Bob Fink

BOB FINK (1935--) has spent his life as a musicologist, composer and author of books on various subjects. He is a graduate of Wayne State University in Detroit, and currently lives in Canada. As well, Fink also worked much of his job life as a realist artist (self-portrait above), illustrator, journalist, political cartoonist; as a machinery designer (auto industry); and as a columnist for his city's daily and weekly newspapers. Fink has worked in anti-war movements all his life, and also is an activist on issues of free speech, civil rights & liberties, winning a number of legal cases (cited at the level of the Canadian Supreme Court) on free speech. (See contents for details)

Neanderthal Flute Essay

Fink published this essay in the Spring of 1997, showing the notes of this oldest musical instrument known (43,000 years old) were capable of matching part of the do, re, mi scale: See the full on-line essay, "Neanderthal Flute": at [1] This website essay has won several awards, including as being one of the "most educational sites on the Internet," and gets from 4,000-6,000 visits/month. The Essay was published as a book in 1998. ISBN 0912424125. For detailed information on the controversy, see Divje Babe.

===Oon the origin of music=== -- Essays & Readings (2003-4) ISBN 0912424141. This most recent of Fink's writing combines in one book the main essays and archaeological material he has written since 1950. The final part III of the book outlines the stages in the evolution of music, scales and harmony in some detail. [2]

Summary and overview of this book:

Fink's viewpoint indicates tonal scales and tonality arise from natural overtones The theory is called the "trio theory," claiming that influences from the most audible overtones of the three most nearly universal intervals (found across time & cultures, namely, a tone's octave, 4th and 5th), when their overtones are placed within the range of that octave, will evolve into the most widespread of scales: Pentatonic, major & minor (depending how many of the audible overtones are so placed). The unequal audible strengths of the overtones determine the role & power of each note in a scale (tonic, dominant or subdominant) -- i.e., tonality and tonal scales. The viewpoint can be read on-line at The 7-Note Solution and Natural Basis of Scales and Stages in the Evolution of Melody, Harmony & Scales.

The origin of music

This 1970, 1981 & 1985 book (formerly The Universality of Music) was recognized as very useful by Dr. Anne Draffkorn Kilmer, former chairperson of Assyriology at the University of California at Berkeley, and who deciphered the oldest song known in the world (4,000 years old). Fink's book on music's origins is one of only 3 full-length English works on the subject (at this writing). --(3 editions) ISBN 0912424095 ISBN 0912424001 and ISBN 0912424060.

===Some new 'olde-musicke'=== -- (New compositions in baroque/classical styles) ISBN 0912424052. These are Fink's published Sheetmusic, MP3s & MIDIs -- which can be heard at [3]. . Fink was also among the first to write a [computer program] that could compose melodies by itself (nominated by the editorial board of Discover magazine for its 1996 awards technology competition, and the magazine waived Fink's entrance fees).

===Lysistrata & the war=== -- (An opera composed in the style of Mozart).

Fink wrote this opera as a protest to the Vietnam war. It was published in 1979. ISBN 0912424079. It was to be performed at Wayne State University in 1968 (from which Fink earned his degree in musicology and the sciences (incl. anthropology}).

This updated version of the play was cancelled when the tenor was drafted into the army 4 days before the performance. The opera director got cold feet about its anti-Vietnam war protest libretto, and used the tenor's draft notice as an excuse to perform the opera in a small room with a new unrehearsed tenor, but no room for a normal-sized audience. That was unacceptable censorship to the composer who then withdrew the opera. News story.

Social activism

Fink has also been a lifetime leading activist in the causes of peace and human rights, was the initial Chairman and an organizer in the student anti-war takeover of Wayne State University in 1970 (following news of the murders of four Kent State University students by the National Guard); Fink collected documents from that time and wrote a history of the Vietnam war protest: Excerpt from Vietnam -- A View From the Walls. ISBN 0912424087. Fink won a number of landmark free-speech cases (one cited in the recent (1993) Canadian Supreme Court ruling) upholding the issue of postering rights News Clip. He was a columnist for years in his city's daily and weekly newspapers in Saskatchewan (Daily Star-Phoenix, The Mirror and others) on social issues (poverty, ecology, minorities, discrimination and the arts).

Moved by the death of Rosa Parks in 2005, Fink wrote an article, some of which was published in a letter to the editor of his local daily paper.

The past events outlined in Fink's article (below) show the tenor of the times that existed back then.

ROSA PARKS AND EDGAR DANIEL NIXON -- By Bob Fink

"Rosa Parks deserved every one of the honours given her for defying the 1950's U.S. laws in the South which relegated Blacks to sit only at the back of buses. There are other unsung heroes in addition to Rosa who also deserve mention. One of them is a Black man, named E. D. Nixon (Edgar Nixon), a worker and unionist.

"Nixon lived in Rosa's community. Vile indignities like harassing Blacks on the buses happened daily. After each breach of humanity occurred, Nixon worked for years to fight against the oppression of Blacks. For years, few people showed up in answer to his calls.

"But Rosa's arrest was the last straw and provided Nixon with a perfect public candidate to represent her community for his long held desire to create a boycott of the buses and their discriminatory seating rules. Parks had refused to obey the outrageous law. Nixon's call to local leaders to create a boycott organization and plan now drew hundreds of people.

"Needing a candidate to be president of the new 'Montgomery Improvement Association,' there was a new preacher in town who could unite the often disputing local leaders & preachers many of whom Nixon felt were too timid.

"That new preacher was the Rev. Martin Luther King. [Later Nixon would write to King in deep disappointment with King's and others unfair leadership behavior toward Nixon and local leaders who worked earlier, for years, to develop resistance to the abuses. It was Nixon who catapaulted King into the great prominance King later enjoyed too much alone, despite Nixon's and others' skillful and necessary far-sighted perseverence, groundwork and planning, which made the boycott and all that followed into a harbinger of momentous success.]

"Official racism wasn't only in the South: The bus boycotters needed alternate transportation, so my friends and I up in Detroit decided to raise money for a station wagon to send to Montgomery, Alabama.

"While collecting money in the Detroit neighborhood and ghetto, the police arrested me, locked me up, charging me with fraud.

"While jailing me, the cops tried to inflame racial hatreds of the white prisoners hoping they'd harm me. The cops said to them, as they threw me into the jail's common-room: 'Here's a nigger-lover for you boys, and we won't hear a thing you do to him.' I was spared any harm because (by some magic of fate) most prisoners there were Black (surprise, surprise).

"Charges were dropped 3 days later when my friends showed up at the courthouse with the station wagon May 1, 1956.

"When the cops called me a 'nigger-lover,' clearly they already knew I was not committing 'fraud' in my fund-raising. Indeed, since the FBI & police spied on us 'lefties' regularly, they knew we were legit. I later got 800 pages of FBI & police records just about me from the Freedom of Information Act, and two of the documents referred to the arrest. One mentions the arrest, but the other proved the FBI knew the Committee we formed to get a station wagon was public, real, sincere and legal. (Those docs are reproduced in Fink's Vietnam book, linked above.)

"The real reason for my arrest and strong desire to prosecute me despite my honest cause was the police saw their role as preserving the separation between whites and Blacks and to prevent any common cause to develop between the groups. Clearly my volunteerism to support the Montgomery Bus Boycott crossed their political and racial 'line,' and so I had to be 'punished,' if possible, but they failed.

"At the court hearing the judge remarked to me, while nodding toward a Black police officer at the back of the courtroom (there were very few of them then on the force): 'Surely these people can handle their own fund-raising?' To everyone's surprise, especially the judge, the 'uppity' Black officer replied to the judge: 'With all due respect, every little bit helps, your honour!' "

ADDITIONAL WORK

Fink has given several piano concerts of his music in Detroit, New York, and elsewhere. His music has been broadcast on TV and radio and by his local University and some was re-published in a local anthology of composers. Many of his compositions have been published on-line by Greenwich Publishing [4]. His writings have been used in various university courses, and he has lectured many times on his musicologiscal ideas about the origin of music.

OTHER BOOKS BY FINK:

• Continuum -- Evolution of Matter Into Humankind (excerpts). 1974 ISBN 0912424028;
• Evolution of the Social Brain 1975, ISBN 0912424109 (about evidence emerging of a collective consciousness);
• Alienation & Art 1976 ISBN 0912424026.

FINK'S CREDENTIALS:

Fink has been cited in many journals, including articles by or about him in [Science] magazine; [Scientific American]; Archaeologia Musicalis. Fink was invited to write a rebuttal article in the 2002-3 proceedings of the September, 2000 music archaeology conference held in Germany: Archaeology of Sound.[5]

Many news articles by or about Fink were published in: Globe & Mail; The Times of London; Ottawa Citizen (October 28, 2002 Enchanted Ear column). Included are some magazine cover-stories (e.g., Alberta's Newsweekly Western Report, May 5, 1997, on the Neanderthal flute analysis Fink wrote, etc).

He also has several citations & quotes in the recently published Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) book of a collection of writings titled: Origins of Music. Fink was also invited to be a juror by Nature_(Journal) to review an article on ancient music.

As an artist his works of [heritage buildings] & sites hang in Saskatoon's City Hall, have been on the covers of environmental and heritage magazines, and poltical cartoon have appeared in the Daily Star-Phoenix.

EXTERNAL LINK

• www.Greenwych.ca

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