The unscripted, unrehearsed Big Sur Experimental Music Festival continues to play against the grain in its fifth year.

On a videotape of last year’s Big Sur Experimental Music Festival, a trombone player, a slide guitarist and a stand-up bassist play music that sounds like a perfect horror movie score—complete with what sounds like creaking boards and moaning doors. After their performance, the camera zooms in on a percussionist using brushes to tap a table of found objects. Later, two guitarists and a trombone player perform on the Henry Miller Library Stage. The trio appears to be a typical jazz ensemble, but the sounds they are creating would make experimental jazz sound like a rote pop song. While some performers make very subdued background music, others create a storm of angry sounds.

Eventually the camera focuses on a man just off the stage. At first, he appears to be one of the festival’s organizers making a hand signal for the other performers to wrap up their set. As the camera pulls back, it looks like the man is a cowboy practicing his lassoing skills while watching the music. Before the viewer can figure out what is happening, the individual walks on stage swinging plastic tubing around his head and playing a trumpet.

Just like the viewer, the performers onstage at the Big Sur Experimental Music Festival seldom know what is going to happen next. With no set list or songs, the musicians at this festival simply hop up onstage and start making things up.

Also, with a format used first at the festival last year, musicians play in four- to five-person ensembles that are constantly changing personnel for two eight-hour pieces. Therefore, the music is always forcing the musicians to adapt.

Now in its fifth year, the Big Sur Experimental Music Festival is drawing a hundred diverse musicians from as far away as Germany and England. Some performers are going to play common instruments like guitars in a different way, while others will be performing with very uncommon instruments.

“One person told me she was playing a bologna sandwich,” Co-artistic Director/Artist Coordinator Matt Davignon says.

Even though Davignon says that most performances will probably have a non-traditional approach to melody, he believes that today’s experimental music helps to shape future mainstream music. He mentions Musique Concrete, a group of people from the 1950s who taped recorded sounds, cut them up, and taped them together in a different order, as a precursor to rap music’s producers.

“You tend to hear things in experimental music that show up late in popular music,” he says.

Ernesto Diaz-Infante, an experimental musician who co-founded the festival, feels that experimental music is a way to revolt against a society where everything is packaged and controlled by corporations. He believes that experimental music as a whole will probably never become mainstream because it is too hard to market.

In addition to organizing the event, both Davignon and Diaz-Infante will be performing. Though both musicians admit it is hard to predict what will happen onstage, Diaz-Infante describes what helps to make a good experimental music performer.

“A lot of playing experimental music in this context is being a good listener,” he says. “It’s really like a conversation. It’s like five people are conversing onstage about an abstract topic.”

The Big Sur Experimental Music Festival takes place Saturday May 29, and Sunday May 30 from noon to 7pm. Events are held at the Henry Miller Library, located a mile past Nepenthe Restaurant on Highway 1 in Big Sur. $10/day; $15/both days; $30/festival pass. 667-2574.