Jon Hassell, an influential American avant-garde composer The inventor of the “Fourth World” musical aesthetic with a global concept. He died at the age of 84, in a statement, his family said. The famous trumpet player, composer and composer died early on June 26 after just one year of health problems.
In the spring of 2020, Hassell broke his leg in a fall at his recording studio. and spent four months recuperating in the hospital. by having to isolate from the corona virus outbreak
Hassell “Loving life and leaving this world is a battle. because he wanted to contribute more to music, philosophy and writing,” his family said. “It was a great pleasure for him to be able to compose and produce songs until the end.”
Hassell’s 1978 debut album Vernal Equinox offered his vision of the aesthetics of the Fourth World. which he called “Unique original/futuristic sound that combines the features of the world’s ethnic styles with advanced electronic techniques.”
“In those days, during the Cold War There is a first world and basically an unspoken second world. That is the Soviet Empire,” Hassell once said, “anything other than these two is called the Third World. and often refers to less developed countries. And those less developed countries are places where traditions are still alive and soulful in their music due to the lack of a better vocabulary. [Fourth world] It’s like ‘3 + 1.’”
A New York Times critic wrote of Hassell’s 1977 performance: “His synthesis opened up new perspectives. instead of just rearranging the elements of the old picture.”
In 1980 Hassell collaborated with Brian Eno on the album Fourth World, Vol 1: Possible Musics. In 2007, Eno wrote an essay entitled The Debt I Owe to Jon Hassell, in which he said: “If I had to name one key principle in the work of Jon, it will be respectful: he looks at the world for a moment. and an emotion that shies away with respect, and this shows in his songs.”
Hassell told the Guardian last year that he was proud of his influence on young musicians. that does not recognize the boundaries between world-class music styles “The Fourth World is what it says: I know, I know this. And this is what I’m about to happen.”
The musician from the left field pays tribute to Hassell Drew Daniel of Matmos, thanking him for The “shining maze” of his music, Kero Kero Bonito, an experimental London pop group, named him the “shining maze” of his music. “The main influence,” Zola Jesus said he had proposed. “A gateway to many other possible worlds”
The Bug, British producer Kevin Martin, said it was an honor to work with Hassell on Martin’s group Techno Animal album with Godflesh’s Justin Broadrick, “The King of Sound, Space and Fourth World Exploration. The world seems darker without you.”
Hassell was born in Memphis in 1937. “I’m proud that I came from the same place as blues,” he says. He studied at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music and moved to Cologne to study under Karlheinz. Stockhausen, inspired by the German composer’s early electronic work, Gesang der Jünglinge.
Among his classmates were Irmin Schmidt and Holger Czukay, who would meet the group. Can Hassell told Billboard about his first experience drinking acidic water at Schmidt’s house: “I remember being on the floor listening to Japanese gagaku and Watch the carpet fibers sway with the music.”
Hassell met minimalist composer Terry Riley while a friend at the State University of New York Buffalo Center for Creative and Performing Arts. In 1968, Hassell performed Riley’s influential first work. In C.
“The American experience around Terry and later La Monte Young is a good antidote to the European experience with Stockhausen,” he told Perfect Sound Forever in 1997. related to good feelings through music, not just some people intellectual exercise It is more holistic. It speaks to the whole body.”
In Buffalo, Hassell befriended synthetic pioneer Robert Moog, worked with Young and studied in India under classical singer Pandit Pran Nath, learning raga patterns on the trumpet. I owe it to Pranat,” Hassell told Perfect Sound Forever.
the traditional musical style which he used to compare with “Sound calligraphy” influenced his Fourth World approach. “I’m not ready to be the first trumpet player. I was too old to go that route,” he told critic Geeta Dayal, “so I had to bring in the things I love: ‘Why can’t I combine this with this?’”
Hassell performed at the first Womad music festival in 1982. That decade he will join festival co-founder Peter Gabriel, as well as Talking Heads, David Sylvian and Tears for Fears.
He intended to collaborate with Eno and David Byrne on an album that became My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Hassell said he couldn’t fly to California to record. and said he was “angry” over the tape Eno and Byrne sent back to him.
In the same interview, he told Perfect Sound Forever, “Obviously, this was a disproportionate allocation of what I did with rock drums and bass. I think it’s extremely unethical. and the fact that I never got the credit Even being inspired was a testament to the testosterone in the room at the time… This made the battle for my musical identity in the market all the more difficult, and I still find the effect of being inspiring. this arrogant.”
In 2018, Hassell told Billboard that he only contacted Eno after writing a 50-page letter to him, “I would say we are brothers now. And that was a rough patch for me, but that ironed itself out.”
In the 90s Hassell worked with artists such as kd lang, Ani DiFranco and often Ry Cooder and continued to release his own albums. He founded the record label Ndeya, which is the home of Warp Records.
His latest album, Seeing Through Sound in 2020, is the second part of his 2018 album Listening to Pictures. Both editions explore Hassell’s “pentimento” music theory, a term he borrowed from the drawing. Image, which refers to images and patterns that are painted over on the finished work.
In an interview last year, Hassell said he was writing a book called The North and South of You. He told Billboard that it was an “analysis of our current situation in terms of our emphasis above us. with reason and technology instead of our south North is logical South is Samba – and you want more when it’s time to leave this world.”
Hassell’s family said he had left. Behind the scenes “many gifts” which they will share with fans in time to “support his lasting legacy”, a donation to GoFundMe set up by Brian Eno in 2020 to support him during his ill health. “It allows his enormous personal music library, which has not yet been released in large numbers, to be preserved and shared with the world for years to come,” the family said. as well as supporting “Charity grants and donations to issues close to Jon support the working rights of musicians.”
The family said: “While Jon was freed from the strangulation of his body. He was thus released in the spirit of his music and would continue to play in the Fourth World. We hope you are comfortable with his words and dreams for the place on earth that he has left behind. We hold him and you in this loss and sorrow.”
