Code Talker II, by Steve Long

Code Talker II

by Steve Long

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Code Talker II 56:30

about

Code-Talker II is the latest installment of my ongoing pipe organ project. In this current iteration I am joined by bassist Henry Fraser. The name of this project derives from the Code-talker paradox, which is an issue in linguistics that calls into question fundamental ideas about the nature of language. The term was coined in 2001 by linguist Mark Baker to describe the Navajo code talkers of WWII. This album documents the paradox: how language (musical or otherwise) can both assist and hinder communication.

For me, the term code-talker evokes real life instances of communication impeded, both intentionally and unintentionally. I think about the Tower of Babel situation that is our virtual world. I think about my personal experience as a gay man, and the language imposed upon me. And where these two issues intersect, I perceive LGBTQ+ identities being co-opted and exchanged as social currency.

Code-Talker II was recorded live at St. Paul’s Chapel at Columbia University in New York, NY. Henry Fraser and I crafted a memorizable roadmap to guide us. The form and procedures of our mental score were so succinct that deviation from its unspoken internal logic seemed unnecessary, and even impossible. This economy of means, coupled with an imperceptibly slow traversing of musical time and space, tested our creative endurance. The resulting music is unadorned and vulnerable, and implies the immutable. I think about the aspects of my person that I cannot change, like my homosexuality, like the coils of each individual fingerprint. These unshakable facts are a reality that comes into being beyond choice.

- Steve Long

credits

released October 28, 2022

Steve Long - Pipe-organ, Composition
Henry Fraser - Double Bass

recorded by Travis Hagan
mixed by Ted Reichman at Subtext Sound System
mastered by Rashad Becker

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Steve Long Brooklyn, New York

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