Steve Reich - It's Gonna Rain, Pt I: More than a bad weather report

 

Steve Reich proves with “It’s Gonna Rain, Pt I” that he earned his reputation as a minimalist. For the whole song after the introduction, he just uses a single sentence spoken by one man. No other instruments are included which sounds intriguing since the song has a duration of eight minutes and most music ranges from two to four minutes. So what can be happening in this relatively long time?

The song started off with something that sounded like a rhythmic speech by a man; he could also be singing which I was not able to figure out. The whole eight minutes consisted of repeating elements of the sentence “It’s gonna rain” matching the song’s title. It was a mix of the whole sentence in different rhythms and phrases picked out of its. The man was knocking on either the microphone or something nearby giving the whole song a rhythm that Reich uses to match the snippets he takes from the speech. Thus, I had two different experiences listening to this song depending on what I was listening for:

At first, I only listened to the spoken words and the variations included in this song. It felt like I was developing some sort of schizophrenia and it made me feel really uncomfortable.  I thought that this would be used in Guantanamo Bay as a kind of modern torture method and it was absolutely unclear to me how someone could find this pleasant to listen to. Especially at about 2:50, when the speaking voice split into two, repeated different phrases and drifted away slowly, the song was giving me goosebumps until the vocals merged again in the end. This was a peak of discomfort.

Listening to the song a second time gave me a new perspective: I listened for the knocking in the background that made the song seem less random but rather like some techno-trance track which just missed its highlights. However, it kept me thinking about the effort that was behind this since the rhythm of the knocking does not change at all, so Reich had to clearly listen for these when crafting the song together out of all the snippets he made. It also made the discomfort I felt when listening for the first time fall off of me and opened my head for the rest of the song. I am not sure if Reich intentionally created a song that requires the audience to listen for details first or just wanted to make a piece of music out of just one sentence. In any case, I did not feel like having a stroke while trying to understand what was going on and found it somehow enjoyable. The denouement was as simple as it was satisfying: Reich just let the sentence be spoken as a whole for one time; “It’s gonna rain after all.” Although it was quite sudden and surprising, I think it fits the song very well.