Odd Music

There are probably more connections between junkyard sports and the arts than there are between junkyard sports and, um, sports. The same drive to transform the "useless" into the playworthy, the same spirit that transforms plastic bags and scrap into a soccer ball, the same need to engage, explore, express - can be found in junk sculpture, junk jewelry, junk fashion, and especially, wonderfully, in junk music.

You know, of course, about the junk-playing, dancing art of Stomp, and maybe you even know about the Taiko-like celebrations of junk-made instruments, creativity and choreography of Scrap Arts Music, but for a taste of what junk-inspired musical innovation leads to, take a long look at Odd Music. Spend maybe 15 minutes, or hours, exploring their gallery of traditional and invented instruments. Yes, the art and craft, the discipline, the hundreds of hours that went into the creation of each instrument - these all may seem a far cry from the slapdash improvisations that lead to the creation of things like the Junkyard Golf Club. But the spirit, the need to break from the constraints of the "official," the taking up of the freedom to innovate, even within the confines of the most traditional of forms, the ingenuity that inspires us to make our own, out of whatever, simply because we want to play - these are all, most gloriously, the same.