Peter Rüedi

   «It would be a big victory to the aesthetic science if we succeed in reaching an agreed upon consciousness not just by a logical examination but also with intuition». This was written Friedrich Nietzsche in the opening of his first chapter of «The birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music». How right he was.

   Nietzsche was accustomed to differentiate between two forms of musical creation: the scientific and «arranged» form which belonged to the god Apollo, and the irrational and rather «wild» form of the god Dionysus. Many theoreticians of music that came after him, from Theodore Adorno to Gilles Deleuze, did not find a division which would define in a more original and certain way the creational ability in general and the musical ability in particular.

   How is one able to build a narrative composition of ideas according to the stringent laws that are dictated to the artist by a musical medium, which is in essence an amorphous. In other words. in what manner can a musician pass on his world views which are always dependent on his quality of education?

   These difficult subjects find expression in the music of the rather elitist British band, «Dead Can Dance» whose two members - Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard have a high level of understanding in the humanities and also require a relatively high level of education from those who listen to them. To the credit of the record companies that produced the discs of «Dead Can Dance» i. e. «Beggars Banquet» and «4 AD» it should be said that they did not even try to interfere in the artistic vision of Perry and Gerrard, which sail to far-out and mysterious worlds of Latinical and Proto-Gnostic meditation - that the two choose for themselves as a source of inspiration. In general, considering the fact that that European civilization is based on a strong dependence from Greco-Roman literary tradition, it is noteworthy that «Dead Can Dance», whose verses paid close attention to Latin texts is a linguistic curiosity for a contemporary band. The names of the verses belie a world rich in associations, but analysing them is no simple matter. In effect, they try to appeal to a limited audience of experts, who will be in position to comprehend and appreciate for example the name of the album «Aion», whose meaning in ancient Greek is a term, used as a personification of time in the mythological iconography of the ancient world. The philosophical - historical direction of reconstructing the spirit of the ancient world and that of the Middle Ages, reaches its marvellous and bizarre climax in the song «Into the Labyrinth» - and all this without falling into the trap of simple ethnicity.

   By the way, the motive of penetrating something remains intact throughout the whole album of the band. The names of all the albums (which in my view are always more successful than the name of the band itself) like «Toward the Within» or «Within the Realm of Dying Sun» can prove this.

   The band also makes a wide use of Greek mythology and religion. In albums like «Within the Realm of Dying Sun» and «The Serpent's Egg» there resonates a tendency towards the under-world of Greek gods. In light of the clear-cut presence of musical signs that belong to ancient burial ceremonies. Proofs are to be found in the compositions like «Windfall», «In The Wake of Adversity», «Anywhere Out of this World» and especially the song «Xavier» which is dedicated to the bitter and bizarre fate of the holy Christian missionary Francis Xavier who travelled to spread the teachings of Jesus throughout Asia and India between the years 1506-1552, give forth a serious and tragic atmosphere of a burial event. In effect, the album as a whole is like such an event. And this is the right time to ask how one accomplishes the central purposes of a musical composition... How does one create the expression and emotion of sadness, loftiness, aggressiveness and tranquillity? the melody and the rhythm are, it seems, two of the most important devices to express emotion in music. Indeed, every composer is interested to cause active emotional feelings. According to Nietzsche, music can penetrate our internal desires. In contrast to the «ideas» of Plato, Aristotle believed that music is a representation of something, a type of universal metaphor, raw material which serves to create mental tensions in the human soul. All this leads of course to the creation of the imagination of the composer be it passive or active. And so, it is not unlikely that we will find a strong pessimism, a depressive existence with no way out. In «spleen and Ideal» we encounter a mental state which is known to most of the composers as «spleen». And it is doubtful whether adding the «ideal» will take Brendan Perry out of his regular depression. Indeed, what we are talking about is the «Enigma of the Absolute» which is unchangeable.

   The band also dabbled in some of the intellectual secrets of the scholastic world and monotonous music of it, including it's pathetic Latin songs (for whosoever understands their content) which is stuck to ones ears. Here the music is in the realm of shaman (a magician and a man of secret knowledge) with his own patients. Shamanism, itself is, by the way, a complex and difficult phenomenon. I will say enough if I'll point out that in the academic world there is a not easy contradiction over the basis of the etymological source of the word «shaman». Whoever is interested in this fascinating phenomenon is invited to peruse the monumental text of the famous American researcher (of Rumanian origin) Mircea Eliade, which is dedicated almost entirely to this subject.

   Getting back to «Dead Can Dance» . After many various divisions and splits within the band, during which one of them - Lisa Gerrard made a fascinating philharmonic - Gregorian project «The Mirror's Pool», the band reunited to create a unique and strong album «Spiritchaser», like only them know how to. The album explores the early Indian pattern, which has shamans with their dances around the bonfire at it's centre. As Carlos Castaneda shows, shamanistic music is meant to strengthen the status of shaman and to facilitate his task as an agent between different worlds who hovers at night in the image of a raven.

   This is exactly what «Dead Can Dance» tried to recreate. The magical rhythm, which comes and goes and foreign physical situations. Music which reminds one of a modern man's search for the undefined truth of a wild nature in a far-away lands.

   That's the conceptual development of «Dead Can Dance»: from a world of ancient history and Medieval ethos to the «present» Indian culture, which is in fact a further distant past (at least according to an important anthropologist from Los Angeles, Michael Harner) only by a miracle survived for us - as if it took Borges seriously...