Henry Flynt

Artist Biography by Eugene Chadbourne

Beginning in the early '60s and continuing for the next two decades, Henry Flynt performed with some of the most famous avant-garde musicians and artists in the world. After his final performances in 1983, he gave up music for a career in philosophy. He is considered a visionary in both fields. A few years after he stopped performing, there was next to nothing in terms of available recordings by Flynt, and with the individual himself no longer pursuing a career in music, it might seem logical that Flynt's work vanish completely, but as is the case with much unique, quality work in any field of the arts, a demand begins to grow silently and steadily. As a result, by the new millenium there were several new CDs of Flynt recitals available and plans in the works for more to follow. And those interested in his philisophical works could spend hours perusing dozens of essays on the www.henryflynt.com website.

Not much information is available about the upbringing of this North Carolina native. He emerged in the avant-garde scene in New York City through a series of concerts at Yoko Ono's loft in February of 1961, and several years later, he was heard as electric violinist with the equally famous Velvet Underground. He was also associated through the '60s with famous minimalist composer La Monte Young, who wrote and titled several pieces specifically for Flynt. Clearly these associations as well as his involvement with the Fluxus art movement provide plenty of big name avant-garde cache for Flynt, but in reality, it is for his high quality musical performances, much of them solo, that he has achieved legendary status. He has kept meticulous notes on all his performances, many of which have titles referencing hillbilly or old-time mountain music, such as "Hillbilly Jive," "Hoedown," "You Are My Everlovin'," "Cowboy Corroboree," "Hillbilly Electronic Music," and "Lonesome Train Dreams." His performances would include extended improvisations, sometimes with tape or electronic backgrounds. Flynt recorded and performed this music regularly up until his retirement, although most of the performances too place at small underground music venues, many of them in New York City. Although he did appear in La Monte Young's ensembles, among others, he mostly concentrated on his own projects. Besides the solo works, these included some ensembles such as the Dharma Warriors and a country rock band he assembled for a studio recording.

His strong interest in philosophy was an important influence during his music career as well, adding an extra dimension to his work. Flynt is strongly inquisitive of many concepts of our society people take for granted, including popular notions of what constitutes art and entertainment. In an article written in 1968, Flynt proposed replacing art with something he called "brend," which he described as an immediate, real subjective form of gratification. He was particularly influenced by music or musicians that had some form of ecstatic involvement with their work, for example he regarded John Coltrane as completely unique in the history of jazz because of the intense energy he brought to work. As a result of these feelings, the music of Coltrane was a strong influence on Flynt and the Coltrane style of saxophone exploration can be heard in Flynt's extended fiddle improvisations. The so-called hillbilly context of his music, or attempts to connect it with old-time music might have some connection with his attempts to make avant-garde music a more direct experience for the audience. He was also involved in creating a variety of large-scale sonic installations, many of them dealing with themes of sonic ecstasy or total listener immersion.

via AllMusic

Henry Flynt (b. 1940)

The electronic hillbilly minimalism of Henry Flynt, recorded 1966-80 [MP3]

http://www.ubu.com/sound/flynt.html

Henry Flynt & The Insurrections ‎– I Don't Wanna (1966)

Vocals, Guitar – Henry Flynt
Bass [Acoustic] – Paul Breslin
Drums – Walter De Maria
Keyboards – Art Murphy
All tracks originally recorded in 1966.

New American Ethnic Music Volume 2: Spindizzy (1968-76)

The creation of a newly available Henry Flynt archive turned out to be one of the better points of the early 2000s, as a small Baltimore firm worked out the process of creating collections from this interesting composer and deep thinker's recording archive. The ten pieces comprising this, the second volume in the series, all deal in some way large and small with the old-timey music of Appalachia, and to a lesser degree with its bastard offspring rockabilly, and one can't go wrong with good ingredients. A simplistic description of what these pieces are all about will be offered for descriptive purposes, but is not intended to insult the much deeper content of the works themselves. To say these musical performances and the ideas behind them are endlessly fascinating is by no means an attempt to fling hyperbole at the subject. The opening violin solo, entitled "Hoedown," presents in its nearly 15 minutes of playing time many of the concepts that the composer, a native of Greensboro, NC, would return to in the decades when he was creating solo performances for violin and electric guitar. Old-timey music is a wonderful subject for the creative composer to sink their teeth into, as indeed they have, including the so-called dean of American music, Aaron Copland. The generations of artists involved in genres bubbling around the avant-garde music scene during Flynt's epoch, including minimalism, could and did take pointers from old-timey string bands which often repeated melodic fragments with slight variations for long periods of time. One thing Flynt does not have on his fiddle is the tone of an old-timey player; compared to Fiddlin' Arthur Smith, for example, he sounds like a student hanging around a fiddle contest, and if contrasted with the timbre of a non-professional, real backwoods fiddler, Flynt would come across even more the greenhorn. But the city slicker tone is no distraction when the real genius of the music is in how the content of the old-timey themes is rethought — edited and clipped into different sections that are on the face uncharacteristic of the original structure of the music. In other words, there are ways in which old-timey music, bluegrass, or blues phrases would be divided up if one wanted to still recognize them as such, and this wouldn't be it. Yet at the same time, the listener will never lose track of the roots of these phrases because of how clear the feeling of the mountain music is, no matter what is done with it. The music is thus able to revolve between poles of familiarity and unfamiliarity — perhaps the source of the "Spindizzy" feeling. These are beautiful performances, and Flynt becomes even more adept at manipulating the material as the years go on. The use of overdubbing and looping techniques on pieces such as "Double Spindizzy" works so well it underscores the brilliance of the original concept, like looking down into a totally clear lake and being overwhelmed by its depth. The pieces with guitar, such as "Rockabilly Boogie," are also interesting because of their structure, but ironically hold up less well as listening experiences, simply because the sonic result of what the composer does to the material is so similar to what it might sound like just to sit and listen to a rockabilly guitar player noodle for a few moments, repeating a bit of this and that before going on to something else, and never actually playing a real song. The familiarity of this kind of casual playing — in a sub-category of "non-intentional" music that includes the sounds of orchestras warming up — makes it seem like Flynt has gone to a lot of trouble for nothing, but alchemists don't emerge from their dungeons with gold compound every time out. "Jive Deceleration" is a wonderful concluding piece that involves rests written into the performance, resulting in silent sections — which is something one would never find in old-timey music unless the fiddler suddenly had to hightail it for some reason. It also subdivides a typical old-timey mode into three-note sections, and should remind the listener who likes jazz of Miles Davis' first modal period. These same modes that were part of old-timey music and '60s jazz came to the Appalachias from sources as diverse as Africa and the British Isles, and hearing it all moving around through so many permutations could make someone...Spindizzy. Near the conclusion of "Hillbilly Jive," the composer goes into a bit of high-pitched violin playing that is amazingly evocative, bringing to mind the sounds of traditional Appalachian hollerin', heard at a great distance. It also is the type of thing that might make a real hillbilly run for his rifle, but thankfully the remarkable Henry Flynt is safe from these type of characters. — Eugene Chadbourne

New American Ethnic Music Volume 2: Spindizzy (1968-76)

Purified By The Fire (1981)

Purified by the Fire

Tambura [Pandit Pran Nath] – C. C. Hennix
Violin [Electric] – Henry Flynt

You Are My Everlovin / Celestial Power (1980-81)

Recorded in '80 and '81, two mind-blowing disks delivering flowing, trance-inducing violin solos of extreme beauty and seriousness. In these incredible electronic hillbilly music violin performances, an exalted synthesis of American ethnic music, raga-like lyrical virtuosity, and a deep psychedelic sensibility takes place--a nod to human culture from the great nihilist philosopher and father of Concept Art. Should be completely world-famous, but only now is this music beginning to the get the attention it deserves.

"Instead of the bombastic thud of rock, Flynt's playing included 'rollicking', 'forward-sweeping', flexible rhythms, indivisible by bar lines, creating an expansive, nearly suspended, rolling sense of time." --Ian Nagoski

First volume in a series subtitled: New Americam Ethnic Music. "Two 45 minute sets of live improvised 'avant-garde hillbilly and blues music' featuring Henry Flynt on (a rather gained) violin, one (YAME) is a duo with an unaccredited tambura player (drenched in reverb/background acoustics), the other (CP) featuring 1 track of violin, and 2 tracks of volume pedal guitars -- all performed by Flynt (drenched in reverb/background acoustics). Henry Flynt is a vanguard American conceptual artist, key Fluxus participant, ally to both La Monte Young (esp. in the early New York years, contributing to the key Fluxus document; the La Monte-edited An Anthology) and George Maciunas (several mid 60s collaborations including 'Communists Must Give Revolutionary Leadership in Culture'), author of many pamphlets and public propaganda works (Blueprint for a Higher Civilization, Down with Art), magazine articles ('Extracts from Personhood's Self Cancellation', perhaps more relevant 'The Meaning of My Avant-Garde Hillbilly and Blues Music'), recently obsessed with furthering the ideals of Meta-Technology. An interesting set of performances, both extended extemporizations on extended alpha-state ascension through excessive application of overtone-series note relationships/harmonics over a single chord/form. Close in spirit to La Monte perhaps, closer in application to something like Tony Conrad or Arnold Dreyblatt, only with a unique country-fried holler-bent that's at once alienating to art-music lovers but at the same time much more personable. An important cultural and historic link, one of the only fully realized Fluxus audio documents (despite it's 10+ year delay to the 'classic' era) available in the CD age. Seminal" -- Hrvatski