Wood Prophecy: A Woodwind Animism Saga
Authentic Nature Music in an Age of Vanishing Soul

We are a Bass Shakuhachi Quartet playing Wood God Hymns and forest anthems: soothingly feral new music at the intersection of Zen nature meditation, rural blues, jubilee gospel and sacred Renaissance polyphony.

World-building Chamber Music.
Dark Green Religious Music.
Bamboo Gospel.

This album is being released in 3 full editions of varying audio mixes and 5 more editions of each movement that will include raw mixes, solo stems and complete sheet music.
Primary Edition (this one) - released June 14, 2022
1929 Edition (vintage 78 rpm transfers) - released July 14, 2022
Church Edition (reverent reverberant iteration) released August 14, 2022

The Main Idea:

To transmit the feeling philosophy of the forest; Nature’s quintessence, in sound.
To transmit through direct experience the flavor of the peace, majesty and aliveness of the ancient days of the Earth.
Actualizing an earthy and authentic nature-based woodwind musicianship, and returning to reverence.

Earth’s deep history shows us three vital stages in this Wood Prophecy:
1 - Blue-Green Algae Makes Oxygen
2 - Wood Makes Verticality
3 - Awareness Grows

This is happening on the couple-of-billion years ago time scale, and we tend to have a hard time processing deep time. Humans do enter the scene here in the 11th hour as (potential) magic wands of Awareness. What my (primarily non-verbal yet with a philosophical backbone) Wood Prophecy is revealing is that we have clues: we have strong clues that Symbiosis is the path of Living Life. Chloroplasts, cyanobacteria, photosynthesis, oxygen, growing upwards into the atmosphere, material that is both solid and empty -- these are all intertwined and implicated in each other. Competition and domination do not obtain beyond a certain narrow scope within living systems; when these seem to appear, they are a zoomed in, semi-distorted view of the whole.

My experience as a demi-noetic woodwinder has provided me with direct experience of wood elementals. Communication through breath, sound/vibration, shared intention/consciousness and, yes, even “time.” About 40 years, maybe slightly more if we take the ingestion of peanuts-in-the-shell as the origin point of my personal tale -- but that’s a story for another album perhaps. To be motivated in this life by a symbiotic connection to wood as an element is not something that I intend to defend or even make a case for right now, but I am stating it here as a fact for me in order to contextualize the liner notes for Wood Prophecy, which, in turn, helps to contextualize the actual music for you, the listener. Or so I hope.

We need to merge all three of these vital clues together and taste the full, up-close flavor in absolute presence: our own vital awareness. Return to the Root, and re-engage reverence. We are not now, nor ever have we been, alone.

The Music

Beginning with An Apicultural Excursion – a 1997 three-movement composition for bass clarinet quartet inspired by the deep historical symbiotic-art of beekeeping - the nature-centric, multi-movement, same-instrument chamber quartet has been a primary mode for me to express and illuminate key musical, ethical and emotional impulses and insights. Over time it has become clear that a deeper spiritual grounding is at the root of these projects, these compositions.

Among other labels and lineages -- some to be explored in a completely separate book -- animism suits and summarizes these ongoing musical offerings. These are non-verbal, breath-powered narratives and timbral explorations.

As we proceed through the five movements of Wood Prophecy, it becomes clear that there is a “U-” or even “V-”shape to this journey, with movement III being the furthest from our human-centered, linear-time, so-called “secular” world.

BIO:
Out of the deep woods comes a chamber group like no other. Composting “styles” and morphing boundaries, they give voice to a rare and musky instrument: Taimu, the Bigfoot of flutes.

Pioneers of “woodwind animism,” the Wood Prophets return to the roots of music itself. Performing all new compositions by founding member Cornelius Boots, their forest hymns and bamboo gospel music transports the listener to the ancient days of the Earth, when trees were gods, and the old gods sought gnostic symbiosis with musicianers in general, and woodwinders specifically.

Their early concerts were described as listening to a gospel quartet of large owls performing the music of Funkadelic, Tool, Muddy Waters and Palestrina. Recipients of a 2020 InterMusic SF musical grant program commissioning award, their five-part woodwind chamber saga Wood Prophecy is an adventure in timbre, pulse and structure; Wood Prophecy transmits the wordless wisdom of the old gods of the woods.

HISTORY:
Emerging from the Black Earth Shakuhachi School, and formerly known as The Heavy Roots Shakuhachi Ensemble, The Wood Prophets is the world's one and only Taimu Shakuhachi Quartet. The sound is of natural life, the conceptual bones are creativity and multiculturalism.

When founder Cornelius Boots began writing for under-valued-yet-potent woodwinds in 1994, he changed his name to align with this singular artistic vision. After a quarter-century of reed and flute adventures -- rock bands featuring the robot bass clarinet; intensive circular breathing; aggressive style sorcery; Edmund Welles: the bass clarinet; heavy metal and blues iterated on solo shakuhachi; 175 compositions; 12 albums; 3 music degrees; a shihan (master) shakuhachi license; a few grants, commissions and festivals; dozens of students, lectures, performances -- Wood Prophecy is a kind of apotheosis for Boots.

Luckily his student of 17 years, Kevin Chen, has also become a true master of wind, breath and sound and together they were able to start the Taimu ensemble experiments that have now flowered into The Wood Prophets.

TAIMU:
"Shakuhachi" is a vertical, end-blown flute made of root-end bamboo that emerged from Japanese Zen Buddhism back in the old feudal/samurai times. The design is painfully basic -- no parts, no mouthpiece, no keys, only 5 finger holes and a blowing edge at the very end of the tube (no whistle design as in recorders, we need a flute-like embouchure) -- and the instrument appears as a cured and cleaned up version of exactly what it was when it grew from the ground. To keep the inner bore natural is called "jinashi" and to use a wider, thicker piece of bamboo is called "hocchiku."

San Francisco renegade flutemaker Ken Mujitsu LaCosse created the Taimu in the early 2000's by modifying jinashi, hocchiku versions of shakuhachi so that they had a bigger, "fog-horn glow" to their tone. Taimu means "the big nothing" and it is considered the full-throated, baritone or bass variant of shakuhachi: the Barry White, the redwood tree -- the Bigfoot of all flutes. So rare, it almost didn't exist at all, but thankfully, here we are. Thank you Brother Ken (1960-2019).

WOOD PROPHET:
A Wood Prophet understands and demonstrates the wisdom of symbiosis. Specifically, collaboration between a human musician and the element of Wood. Backed by the power of the deep past, a Wood Prophet is the bridge between many styles of music, and the intelligence of living Nature. Masters of respiromancy and proponents of natural music, Wood Prophets' mission is to provide the soundtrack to a profound shift in the human/Nature relationship.

"We are not problem-solvers, gatekeepers or soothsayers. We are breathy shepherds of illumination. The unknown is not always the unfamiliar."

LIVE BAND:
Kevin Chen
Cornelius Boots
Karl Young
Hiromi Inaba

Former members:
Ken LaCosse
Darrell Hayden
Chris Adkins

Brain Trust:
Felicia Chavez, Andrew Lloyd Westhoff, Tyler Sterkel, Filipe Lopes Chaves, Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, Virginia Dofflemyer, Kevin Chen, Nils Frykdahl, Gentry Densley

Lineage:
Agrippa, The 3 Tons (Ellington, Kenton, Clinton), the Jameses (Etta, Brown and Ronnie Dio), Dolphy, Coltrane, Kirk, House, Patton & Watazumi