If you walked by the corner of 54th Street and Sixth Avenue in New York City in the summer of 1967, the chances are you would have caught sight of the most famous of all of the city’s eccentrics. He dressed in a Viking costume: headdress with horns, elaborate cape, spear. He was articulate and friendly. He’d discuss the Vietnam war, the local art scene, the grand designs of history. He would try to sell passers-by some couplets from a mammoth work-in-progress called Thor the Nordoom. He was blind, but refused to talk about his condition as a handicap. Perhaps most surprising of all was that this eerie and unusual figure was a classical composer in the tonal western tradition who followed all the rules of counterpoint and harmony. This man was Moondog.
Robert Scotto’s Moondog, The Viking of 6th Avenue is published by Process
“I’m into swing. I get that from the American Indians like the Sioux, the Arapahoe and the Apache. They have this drum-beat, heart-beat. Bom, bom, bom… If you listen to Indian music from the plains, you’ll hear that there’s a steady swing beat and the big tom-tom is syncopated with swing-type melodies.
I got that influence when I was six-years-old in Wyoming. My father took us to an Arapahoe Indian reservation. The chief let me sit on his lap and let me beat the tom-tom for the Sun Dance. So, that goes back to the early ’20’s for me.” Interview by Jason Gross (May 1998)
Moondog Music played in New York, on Upper West Side, Carnegie Hall, and at Mercyhurst College. January 2007
