Bone Music (2020)

Duration: 6 minutes

Commissioned by: Commissioned jointly by Alabama Music Teachers Association and Music Teachers National Association

Recorded By: Jennifer Case, oboe; Joshua Burel, violin; Daron Kirsch, cello; Richard Graber, xylophone; Debi Loach, percussion

Program Note: In the 1950s the Soviet Union banned Western records, leaving music lovers curious about musicians like Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, or songs like “Rock Around the Clock” and “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” They came to learn of this music through “bone music,” bootlegged recordings pressed on old x-rays for disguise. An x-ray of a human hand or a skull would spin on a turntable playing popular Western tunes that had been shallowly pressed into them. Since nobody knew exactly what the songs were supposed to sound like, x-ray record dealers often mislabeled records to make a quick buck if they didn’t have the requested song in stock. This meant that people weren’t necessarily hearing a song by Elvis Presley like they thought they were or that they actually learned a different song as “Rock Around the Clock” instead.

Bone Music pays respect to this unusual time in music by distorting popular melodies and combining them in new ways to create entirely new music altogether. We take for granted that we know what Little Richard or The Beatles sound like, but what if we didn’t and were at the mercy of a street vendor selling music on discarded x-rays? This piece certainly has fun combining songs in interesting new ways, but it also reminds us of the dangers of censorship.