White Company reviewed in the Digger

I'd always wanted to be a fireman, nurse or train driver, the old thing about those uniforms.
Nowadays I think more about being a stoned gypsy and wandering all over making magic and music.

And now I hear about a group of musos, actors, painters and mimes called the White Company who are doing just that....traveling around Australia spreading the word about the Tribal Gathering in May, the Aquarius Festival. Their vision is living and working together and they say "we want so sing with you, dance with you and take you by the hand" which sounded fine....

...we the audience sit quietly on the floor .....there are tapes playing echoes around the room and an amazing collection of wind, string and percussion instruments.....The six musicians...sit on pieces of knitted rug on a big mat. A j is passed as sitars, violins get tuned.....three women are chanting into the mike "Seek and enjoy sunlight, take off your shoes and your clothes.... All evil and dark smelling things will rise from you, all must be born again of sun and truth...."

One of the musos has a burner and a tray of incense oils. Each piece has a different smell as well as a different feel and sound. Chanting begins "fire opens old wounds.." and suddenly there's a huge whoosh of flame from the Indian guys mouth, fucking fire eater......like a dervish he dances around the room passing the torch across his feet and holding the flame in his hands. The music is beating wildly.

The show is almost over and the White Company sing to us. "May the longtime sun shine upon you, all love surround you, and the pure light within you, guide your way home..." and soon everybody was dancing with them.

We weren't entertained, we lived through it. Anytime they could have asked me to join and I would have.......

I saw the Bauls perform at the Village Church, Paddington, a week ago......They were preceded by an improvisation session lasting one hour and forty minutes by the White Company.....

The occasion was virtually unannounced, but attracted an audience which grew from 38 at 8.50 pm to 64 at 10.45 pm. The evening was marked by the freedom of the audience to get up and move around, talk quietly, pray, feed babies, light candles or incense, go to the lavatory, stand on the head, or simply remain immobile in the lotus position. These details may seem obvious, or even boring....but consider how each item is a contrast to formal concertgoing

.....the White Company is at present a group of seven musicians more or less endowed with instrumental dexterity and improvisational freedom. they depend on a knowledge of each others habits, characteristic musical gestures, the ambience and a fluctuating rapport for their group improvisations.

If the violinist plays a phrase like a Rumanian gypsy fiddler the others can predict the kind of cadenza he will develop. If the sanza (African "finger piano") sets up an ostinato pattern, the flautist may take up the melodic suggestion and if the alto bamboo flute is listening keenly he may be able to follow in close canon, just behind the flute. At one point the players developed a quite intricate piece of three part imitative polyphony, accompanied by various drones, tabla rhythms and percussive punctuations.

When the White Company began to improvise the melodies were plainly diatonic, the rhythmic movement slow or even inert and the harmonies very plain and concordant (*1) One wondered at this point whether they would ever reach some kind of organised excitement. Well they did, although it took a long time to come about.

I think they have a very real achievement in being able to make up on the spot complex, dissonant, rhythmically fast pieces without any predetermined basis at all beyond rehearsed "togetherness". They do not have the advantages of a fixed chordal sequence and a regular metre as in jazz. These youngsters are fast learning from the east....

According to one of the players in the White Company, they were not in very good form...because they had previously burned themselves out in a restaurant with quasi Japanese and atonal improvisations, so much so that the dulcimer player got stuck on one chord for half an hour. (*2) If they had been better in the restaurant than in the Village Church, I hope they were fed for free!...

posters perspective photos people	the White Company
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