Rusty Banks is a composer/guitarist/teacher originally from Jasper, AL, now living in Pennsylvania.
His compositions benefit from themes relating to regions or environments. For example, his composition commissioned by the Alabama Music Teacher Association's 2004 convention featured audio samples from the Cahaba River, Alabama's last free-flowing river. Another work, "Long Pine Creek: New Year's Day," uses sounds from Long Pine Creek in Nebraska. His compositions range from traditional concert music to sonic installations where boom boxes are scattered throughout a room. His music is described as thoroughly modern, yet accessible, a description he shudders at, but reluctantly accepts. His compositions may be heard on Living Artist Recordings, as well as his web site, rustybanks.org.
|
Friday, March 17, 2006
Zen and the Art of Linguistics
Recently there was a great thread about calling oneself a “composer.” It started with Randy Nordschow’s thread on NewMusicBox, with its inflammatory assertion that … “it's time to face the fact that, yes, maybe we really aren't composers.” He also states that if you aren’t making the bulk of your income from composing, you are really a “hobbyist.” This was cause for some great discussion as well as soul searching for many readers of NewMusicBox and Sequenza21. One term in Randy’s post that some readers really balked at was “hobbyist.”
Whenever there is an attempt to label me, or what I do, I usually shrug. Any word would only label a part of who I am, and many times the word can only be a useful description in limited circumstances. I’m on record as saying I call myself “musician,” a term I find more flexible, than composer, performer, or teacher. While I didn’t become as enraged as some over the word “hobbyist” (I’ve certainly been called worse!) I did notice that something didn’t feel right about it. While a good argument could be made for the term, it just didn’t feel accurate. While I never could gather words that concisely explain why, I did manage to come up with an analogy that is perhaps useful.
If someone doesn’t make their living in Buddhism, can they really be a Buddhist, or is Buddhism merely their hobby?
Hats off to Randy, for a great conversation starter!
posted by Rusty Banks
|
| |
