“gal*in_dog howls for something, but nobody knows what.”
hat is the relationship between Guillermo Galindo, serious composer of orchestral music, and gal*in_dog, post-Mexican rapscallion of the electronic?
That question was in the mind of some members of the audience at one of the programs of the sixth annual San Francisco Electronic Music Festival. Also on the program were Victoria Jordanova—an American composer and harpist born in former Yugoslavia whose oddly evocative electro-acoustic harp sounds were deliberately reminiscent of the sounds of the sitar—and Morton Subotnick, distinguished electronic composer who, with Miguel Frasconi, produced a delicate, beautiful “sound surround” which kept the audience in a trance-like, meditative space.
There was little that was “delicate” but much that was brilliant about gal*in_dog. The piece he performed was titled “Cruise 4ide”—and puns in various directions, not least of which is “cruz,” since the central implement of the piece was nothing less than a black and white cross. “Beyond a universal understanding of the cross as a Christian symbol,” Galindo (or gal*in_dog) writes, “the cross represents, among many other things, the tree of life (Middle Ages), the four cardinal points (Aztec/American Indian) [cf. “4ide”] and the middle point between heaven and earth.” He adds, “Any connections of this piece with reality are not coincidence.” One can see reality drawing back in fear before gal*in_dog’s assault.
gal*in_dog entered dressed in black and carrying his cross. (One thinks of those ancient priests who approached the Indians of this continent with such good and utterly misguided intentions.) On his head was a helmet with two large spikes sticking out of it; the helmet disguised his face. His right hand sported what looked to be a black claw. Seeing him, one audience member shouted, “Well, hello!” gal*in_dog looked at once comic and dangerous. What in the world was this man going to do?
The audience’s anxiety was hardly assuaged when he began to wave the cross around the various instruments before him—and it began to make sounds, different ones depending on what he put it near or how he moved it. (One of my favorite implements was what appeared to be a Black & Decker drill.) These sounds could be comic but also deeply serious (at one point they felt like one’s own heart beating), even threatening. Sometimes they sounded like the piercing whirr of the dentist’s drill. We had no idea of the parameters of such an instrument. What could it do? Further, one had no real assurance that this strange-looking man might not amplify the sound to the point at which we felt pain. (“I’m going to make a loud noise,” Galindo told me before the event: there was definitely a sadistic element in this performance.) gal*in_dog seemed to be a priest engaged in the presentation of a ritual—the feeling was strong—but we had no idea of the content of the ritual. What must the Aztecs have felt when they saw the Spanish priests saying Mass? What must the priests have felt when they saw the rituals of the Aztecs? “According to animistic Native American tradition,” gal*in_dog writes, “’inanimate’ objects are believed to have supernatural qualities, their shape, material and the sound they make are all connected in a unique entity filled with powerful symbols.” Thus his cross—a silent visual symbol suddenly endowed with sound. As gal*in_dog moved around the stage—slowly, deliberately going about his work—one felt the presence of a world of symbols, but one had no idea of their meaning.
And then we began to see images, shifting ones, many images from Mexico of explosions, all distorted in some way. (This video art, Quema de Judas—Judas Burning—was shot by Galindo and manipulated live at the performance by Jen Cohen.) There was a screen set up behind gal*in_dog. We had barely noticed it until he turned his back to the audience and raised the cross—and the performance was suddenly a light show. (There was something of the 60s here—a sense of places like the Filmore Auditorium or the Avalon: but the 60s had now become mysterious, displaced. gal*in_dog was as far as could be imagined from rock n roll, and yet…)
And then it was over. gal*in_dog left the stage and did not return to acknowledge the applause. It was a stunningly original, imaginative performance—“only” a performance, yet it brought us into areas which are rarely touched by performance. I thought Morton Subotnick’s piece was wonderful and delightful and I enjoyed it immensely, but it didn’t situate me in the kind of mythic space that gal*in_dog’s performance had. One had the sense in watching him of huge psychic areas opening up—something deep and, in the good sense, “primitive” (primary, first). It was like seeing the Catholic Mass for the first time with a pure and innocent heart which has no knowledge of the negatives of that religion. Guillermo Galindo is lucky to have such a presence in his body. And we are lucky that he lets him out from time to time. Black and Decker never sounded so good.