Wadada Leo Smith

Kosmic Music

Kosmic Music is a musical score comprised of two parts: a single mixed media drawing titled Colors and Satellites, and a pair of mixed media drawings titled Koral Reef. Conceived of together as a single musical score, the three drawings exemplify a specific stage in the evolution of Wadada Leo Smith’s Ankhrasmation Language, which he has been developing since 1967.

Although at first glance the works in Kosmic Music might appear abstract compositions drawn on paper, as with other scores produced by Smith, suggestions of musical structures are revealed upon closer inspection: an entanglement of musical sheets and bright geometric forms.

The artist activates these works by performing the scores live, sometimes accompanied by other musicians who are familiar with his Ankhrasmation Language and can follow the cues from the formal and musical components of the works. As described by Smith: “the scores are constructed in a way that can be used to produce music, but the music itself is not on the score. The score is this doorway where you become aware of elements like structure, shapes, color and [the] connection of those shapes and colors and lines and dots. You have to transform that into some kind of reference, [and] then you’re able to actually get to the music.”