To mark The Wire's AMM cover story in issue 461, directors of the documentary exploring co-founding member Keith Rowe's relationship with sound through the guitar have made the film free to watch
What Is Man And What Is Guitar? is a profile of musician and composer Keith Rowe's relationship with the instrument and how he uses it to understand himself. Directed by Bob Burnett and Alan F Jones, the short documentary delivers passages of Rowe’s ongoing journey, from “playing jazz through early years of poverty in Britain, to exploring the unexplored with the ensemble AMM, to his groundbreaking solo, duo and ensemble work from beneath the small umbrella of fringe music.”
The film also zooms in on Rowe's current practice and explores how Parkinson's disease affects his work and performances. “[Rowe] decided that he can no longer perform solo concerts on guitar because of the tremor in his right hand,” writes Matthew Blackwell in his review of the film in The Wire 452. “The moment he made this decision can be heard on Absence, as he explains in its sleevenotes – but still the instrument informs his practice. We watch as he dims the lights at a concert, playing only a metronome. Rowe and the audience sit in darkness and silence between each click. ‘The performance becomes a performance of what I cannot do, and a recognition of my own vulnerability,’ he explains, and in that sense ‘the guitar is still there.’”
To mark The Wire's AMM cover story in issue 461, the directors of What Is Man And What Is Guitar? have made the film free to watch for a limited time, exclusively via The Wire website.
Read our seven page feature and mini-Primer on Rowe's long-running improvising group AMM in The Wire 461. Wire subscribers can also read the magazine online via the digital archive.
