Mark Howell

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Mark Howell at William Hooker's brunch session in 2025 Markhow.jpg
Mark Howell at William Hooker's brunch session in 2025

Mark Howell is an American musician, composer, [1] ethnomusicologist, ethnomusicologist, and music archaeologist.

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Early life and education

Howell was born in Philadelphia, Mississippi in 1952 and moved to New York City in 1982. In Mississippi he learned and played guitar with local Blues musicians, including Foots Backstrum and Wade Walker. He also played with another Philadelphia native, Marty Stewart (guitarist with Johnny Cash). Before moving to New York City, Howell lived briefly in Jackson where he played and/or recorded with many Rock and Jazz musicians, including Tim Lee, Al Fielder, Cassandra Wilson, and Evan Gallagher.

In 1996 he earned an M.F.A. in music composition at SUNY Stony Brook; and in 2004 a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the CUNY Graduate Center with a dissertation called "An Ethnoarchaeological Investigation of Highland Guatemalan Maya Dance-Plays."2004 Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology, The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY). Before then, between 1974-1975, he attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, graduated from New York's Institute of Audio Research in 1974, and received a BA in Music in 1980 from the University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg.

Career

In 1983 he formed an avant-garde post-rock band called Better Than Death (BTD) with bass clarinetist Michael Lytle. Other members at various times included Coby Batty, Jeff Myers, and Erik Keil. In 1986 he collaborated with Etron Fou saxophonist, Bruno Meillier to form a Euro-American group called Zero Pop. They recorded, All the Big Mystics and Glows in the Dark. In between Zero Pop tours BTD recorded Swimman (1987), and followed that release with a U.S. tour. Between 1986 and 1994 Zero Pop toured Europe seven times and the United States three.

Howell played guitar on the Curlew record, North America, and met Martin Bisi, Rick Brown, Tom Cora, and Fred Frith. In 1989 he and Frith, Nick Didkovsky, and Rene Lussier formed the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet.In 1989 Howell formed a third band, Timber, with drummer, Rick Brown and bass player, Faye Hunter who was later replaced by Jenny Wade. Between 1989 and 1996 Timber made two U.S. tours and one in Europe. They released one CD, Parts and Labor, were included on Matador's LP and CD New York Eye and Ear Control, as well as on two of Elliott Sharp's State of the Union compilation CDs. Howell's involvement with the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet between 1989 and 1995, included five European tours, several U.S. performances and the recording of "The As Usual Dance Towards the Other Flight to What is Not", which was released on Frith's CD, Quartets. He also played with Frith, Didkovsky, Lussier, and others, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music performance of "In Memory", in 1989.

In addition to his band work, Howell has composed for Lynn Shapiro (at the American Dance Festival 1994), Amy Sue Rosen, Diane Torr, and Stephanie Artz. He was also commissioned by several ensembles including "North By South", (1993) for percussionist Kevin Norton, and "To the Heart", (1997) for the ten-piece mixed ensemble, New Ear. His composition scores were published by Frog Peak Music.

Howell has also researched the music of Precolumbian America. He has presented papers and published books and journals on topics related to music archaeology (see below). In 2006 he became the director of the Winterville Mounds site, an archaeology park and museum in the Mississippi Delta administered by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Music Archaeology Theories and Discoveries

In his research on Maya dance-plays (bailes) in Guatemala, Howell concurred with Henrietta Yurchenco, Dennis Tedlock, and other scholars, that the baile, Ra'binal Achi, contained Pre-Columbian music elements, which he isolated to include song structures controlled by rhythmic patterns on a slit-drum, specific instrumentation assigned to specific baile types, and an aesthetic preference of timbre over melody. The Ra'binal Achi slit-drum patterns incorporated a rhythmic system utilizing additive and subtractive patterns (not unlike Minimalism in Western Art Music.) In his analysis of European trading bells in the American southeast he discovered a Native American preference for high-pitch sounds over low-pitch ones, as well as propensity to re-function European trade items into sound makers. Also in the southeast, he collaborated with Jim Rees in proving that a cane flute found in the Breckenridge rock shelter in northwest Arkansas to be the oldest double-chambered duct flute known in America, with implications that construction, function, and even language associated with the flute may have accompanied the builders as they possibly migrated north to the Great Lakes region centuries before European contact. Howell's recent work deciphering Maya murals in Chajul, Guatemala (as part of the COMACH research team) implies the early introduction of the European Baroque guitar in the Guatemalan highlands. Moreover, that its unique tuning system (with double strings tuned from bottom to top, AA down to DD up to GG up to BB up to EE) has been transferred to standard six-string guitars used in specific Highland Maya rituals. In addition to his Native American research, Howell has conducted music archaeology work on African American music, where he validated a "worked" glass tradition beginning in the 17th century that may have led to the bottle-neck slide, along with a preference for double-framed monochords over single-frame ones, and a use of performance spaces generating higher over lower acoustic volume. He believes that the Blues Guitar should be characterized as a six-string "diddly bow" rather than a playing style on a standard Euro-American six-string guitar.

Select Music Compositions

premiered in 2006 by Inconvenient Music at the Festival des Musiques Innovatrices de Saint-Etienne, France.

Select Discography

(composer and/or performer)

Select Publications

Invited Presentations

Organization of International Conferences

Prizes and Awards

References

  1. ↑ Howell's analysis of La Salle Bells published by archaeology group by Debbie Burt Myers. The Neshoba Democrat 10 August 2008. Retrieved 18 August 2011.
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