John Fahey

“Fare forward/ O voyagers, O seamen/ You who come to port, and you whose bodies/ Will suffer the trial and judgement of the sea, Or whatever event, this is your real destination/ So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna/ On the field of the battle/ Not fare well/ But fare forward voyagers”. And, again: “All manner of thing shall be well/ Into the crowned knot of fire/ And the fire and the rose are one”. These are the lines (taken from the “Four Quartets” by Anglo-American poet Thomas Stearns Eliot) on which John Fahey built, in musical form, his second superb masterpiece. But while “America” (1971) still showed a desire to remain anchored to a narrative structure, “Fare Forward Voyagers” is instead branded through and through by Fahey's new infatuation with the guru Swami Satchidananda, who had set up a kind of spiritual community in Northern California, in Lake County to be precise.

This new relationship with the psyche (mediated by Indian-derived spiritualism) urges Fahey to push even further into his visionary reworking of American folk(-lore). The choice of Eliot's lines, in fact, shows how our man was by now intent on entrusting his wanderings to the unknown, establishing a relationship with his acoustic guitar rooted in an irrational diction, deeply marked by inner ghosts — all of them, however, resolved into pure sonic shimmer, into pure evocation of shifting forms straining toward the absolute. But this journey inward — and into the very consciousness of the world — follows a reverse progression: Fahey sets out, in fact, from an already-acquired awareness of the transcendent union between fire (symbol of divine love) and the rose (image of beauty and desire). In this union, Eliot — and, by extension, Fahey himself — glimpses the supreme moment of the traveler-man's upward striving (the “turtle-man,” elevated by the Takoma Park guitarist into a mirror image of humankind).

Thus, in “When The Fire And The Rose Are One” (13'54"), after a solemn kaleidoscope of chords, reverberated with a glacial depth (extraordinary work by producer Jim Hobson), the perfection of that union is rendered through the dizzying contrast between moments of near-ascetic soliloquy and sudden accelerations, dense now with panicked fear, now with ecstatic calm. Then, at 3'55", the sound unfolds into a delicate, dreamlike watercolor. Fahey's fingers slide across the fretboard, and that noise becomes part of the music itself, just as a violent brushstroke can freeze on canvas — and in time — the painter's very act. Follow the imperious interplay of crosscutting lines (narrative and digression; meditation and counterpoint) that from 7'42" begins pushing toward the ending, itself balanced between calm and storm, fearless scales and notes left to their fate.

“Thus Krishna On The Battlefield” (6'36") — on the theme of the need for disinterested action as an antidote to the innate guilt of every human act — has a less convulsive flow: roughly four minutes of free chords, channeled nonetheless toward a base theme, which then fades into a strained harmonic-melodic ascent: on one side, crystal-clear sparks; on the other, the dark austerity of the low notes. Both tinged with fury. The 23-plus minutes of the incredible title track represent the final invitation to “fare forward” toward our “true destination.” Together with “Voice Of The Turtle” (on “America”), this is certainly the high point of Fahey's “primitivism” — that is, of his fundamental lesson (above all for the new age still to come) in how, starting from a simple theme, one can cross border after border, even with nothing but a guitar.

If Fahey's fascination with the origins of American popular music and with Indian “ragas” is the wellspring from which his visions flow, then with “Fare Forward Voyagers” (the track) his quest can be said to be complete. From the very first seconds, it's clear we're in the presence of an absolute, definitive meditation (as “Voice Of The Turtle” was, though from a calmer, more “narrative” angle): the desolate throb of the lowest strings, diamond-like layering, “abstract” echoes of good old blues, luminous harmonics, the subtlest digressions. This goes on for about seven minutes. Then, refractions of Indian scales and fragments of old America in celebration whirl through a dance from another time. Around the thirteenth minute, the guitar soars into a terrifying flight. It's as if Fahey were now at the mercy of his own music. He seems, in short, to be experiencing on himself, in a frighteningly “concrete” way, the “rasa” — the aesthetic pleasure that, according to Indian tradition, arises from the perfect performance (and correct listening) of a “raga.” Following the same tradition's precepts, moreover, Fahey arranges notes into melodic sequences, which in turn follow one another in ascending or descending order. And, again, striving to maintain a “modal hierarchy,” he occasionally accentuates certain notes. This explains the sudden disturbances in the sonic fabric through vigorous jolts, which seem intent on toppling the (already precarious) line of improvisation. And yet, his is not a virtuoso guitar style, unlike, say, that of a Leo Kottke. It is, rather — how to put it? — more impressionistic, less structured, even if at certain moments the opposite impression may arise. Around the nineteenth minute, the tension eases once more. The familiar reflective chords stretch out through space and time. Small harmonic shards vibrate in solitude. Fahey retraces his steps, as in the two previous tracks, but this time fleetingly quoting a few accents from his own “Dalhart, Texas, 1967” (on “America”). True to Eliot's lines, he knows, in short, that “beginning” and “end” are, after all, one and the same.

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29/10/2006