C. C. Hennix

It's Sunday, July 16. Day of the Horns, according to Angus MacLise's Universal Solar Calendar. Time to stretch out with a long-form raga as we transition from one week to the next.

As you will hear, Blues Alif Lam Mim in the Mode of Rag Infinity/Rag Cosmosis is far from your typical raga. It's more of a modal drone with Eastern accents, and was written by the incredible Catherine Christer Hennix in 2014. Hennix contributes vocals, as does Amirtha Kidambi (who performed with avant-jazz guitarist Mary Halvorson in Code Girl) and Ahmet Muhsin Tüzer. 

Intended to reveal the blues’ origins in eastern musical traditions, Blues Alif Lam Mim in the Mode of Rag Infinity/Rag Cosmosis has its roots in Hennix’ Illuminatory Sound Environments, a concept developed in 1978 by "anti-artist" Henry Flynt on the basis of Hennix’ own The Electric Harpsichord. As Hennix explains, 

“Rag Infinity/Rag Cosmosis presents fragments of 'raga-like’ frequency constellations following distinct cycles and permuting their order, creating a simultaneity of ‘multi-universes.’ When two such ‘universes’ come in proximity of each other and begin unfolding simultaneously along distinct cycles, there is a kaleidoscopic exfoliation of frequencies as one universe is becoming two, but not separated—the effect of cosmosis is entrained, binding two or more frequency universes into proximity where their modal properties interact and blend, creating in the process entirely new microtonal constellations in an omnidirectional simultaneous cosmic order with phenomenologically ‘transfinite’ Poincaré cycles (cyclic returns to initial conditions).”

Did I mention that in addition to making music with Henry Flynt, La Monte Young, Pandit Pran Nath, Arthur Russell, and others, she studied bio-chemistry and then linguistics in Sweden before settling on mathematical logic and philosophy? That she served as a professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at SUNY New Paltz and as a visiting Professor of Logic at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory?  That she co-authored a paper (Beware of the Gödel-Wette Paradox) in 2001 with Russian mathematician Alexander Esenin-Volpin, for which she was given the Centenary Prize Fellow Award by the Clay Mathematics Institute?

Last I heard, Hennix resides in Istanbul, pursuing studies in classical Arabic and Turkish music, although she might be anywhere now.