Manafonistas

Das Buch von Trevor Cox ist zu essentiell, wir lassen seine Soundforschungen mit vielen psychoakustischen und einigen philosophischen Implikationen auch noch im März neue Interessenten finden. Es war mal wieder an der Zeit, eine so alltagsorientierte wie bizarr fremdartige Musik zur Cd des Monats zu erklären, die so manchen Hörer in Bann schlagen wird, ohne dass er weiss, wie ihm geschieht. Da hat 12 k wieder mal ein kleines Meisterstück abgeliefert: Janek Schaefer sei Dank! Rupert Thomson ist ein britischer Autor, der mit jedem Buch etwas gänzlich Neues schafft. „Faustinas Verschwörung“ wird trotz der Schubladen „historischer Roman“ und „Thriller“ wohl ein Geheimtip bleiben. Sein Stil ist zu brilliant, die Wendungen seiner Geschichten stammen aus keiner Requisitenkammer. Wir hatten mal einen kleinen Briefwechsel, vor vielen Jahren, er war ganz glücklich mit meiner Empfehlung „People Are Strange“ von Stina Nordenstam. Und wer eine grossartige Jazzplatte aus alter Zeit (so alt auch wieder nicht, und heute schon zeitlos :)) entdecken möchte, die gleichfalls landläufige Stile, Zuschreibungen und Einengungen ad absurdum führte, ist mit dem zweiten Duo-Album von Ralph Towner und John Abercrombie bestens bedient.

Try this: A man goes out to buy a package of cigarettes and is kidnapped and held as a sex slave by three women. Or this: A policeman volunteers to spend the night guarding the body of the most reviled murderer in British history, to prevent the possibility of any attempts to violate it.

Thomson is a bold and astonishingly creative genius, consistently unexpected, with an uncanny ability to make the extraordinary familiar, and to weave most subtly within his unusual stories crystalline observations of what it is that makes us human, and why morality matters. His dazzling new book is, on the surface, a wonderfully realized historical novel, and may perhaps remedy his relative obscurity. With the sweep, ambition and pace of a Dumas swashbuckler, Secrecy has the Thomson trademark unexpectedness, but his narrative artistry has never been more gloriously realized than it is here.

The story opens with Zummo, a sculptor, on a hill above 17th-century Florence, looking forward and backward with equal trepidation. Driven from his homeland of Sicily by jealousy and innuendo, he can’t escape the possibility that his reputation, justified or not, will catch up to him. Summoned to Florence by the Grand Duke, Cosimo de Medici, Zummo can’t shrug off the cheerless and blasted landscape he has traversed en route to the city, nor shake the misgivings that assail him as he prepares to enter it.
The artistic talent that has brought the Sicilian to the attention of the Grand Duke is not an ordinary one. Zummo works in wax, and his sculptures are odd and morbid. He delays his attendance at court after his arrival; only after he is sent for does he finally make an appearance.

Florence, in 1691, does not appear to be the ideal home for a man of his particular artistic bent. “Though everything was forbidden in Florence, anything was possible,” Zummo notes. The Office of Public Decency has the power to imprison or flog citizens for even the most innocent interactions between unmarried people. Minor functionaries are not to be trifled with; foreigners are viewed with suspicion.

The Grand Duke, a pious and self-absorbed man still smarting from his failed marriage, is captivated by the sculptor’s work, and arranges a generous stipend. His private secretary is not so enamoured of Zummo, or his close relationship with the Grand Duke. Zummo also makes an enemy of a sinister priest named Stufa, the protegé of the Grand Duke’s mother, after which time his work and his lifestyle become liabilities.

Secrecy is ambitious in its reach, luminous in its realization – a book of almost infinite detail. Every scene, every character, every emotional transaction draws weight and credibility from Thomson’s powers of observation. This is a novel about big and important matters; about influence, about art, about politics, about duty, about truth and, of course, about secrecy. But in the end, it’s a book about love.

Rarely does a book that’s so accommodating and absorbing for readers pack the moral muscle and the emotional impact that Secrecy manages so apparently effortlessly.

Ben McNally is a bookseller in Toronto.

This week sees the release of the first LP reissue on Dug Out, Dadawah‘s brooding, strung-out masterpiece of nyabinghi (Rastafarian spiritual music), Peace And Love. Originally released in 1974 on Wild Flower, it was repressed in ’75 by Trojan with different artwork. Ainley and Ernestus have had the tracks remastered at Abbey Road for the Dug Out edition, the vinyl housed in “old-school, hand-assembled sleeves” with original cover art restored. The album is available on CD and digital as well as vinyl.

We’ll let Honest Jon’s explain the unique appeal of the record:

“Led by Ras Michael over four extended excursions, the music is organic, sublime and expansive, grounation-drums and bass heavy (with no rhythm guitar, rather Willie Lindo brilliantly improvising a kind of dazed, harmolodic blues). Lloyd Charmers and Federal engineer George Raymond stayed up all night after the session, to mix the recording, opening out the enraptured mood into echoing space, adding sparse, startling effects to the keyboards. At no cost to its deep spirituality, this is the closest reggae comes to psychedelia.”