La Jornada: William Basinski seeks to create beauty from chaos

The music of William Basinski (Houston, 1958) “is a bridge to listen to the spirit,” as various platforms describe the work of this creator, who on May 9 will be presented at the Plaza de las Artes of the National Arts Center (Cenart), where he will include an unpublished piece for the Mexican public.

The artist is considered one of the most innovative in modern music for mixing sounds originating from mixes of cassette tapes and other technologies with which he immerses the public in a trance over themselves, which allowed him to make rhythms inspired by the works of Brian Eno and David Bowie.

“I am very happy to return to Mexico; it is a wonderful country where I myself would go to live. This visit excites me very much. They are a wonderful town that always shows a lot of affection to everyone who visits. I was there two years ago and I did not want to leave,” he commented.

With more than 40 years of musical training and 30 years of professional career, William Basinski is a survivor. He faced discrimination for his homosexual orientation when his family moved to Florida, and struggled to survive financially as an emerging experimental artist. Due to his command of the clarinet and saxophone, he was considered to participate in important orchestras in the country, but he always preferred to follow the path of experimental music.

“For more than 25 years I have dedicated myself to my ‘special projects’ and at that time very few people seemed to appreciate it. It seems like a joke, but I realized that I had to wait for my audience to be born. We made great efforts that led to the album The Desintegration Loops. Music has marked my life and the way I see the world.

“I don’t see the world with encouragement. Every day that passes it becomes crazier. We live in an unpleasant moment, with perverse and monstrous people in the politics of my country, focused on war and destruction. You in Mexico see yourself much better because there you have a very good president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who seems to me to be doing things appropriately,” he commented.

William Basinski assures that these problems are the sign that the capitalist and sexist system “is like a cornered rat, but I see the fractures that are becoming evident and I think that is a bright sign and there is hope. We are all tired of it, but personally I can only combat it by trying to create beauty from chaos.”

Melancholy of the brief

With albums like the one already mentioned The Desintegration Loops, Lamentations y Watermusic (the latter in two volumes), Basinski seeks to confront the tedium of daily existence, for which he plays long-lasting melodies with which he seeks to deepen reflection and allow his audience to get to know themselves.

“I feel very happy for the reception, it is a blessing that they understand the message I want to give. It has been very hard work, with many shortcomings in my youth, but I thank James and my family for being with me. The Japanese have a concept known as mono no awarewhich can be translated as the melancholy of the brief, of the moment, and I think I am very similar to that: to look for the beautiful in the sad and sentimental memories that allow us to elevate humanity to something truly worthy.

“They see me as a visionary because I worked with shortcomings and adapted. There were no mixing tools when I was young and I improvised a lot with sounds playing with cassettes and sounds. I found that I made music of anesthesia, with melancholy, and that caught me. I keep learning new things and that seems wonderful to me.”

The concert at the Cenart will be a revelation for lovers of transcendental music because five works will be exhibited, most of them from the period Arcadia. “I feel alive when I’m playing. I don’t really like traveling for work because I’m a homebody, but as soon as I get to the stage everything dissipates and that’s what I love, it’s like it came out of my body. I want to take care of my Mexican audience, and for them to take care of each other, we have to love each other a lot because that’s what we’re missing.”