This very obscure compact disc named Barbaarse Dans -in English- Barbaric Dance (not even on Discogs) contains great musical interpretations of poems by the Flemish surrealist and dadaist poet Paul van Ostaijen (22 February 1896 – 18 March 1928) and was recorded in 1994.
The music was made with voice, bass clarinet, guitar, saxophone, hammers and saws by saxophonist Hein Pijnenburg, Jazz-singer Ineke van Doorn and guitarist Paul van Utrecht. It was created to accompany Paul van Ostaijen's avant-garde sound poetry that was written in the early twentieth century in Dutch. The musical interpretation comes close to the Dutch performance artist and protagonist interpreter of abstract sound-poetry Jaap Blonk.
Even though Dutch is quite a non-important and often quite disliked language, Van Ostaijen was one of the most important people in the Dutch language territory who was inspired by the dada movement alongside the artist Theo van Doesburg. His sometimes onomatopoeiatic sound-poetry broke many barriers in the Dutch literary field and introduced sound-poetry as a performative and even visually experimental dimension in Dutch poetry in the early twentieth century. This album is quite special in the sense that it interprets his poetry. It's a unique musical example of the Dutch language literary avant-garde. It was released in a self-made fragile paper cover.
From the liner notes:
Barbaric Dance is a theatrical composition in which Hein Pijnenburg puts forward the poetry by the Flemish avant-garde poet Paul van Ostaijen. The musical work is shifting throughout the piece: at first the starting point is text and the music is composed with the text. Later in the composition this is reversed. The text: fragments of poems, words and seperate letters are fitted in the music. Hammers and saws are prescribed in the score to create two effects: to create a transition of rhythm and sound of daily life towards the silence of the theater and to increase the feelings of the listener and actor by physical powers. Furthermore the hammers and saws function as percussion.
Paul van Ostaijen was a Flemish poet who lived from 1896 to 1928. His work mirrors the changing and stirring zeitgeist of the first twenty-five years of this century: a hyper-sensitive Van Ostaijen found his inspiration amongst others in the First World War and the atmosphere of the Music-Hall (a precursor of the discotheque). He looked for possibilities to combine words, sounds and images in his poems.
Barbaarse Dans is based on the poems: Barbaarse Dans, Angst, Fatalisties Lied, Asta Nielsen, Vers 2 en Vers 3 and Alpejagerslied.
Recommended!
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