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Prayer for the Forest
by Antonio Testa and “Alio Die” (Stefano Musso)
GreenHouse Music, 2002
http://www.greenhousemusic.com
The Italian duo of Testa and Musso follow up their 1997 release “Healing
Herb’s Spirit” with another album of earnest neo-primitivism, Prayer for
the Forest. Like many other examples of the “tribal” genre, Prayer
for the Forest is composed of a combination of ancient, Native, and
“found” percussion such as rattles, rocks, sticks, and whistles, along with
environmental sounds, and up-to-date synthesizers and sound processing
equipment.
The mood of the album is almost always somnolent and nocturnal, with slow
rhythms and quiet dynamics. On “Ancestor’s Breath,” (track 3) for instance,
a single drum beat sounds against the crackling noise of fire and the sound
of wind and crow calls, picturing a night spent in shamanic ritual. The next
track, track 4, “Walking through the camp” is a bit more upbeat, with
repeating loops of African folk music and the voices of villagers. But by
track 5 they are back into the eerie night, mixing shortwave radio sweep
sounds with loops of bells and synthesizer drones.
These are all sound-tricks I have heard before. Testa and Musso represent a
style which has been widely explored in both Europe and the USA, inspired by
aboriginal and shamanic musical cultures. The European brand of this style
has always had, to me a kind of wistful post-colonial nostalgia to it. No
matter how much one visits or studies these indigenous cultures, one is
always a stranger to them, and no matter how many tribal drums or rattles
one has, it is still Europeans playing them urban Europeans who yearn for,
but can never really participate in, the idealized village life and natural
world that this music is meant to evoke.
Hannah M.G. Shapero
4/18/02
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