Players - Downbeat

34 DOWNBEAT April 2009
This refusal to be clearly in one place or
another is the essence of Fourth World. Hassell
speaks often of dichotomies—classical versus
jazz, the intellectual versus the intuitive, the
Western world versus supposedly “underdeveloped”
nations. He sees them all as boiling down
to a single set of opposing forces: the north versus
the south, both on a global scale and in terms
of the human body, where the north represents
the head, the south the emotions. (He’s even
writing a book on the subject, The North And
South Of You, enacted last year as a rather freewheeling
performance piece with Eno, to be
repeated in London in April.)
Hassell and Fourth World sit on the equator
between these two metaphorical hemispheres.
Hassell may have worked with the Kronos
Quartet, and have connections with several
major 20th century classical composers, but he’s
also collaborated with, among others, New York
art rockers Talking Heads, experimental
Icelandic vocalist Björk, Senegalese singer
Baaba Maal and Ibrahim Ferrer, late vocalist
with Cuba’s Buena Vista Social Club. To adopt
Hassell’s own language, his refusal to distinguish
between so-called high and low art could
be read as part of a wider determination not to
let his rational “north” colonize his more exoticleaning
“south.”
“My attention doesn’t go to the icy cave
where the fundamentals of life and death are
being chanted,” he said, speaking of his time
with Pran Nath, “even through that’s where raga
comes from. It’s always about life and death, but
it’s about life and death with a smile and a little
twitch of the hips, à lá João Gilberto. That’s my
interpretation. I’m always pushing away from
that notion of austerity, away from icy toward
tropical. It’s another one of those things: Let’s
put both those things in the same picture instead
of considering them as separate.”
Putting things in the same picture, the same
frame, the same room and turning the lights
out—however he chooses to express it in words,
this has been Hassell’s mission for more than
three decades. The philosophy—and resulting
music—has remained unwavering, though the
vision is perhaps more finely honed than ever on
Last Night The Moon. It underpins every part of
this album, from the music through to the liner
notes, which include a dictionary definition of
the word “montage.” The worldview is even
manifest in the unusual title, which turns out to
have been taken from a 13th century poem by
Jalaluddin Rumi.
“The Sufi part of Islam came out of him,”
explained Hassell, more enthusiastic than at
almost any point in the interview. “It’s drunk
with God, so to speak, and yet you don’t leave
out her sensual side of it. It’s exactly what The
North And South Of You is about. That’s why
the line itself is so attractive to me. It’s cosmic
and sexy, so that is resonant with everything
we’ve been talking about. I hope the music is
the same.” DB