Pseudoarchaeology and Music

Among scholars interested in pseudoarchaeology, there is a longstanding concern that popular pseudoarchaeological programs (e.g. “Ancient Aliens”) are a gateway that draws unsuspecting victims into the world of right wing politics and racism.

For others, however, an interest in pseudoarchaeological is a gateway to Black musical traditions and to that end, I spent some time this weekend reading Michael Gallope’s new book: The Musician as Philosopher: New York’s Vernacular Avant-Garde, 1958–1978 (2024). The book explores music of the New York avant-garde over “the long 1960s” (as the title suggests) with chapters on pianist David Tudor (and John Cage), Ornette Coleman, the Velvet Underground, Alice Coltrane, and Patti Smith and Richard Hell. In other words, chapters on some of my favorite musicians who not only have shaped my journey into the world of pseudoarchaeology, but also, earlier, punk archaeology. 

Gallope’s work does not touch on pseudoarchaeology specifically, but offers a view of the vernacular avant garde in New York that provided a medium through which pseudoarchaeological ideas traveled often alongside esoteric, theosophic, mystical, and other forms of broadly “exotic” thinking. Gallope observes the appearance of these influences occurs when artists appeal to “second order modernisms” which manifest in hyperfractures. He defines hyperfractures as “atmospheres” where abundance and excess (characteristic traits of the modern world, if there ever were any) occlude our understanding of the “virtuosic object” (which is, I suppose, the object of most artistic efforts). The other characteristic trait of second order modernisms is “alchemies” which draw on modern sound production techniques—especially electronic tools—to create “hallucinatory” and “transformative” levels of intensity. In other words, the technology and economy of “late modernity” and mid-century capitalism made possible the distinctive expressions of what Gallope viewed as New York’s vernacular avant garde. 

This move—from the esoteric and exotic to the material and technological—is a key one for understanding the contours of mid-century Black vernacular thinking about their past. This way of understanding a materialist modernism has echos in the more esoteric attitudes toward, say, “ancient aliens”—in, say, the Nation of Islam and in Sun Ra’s musings—that see these beings as both spiritual and historical predecessors to contemporary Blacks. While Gallope doesn’t make this connection, specifically, he notes, obliquely, the parallels with Du Bois concept of double-consciousness. I wonder whether it fits better Paul Gilroy’s concept of double consciousness which locates the denizens of the Black Atlantic between the world of white, modern Europeans and the experience of being Black.

More salient to my research is how Gallope recognizes in Ornette Coleman and Alice Coltrane, in particular, deeper, vernacular currents that manifest in their work, but have ambiguous roots that aren’t easily susceptible to the modern scholar’s gaze. In other words, their music, while largely consumed by a white, middle class audience, has roots in a different level of experience that goes far beyond the bourgeois escapism offered by this music on a superficial or even technical level. Instead, through hyperfractures and alchemies, those who understand and know can experience this music as a gateway to some of the same ecstatic, esoteric, and exotic texts (and knowledge) that has influenced the development of pseudoarchaeology over time.

Scholars, then, concerned with pseudoarchaeology can be content to explore the well-trod surfaces on which pseudoarchaeological travel. There is, however, this deeper level where the ideas manifest in pseudoarchaeology converge with those manifest in contemporary improvised music. Both in archaeology (pseudo and otherwise) and in contemporary improvised music, technology and materiality play key roles in the shaping the medium through which individuals communicate the critiques intrinsic to modernism. We can obviously argue that pseudoarchaeology and the kinds of music that Gallope studies in his book are not morally (or ethically or even aesthetically) equivalent, but they nevertheless draw from some of the same traditions. This suggests, much like this clever watch from IFL Watches, that pseudoarchaeology offers a gateways to many different kingdoms.