardon my eloquence), the acoustic bass leading the way. Then, once the opening remarks have been made, something happens, and we appear to move into some rich, but understated sonic territory. For a few moments, we have a synthesizer speaking to us, and appearing to tell some story. Yet, the acoustic bass, breaking after a short while, is more expressive, as, yes, an acoustic instrument will always trump electronic. Both, however, have been following some kind of melancholic narrative. And both are insistent. The sounds and the pace have the listener feel as though we are in some deep and serious sphere of engagement with the world. There is something at once beautiful and at once disturbing in this world. The music might be described as plangent in tone. The voices of the synth (sounding trumpet-like) and the acoustic bass feel like they are voices searching for light or lightness, and, as yet, not finding it. At 2.50 mins or thereabouts John’s nylon-string guitar breaks in and wants to say things too. John is famous for his speed and virtuosity -often expressed, it should be said, in a negative manner, as though there were something wrong with having such attributes. In ‘Zamfir’, however, John does not play fast. He does not play fast at all. It is not that kind of song. Of course, even in slow pieces John has been known to throw off a lightning-fast trill (‘Every Tear From Every Eye’ from Electric Guitarist), just to show us he is John Mclaughlin (well, no, actually, because the piece benefitted from it..). But here, he keeps his playing all slow and all measured. It is a rare piece therefore among his recorded output (see also the opening track of Apocalyse, ‘Power of Love’). He plays his nylon-string guitar here with taste and with depth and with a seriousness we cannot but feel is directed and purposeful and … unfolding. Yes. It is not a guitar solo as such, because this song is by no means conventional. I have no idea what the structure of this song is. But I do know that song unfolds. In that sense, it has some similarity to Mahavishnu’s ‘Dawn’, which begins slow and then, against the grain of the piece that appeared to be, suddenly evolves into a hard rock piece of legendary proportions. No, it is not a guitar solo. It is, as the synth and bass have been, a voice, telling a story, a story of some depth and import. The listener is entranced –or this one is anyway– and wondering precisely where all this is going.
And sure enough, unexpectedly even so, the guitar leads us out of that Stygian darkness. Or is it a Dantean darkness? John does have the opening lines of La Divina Commedia spoken at the opening of that song in The Promise (‘Thelonius Melodius’). McLaughlin’s notes start to walk towards the light. His narrative suddenly resolves the knots and the difficulties, and, with a suddenness and a clarity we (or maybe just ‘I’) hadn’t expected, the listener is lifted into a wholly new realm, a realm of light and hope and happiness. And the thing about it is the whole thing seems natural and organic. The moment when the music changes is at once sudden and unexpected, and at once allied to and precisely evolved from the environment which preceded it. Indeed, if we re-listen, we can hear the the ending themes were present at the beginning; they are being re-worked, into metals of a different colour. And that new colour now affects our senses and we feel simply released from the tension that the sonic world of ‘Zamfir’ had been apparently so intent on creating.
It is a wonderful moment, and as the music fades we begin to hear more, and imagine more possibility in what we are hearing. Other possible worlds of exploration, a whole universe of light after the universe of beautiful darkness that has been ‘Zamfir’.
It is a wonderful moment, and as the music fades we begin to hear more, and imagine more possibility in what we are hearing. Other possible worlds of exploration, a whole universe of light after the universe of beautiful darkness that has been ‘Zamfir’.
Oops, I should have consulted Walter Kolosky's book, Follow Your Heart, which has a good paragraph on the song and confirms that it was dedicated to Gheorge Zamfir. He also mentions the actual musicians by name, which is more than I do!