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Milton Fletchers talk to Dan Barrett of STRIKE!
Young boxers mixing it up at STRIKE! Courtesy of Milton Fletcher.
Milton Fletcher: What is STRIKE!?
Dan Barrett: STRIKE! mixes boxing matches and contemporary chamber music, with most of the performances taking place in boxing rings. In combining such seemingly disparate genres, the crowd at STRIKE! is unusually diverse. STRIKE! derives much of its fundamental vitality from everyone getting to learn a little about the each other’s “world.” From this odd coupling, STRIKE! creates a space where music has a chance to be seen in the light of explosive engagement—both physical and interpersonal, while boxing is encountered in the light of chamber music. Most of the music is performed by our loose-knit performance collective, The International Street Cannibals.
The earlier performances of this series were given at Gleason’s Gym, in Brooklyn, where we have staged nearly all of our shows. Gleason’s has been the training ground of 127 world champions, among them Mohammad Ali, George Foremen, Roberto Duran, and Mike Tyson. Bruce Silverglade, President of Gleason’s, who has served as Emcee for STRIKE!, has also assisted in marshalling the forces and steering the event while in progress.
STRIKE! is a phenomenon, as much educational as it is presentational. Our audiences see and hear "hot off the press" compositions and musical ideas being fashioned before them.
STRIKE! basically features short 10 or 12-minute "sets" of chamber music presented in alternation with eight-minute matches of three rounds each. At times, short verbal introductions might precede each "set." The introductions orient the audience to the nature or background of the compositions, and sometimes to the origins of the more exotic instruments. This approach is less formal and livelier than program notes. The event generally progresses from boxing ring to ring, utilizing the spaces so that a smooth and seamless interlacing of music with boxing is achieved. The preparation for one performance goes on while the current performance is in progress. The configuration of the gym lends itself to urging the audience into different areas of the space. A theater-in-the-round forms around each ring, as audience and performers pass from one ring to the next. And as the audience moves from ring to ring, the mind and ear follow the alternating concert events of music, dance, movement, and boxing.
STRIKE! flows from the philosophy of performance, the thematic core being the dismantling of conventions, the striving for textual renewal, and the resuscitation or introduction of ritualistic elements.
MF: What are the goals of STRIKE!?
DB: To show the commonality of these two passionate activities, or, if you will, rituals. Even a casual observation of Man’s history and of human affairs would easily convince any sentient being that a passionate engagement with our tasks, and a sense of purposeful ritual are essential to a vital existence, and must have certainly been indispensable to our survival. Participation, whether it be that of "audience" or of a "performer" requires the same intensity. Without that intensity there is no living ritual, no living through and with life and the world.
The serious, and at times motionless intensity of many of our historic performers have shown us this kind of immersion: the work of Vladimir Horowitz, John Coltrane, Oscar Peterson, Art Blakey, and Art Tatum. For these artists there was little show, unlike, for instance, some of the violin and cello soloists of today’s marketplace, or many of our pop artists. If an athlete carried on to the degree that we sometimes witness among many of the present favorite instrumental soloists of the market, he or she would fail irreparably; and if they were boxers, they’d get knocked out, their health consequently compromised. Boxing can teach this lesson: stick to your work, and don’t be afraid to be dead serious. Chiefly, don’t bullshit. Focus on the task at hand, and concern yourself with the apprehension and meaning of its details. So the message of STRIKE! bares an accent of rigor, as it carries into the province of music some of the honest and hardheaded ethos of boxing and athletics.MF: What is the future for STRIKE!?
DB: Besides the four concerts which we are planning for the future at Gleason’s in Brooklyn, we are setting up for a show at Gleason’s in London within the next few months; we anticipate a show in Russia, as well, for the late spring.
www.streetcannibals.com
