Book of Marseille, track 4 from my new album Worldcore, is an aural interpretation of the Tarot de Marseille. In it, I attempt to convey not only the overall feel of the Marseille deck, but also the specific symbolism and structure of the World card. The following is an interpretive analysis illustrating how I went about transposing the tarot onto music.
The album can be found at https://alantormey.bandcamp.com/album/worldcore It is free to stream and all money earned from download sales is being donated to health and environmental charities.
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One theme that's prevalent throughout the Worldcore album is the use of international music styles that are themselves strongly influenced by American music, such as Bossa Nova, Filmi, and non-Anglophone rap. Two other elements that help comprise the album's through-line are jazz and French language vocals. Although there's nothing specifically "international" about the particular jazz styles I utilize, American jazz music and the French language connect very easily and intuitively, given the century-long exchange and comingling of jazz music and la vie français. France was an early and enthusiastic adopter of jazz and many famous early jazz musicians, including luminaries like Sidney Bechet and Archie Shepp resided there. Furthermore, the French jazz scene distinguished itself from its American counterpart by the incorporation of tropical influences into its mélange. Although these influences originally leaned heavy on the Caribbean, especially Martinique, it's unwise to think of the French tropics and exclude the island of Réunion.
Maya Kamaty, also known (for this project specifically) as Madame Iskra, is a jazz vocalist from Réunion. She sings (beautifully) in Réunion Creole—a singular language that incorporates elements from all over the world, including French, Malagasy, Hindi, Tamil, Gujarati, and Portuguese. In fact, one could almost think of it like a linguistic analogue to what I'm trying to do in the Worldcore project.
To my ears, Réunion Creole sounds like 'not-French.' That is to say, it sounds like French, but not the French that I know. It has older elements and elements that, to me at least, seem farther away, distant in both place and time. In this way it becomes an audible metaphor for the Tarot de Marseille. For those of you who may not be familiar, the Tarot de Marseille (or TdM) is an historical style of card deck whose original heyday lasted from (at least) 1650 through to the late 19th century. It is the precursor to the kind of modern tarot decks whose imagery will be familiar to us from horror movies and head shops. Those who read the tarot will tell you that the Marseille deck speaks with a distinctly different voice than the modern, Anglo-centric decks. It's still tarot but a tarot with a different accent and different shades of meaning. It therefore seemed highly appropriate to utilize this language and this voice in a work that aims to capture the feel of the TdM.
More specifically, Book of Marseille takes its inspiration from card XXI, entitled The World or, more properly, Le Monde. It is the final card in the sequence of trumps (known as majors in modern tarot). Unlike the Pips, which comprise the bulk of the deck and are similar in appearance to modern playing cards, the trump cards are each fully illustrated and titled. Graphically, Le Monde features a woman in the center (La Danseuse du Monde or World Dancer) inside a laurel mandorla or wreath. In each of the four corners of the card is an entity that represents one of the four classical elements of Earth, Fire, Water, and Air.
One of the primary interpretations given to the World card is that it represents cyclical change. In Book of Marseille, this idea manifests itself in the music's formal structure. Based (very) loosely on the idea of a Classical European Rondo form, this track cyclically alternates between the music's main jazz elements and a set of slightly more unusual timbres. This 'B' material is assembled from samples of various 'archaic' instruments: ocarinas, recorders, shawms, and an antiquated ecclesiastical pump organ. These instruments share the sense of distance and 'not-quite-ness' that I feel in the TdM and hear in the Creole language. They intone differently than contemporary instruments. Their tunings are distinct. This is the not-oboe, the not-kazoo.
As stated above, the card presents five entities: the dancer, the bull (earth), the lion (fire), the eagle (water-I know, just trust me), and the angel (air). Additionally, in many, if not most decks, the lion, angel, and eagle (but NOT the bull) are haloed.
In Book of Marseille, each of the main musical elements corresponds to an aspect of the card. In addition to the 'archaic' instruments that help portray its symbolism, the rhythm section (drums and bass) represent the earth element. The keyboard represents the water element. The Trumpet represents the Fire element and the flute represents the Air element.
Flute as air should, I hope be self-explanatory. Additionally, I've always associated the flute with French music and culture. I'm not sure if this is idiosyncratic to me or not, but when I think of the flute I think first and foremost of music by French composers like Debussy and Varese, and French flautists like Jean-Pierre Rampal and Michele Debost. To my sense, including jazz flute in the music is simply one more connection of the kind of cyclical musical feedback that I'm emphasizing throughout the Worldcore project.
It is common in music to treat the rhythm section of drums and bass as a combined unit and here I do just that. As the representatives of Earth, they provide the foundation for the music both rhythmically and harmonically. They are the ground upon which everything rests.
The electric piano symbolizes water. This may seem counterintuitive at first, but I hope that when you listen to its delicate, wave-like gestures and hear its fluidity of performance that you'll wholly understand.
Not only does the trumpet evoke elemental flame in its fiery blasts, it is also thematically appropriate, since the trumpet is an important feature of Card XX, Judgment, in which we see the angel Gabriel blowing a mighty note.
And finally, late in the piece, we hear the voice of the world dancer beckoning us with her sagacity and virtue. The elements align the music ends. A brief, non-musical codetta brings us a new voice speaking a new French. The cycle begins again.
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