Meditation of the Tooth (Sri Lanka)

Part of the Sacred Spaces project - find out more at http://www.citiesandmemory.com/sacredspaces

Reimagined by J. P. Drecourt.

"The original recording attracted me because of the nasal sound of the oboe and the rhythmic structure of the piece. The lyrical phrases emphasise the devotional aspect of the piece, and the recording is of very good quality. And when listening a little more, one can hear how close real life is, the voices, the noises and even a mobile phone ringing.

When it came to reimagining the piece, I quickly hit an issue: the piece is very repetitive both in terms of structure and sounds. My main goal was to keep the devotional aspect of the piece, keep the sense that we dealt with a sacred, special moment in time. I thought about meditation, but how to turn such a rhythmic piece into the classic new age meditation music?

Then I read this quote by Ed Catmull, one of the co-founders of Pixar: "What artists do is they learn to see." So I focused on my own experience of meditation. And it is bumpy ride! So the piece tries to recreate how the mind drifts from present to past, possible futures, fears and joys. A regular rhythmic pattern (the present) interrupted again and again by other thoughts and feelings.

Technically, the piece is entirely made of samples from the original recording and abides by my vow of minimalism (http://drecourt.com/writings/vow-of-minimalism/). It states that I can only cut the samples and change their volume, no time stretch or fancy effects. For this piece, I used a setup in Propellerhead Reason that allows me to take a short sample and vary manually its start time and duration as well as the frequency at which it's repeated. I improvised using a few of my favorite bits in the original recording and then arranged the best parts of the improvisation into the final work."