Ashley: Yellow Man With Heart With Wings

• Main performer: Robert Ashley
• Libretto languages: English
• Time: 53:30
• Release Date: 1978

Review

This composition (1978) is an extended song, with text by the composer, for voices and electronic instruments. The central theme is agriculture and the geometry of the land: how this idea has spread in society and what it has engendered. Commissioned by radio station KUNM-FM in Albuquerque, NM, the subject of the piece is subtly tied to the history of that land: "The idea of agriculture is improvement. Flatness as a solution to the problem of gravity, confused with the idea of feeding the people, is something we have to live with." The text consists of images and ideas from two other works by the composer: in memoriam ... Kit Carson (hardly a favorite character in New Mexico history but important for representing a certain social concept), and The Church from the opera-for-TV Perfect Lives. The first 27-minute track is spoken in a beautifully inflected Spanish translation by Guillermo Grenier, and the second track is spoken in equally appealing resonant English by the composer. The entire piece is underscored by instrumental tracks (Polymoog synthesizer played by Ashley, with clavinet by "Blue" Gene Tyranny) that open with a soft rising harmonic phrase that is repeated as an ostinato figure throughout the piece. There are gentle, mysterious, ethereal instrumental patterns that emerge and recede from the surface just below the voice, and away in the background there are occasional pitched and electronically processed chorus responses or, rather, brief utterances that serve as strange commentary and musical punctuation. This is a poetic, thought-provoking and musically entrancing composition. ~ "Blue" Gene Tyranny, Rovi

Performances

Composer	Title	Time
Robert Ashley	Yellow Man with Heart with Wings	26:51
Robert Ashley	Yellow Man with Heart with Wings	26:39

Previous:	Ashley: Private Parts (the album)
Next:	Ashokan Farewell