Humour: At What Point Should We Get Serious? (Florent Ghys Response)

On the Presentation

Florent Ghys’ presentation was one of the most intriguing ones to me, not only because it had me cracking up the most but it also left me grappling with a few questions. Ghys’ music was fairly unique, particularly because of his whole ‘don’t take things too seriously’ vibe, which reflected itself humorously in his music and his videos (positively). He mentioned that he liked the naivete of having little to no knowledge of video editing, because it brought a fresh and authentic perspective to his art. I couldn't have agreed more.

On the Themes

Most notable in his work was the use of humour in his music/videos. Humour is not a stranger to the world of classical music - we’ve got Haydn’s ‘Surprise’ Symphony as the most famous example, and we’ve also had folks like Mozart writing songs with the literal lyrics, “goodnight/sh*t in your bed and make it burst.” And so it’s interesting to see how this torch is being passed around through the years. In ‘Hommage a Jacob Ter Veldhuis’, where the music is set against a French weather reporter, Ghys fully capitalises on the silences and phrases of speech.

He then presented another similarly-themed piece - this time, his music was set against an Iranian weather reporter speaking Persian. This piece particularly stood out to me - the cello was a stunning choice, and Ghys was right to say that the contours of her speech were already very lyrical. However, at this point I was wondering - why weather reports? Is it because - especially given that in this second case, he’s dealing with a language he doesn’t know - it’s the most apolitical source material? Which I’m not positing as a bad thing, obviously; but if this is the case, we must consider some new factors. As with his informal vibe, Ghys was very flippant in his introduction of her, going on to incorrectly state that she was speaking “Iranian”. This, for me, is when it starts to get a little bit unimpressive. Is this ignorance okay because it's consistent with his "vibe", or should there be a point at which we must get serious?

I'm of mind that there’s a level of responsibility that comes with handling content from a culture that is not your own, even when it’s talking about something as trivial as the weather.

(I did note that, contrary to my initial thought, Ghys’ reasoning for using weather reports was in tribute to his mother who has an interesting relationship with the weather channel. He also talked about finding beauty in what is considered mundane; so perhaps there’s not so much an evasion of meaningful content insomuch as there is just an appreciation of a different kind of beauty. Right? This response still felt incomplete).)

But even on this note, I couldn’t help myself wondering - what would this kind of music sound like and look like if it was also used to narrate real stories, moving stories? I wholly recognise that these thoughts are obviously inspired by my own bias towards art revolving around 'deeper' and more political subjects, but I’d be curious to know - what is the melody of a grieving person? Note - this is not necessarily a challenge to Ghys, but more just a general reflection. If anyone is familiar with other composers who have explored this kind of relationship with speech and music in a reflective way, don’t hesitate to share them! I didn’t particularly catch Ghys mention any sort of influences during his talk.

On the Music

Musically speaking, I noticed across many of the tracks that he played for us (such as with the gaming one, the lawn mower one etc), Ghys would initially begin with the original rhythm of the objects in the video, but then as it built up, he would superimpose a straight time signature and a very tonal harmonic foundation (usually minor keys) upon which to support it. I wondered if it would be more interesting if some of the pieces evaded this predictability and instead continued to use the natural irregular flow and rhythms of the subjects.

Granted, though, Ghys only provided a sample of his works and so there’s still a lot to unpack of him. I’ll be excited to continue checking out & exploring some of his other works.

- Kabi.