Those famous travels, most notable as the first leg of discovery to Dianetics and Scientology, commenced in 1927 with his father’s posting at the United States Naval Station on the island of Guam. Following by way of China and Japan, the sixteen-year-old Ron encountered what was to be the first of many remote musical traditions -- in this case that curious Guamian blend of native Chamorro, Spanish and what passed for swing in dance halls catering to Americans. Of particular note was that billibutugun which he detailed in another diary entry as, “It is about seven feet long and has a piece of baling wire strung across it. They hold the wire taut by the spring of the stick and place the coconut, which is nailed to the center of the stick, on their stomachs. It is said that the larger the stomach, the better the tone.”
Following a brief return to Helena, Montana -- where he again picked up his sax to play in a basement band -- Ron again set out across the South Pacific to a then still-mysterious Asia. There, he studied unique instrumentation that would surface in several later compositions, including the tribal war drums of Mongolian horsemen, the gamelan gongs of the Javanese temple orchestras, the Japanese koto, the Indian sitar and the Chinese zither. A later note further references a blue silk bag of “twenty or thirty various kinds of instruments,” and adds “I can play anything on a carpenter’s saw.”
But more to the point, it was through the course of these Asian travels that he first explored the possibility of what he described as the “unpositive note” or that strangely apologetic quality so characteristic of the Asian music. That is, as he later explained, the traditionally low caste Asian musician could not arrogantly strike a note. Thus, notes are periodically approached from below, and the musician slides up to it slowly, or in other words, “one apologetically slides up to it or down to it.”
T WAS THROUGH THE COURSE OF THESE ASIAN TRAVELS THAT HE FIRST EXPLORED THE POSSIBILITY OF WHAT HE DESCRIBED AS THE "UNPOSITIVE NOTE."
Some of the many stringed instruments Ron played.
