The first venue I chose was small and intimate, something called a blues club. The club itself was in a part of the Outpost called Saloon Central, a ring devoted mostly to clubs, bars, and restaurants that also dabbled in intoxicating substances.
I chose a table in the back away from the lights. A menu offered items I'd never heard of, from green chili to tamales to barbeque brisket—all, the menu claimed, authentic foods, but authentic to what I did not know. The air smelled tangy and sour, a scent that wasn't quite bad and wasn't quite good.
I ordered a beverage from a list I'd never heard of, something non-intoxicating called a C'cola, also considered “authentic,” and a bowl of that day's special steak-and-potato soup.
Then I settled back and waited for the entertainment to begin.
The musicians did not file on stage as I had expected. Nor were they wearing matching clothing. In fact, they looked as though they were wearing their normal everyday dress. They carried instruments I had not seen before.
Slowly lights came up on the stage, revealing what I believed to be a percussion set—drums, was it called?—and some sort of keyboard instrument. I recognized two guitars and some kind of woodwind—a saxophone?—as well as a bass. Brass players—trumpeters?—sat near the percussionist in the back.
A rotund man sat on a stool in the center, one leg extended, the other supporting one of the guitars in the curve of its belly. The bass player sat on the right.
The remaining players sat near the side, holding their instruments down, all except the lone woman, who stood beside the rotund man in the center.
They crowded around their instruments, chatting so softly I couldn't hear them. Then the rotund man in the middle picked seven notes on his guitar.
They were almost a command to play music.
The others seemed to heed that command. The bass player plucked a long note. The keyboardist added a rolling chord, and the percussionist tapped one of the flatter instruments in the same rhythm the rotund man had played. With the other hand, the percussionist played one-and-a-two-and-a-three, which then got picked up by the brass, almost as if they were answering the initial line.
It seemed disorganized. The music was loud. I could feel each instrument in my sternum, the bass line in particular so forceful that it seemed to propel my heart to a new rhythm.
Each time the rotund man played his signature line, he changed it. The changes made me uneasy, and once I caught myself looking to see how the Pane were reacting.
Only there weren't any Pane in the room.
Just humans of all sizes, most of them nodding their heads to the one-and-a-two beat carved (and kept) by the percussionist. Then the rotund man changed octaves, playing the same seven notes, only varying the motif, as if he were composing the song on the spot. When he reached the end of that variation, all the pieces came together: the original motif, the answer, and the percussion into one dramatic note, followed by a prolonged rest.
At that moment, the woman whirled toward the audience as if she suddenly realized we were there. She sang to us as if she were talking to us. Only she made the words fit that original motif. Her singing was low, in the same register as the rotund man's strings, and repeated in the same rhythm.
At the moment she hit the end of the sentence, the instruments joined her, just the same way they had joined the rotund man when he started the song.
She was swaying to the music. The entire ensemble swayed, as if they couldn't help themselves. I glanced at the audience. They were swaying too.
I was the only one who wasn't moving, and it took me a moment to realize the strain that was causing me. I literally had to hold myself in place, each muscle tense, so that I wouldn't move.
Movement caused the vocal chords to slip, the breath to fail, the wrong muscle to tighten at the wrong moment. If a performer moved, he ran the risk of making a fatal error. Of course, in Tygher City, I had made a fatal error without moving anything except my lungs, my diaphragm, my throat, and my mouth. So even that theory, the theory of passivity, had been wrong.
Now the musical conversation had three parts: The woman, who sang her part as if she were making it up on the spot, the rotund man who continued his variations, and the rest of the musicians who either built a bed beneath her phrases or an answer to his.
I looked around again, afraid that someone would stop the music because of its myriad flaws, but no one did. Everyone was staring at the stage, bobbing their heads or tapping their fingers. Behind me, someone yelled, “Sing it, sister!” and the woman didn't stop, she didn't chastise him, she didn't even seem to notice.
I turned and looked. The man at the door, the one who had taken my credits, didn't do anything, and neither did the servers.
Apparently, it was all right to yell in this place. Just like it was all right to move even when you were on stage.
They got to the end of her lyrics, following a similar, but not the same motif that the rotund man had set up with his strings. She created her own variations, and explored them with her voice, which grew louder and more raspy as the words became more fraught.
Finally, she told us she was done, and the music did as it had before: all the instruments came together in a single note, punctuated by a prolonged rest.
Then the other man—the one who had been talking with the woman—stepped forward and actually spoke to us, as if the rest of the musicians weren't there at all. What he was saying responded directly to her lyrics. He was answering her, like the musical phrases answered each other.
The complexity made my head hurt. The music had only gone on for a few minutes, but it felt as if time had slowed down. Each phrase took on import, each beat seemed to reveal something new to me.
This wasn't music, not as I had heard music. This was something other, something visceral, something real.
The music came to that climactic pause again, and as it did, he and the woman turned to each other, mixing their lyrics together in a conversation—his words mimicking the background instruments’ one-and-a-two rhythm, hers on that seven-note motif, so the entire opening of the piece, which had seemed so impromptu and random to me, suddenly had purpose.
They had planned this, maybe even practiced each section, yet somehow retained a spontaneity that put me on edge, frightening me with its sheer audacity.
Only no one else seemed to think it audacious. They all seemed to expect this—the melody, the response, the not-quite-musical singing, the raspiness, and the increasing violence of the music, as the man and woman played at anger with each other.
I knew they were playing, yet as the music grew louder and louder, that anger seemed real. It was there in the strings, in the power of the keyboard, in the bass line, in the harder and harder rhythm of the percussion player.
I shifted my chair backward, leaning against the wall, unable to go any farther. Never had music itself made me so uncomfortable—not the way it was performed, not the errors (of which there were dozens)—but the actual power of the notes, the force of the rhythm, the way that each sound built on every other sound, creating so much emotional power that I became overwhelmed.
Finally, the song ended. The sound reverberated throughout the room, and slowly faded. I let out the breath I hadn't realized I was holding, my heart racing.
They started another song—this one with three hard beats from the percussionist—and then the entire group of musicians weighed in.
I couldn't handle more music. My heart already felt like it was going to explode. I'd felt more violent emotions in that six-minute song than I had felt in months—maybe since I saw Gibson with his new protege. Or maybe even before that.
I pressed my thumb against the payment screen, then staggered out, stepping into the wide corridor. It seemed too bright after being in that club. People strolled past, some arm in arm, others having discussions. Tables filled with diners sat outside a few of the restaurants.
No one looked at me oddly. Apparently a man staggering out of the blues club w
asn't unusual. I leaned against a nearby pillar and tried to catch my breath.
My heart wouldn't slow. My entire stomach churned.
I had had no idea that music had such intrinsic power. I had known that it was different, just from the recordings. But I had heard that difference in an intellectual way—with a fascination that different musical traditions could have such unbelievably different rules. I had never thought of music as an emotional pursuit—something that could control not only how I felt, but how I breathed.
Faintly, from inside the club, I could hear the wail of the rotund man's guitar, the rasp of the woman's voice. I stayed against the column, a safe distance away.
How had I missed this? I had devoted my life to music. And now it seemed as if I had only known a small part of it.
When I finally caught my breath, I wandered back to my cabana, and climbed inside that floating dining room.
I sat there without the lights on, staring at the blackness beyond—a blackness that wasn't entirely dark, because of the light from stars I couldn't identify. I sat in silence.
Only there was no silence.
Because inside my mind, I kept hearing that seven note motif.
Finally I tried it myself. It wasn't as easy as it sounded. My notes were pure and somehow wrong. I sang the line again, and heard how inappropriate my voice was. The woman's voice had been lower than mine. My voice was high, as high as the guitar on its fourth octave.
So I warbled the motif, like the guitar had done, and heard something in my own voice that hadn't been there before:
A wail. Almost a moan.
It caught me, and pleased me, and frightened me, all at the same time. Ah, yes, the Pane had been right: other music corrupted. Other music changed.
I smiled softly to myself and sang the seven notes over and over again, each time making them different. Each time, making them mine.
* * * *
Of course I went back: I couldn't help myself. Night after night, I listened to the same group of people playing different songs in different combinations of instruments.
At first, I couldn't stay very long. I sat rigidly and fled when the panic got too great. But slowly, I found myself relaxing. The toes of my right foot started tapping, only to stop when I noticed, or my head bobbed ever so slightly, just like everyone else's in the audience.
Gradually, over the space of a week, I managed to stay for seven songs. When they ended, the group left the stage, although their instruments remained. The audience remained as well, which I thought odd. The other patrons ordered more drinks, talked among themselves, even talked with the musicians—which shocked me. On Djape, we musicians could not speak to the Pane. It was expressly forbidden unless the Pane spoke to us first.
I ordered another C'cola (those things were addicting) and watched the interactions. After about twenty minutes, the musicians meandered toward the stage, always led by the rotund man. When he sat on his stool, one knee supported his instrument—which I now knew as an electric guitar. The music dictionary I consulted called it “an outmoded instrument that uses an amplifier [which, in original instruments, used dangerous electric current] to make the vibrations of the strings louder or to alter them altogether).”
I had looked up the blues as well. The definition told me why I had felt some unease. Central to the music was something called “blue notes,” notes that fell somewhere between natural and flat on the third, fifth, and seventh degrees of a C Major scale. Those blue notes had the effect of holding the listener between the major and minor modes, without quite achieving either of them, providing either a sense of unease or, in most cases, a feeling of loss, of incompleteness.
The blues, then, was composed of half-flatted notes—abominations to the Pane.
Which made sitting in this venue, dim and claustrophobic, feel like rebellion to me.
It was as I had that thought that the musicians started up again, this time with an up-tempo piece. The singer—if he could be called that—was the rotund man. He had the most nasal voice I had ever heard. He seemed to sing from his throat instead of his diaphragm. And yet his vocals had power.
He sang three verses, then repeated the melody on his guitar, creating his own arpeggio in the middle of it all. The usual male singer had joined the trumpet player in the back, playing a smaller version of the same instrument, with a higher pitch and a brighter tone.
The various sounds these people could make with their instruments, the way that they answered each other and yet made everything seem casual amazed me. This time, this song, caught me, and I couldn't stop my toes from tapping or myself from swaying. I kept breathing too, which I hadn't in some of the earlier songs.
I relaxed into it, feeling, for the first time, like part of the audience. Before that, I had felt like an observer, an alien myself, someone who couldn't quite understand the experience everyone else was having.
I still wasn't sure I understood it, but I appreciated it—and with this song, I realized it had become part of me, so deep a part that I couldn't control my own physical response to it. But I could finally move. I didn't have to be rigid any longer.
And that, more than anything, seemed like a victory to me.
* * * *
After that night, I managed to stay for the entire show. I got used to the cuisine, falling in love with the brisket and the steak-and-potato soup. I nodded to the doorman as I came in, and after a week, the waitress no longer had to give me a menu. Instead, she asked me which of my favorites I preferred, and brought me C'colas whenever my glass was empty.
The music had become an obsession for me. I'd been coming long enough to hear the musicians play some of the same songs over and over again. But startlingly, terrifyingly, they never played the songs in quite the same way.
The first time they changed a motif or played the electric guitar in place of the saxophone, I felt frightened. Had I, for the first time in my life, misremembered a piece of music? But later that same evening, as they played yet another song differently, I realized they had no set track. Unlike the music we performed for the Pane, there was more than one way to play these songs.
And that seemed like such a revelation to me that I finally felt I needed to consult with someone. Someone who knew what they were doing. I wanted to talk to the rotund man.
* * * *
I approached him after what he called a “set.” He was always the first to climb onto the stage and the last to leave. After the first set of that evening's entertainment, he sat alone on his stool. He had unhooked his guitar from its strange amplifier, and he was plucking at the strings.
As I got closer, I could hear them, faint and precise.
He was tuning the guitar.
“Excuse me,” I said. “May I ask you a question?”
He looked at me. Sweat beaded his forehead and lined the circles underneath his eyes. Up close, I saw that his shirt was drenched as well.
It was hot on the stage. The heat from the small bar seemed to gather here. The amplifier, which I stood beside, seemed to give off some heat of its own.
“Sure,” he said, his fingers flat against the strings on the guitar's neck. He no longer picked at it. “What do you need to know?”
I wasn't sure how to ask the question. I felt awkward and young, something I hadn't felt around music in a very, very long time.
“You never play songs in the same way,” I said.
He waited.
“Isn't that—is that—isn't that...?” I didn't know how to finish the question. It kept getting jumbled in my mind between two separate thoughts: Isn't that wrong? Is that disrespectful?
Finally, instead of choosing between those thoughts, I blurted, “Doesn't music have rules here?”
“Rules,” he repeated. He studied me for a moment. “Of course music has rules. It's all about rules.”
“But you don't follow any of them,” I said.
His eyes narrowed. He leaned back, his head tilting. It was as if he saw me for the v
ery first time.
“Should you even be here?” he asked.
I flushed and lowered my head. I didn't want him to think I had deliberately stepped out of my place—whatever that place was.
“I don't know,” I said. “If there are rules about who can be in this club, no one told me. If I'm supposed to leave—”
“No,” he said. “That's not what I mean. You're one of those unfortunates, right? From Djape?”
I raised my head. He was staring at me as if I were as alien to him as his music was to me.
“Unfortunates?” I repeated.
“One of those—what're you called?—castrati? Castrato? You ... dress like one.” He wasn't originally going to say “dress.” He was going to say “sound” or “speak.” Others had said the same thing to me on the Outpost.
I had learned not to correct their ignorance, and to suffer their questions with as much grace as I could muster.
“I was raised on Djape,” I said cautiously.
“Which means you're one of their musicians, right? And from what I understand, they don't want you off the planet, let alone in a place like this, listening to us.”
His words weren't harsh. They had a compassion and an interest that no one had shown me before.
“They no longer care what I do,” I said.
“You got yourself fired?” His eyebrows went up. “I didn't know that was possible.”
“No, I wasn't fired.” My flush deepened. “I swallowed a note.”
“You what?” He was leaning forward now. “What does that mean?”
“It means that I am no longer a trustworthy soloist, so my singing career is over.” I spoke with a dispassion that surprised me. “I could have taught, but I chose instead to travel. I've never seen any place other than Djape.”
He frowned. “And you think this is where you should be?”
My heart was pounding as if his percussionist had gone back to work. “I've never heard music like this before. I had planned to go to other clubs, different venues. But I came here first. I've never heard anything like this. Not even on the old recordings. Your music is ... evocative.”
Asimov's SF, September 2009 Page 16
