How Goons Make Music

Goons love to sing.

We’ve been singing since Drog found the handle, as we say here on the Island, and it’s something we enjoy every night around the bar-b-que pit.

Well, technically, not around the pit itself. I should explain how the pit is laid out, since it makes a difference in how we sing.

I mentioned before that there are always about a hundred of us Goons on the Island at any one time, give or take, and we like to get together of an evening in the big clearing. It’s a nice spot, the clearing. On one side, a hillside rises up gently and then kind of levels out into woodland and jungle that runs a couple of miles up to the lower slopes of Goon Volcano. Our caves are scattered along the hillside right above the clearing. Since the Volcano is usually fuming and puffing away and giving off a nice red glow at the top, it’s a nice view looking up the hill at night.

On the other side of the clearing, the hillside drops away in a long slope covered with more woodland until it reaches the beach. From the clearing, you can see the ocean on that side. If you spend the day in the clearing, you can watch the sun rise out of the ocean in the morning and set right into the mouth of the volcano at night.

It’s pretty spectacular, even after 30 or so years of seeing it, which is about how long individual Goons last.

So anyway, the clearing is large enough for a hundred Goons to hang out in and cook in and dance around in pretty comfortably, by which I mean it’s fairly large, because Goons are fairly large...about seven and a half feet tall on average.

Which means the bar-b-que pit is pretty large, too, but it’s not in the direct center of the clearing. It’s closer to the up-hill side, and it’s really two pits side by side to accommodate two large entrees. Most nights it’s four groats, two to a spit/pit, but every now and then we enjoy a change of pace in type of meat, as I’ve said before. Around the pits are the prep tables and some comfy stools for those that like to watch...and who doesn’t like to watch good bar-b-que being prepared?

Out by the down-hill side of the clearing is the main gathering place for us Goons where we actually eat and talk and stuff crapkee and dance and sing, like I started off talking about. There’s a larger fire pit here for the light and comfort and after-dinner bones and husks and such.

So now you have an idea of the layout, and it’s after a good evening meal and a butt load or two of crapkee that the singing starts around the fire...mostly around the fire, although there are several pieces we sing that use call and response from singers up in the caves or even farther up the slope.

It’s hard to describe Goon singing to someone who’s never heard it, but if you think of Old Regular Baptist shape singing with a mixed-meter Gregorian chant backbeat you’ll start closing in on it.(Our singing has affected shape singing and Gregorian chants a lot more than they’ve affected our style, but that’s another story or two.)

The thing that makes our singing different is that we don’t sing using words per se. We vocalize, of course, but what we vocalize are more like sound textures and feelings. You won’t hear Goons singing about their sweethearts or about a bad day at work or about anything in particular, really. But if you’re sensitive to Goon vocal styling, you’ll hear us sing about every emotion you’ve ever felt or are ever likely to feel...sometimes all in the same piece.

Here’s how it goes. After dinner and some conversation, a small group of Goons usually start up a tune in a particular rhythm, let’s say four beats to what you’d call a measure. That’s a pretty simple rhythm, and it’s perfect to warm up with. Then, when everybody is pretty sure what the mood and the texture of the intro is, another group of Goon will start up in the same mood space but on a counter rhythm, like three beats to a measure, which means that the two groups will synch up rhythmically when the first group goes through three measures and the second group goes through four. They meet at twelve, in other words. Twelve is where they’re back on everybody’s one, if you get what I mean. Adding six-beat measures does the same thing, and those usually show up eventually, so in a song like this, three rhythms are going at once, two of them meeting on the sixes and all three meeting on the twelves, in an attractively loping pattern.

Then another group might start up with a two-beat rhythm and accentuate the four-beat group while meeting the three-and six- beat group every six beats. And somewhere along the line, if the twos and threes get together and start singing five-beat measures, they meet the fours on 20 and the sixes on 30.

Depending on the mood, we also have pieces that work sevens, nines and elevens. Those are great, too, and the bongos really help with the accents.

These pieces can go on for hours, all night long sometimes, and Goons drop in and out whenever they need to lighten the load or hang another butt load of crapkee or have sex or whatever.

Back in the days of wind power, we used to get a lot more flotsam and jetsam on our beach than we do now from passing ships hearing us singing and coming in to see what the heck it was. I’ve heard a good Goon night song from a ways off, and even from a Goon point of view, it can be pretty spooky, especially if we’re using a lot of what you’d call minor or augmented intervals in the tones, which is just the way we like it if we’re in the mood. From a passing sailing ship, this has to sound pretty chilling. More than a few of these passing ships have come in to investigate over the years...usually the kind of ships manned by pretty chilling humans themselves.

The island has a shallow reef around it, and if you miss the gaps, it’s a back breaker as far as sailing ships go. We never had much use for the cargo on these ships, but the sailors and passengers were a treat, if you know what I mean. Probably one of the reasons for the Island’s less-than-convivial reputation.

We still get a sailing vessel every now and then...usually long-distance loners testing themselves against the sea or racing crews blown off course. But the main shipping lanes don’t come too close nowadays, and the local boat traffic from the mainland where the ferry boat originates learned a long time ago not to wander in too close. Which is the way we like it.

So groats it is on the bar-b-que most nights, which again suits us just fine.

And that’s the story on Goon singing. The fact that it also has a lot to do with Goon eating just demonstrates how closely related are food and almost everything else in Goon life. Eat to sing, sing to eat, you might say. Well, that's what we say, anyway.