| PROFILES |
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| SELF-PROFILE ON WAKAN (IMPROVISATIONAL GUITARIST) The word "Wakan" means "sacred" in the Lakotah language and "heart of the sky" in the Mayan language. Seeing that "sacred" is the way I see the creative process in general and that there's something beautifully optimistic about its other meaning, it seemed like a good idea to appropriate it for use as a name. It's also exactly how I feel in a very visceral way when I'm improvising in the manner I did the other night [on Monday, November 17/03, at the Southern Ontario Fingerstyle Guitarists Association Concert at the Pheasant Plucker, Hamilton]. This approach compels one to be very much in the moment, and when everything is working as it should, it's difficult to perceive myself, the audience, and everyone and everything else as anything but sacred. This particular feeling is in line with many native people's views that I subscribe to, so it's nicely synchronistic that it kind of jumped out at me. Another name I almost used is 'V�in�m�inen', who is the Shamanic hero in the set of epic poems and songs called the 'Kalevala'. I had decided to Canadianize the spelling of this name and came up with 'Vynameridan'. However, after saying the word over and over, and looking at it in print, it started to resemble the phrase, 'I'm an American'. So I canned it. It will most likely be the title of my next improv album, but in the original Finnish. I should mention that I'll be unofficially releasing the first of these guitar improv albums very soon. The album is called The Elements of Chance and has the only 12 improvs that have been recorded so far that I know of. I'll only be sending it to press and a few select musicians for the time being, and once I have a web site up, I'll make it available at 'Amazon.com' and probably 'MapleMusic'. I'm hoping this album will make a small splash for guitarists, as there doesn't seem to be anyone else doing this (and I've looked far and wide). Because of this, I've decided to include in Wakan's upcoming bio that 'he's pioneered a new approach to improvising on Acoustic guitar, which involves playing in a new and previously unrehearsed alternate tuning that is made up a few seconds before each song'. That's the shortest way that I can presently articulate this approach, except to call them 'Random Alternate tuning improvs', which really isn't accurate, because I really haven't played in these tunings before the moment that they occur. In fact I don't even practise this at all. Most of my practise playing consists of trying to improve my skills at playing what I hear in standard tuning, and composing. (continued on next page) |