''Voice of America'' is a 1982 live collaborative album of

improvised Improvisation is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. Improvisation in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of impr ...

experimental music by Fred Frith, Bob Ostertag and

Phil Minton Phil Minton (born 2 November 1940) is a British avant-garde jazz/ free-improvising vocalist and trumpeter. Minton is a highly dramatic baritone who tends to specialize in literary texts: he has sung lyrics by William Blake with Mike Westbrook' ...

. It was recorded live at

PASS Pass, PASS, The Pass or Passed may refer to: Places * Pass, County Meath, a townland in Ireland * Pass, Poland, a village in Poland * Pass, an alternate term for a number of straits: see List of straits * Mountain pass, a lower place in a moun ...

(Public Access Synthesizer Studio), New York City in January 1981, and the Actual Festival at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts), London in August 1981. The album was released on LP by Rift Records in 1982. RecRec Music reissued the album on CD in 1994. The PASS concert featured Frith and Ostertag, while the ICA concert featured Frith, Ostertag and Minton. Tape recordings made by Ostertag in

Nicaragua Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the countr ...

in 1980 were played in both performances; other recordings from radio and TV shows were also used. The LP release included an insert with transcriptions and song lyrics, in Spanish and English, of the recordings used.

Background

In 1980 Ostertag spent time in

recording songs and raising money for El Salvador guerrillas fighting the

Sandinista National Liberation Front The Sandinista National Liberation Front ( es, Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, FSLN) is a socialist political party in Nicaragua. Its members are called Sandinistas () in both English and Spanish. The party is named after Augusto Cé ...

, who had seized power the year before. He used these tapes, plus additional recordings of radio and TV shows, in both ''Voice of America'' concerts. Ostertag's equipment was a keyboard-less, modular

Serge synthesizer The Serge synthesizer ( Serge Modular or Serge Modular Music System) is an analogue modular synthesizer system originally developed by Serge Tcherepnin, Rich Gold and Randy Cohen at CalArts in late 1972. The first 20 Serge systems (then called " ...

, telephone answering machine cassette loops, and cassette players, modified to malfunction unpredictably. None of the musicians knew which tape would play next. At the ICA concert, vocalist Minton was recruited from the audience to replace Ostertag's synthesizer, which had been "destroyed in a technical mishap". Minton sang, Ostertag used his broken cassette players and a contact microphone, and Frith played a "guitar" he had made from "a piece of scrap wood with some guitar strings stretched over a pickup". Ostertag's later referred to the event as "magical".

Reception

A reviewer at ''Music and Sound Output'' described ''Voice of America'' as "the oddest 'music' I've ever heard"—it has no traditional melody, harmony or rhythm, but is rather "composed noise ... the sound of lives lived, and lives lost". The reviewer said while it is ambient, "it sure isn't soothing" like Eno's ''

Music for Airports Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspe ...

''. Howard Mandel wrote in a review in '' DownBeat'' that the "metallic electronics" on the album paints an alarming picture of events in South America. He said in contrast, the Super Bowl and ''

Let's Make a Deal ''Let's Make a Deal'' (also known as ''LMAD'') is an American television musical comedy variety-game show that originated in the United States in 1963 and has since been produced in many countries throughout the world. The program was created an ...

'' tapes bluntly dismiss North American culture. Mandel concluded that " ogrammatic, perhaps dogmatic, ''Voice of America'' would seem too obvious for critical comment, were new music lovers more committed to political study than they seem to be." In a review at Babyblaue Seiten, Ralf J. Günther wrote that to appreciate ''Voice of America'', the listener needs to understand the political climate in the United States and

in the early 1980s. He described the album as having "no music in the conventional sense", but rather a collage of tapes played at random, accompanied by noise and free instrumentation. Günther said the use of prepared tapes contrasts with, and complements the improvisations. He added that Frith and Ostertag's use of radios reminded him of the way Holger Czukay used the radio as a musical instrument.

Track listing

Sources:

Liner notes Liner notes (also sleeve notes or album notes) are the writings found on the sleeves of LP record albums and in booklets that come inserted into the compact disc jewel case or the equivalent packaging for cassettes. Origin Liner notes are desc ...

Discogs Discogs (short for discographies) is a database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. While the site was originally created with a goal of becoming the ...

Personnel

* Fred Frith **Side A – guitar, tapes, radio **Side B – homemade instruments * Bob Ostertag **Side A –

, tapes, contact microphones, radio **Side B – tapes, contact microphones *

**Side B – voice Sources:

Sound and artwork

*Side A recorded on cassette tape by Bruce Levinson *Side B recorded by Jean-Marc Foussat *Mastered by

Howie Weinberg Howie Weinberg is an American audio mastering engineer with over 2,257 mastering credits, three TEC Awards, 21 Grammy Awards, two Juno Awards, and one Mercury Prize. Career Weinberg mastered Herbie Hancock's 1983 album '' Future Shock''. Other ...

*Liner notes by Bob Ostertag, Fred Frith and

*Translations by Bob Ostertag, Cecilia Dega and Susan Greenburg *Typesetting by Eugene Nowacki *Photography by Tina Curran Sources:

Tape recording sources

*Side A *# "¿Qué Hacen los Extraños?" by José Armijo, Salvadoran singer *# Sandinista dialogue from "La Guitarra Armada" (The Armed Guitar) by Carlos Mejia Godoy *# "Revolución", from the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua *# Chronology of the Chilean Coup; 1973 Rounder Records *# "Let's Make a Deal!" *# TV coverage of the return of the Teheran hostages *# "Let's Make a Deal!" (continued) *# The Super Bowl, 1981 *Side B *# Salvadoran National Guard chanting slogans while training *# Chaquito, a small boy, speaking at his father's funeral on the Chinchontepec volcano, El Salvador: Film Institute of Revolutionary El Salvador, FMLN *# Small girl singing at a ceremony to mark the end of the literacy campaign in Esteli, Nicaragua *# Song: "Mourn Not the Dead", by Ralph Chaplin, member of the I.W.W. *# Small girl singing ... (continued) Sources:

References

Works cited

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Voice of America 1982 live albums Collaborative albums Experimental music albums Free improvisation albums Fred Frith live albums RecRec Music albums Political music albums by American artists