Artist: Raven Chacon
Year: 2018
Material: Vinyl Banner
Purchase Information: Chancellor Richardson Memorial Fund, 2019
Location: North façade of Harrison-LeCaine Hall
American Ledger (No.1) incorporates a traditional musical score with Navajo iconography. It is intended to be performed by many players—musicians and non-musicians alike—with sustaining and percussive instruments, voices, coins, axe and wood, police whistles and a match. Raven Chacon’s audio-based works can be described as a combination of chamber music and experimental noise music, composed to resound and pulsate through your body.
Instructions for the performance of American Ledger (No. 1):
For at least 13 minutes.
For any number of musicians with any number of non-musicians. Each line is a minute or longer.
Line 1 is for both percussive and bendable tones.
Line 2 begins with a warbly long tone crossfading into waves of harmonic or dynamic increases.
X = chop wood.
Line 3 is for police whistle(s).
Other instruments may join.
Line 4 is for coins to be thrown.
Two instruments may accompany.
Line 5 is a line.
Line 6 is a grand decelerando ending with the striking of a match.
Line 7 is for acknowledging groupings of 5’s and 4’s.
Chop wood.
End with everyone and everything.