Steve Reich - It's Gonna Rain

The piece It's Gonna Rain by American composer Steve Reich from the year 1965 is considered to be one of Reich’s first major works and an example of early American minimalist music. 

When listening to the piece the first descriptive adjectives that came to mind were: energetic, aggressive, repetitive, shouty, and annoying. Energetic because the piece starts right away with its central and loud phrase “It’s Gonna Rain”, there is no (melodic) introduction to start the piece off, the listener is thrown right into it. Aggressive and repetitive because the phrase is repeated over and over and the words are shouted in a rather loud voice. This is why I would also characterize the piece as shouty. Additionally, the repetition feels almost endless, which makes me as a listener feel a form of annoyance after a while. 

What It's Gonna Rain does really well is the transformation of a phrase/words into a beat. This transformation reminded me a lot of modern mainstream dance music. However, the use of repetition in these pieces is nearly as excessive as in Reich’s pieces. The creation of the beat, as mentioned, reminded me of modern dance, almost techno music, and while listening to I imagined that this could be a piece of music played in Ibiza since it creates a certain experimental vibe. 

When the beat fully takes over for some parts the repetition of sound reminded me of the sound of an ambulance, which again fits with the adjectives loud, aggressive, and annoying mentioned in the beginning. 

Without remembering from class or having researched, I noted down “seems like a priest is shouting his blessings at a church community” while listening to Reich’s piece, only to find out that the voice in It's Gonna Rain indeed is from a Pentecostal preacher called Brother Walter. This really surprised me as a listener because even though I did not know before, Reich created his piece with specific elements and set his intentions in creating a certain atmosphere in It's Gonna Rain that is evidently transported and conveyed to the inexperienced listener.