Listen. Read. Ponder. Composing the 21st Century Wilderness: Audio Journal (Duration: 17 minutes) Music, recordings, story and presentation by Justin Ralls. By Justin Ralls In the summer of 2012, nestled in the central Alaskan wilderness of Denali National Park, nine composers participated in the first ever “Composing in the Wilderness” seminar. Sponsored by the Fairbanks Summer Arts […]
by Justin Ralls It was on a warm, early summer evening in Portland, Oregon where I sat down with Alexander Arbachakov. Gathered at a barbecue, surrounded by Northwest environmental leaders and five delegates of Russian conservation groups, we discussed shamans, natural sound, and the spirit world. Mr. Arbachakov is a member of the Shor tribe of Kemerovo […]
Listen. Read. Ponder. Geophony: Chorus of Wind and Water. Multi-media piece for soundscape and percussion. The piece explores my experience in the forest walking along paths, beside roaring cold spring rivers, warm rain, the sounds of winter wren, and an encounter with a barred owl. It is a journey of ‘elemental imagination’ in the forest, where […]
Joseph Campbell, in his lifelong exploration of our planet’s mythology came to believe that shamans were the first artists, the first musicians, and the first storytellers. He also discovered the drum as one of the core instruments in many varieties of shamanism, appearing in the most ancient of traditions. It is then reasonable to speculate […]
I recently visited the Hart Mountain Wildlife Refuge, in southeastern Oregon. The desert is a magical place of vast extremes. It was a dry 90 degrees by day and a dewy, frosty 32 by night. Eastern Oregon is in the height of a dry cycle (affected as well by the ongoing drought throughout the West), […]
Miscellaneous ramblings, visions, unedited notes, thoughts, utterances while in the Andrews Experimental Forest: Artists, philosophers, writers, composers; they are the myth makers of modern man—the griots—the storytellers, who may shape society. Scientists are in many ways the hunters, the practical knowledge collectors of facts and figures, percentages and statistics, relationships upon relationships in the other-than-human world. With this knowledge […]
By Justin Ralls “Landscape is the culture that contains all human cultures.” ~ Barry Lopez I frequently take walks in Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge, near where I grew up in Portland, Oregon. I walk to watch and listen to birds, to compose and write in my head; to ponder. […]
