Long before the Aunty Donna boys showed us the joy (and psychological perils) of learning that “everything’s a drum,” musician Xavier Lozano was going around turning everyday objects into flutes.
A tweet from Marcel Barrena demonstrates this single-minded pursuit. In it, Lozano is shown holding up a metal traffic barricade and using it to play a lovely little tune that sounds like it’s coming from…well, something other than a beat-up roadworks tool. The image this presents is wonderful. Lozano is about the same size as the barrier and the juxtaposition of his calming melody and the visual impression that a shaggier Marc Maron in a Ramones t-shirt has just finished wrestling a big metal object into musical submission is striking.
Over on his Instagram page, Lozano can be found turning all sorts of other stuff into flutes, too. He’s posted segments from a TV appearance where he performs on his street barricade alongside a traffic cone connected to a rubber hose and a delightful-sounding bike tire. He’s also filmed himself peacefully noodling on a repurposed gun while celebrating the anniversary of Portugal’s Carnation Revolution. And in a Tedx video from 2016, he comes out on stage to present the hidden musical potential of a piece of irrigation pipe and a crutch, which he credits as being the device that got him into turning various objects into wind instruments in the first place. (One non-flute video also sees him turning a plastic water bottle into a makeshift guitar.)
[pm_embed_youtube id=’PL321B9915F588F49D’ type=’playlist’]We should mention that Lozano is just as good at playing a wide range of instruments actually designed for music—from a modified Bolivian flute to bagpipes. But, as impressive as these displays of talent may be, it’s kind of hard for them to measure up to the more novel sight of a guy playing music through a gun, crutch, or traffic barricade.
[via Boing Boing]
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