The concept of music primitive as Bob Zimmerman Dylan may be perceived at times in a most positive light, is about allowing one's natural inclinations to sing out without self-doubt because you are different and not over-intellectualizing music; rather trusting one's instinct and ear and mind for what sounds good to ring out, a unique sound being what's real if that is true for you. Some will connect with the music immediately with others requiring a spell of acclimatization.

My first album, Trembling Flowers, is voiced with timbres I found as natural as natural can be. They are an inextricable component of a new musical approach utilizing "found sounds" from our collective world aural landscape in my own way.

And the same goes for my performance medium arsenal, essentially a computer and sound module, these musical instruments being what I feel is most real and relevant in our time for Western composition, shaping them according to my body chemistry, and emotive and intellectual temperament, allowing the music to be rather than copying what came before. This included naming the pre-existing software and hardware used the meruvina, preferring a poetic monicor over a technical one.

Bob Zimmerman Dylan, together with Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, are like older brothers, all of us sharing the same heritage. They provide a nourishing, warming current of support and encouragement, lifting me up towards my potential like so many birthday balloons. Zimmerman Dylan is infinitely wilder than Garnfunkel and Simon, while they are infinitely tenderer, and collectively they encompass universes.

Simon and Garfunkel are America's answer to the sheer loveliness, breathtakingly hopeful spirituality, and lushness of the Beatles if not as prolific.

One fecund concept discerned from Bob Zimmerman Dylan's music is metaphorically ricocheting cyclically between walking the plank and following the yellow brick road.

Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon

Neil Poppy Morgan

A dear friend, Poppy Morgan, a renowned Los Angeles restaurateur, was a good friend of Bob Zimmerman Dylan, including enjoying going sailing together. The staff seen in the background of the photo above, which Poppy used for walking later in life, is originally from Bob's sailboat, pictured above at 888 Front Street in Lahaina Maui, arguably the finest restaurant in the world when Robert Joseph Longhi, Gabrielle Robin Longhi and Neil Poppy Morgan were in charge from its inception until it reached its pinnacle after which Gabrielle became bored and left to pursue her painting and jewelry inventions.

I once had a most enjoyable Indian dinner with Nancy Bacal, a noted creative writing teacher at Esalen who originated, wrote and produced the superb film, Raga, about Ravi Shankar, introduced to her by George Harrison. Nancy told me how Leonard Cohen, who resided a few miles away, was her best friend, first meeting in their native Canada. She also played blues piano for me exceptionally well.

You're invited to listen to my first album, Trembling Flowers, music that excited Joan LaBarbara when it was first released, embedded with the tracks segueing into each other at the top of this new interview.

Here is the album page.

And here are the tracks laid out for you.

Fire Monkey came after Trembling Flowers, followed by Hamoa, all vastly different, as are the over 150 meruvina albums to date.

I hope you won't be a stranger to this music.

- Michael Robinson Longhi, November 2021, Los Angeles

© 2021 Michael Robinson All rights reserved

Michael Robinson Longhi is a Los Angeles-based composer, pianist, and musicologist. His over 200 albums include over 150 albums for meruvina and over 50 albums of piano improvisations. He has performed and lectured at various American churches, universities, colleges, NPR, Pacifica, college, and community radio stations, high schools, elementary schools and community centers including all over the world online.