I Will Not Be Sad in this World

Gasparyan, Djivan

album cover

One Lonely Instrument Takes On Heartache

In his caustic comment on humanity, Notes from the Underground, Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky's bitter and sometimes mean main character asserts that "suffering is the sole origin of consciousness."

If that's true, then music can be a primary means of altering consciousness. Across cultures and continents, people seek in music a temporary refuge from suffering, a way to quickly change one's mind-set, if not one's circumstances. The Armenian Djivan Gasparyan, whose instrument is the oboe-like duduk, plays with an awareness that his listeners need to shake off a burden or two. He doesn't bully them with jolly jigs or any forced frivolity. Instead, he offers deeply felt, heavy-hearted sounds for contemplation.

These turn out to be a counterintuitive form of uplift. This album features Gasparyan performing mostly solo, with another duduk supplying a drone background. Despite the title, sadness is definitely here to stay—his lithe, fragile themes have a feeling of enveloping grief, the kind that won't lift by will alone. Gasparyan plays from deep inside that feeling, and is determined to understand its various dimensions. He makes the duduk sound like a woman's muffled sobs, or, when he wants to be superemphatic, his attacks take on the breathy chuffing of a wooden flute.

Often erroneously filed under "New Age," this disc offers the most "traditional" way to encounter Gasparyan, who's also featured in the soundtrack to The Last Temptation of Christ and has collaborated with the Kronos Quartet and guitarist Michael Brook. Those varied projects offer traces of the sensitivity that sits center stage here: He plays valiantly, knowing that he can't wipe out sadness with the magical flickering notes of his duduk. But he can try to transcend it.

Genre: World, Armenia
Released: 1989, Opal. (Originally recorded 1983.)
Key Tracks: "Little Flower Garden," "Brother Hunter," "A Cool Wind Is Blowing."
Catalog Choice: Black Rock (with Michael Brook); Heavenly Duduk.
Next Stop: David Torn: Cloud About Mercury
After That: Claudio Monteverdi: Vespers of the Blessed Virgin