Suubako
The lights dim in the concert hall as the last of the late-arriving guests take their seats. In the hall are a few hundred invited corporate leaders, foreign dignitaries, and close associates of the performers. A circular ring of ascending seating rises from the performance floor to create a bowl-like space with the audience looking inward toward the central stage. Overhead the domed ceiling has gone a completely impenetrable black as the holographic projectors activate, creating a null space to serve as an extension of the performers' audio-visual canvas. Yours is an excellent view, although it is no better than that of anyone else in the hall, and the entire space is visible from your seat without moving your head or eyes more than a few degrees.
The holoprojectors cast a limited occlusion field around the stage, permitting light that passes through the field once but limiting that which passes through twice or more. The effect is that most of the audience seems to melt away and almost vanish before your eyes. You feel slightly alone with only those seated closest to you and the empty space of the stage visible in the darkness. The performance is about to begin. In anticipation you take the hand of your plus one seated beside you, but your focus is unalterably locked on the circular stage. Although it is below you and not especially large, the weight of what is about to take place makes the sight of the stage press down on your consciousness like an anvil.
A horn cries out from the emptiness, brassy and sharp but not piercing. The blood rushes in your neck, your brain calling for more as adrenaline-amplified senses send it into a frenzy of activity. The horn is a summons, the notes of its call taken from an ancient military anthem, and it brings the performers forth. A pulse of indigo so deep you can barely detect it washes over you as a rich bass rhythm begins to play. This is the oldest piece in the performance, its foundation in more ways than one. The rhythm is like a heartbeat, steady and strong, or perhaps like the cadence of a formation of soldiers on parade. It picks you up and holds you as the next piece joins in.
Prisms refract light in specific ways and their patterns are known and quantifiable. What is taking place now in the space above and around the stage defies all preconceptions of prismatic photonics. Beams of light lance out from nowhere, traverse unseen refractors, and explode in brilliant patterns of every color. You blink and realize the light accompanies the sound of a hihat, now tapping out its own rhythm. On stage a performer has materialized and is surrounded by an array of percussion instruments.
A blast of air hits you as shockwaves of golden light fly out from the stage. You blink and see for the first time a laser harp and its player on the stage. Suddenly the ceiling explodes with the light of a stellar nova, the hall luminesces almost unbearably and you are bathed in heat. Almost as quickly as the burst came it is gone and you sense no residual images left by its rays. Blinking against the irrationality of the phantom nova you see three more players, each seated and playing elegantly crafted zithers. Ribbons of rose-colored mist swirl around you now, teasing your fingertips, your neck, your cheeks. The sweet notes of an ancient wooden flute reach your ears and on stage you see that another performer has appeared.
At last a human voice enters the composition, clear and beautiful. It rises from the depths of low notes as the singer herself rises onto the stage from below on a hidden platform. With all of its players in place, their overture of assembly complete, the performance now begins in earnest. Sound and sight compel your mind to let go and be absorbed by the symphony. For a short while you are able to disconnect completely and feel as one with the music and with those around you as the old revered songs are rendered again in a million senses. Afterward you feel that you have touched some fundamental part of these people, of the audience, of the players, and of the whole civilization to which they belong. You go home feeling somehow united and free at the same time, a sensation once described as "the resonance of community".
This is suubako, the epitome of classical Caldari music. What makes suubako so unique and so moving is that each piece of the performance taking place in front of you is performed by a member of the same family--across six generations. The only performer who is not a high-resolution holographic projection is the vocalist, Aino Isuvara, the last to appear on stage. The rest of the musicians and their performances are in fact recordings of her ancestors, going back to a time several decades before the Gallente-Caldari War when most of the bass lines were recorded by her great-great-great grandfather Otro Isuvara. This family of musicians currently performs for a division of Echelon Entertainment under the name Elaakan Vilitu Heizogu or the "Songs of Forever Family".
Some have said that to understand suubako is to truly understand what it means to be Caldari. To be genuine suubako (any of the several imitation forms are known as suubakotsa) requires that each component in a performance be contributed by someone who is considered a genuine virtuoso in their own time and that at least one component is contributed by a performer who is no longer alive. The ultimate suubako groups are those like the Isuvara family, wherein each successive generation is trained in a specific instrument so that at their peak of skill they can render unparalleled recordings for use in future performances. To this end, several corporations within the State cultivate talented artists as investments in "suubako futures".
It is the collaborative creation, spread across not only a group of individual players separated by distance but by time as well that gives suubako its weight and meaning. It is well-known that the Caldari are generally not a spiritual people. They have little need for gods or afterlives. Yet in the suubako concert hall where the small efforts of many people over a long time come together to create something powerful and moving unlike anything else, the Caldari psyche can allow itself a little religion. "I am a part of something more, something larger and greater than I can ever be--than my generation can ever be--on our own," the listener's subconscious tells itself upon reflection of the performance. "This is heiian writ on the canvas of the senses."
Modern suubako traces its origins far back in time to the period after the fall of the Raata Empire on Caldari Prime. Most scholars agree that the markuu yn vaito or "call and answer" genre of choreographed duet opera that emerged during that tumultuous era was the predecessor of suubako. Much later, with the development of high quality recording technology, the way people could appreciate music changed and great performances were assured never to fade even after the artists were gone. First contact with the Gallenteans and the cultural influences that followed brought the modern audio-visual symphony into the Caldari artistic consciousness. By combining sight and sound (as well as scent, touch, and even more basic sensations with the incorporation of direct brain stimulus) in elegant ways, the players could reach their audience more directly and create an even more powerful experience than before.
The first experimentation with cross-generational symphonies began about three hundred years ago. At first, pieces of great performances from decades past were brought in to augment or echo the performances of contemporary players, but this was generally done in tribute to aging or deceased artists or groups. It wasn't until some years later than experimentalists like Otro Isuvara began toying with the idea of creating music that was not meant to be played for several dozen or even several hundred years. Isuvara along with a few other brave artists laid the foundation for the first suubako groups, creating a huge library of performances on separate instruments with full-body recordings of themselves captured for holoprojection. Their children would add another section to this library of recordings in their own time once their skills with various instruments were perfected.
When Isuvara was in his late 80's, shortly before his death in the Gallente-Caldari War, the first true suubako performances began. At that time the form was considered a novelty and enjoyed for its strange and eccentric combination of recorded and live performances that were planned years in advance and specifically meant only to be played together. Soon after, the Gallente-Caldari War interrupted almost every part of life for the citizens of the young State. Only once the dust settled and the newly forged State stood free and apart from the Federation did people again turn their attention to the arts. It was then that the seed planted in the Caldari musical soil by people like Otro Isuvara was found to have grown into a full and healthy tree now bearing fruit. His children and grandchildren had by then lain down their own parts and the fourth generation of Isuvaras were playing the live portions in the concert halls of New Caldari.
The propagandists did not overlook this trend and were quick to seize on the resurgence of suubako and turn it into a tool for their own purposes. Portrayed as a red-blooded patriotic art form (and its Gallentean origins conveniently censored from the official reviews and advertisements), suubako gained a significant level of popularity among all classes of citizens in the core worlds. This popularity peaked, along with corporate exploitation of the form's public image, around the YC30's. One particular holovid documentary entitled "The Great Performances" stands out as demonstrative of that time, it's imagery and script overflowing with lofty exultation of the suubako performers' service in keeping the homeworld's songs alive.
Hearing such music recorded by those great players of generations past and seeing their images preserved in perfect projection alongside the living forms of their descendants touched every citizen who went to the suubako hall in those early days after the war. Many of those who had fled the bombardment of Caldari Prime... would leave in tears, unable to hide their emotions upon hearing the songs of their youth from our distant homeworld across a gulf of so many light years and so many calendar years. (Holovid reference: "The Great Performances", Lai Dai Press, YC28)
The rights to most of the original suubako groups were purchased by enterprising corporations during that golden age of the form. And since that time, suubako has been enshrined in the official State histories as one of its greatest artistic achievements. Otro Isuvara and his visionary contemporaries like Taan Reitsoken, Rakkeva Arusuuvi, and the enigmatic vocalist Quuan have been elevated to an almost mystical status, and many corporate historians still include theirs among the names of the modern State's political and military forefathers.