Lets Compare-Gonjasufi

So I thought I would try something new this week. In the past I have compared two musical artists usually a up and comer with a more classic usually from the eighties band. Now I think it would be interesting to compare a musical artist, current or otherwise to a non-musical art, anything from television, paintings, poetry, movies, photography to culinary art. No art is completely without precedence, and while it may seem so when listening to music that is completely unique from other contemporary sounds musical artists will borrow heavily from the aesthetics of other artists, whether by intention or coincidence. For today I thought a good place to start was with Gonjasufi. Now I know have writeen about Sumac Valentine, aka Gonjasufi in the past, however I felt like it was worth revisiting here.

Backround

Gonjasufi makes music that is all at once smooth and abrasive. If ever there was a voice that could be said to be the child of smoking too much of a certain illegal substance than this is certainly it. Half Yoga instructor, half downtrodden urban dweller, half Islamic mystic, Sumac Valentine, the voice behind Gonjasufi is mystifying in every sense of the word and has a sound that goes along with that, borrowing heavily from the psychedelic, hip-hop, and eastern music.

Work 1 (Poetry) The Tyger by William Blake

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

William Blake was a painter, a poet, a novelist, and a philosopher all wrapped in one convienent nineteenth century package. His poem The Tyger (along with the book that it is contained in Songs of Experience and its companion book Songs of Innocence) was part of a set of poems that were paired with other poems that specifically contrasted with each other. The poem that The Tyger contrasts with his entitled the Lamb, which relative to the horrors of the Tyger is gentle, peaceful and serene. I think I mentioned back in my review of A Sufi and a Killer that this poem reminded me of Gonjasufi, especially the song Sheep. Valentine is a pairing of contradictions, the same way Blake’s two companion poem books, A Song of Innocence and A Song of Experience are. Instead of Tyger’s and Lambs however, Valentine compares violence and spirituality, the mundane and the mystical. The poem The Tyger has also been associated with the mystical since it was written. For instance, drawing heavily from the philosophy of Blake, the infamous cult leader Alistair Crowley used archaic spellings for words similarly to how Blake does with The Tyger. For Blake, the spelling of Tyger was supposed to give the animal an ungodly aesthetic, making the reader question whether the same god could really have created something as meek as the lamb and as fearful as the tiger in the same breath. Crowley used archaic spellings twofold, as a nod to Blake and other writers before him who used older spellings, and to distinguish common parlor magicians from true believers who would spell the word magick (No the Red Hot Chili Peppers did not come up with that). In the same way Gonjasufi uses different spellings to bring a mystical sense to some of the songs on the album. Tracks like Kowboyz and Indians, Klowdz, and Kobwebz all replace C’s with K’s and S’ with Z’s. The ultimate point though is that Valentine is trying to tap into that same mystical world of the unknown that Blake does. In the first verse Blake specifies where the Tyger lives, “the forest of the night”. So too Gonjasufi defines his surrounds, not as a forest but as an urban setting. He does so without saying it explicitly however. Where most of the songs would seem to imply traditional living environments where one might find a real Sufi living, there is something about Valentine that gives him away as a man of his time, and ultimately it helps the record because both the modern and the supernatural are represented fairly.

Work Two (Painting) La Grande Odalisque by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Yes It’s a naked woman, and no I am not comparing it to Gonjasufi because I think he would look good naked. The reason that I included this painting here is not so much the figure herself but the way she is dressed (or not dressed). Ingres’ the man who painted this was a neoclassical painter, a style to emerge in the nineteenth century and ironically the period in which Blake was also painting. The Neoclassical style was a direct response to the Rococo style which had come before it. Where Rococo mostly focused on pastel colors and sensuality, the neoclassical style served more as a return to the style of the baroque; paintings of this style were very serious, tended to have lighting depicted in the scene, and often blended the form of figures in the pictures with dark empty spaces. You can see this in the above painting where there is ambiguity as to where her back leg ends and the dark background begins. Also the painting is rather serious, and uses dark colors like the deep blue of the drapes, even the woman’s skin is pale as opposed to a pink flesh tone.  Now on to the reason why I chose this. Ingres was part of an unofficial movement in art called romanticism. Romanticism in painting manifested itself through artists depicting things that the persons buying their paintings had never seen before i.e. fights with lions, depictions of eastern governments and customs, or in this case a woman. The woman depicted is an odalisque, or a concubine, a sex slave. The things she is holding, the room she is sitting on and the dress that adorns her head are all eastern objects that would have been foreign to whoever in France bought the painting. And here is where Gonjasufi ties in, because Ingres’ depiction is not accurate. For one, look at the woman, her back is way too long around her hip region and her left arm appears to be much shorter than her left one. On top of that this person is supposed to be middle eastern, her unnaturally pale skin however is not in line with what persons are really like. So too with Gonjasufi who imagines a Sufi as a modern city walker who smokes weed to contact spirits. Both A Sufi and a Killer and La Grande Odalisque are creative un realistic reinterpretations that ignore reality. Valentine figuratively paints a vivid picture of how he sees himself whereas Ingres literally paints of how things should be. In both cases it is similar to what Michelangelo would do when depicting persons, he would see them not as how they actually were, but as they should be. He would depict real persons more beautifully than they actually were, or rather he would depict people how they were thought of rather than how they actually were. Same with Ingres who depicts the concubine as having  unnaturally large birthing hips and takes away emphasis from her face which holds a hard to read emotionless experience. Valentine equally depicts his characters as he sees fit, they give guidance, face problems, and smoke a whole lot.