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“For me music is a way to learn about the world, its complexity and depth, and its beauty,” Gernot Blume ’98 PhD told NewsE editor John Woodford in a telephone interview from Blume’s hometown of Bingen, Germany. “I revel in the many ways there are to make sounds and to hear.”

Bingen, Blume’s hometown in the wine region along the Rhine, is famous as the home of Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), the composer, theologian, naturalist and visionary. “My heritage is an intrinsic part of me,” Blume said. And like Hildegard of Bingen, he, too is drawn to the spiritual aspects of music.

“I think that music is an art form that wears spiritual questions on its sleeve, if you will,” he said. “It’s such a crazy thing that we are all enchanted by frequencies and sound waves and that people produce instruments. It’s ephemeral and immaterial. I think that produces questions about why we do it and what moves us and what our live is about and what is the world made of.”

Blume, 36, is not trying to proselytize with his music. “The problems of fundamentalism in our world—in all kinds of religious contexts—are very profound. I see religious beliefs as culturally relative, but everywhere as a source of inspiration. I thrive on the music making of any culture that sees music as part of the spiritual.”

According to composer and flutist James Newton, Gernot Blume’s music “blends World Musics, Blues and Jazz, and European classical music in a way that understands the uniqueness of each of these languages and their ability to coexist on a new cultural plane. This approach to art is perhaps one of the most significant contributions to the furthering of a new musical aesthetic.”

Blume began teaching himself instruments from early childhood. “Piano is still my main instrument,” he said. He studied it formally and was conservatory-bound until he taught himself the guitar and violin.

Then he heard Irish fiddlers and realized there was more to the musical world than he had dreamed of. “The Irish musical revival was the first nonclassical Western music I came in touch with. It became this big inspiration—a living tradition that included compositional elements but veered away from the classical experience.

Blume’s curiosity led him away from the classical German conservatory and, at first, to Eastern European and Bulgarian folk music. “I learned the accordion, and then one thing led to another, so that I now play many different instruments. Learning an instrument has been my access to different music and cultures. It’s my personal obsession. I don’t now exactly how many I play, because I treat instruments as systems, concepts, rather than as the specific objects they also are.” (His “primary instruments” are the sitar, surbahar, piano, nyckelharpa, accordion and harp. Guitar, vibraphone, violin, mandolin, recorders, various drums, and Javanese and Balinese gamelan instruments are among his secondary ones.)

The “Big Bang of my affinities,” Blume said, “was the experience of hearing Ravi Shankar on records. Then I knew there was a music vastly different from the traditions I had studied.”

Blume came to the United States in 1988 “because at that time in Germany no school had an accredited degree programs connected with the study of world music cultures. World music is still a slim situation here.” After earning his BA and MFA at California Institute for the Arts he chose U-M’s doctoral program because he wanted to study ethnomusicology with Prof. Judith Becker, a world-renowned expert in the field.

During their Ann Arbor years, Blume and his wife, the composer and marimbist Julie Spencer, produced their first CD, “Changes Inside,” under their Spencer Blume Publishing (SBP) label. After several years in Portland, Oregon, They moved to Germany where they teach, perform, compose and raise their children.

“Anjou” is on Spencer and Blume’s second CD, “Lost and Found” (2000). Both CDs are available in this country through Steve Weiss Music, 2324 Wyandotte, Willow Grove, PA 19090. Phone: (215) 659-0100.

They will be available on the Web soon at an SBP Web site, Blume said.

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