Gathering Sounds is at once an opus on the art of field recording and a collection of philosophical musings on life. While the subject matter of the recordings focuses on sounds from rainbow gatherings, it functions as a meta-analysis on modern life with technical tips for those interested in the science and art of field recordings.
First page of chapter three of the book.
Author Tenali Hrenak incorporates art work and essays from other gathering participants, but the real star in this work is the poetry of Hrenak’s writing. At once expository and poetic, Hrenak’s book is more than a collection of field recordings but an excavation of the meaning of folk music, anthropological research, music as medicine, and of course, stories about the Rainbow gathering in all its complexity.
As with other writings about rainbow gatherings, this book reveals so many amazing moments that I, as a long-time gatherer, missed. The stories behind the music corroborate my own perspective that the gathering functions as compressed life. Even those of us, who are at a given gathering, miss so much. Works like this make me realize (once again) that even throwing myself head first into experiencing the gathering in all its multi-faceted unfoldings, I am not an omniscient participant.
While Hrenrak’s overt goal is to highlight the work of the talented and creative people at the gathering, in the end, I come away with his talent for refracting culture and creating philosophy out of his twenty years of recording sounds and music at the gathering.