PGM Note: on the 4th-world night train to Babylon
First Broadcast: 27.05.05
Info: PGM 731
Size: 58 MB
Format: MP3 160 kbps
It's always cause for celebration when a new recording arrives from American composer and trumpeter JON HASSELL. For the last 20 years, he's been a source of insights that have inspired the artistic direction of this program — and influenced a wide range of contemporary music, from pop to experimental.
Hassell emerged from the electronic avant-garde of the 1960s, then changed direction and headed to India as a student of Kirana vocal master PANDIT PRAN NATH. He opened his ears to the panorama of sounds around him and envisioned a "coffee-colored" classical music of the future — with new forms and an expanded musical vocabulary that embraced elements from non-western cultures. Above all, it left behind the ascetic sound which European music associated with serious expression. Hassell called it "Fourth World Music."

On this transmission of Hearts of Space, another journey in the 4th world soundscape called MAGIC REALISM. The phrase is associated with the fiction of GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ, and other writers, where magical elements appear within a realistic setting. For Hassell, it's a rich hybrid of sounds ancient and digital, composed and improvised, Eastern and Western.