OK, Go! – The Creative Power Of A Nomadic Mind by John Munson

Eric’s Introduction:

John Munson is a rock star.  Of course anyone familiar with the great power pop trio, Semisonic, knows this.  But I mean the bassist was ALWAYS a rock star - one of those guys who entered puberty a wiry music geek and came out the other side…a ROCKSTAR, with a frame proportioned for arenas, and a face so handsome photographers beg to take his picture. And that strut he does on stage? You can’t teach that!  Back in college, I’d go watch John perform with his popular local band, Trip Shakespeare, and I’d wonder, How does a guy become so damn cool?

Fifteen years later, I know the answer.  Today John, a good friend of mine, is no less a rock star to me.  But I now understand that his extreme cool is, in fact, fueled by a king-sized inner music geek that’s only grown larger over the years.  I joke, but it’s true – John’s visible confidence as a musician, his seemingly effortless playing, his technical skill, indeed his musical soulfulness, all result in large part from of his endless curiosity about music, no matter where it comes from.  John may have traveled the world as a rock star, but not before he opened himself up to the lessons the world of music had to teach him.

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Lookout…a bass player is crashing the dumbdrummer party!  Eric asked me to talk a bit about the possibilities world music offers musicians these days.  A number of my favorite artists are good examples of the impact travel, whether physical or imaginative, can have on art: Paul Simon, Manu Chao, David Byrne, Brian Eno, Ry Cooder, Joni Mitchell, Led Zeppelin.  We should all learn from them.

I’ve always had an interest in travel and world cultures for their own sake. But now more than ever before the world of music is at our doorsteps.   You can tour radio stations from all over the world on the internet.  You can hear what people are listening to anywhere.  And despite the considerable penetration of western music into non-western cultures, you’ll be surprised and pleased to discover that regionalism still exists and that there are worlds of music to discover that you never imagined existed.  

Why does that matter?  Because it offers the possibility of enlivening your musical palette and igniting creative fires through the absorption of new ideas.  And not only that: it offers a path to the realization that music is indeed a universal language that truly brings us all closer together and shines a light of hope and understanding onto an increasingly fractious world.

I recently had the opportunity to re-engage my long-standing interest in the music of Taiwan and China.   That interest has developed over many years and taken me to places I never dreamed of.  It still does.  I’ve worked on Chinese music both here in Minneapolis and during travels to Asia.  I’m going to talk a little about my journeys and where they’ve led.

We musicians are curious folk.  We’re constantly looking for ways to expand the sonic possibilities of our set-ups.  We’re sponges for new ideas.  We’ll run to the store and buy (or download) music that tickles that special place in our musical minds and listen over and over again trying to gather up some fascinating difference.  That curiosity leads to an enriched musical mind.  The more jarring and fresh the ideas we listen to the more creative energy we derive from them.

Take that curiosity one step farther and imagine going to a country where all themusic, and in fact nearly all the sounds including the language are different, and you have a hyper-energized sound environment!  My first such experience was on a trip to China twenty years ago.  The trip came a little bit out of the blue.  I hadn’t planned for it, but when the opportunity arose I grabbed it.  That lack of preparation increased the differential power of the experience.  Suddenly… a new world!  Get on in Minneapolis, get off on… Mars!

As I walked through the streets of Beijing music was spilling out everywhere. Musicians practiced little fiddles on benches in front of their homes to impromptu audiences of passers-by.  In the parks small groups gathered to do local interpretations of ancient opera traditions.  People joined in and departed based on their daily schedules requirements and no one seemed to mind.  

At night in the theater where I went to see a more formal presentation of Beijing Opera people were hooting in the crowd, almost as they would at a baseball game in the United States.  There was an exciting level of engagement with a shared musical history and a lively folk tradition that I found inspiring.  The way people responded to the music was casual and yet there seemed to be a greater degree of familiarity between the music and the audience.  It’s still a bit hard to describe, but it felt vaguely DIY and punk rock to me.  

Amusingly, whenever I spoke with Chinese I met on my trip about this “unusual”relationship that people seemed to have with music they were all mystified.  What I observed and felt, they couldn’t even see.  They lacked perspective on their own experience.  They were too close to it.  They were in it!  What they were curious about was the music scene in the United States.

As my trip went on I found a Chinese musical instrument shop and purchased some intriguingly weird instruments. I proceeded to drive everyone in the surrounding rooms at my hotel crazy as I tried to learn how to play my new snakeskin (Jim Morrison here I come!) and coconut shell fiddles.  I went SCREEECH SCREECH SCREEEEEECH!  The other guests went BANG BAAANG BAAAANG!  

But after a few days I’d gotten good enough to play my er hu and ban hu in the local music stores I visited.  I’d sit down before the astonished clerks and in a rudimentary way saw out the most famous Chinese tune, Kang Ding Qing Ge (a love song, of course), and by the time I’d walk out there would be thirty to forty Chinese checking out the yangguizi or da bi zi  (respectively, but not respectfully, “foreign devil” and “big nose”!) who was making a foray into their music.  I thought this was a pretty cool cultural exchange.  Sometimes I would leave with a procession of thirty or forty young Chinese trailing behind.  I got so I could hear what they were saying over and over: “ta da” “dui, ta zhen da!”  I took it to be praise for my prodigious er hu chops.  Later, after a few weeks of Chinese study, I learned that they were saying: “He is big!”  “Yes, he is truly large.”  Oh well. I still feel like I did my part for world understanding on that trip.  

The power of that experience and others like them fueled three years of language study, a return trip to Tianjin, China where I studied er hu with a nationally-known teacher, and an on-going fascination with Chinese music that has led to many wonderful and unforeseen things even up to today.  A couple of months ago, for example, I played on Gai Bian Zi Ji, the new CD from Taiwanese pop sensation, Lee Hom Wang.  In December I played a short run of shows with him here in the U.S..  Maybe that trip will lead to another trip to Asia where I’ll be able to increase my knowledge of Chinese music and journey still deeper into the culture, language and music of China.  You never know, but one thing seems sure: exposure to and immersion in a new culture can result in increased creative energy and unusual, exciting musical detours. 

Many of the musicians that I have met over the years have related similar experiences of having musical travels which transformed their lives.  What is it about these trips that is so enriching?  Beyond the thrill of the new there is a refreshing look back at your culture of origin.  Sometimes you can look back horrified, sometimes you can look back with renewed fondness, but whatever happens your view of your own world will forever be changed.  As a musician it’s important to be open to the possibilities that another musical culture presents.  Now more than ever before those possibilities are a mouse click away.  Still, if you really want to get there you should go there to see what the music means in its own context.  The more deeply you dive in the more you’ll derive from the experience.

 John Munson is the bassist for the Grammy nominated rock group, Semisonic.  Today John lives in Minneapolis.  He recently played on Mike Doughty’s forthcoming CD Golden Delicious, Dan Wilson’s Free Life and Lee Hom Wang’s Gai Bian Zi Ji.  John’s currently recording songs for his band The New Standards new CD, producing records, and waiting for it to get truly freezing in his home state of Minnesota so he can set off on some interesting trips.