Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Demetrio Stratos" in English language version.
a) In 1977, his vocal abilities were explored and documented by Professor Franco Ferrero at the University of Padova.
b) In April 1979, Demetrio Stratos had been diagnosed with a severe case of aplastic anemia. He was 34 years old. His condition deteriorated rapidly and he was transferred to New York City Memorial Hospital for treatment. Back in Italy, his friends organized a concert to pay for his medical expenses. Many musicians accepted the invitation to perform, and the concert was planned for June 14, 1979. It was to become Demetrio Stratos' memorial concert: he died in New York City on June 13, 1979, while waiting for a bone marrow transplant.
c) At the time of his death, rumors circulated that his illness was caused by his secret and dangerous vocal practices. People wanted to believe that Demetrio Stratos had died for daring too much and wandering outside the limits of human possibilities: a modern Icarus, punished for flying too close to the Sun.
d) Demetrio Stratos' life perfectly incarnates the spirit of the '70s. Recently, film director Gabriele Salvatores' (Mediterraneo; I'm Not Scared) announced his intention to produce a movie exploring music and politics in Italy during those years through the life of the charismatic singer.
e) Vocal gimmicks aside, Stratos' mission was to free vocal expression from the slavery of language and pretty melodies. From the observation of his daughter Anastassia, he concluded that humans have enormous expressive potentials that are progressively reduced during verbal development to just a few socially appropriate functions such as language and harmonic singing. For Demetrio Stratos, the exploration of vocal potentials was a tool of psychological and political liberation: he literally wanted individuals and social groups to find their own voice.
Se una nuova vocalità può esistere dev'essere vissuta da tutti non da uno solo: un tentativo di liberarsi dalla condizione di ascoltatore e spettatore cui la cultura e la politica ci hanno abituato. Questo lavoro non va assunto come un ascolto da subire passivamente, ma come un "gioco in cui si rischia la vita"
Originally written in the Spring of 1995 and published in Expose #7, pp. 4–7; updated in February 2001
Albert Hera: "Che cosa pensa di Demetrio Stratos?"
Tran Quang Hai: "Aveva imparato da me nel 1977 in Francia. Venne da me con un impresario che mi disse che il maestro Demetrio Stratos voleva apprendere le mie tecniche di canto. Rimase con me per due ore e imparò tutto. Dopodiché, tornato in Italia, utilizzò gli esercizi appresi per le sue ricerche personali."
This is a homage to the proporsi way and to work in the musical artistic field that was typical of Demetrio "outside from every constriction and in full creativity".
b) Il prof. Franco Ferrero, che frequentò Stratos nel Centro di Studio per le ricerche di Fonetica del CNR dell'Università di Padova, ammette: "Stando a quanto ho riscontrato durante l'emissione, le corde vocali non vibravano. La frequenza era molto elevata (le corde vocali non riescono a superare la frequenza di 1000–1200 Hz). Nonostante ciò Demetrio otteneva non uno, ma due fischi disarmonici, uno che da 6000 Hz scendeva di frequenza, e l'altro che da 3000 Hz saliva. Non si poteva supporre, quindi, che un fischio fosse l'armonico superiore dell'altro. Constatai anche l'emissione di tre fischi simultanei".
c, e) La strabiliante ricerca di Stratos porta molte suggestioni e piste di ricerca ancora da studiare. Vorrei limitarmi a due sottolineature particolarmente stimolanti ed innovative per il nostro tempo: la preminenza del significante rispetto al significato e il valore rituale della voce in ordine all'accesso alla scaturigine del corpo.
d, f) "La voce, sostiene Stratos, è oggi nella musica un canale di trasmissione che non trasmette più nulla" e ancora: "L'ipertrofia vocale occidentale ha reso il cantante moderno pressoché insensibile ai diversi aspetti della vocalità, isolandolo nel recinto di determinate strutture linguistiche".
Demetrio Stratos (1945–1979) used the overtones to create the relationship between voice and subconscious.
This is a homage to the proporsi way and to work in the musical artistic field that was typical of Demetrio "outside from every constriction and in full creativity".
Se una nuova vocalità può esistere dev'essere vissuta da tutti non da uno solo: un tentativo di liberarsi dalla condizione di ascoltatore e spettatore cui la cultura e la politica ci hanno abituato. Questo lavoro non va assunto come un ascolto da subire passivamente, ma come un "gioco in cui si rischia la vita"
In this panorama of the individual, the cantautor who affirms the collective utopia, perhaps no other group was able to acquire legitimacy as the expression of emancipatry political collectives than Area, with singer, writer, and performer Demetrio Stratos. In keeping with the political dimension of engaged music, the group Area consolidated in their albums, and especially through their live performances (multi-genre musical expressions: free jazz, rock, electronic, instrumental and vocal experimentation) the foregrounding of desires and needs of a generation engaged in restructuring socio-political realities:By the time Demetrio Stratos died of leukemia in 1979. Movimento '77 was already in the process of being erased from official history. Stratos disappearance is emblematic of the Movement as a whole: his experimentation with the "voice" as a medium of information, vehicle and agent of identity formations, becomes something that "ha perduto il proprio destino" ("has lost its destiny"). His death cuts short a collaboration with poet Antonio Porta, another Novissimo, on a project set to the music of Stratos' voice."It was the mid-1970s and live events roused enthusiasm as never before; they fulfilled the need to be together and the illusion of continuing as a person. Area ... (was) a head above the rest. Not only because they seemed to be more attentive to the themes outside the world of music ... nor due to their interest in the use of instruments which seemed vaster and futuristic, but above all because ... (of) an incomparable coherence in their everyday work and in the steadfastness (sic) with which they faced even their contradditions."
"Riflusso," resistances, unoccupied roads
Cunningham entrusts the musical accompaniment for each Event to a different contemporary composer. At event #209 I heard John Cage's "Mesostics re Merce Cunningham," in which Stratos produced an astonishing array of sounds and sound effects using only his voice.
