Robert,
You are probably right about the unduplicability - but (waxing philosophically) I think if the brain can hear it or see it, then it has to be representable, even if we don't have the expertise to represent it.
Following Kant here, so really waxing on ancient concepts... where we first grasp something by getting a sense of its proportions - how big it is compared to a tree, a mountain, a drum, a clanging church bell, a brush against the hair, a punch in the gut.... then we have to be able to reproduce it in our minds, so we hold it up to our concepts and get an understanding of it. If we can't measure that thing (starry night, unfolding storm at sea) then there is only one concept, infinity and the experience is called 'sublime.' If it is measurable, and we can reproduce it, but there isn't a concept that it adheres to, then it is what we call 'beauty' or purposeful purposelessness since it hasn't a category and just cycle around pleasantly without one, seeming like it could find one, but never doing so.
Certainly Hendrix falls into all three of these conditions - sometimes being so "large" that one can't really measure of grasp it, and so finding itself sublime. Other times one grasps it, but as you say, on a non-verbal level - and in this sense is more like Kant's idea of beauty, where it moves us, but we can't speak it.
Still, I hold out hope that after repeated listening and analysis, and perhaps after physically repeating the notes until on takes them on as one's own, some analysis can fall out.
I did read that either Hendrix or one of his entourage said about his music (oh I recall, it was miles davis about hendrix and music in general) that the important thing is not what you hear. Again this harps back to the Kant and the Romantics view of things, which I happen to like in terms of explanations, but it doesn't get me very good analysis. (and that is just my bias of loving analysis as a form of improvisation - I see Hendrix music as often being an 'analysis' of all the music that influences him.)
Interesting anyway we look at it...
RC
Richard Wilkerson | dreamgate.com