Sounds Like Music

Matthew Cannon
Jul 25, 2017 · 3 min read

To christen this thing, a blast from the past. In 2005 five people filled a gap in the nightlife of Cape Town, South Africa, by producing a handy guide called Turn the Table. I wrote a scene-setter for the first issue:

Listen, in the beginning was the Word. But Music followed closely on its heels, always pushing for reunion. In it, as in everything, vibrating specks produce sound through their movement, playing their part of the whole. Tiny, sizzling particles forming each vocal chord, amp and hand drumming on stretched skin.

The cover of the first issue, designed by Yvette Morkos

Under the old mountain, a man chips stone with stone to craft a perfect edge. Looking for roots nearby, a woman matches the staccato rhythms of his rock music as she drives deeper into the earth with her digging stick. Over their heads, a sugarbird chirps and sways on a large, pink protea, drunk on its nectar and unafraid of the thumping and clicking it has heard so often before. The white noise of a waterfall resonates in a gorge behind them, and, visible down at the distant end of the slope covered by fragrant green bush, waves break onto a beach with a sound mimicked by forcing air between tongue and top palate from the back of a mouth.

The old man now notices that a repetitive tune has begun to escape from his throat via his nose: lilting, melodious and quietly beautiful. His current favourite, it carries him through the heat of the day’s work and will find full, entranced expression under the stars that night.

The wind blows here, and, being made of the same stuff as spirit, it knows no bounds. It hisses across the entrance of your ear, slices through valleys, makes a mournful tone as it’s sucked momentarily into a discarded Coke bottle. It causes tree branches to swish over the heads of the marimba players in the shade, who hit wooden slats to gain a rippling sonic response. Their bare upper bodies strain at the percussive intensity required to stay in time, but the strain is welcome, as it goads their attention back to the moment, before losing it to timelessness again. Within dimensions shaped by sleep deprivation and additives per mouth, people spasm and shake to the beating noise, and club the air above their heads with their fists as hi-fidelity lines of squares of green light bump up into the red. It’s so loud in here. Yes, and sound is everywhere. Howling, buzzing mouthbows form a string section and a harpsichord twinkles along over the top, causing layered skirts to brush the ballroom floor in furious circles.

Finally, at dawn, the muezzin uses a microphone to call the last and first song out to opening skies.

Inside a living room on a weekend afternoon, eyes close in appreciation as a bassline slowly bends into blissful shapes. There is time to expand and sift through events, to stretch into a body that danced until spent of its tension. Outside, sunlight bleaches leaves, the sea, the city and Table Mountain, at the foot of which an old woman loosens soil in search of tubers. Now and then, she turns and speaks to her companion in words that sound like music.

Matthew Cannon

Written by

Nature Boy, Renaissance Man, Satirist, Sleuth and Seller of Rare Music Goods on www.landofmilk.weebly.com

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