No More Driver Call Me
Improvised sound work as the song of slavery
Bruce Russell
“The first question any self-aware artist should ask themselves is ‘why am I doing this work’ or (to view the same thing from another angle) ‘what will this work achieve’? By definition, art work is, in the short term, unlikely to return a living; and no sustained activity can be both completely gratuitous and completely purposeless. Instead, I will argue, the work’s social value is in delineating new and emergent contradictions in society, understood as the real ‘musical object’.
I was surprised when, after some years of wondering how I could justify my work in terms of social utility, I found that the answer was suggested by a blues lyric, evidently of some antiquity, which I saw reproduced in a book. These lines (quoted from an earlier anthology of Black field hollers) caught my eye in part because they seemed to be possessed of many possible readings, both apocalyptic and eschatological.
‘No more Driver call me,
No more Driver call me,
No more Driver call me,
Many thousand die.'”
Bruce Russell is an improvising sound artist, who since 1987 has been a member of the Dead C. This genre-dissolving New Zealand trio mixes rock, electro-acoustics and noise. He has also been active as a solo artist, and directed two independent labels, Xpressway and Corpus Hermeticum. He writes essays and criticism for The Wire, artists’ catalogues, and other publications. In 2010 published Left-handed blows: writing on sound 1993-2009 (Auckland: Clouds), and in 2012 edited Erewhon calling: experimental sound in New Zealand (Auckland: Audio Foundation/cmr). He is currently studying at RMIT towards a doctorate in sound in the School of Art. During his spare time he manages the School of Art and Design at CPIT.