So what, and why, is music? Why is the organisation of meaningless noises into arbitrary mathematical sequences more than a glorified parlour game? Why is it something we pay attention to, take seriously, even dedicate our lives to?
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture, but I’ve been to places where I’ve seen a lot of architecture worth dancing about. I’m gonna give this a bash.
Music is the freest of the artforms because it’s the most abstract. It’s not representational, it’s not solid and it’s not specific. It doesn’t smack of anything else on the planet, so it must be transcendent. You could say the same about mathematics, but maths doesn’t make you cry. Besides, it’s useful, and I’m with Chuang Tzu when he says ‘Everyone knows the usefulness of the useful but no one knows the usefulness of the useless.’
And Alan Watts when he says ‘It is in this kind of meaninglessness that we come to the profoundest meaning.’
Or David Byrne when he says ‘Stop making sense.’
I don’t feel like I’ve got to the heart of this yet. Let me try again.
Some academics think music maps the inner texture of our emotions somehow. (“Somehow” is the rub there, isn’t it?) You hear the curvature of a melody and it somehow mimics the rise and fall of elation, or the downward arc of grief. Makes sense: when Joni sings ‘The bed’s too big, the frying pan’s too wiiiiiiide’, that’s how the sobbing of the mind sounds, isn’t it? And a choppy distorted guitar doesn’t make you feel rage, it reminds you of rage because it is rage. Listening to Minor Threat’s “In My Eyes” or Hüsker Dü’s “I’ll Never Forget You” when you’re in a bad mood is like having a friend next to you saying ‘I KNOW RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT?!’
No, that’s not it.
In my college dissertation I suggested that music, especially live music, takes you back to the womb somehow. Makes sense, right? Sound enters your world long before sight. The background hum of the world outside. The sound of your mother’s voice. But especially that rhythm, that incessant 1-2, 1-2 of the heart. Is that why most songs are in 4? Is that why a lot of the percussion patterns in Fela Kuti-derived Afrobeat sound exactly like heartbeats?
And what are you doing in the womb besides listening? You’re dancing. You’re certainly not thinking. When you get out of your mind on psychedelics, jump into a swarming throng and wave your limbs to wave after wave of shattering sound, aren’t you taking yourself back to a time before you had to think about anything, judge anything, be anything – a selfless utopia where your only job is to hear, feel and move?
No, that’s not it.
Maybe I should stick to what music means to me. The way I think of it, the best musicians are like the blind leading the blind. They take that step forward, reach out, feel the tusks, ears and tail of the unfathomable elephant that is reality and report back in metaphors. And the harder the metaphors are to wrap your head around, the more they convey.
Watch a Kate Bush or Prince live show and I’m instantly face-to-face with a forbidding mystery, something that goes beyond the realm of pleasure into something more profound and emotionally complex, a joy that’s nearly pain. In this country artist and audience have discarded meaning and sense and finally started dealing with the important things. “Enjoyment” is far too tame a word; “entertainment” is contemptuous.
Music tears back the curtain. Beethoven’s Seventh and Live at Leeds evoke the drama and dynamics of the Deuteronomic history. The surface silliness of “People Take Pictures of Each Other” and “Sofa No. 2” hide the pure, abstract beauty of Platonic Form. “Funky Drummer”, “Ordinary Pain”, Afrobeat, soukous, mbaqanga are Bach if he knew how to dance, the music of the spheres, the courage to choose joy in the face of horror.
Bonus points to Talking Heads for marrying the rhythm of life to urban neurosis and alienation, creating a shamanistic genre that’s too self-conscious to commit to the trance. Plus white people can dance to it.
Meanwhile Revolver, Low and Sound of Silver sing to my inner alien, that glacial part of me that’s already transcended the petty cares of this life and started pulling at some of those cosmic threads that remain beyond the reach of homo sapiens.
Mix all these elements in with the elation of gospel, the estrangement of hip-hop and the Zen of Nick Drake and you’ve got some of my favourite parts of the elephant, the stuff I draw on when I sit down to write. What comes out has to be extreme: maybe it expresses a strong feeling, evokes absolute horror or euphoria, or is just extremely abstract. But I always abandon the thing if it can’t do more than sit there looking nice.
Composing demands that both sides of your brain pull their weight. If nothing of yourself goes into a song you’ve got no reason to write it, and if you don’t get the technical details right no-one has any reason to listen to it. So it’s important to me that my lyrical abstractions express my fury and ecstasy, but equally important that I invert some of the root notes, don’t overdo it on my beloved descending fourths and avoid perfect cadences whenever possible (some of my best friends are perfect cadences, but you have to make some effort to move with the times). The more rhythmic and harmonic surprises the better, but no weirdness for weirdness’ sake, the Beatles wouldn’t like it.
Rhythm is vital: syncopation and percussion-heavy grooves are music’s equivalent of the Tao, the movement and flow of the ideal life. But if I don’t take my pop choruses equally seriously I’ll feel the Beatles frowning at me from over my shoulder – and we can’t have that. If possible, let the Dorian hooks and conga patterns sound the way this looks. Let energetic songs sound like fire, a mixture of yellow, red and lots and lots of dark orange. Let slow jazz songs squeeze out greens and blues, and slow folk songs express the sunyata of clear water. Let all the elements combine to do … something. Lockdown’s monotonous enough without half-assed songs making it worse.
I have no idea how close I ever come to hitting these goals. But I do know that the attempt reminds me that there’s more to life than is dreamt of in the routines and mental habits that make up my everyday experience of it. Time with that unfathomable elephant is time well spent.
Welcome to the second Cassandra Voices podcast introduced and written by Nicola Bigatti, and produced by Massimiliano Galli. This podcast was recorded in the heart of Dublin 8 in what used to be the studios of the 2014 indipendent project Radio Liberties.
This podcast continues a journey through Italian ‘Library Music,’ a vast catalogue of records composed mainly in the 1960s and 1970s by some of Italy’s finest musicians, with Rome and Milan becoming centres of excellence.
Although recording artists associated began with generic soundtrack music, this provided a springboard for an innovative music scene. From a commercial base in T.V. series and advertising jingles, musicians forged unique styles, and developed distinctive sounds such as that associated with Spaghetti Westerns, a genre known as Film Poliziesco-groove.
Ennio Morricone in 2015
Foremost among these composers was Ennio Morricone, who achieved global fame for soundtracks to films such as ‘Once Upon a Time in America’ (1984) and ‘The Good the Bad and the Ugly’ (1966). Morricone passed away in July of this year at the age of ninety-one, and this Podcast is dedicated to his memory.
This Italian Library encompassed avant-garde composition, classical harmony, psychedelia, and funk with brash horns, guitars, and futuristic synths prominent. It was a fertile ground for experimentation and creativity, strongly influenced by the social, economic and political dynamics of that epoch.
Composition occcurred under the shadow of political and social turmoil in Italy – ‘the Years of Led’ (Anni di piombo) as a succession of bombings and assassinations by extremist groups shattered an uneasy post-War consensus.
I would like to share with you a little journey through my current thoughts – a small piece of my ever-shifting consciousness.
Through my life’s journey I have come to realise that the source of my anxiety always stems from not knowing something. What I am, who I am, where I am and where I am going. Every bit of my identity that can be described with human language is a construct. I am here typing these words, my inner being looking out through the eyes of my head onto the screen. I am on a planet floating through the universe, and sometimes when I’m lucky I am able to know that I know very little.
Where does the mystery begin? Where does it end? I could say I know everything about an apple. I’m familiar with it. But it is also a sacred object, with an unimaginable design. It is a mysterious expression of cosmic creativity, made from the building blocks of the universe. The same cosmic code that constitutes you and me. Every time I start to think about anything, no matter how mundane, the deeper I go with it, I always reach the same place. Behind everything there’s a gigantic world of not knowing. Everything we know is just the tip of an iceberg.
I equally don’t know why I chose music over everything else. It just attracted me like a magnet. I never get tired of it. Recently I began to understand the magic of words a little better and I’m dabbling in poetry, which for the first time I am enjoying immensely. I am convinced that language (including this text) is utterly confusing and misleading. I believe poetry is the only true language as it simulates accurately the workings of the subconscious mind, and therefore it feels more true than the forest of symbols we usually operate within.
I have released one album of music so far called “The Essential John Moods”. I have written and recorded two more since then, but I feel I’m only now approaching deeper layers of songwriting. I am also certain that I’ll never get anywhere. At least nowhere close to a destination. I think of my life and my relationship with music as a creative odyssey.
Growing up middle class in Germany in the 1980s, the son of a judge and a Polish Homeopath, I have been slowly simmering in the soup of late twentieth century post-spiritual materialism like many my peers. My parents were a little into church, a little into Yoga, a little into science, but generally as confused in life as anyone else. Death was rarely mentioned, and if it was its presence was so heavy that one could almost feel the temperature drop in the room. There was no lightness to death, and I learned to regard it as something foreign; always avoiding the topic in conversation.
My parents were, and are, lovely people, but back then they just didn’t know what to teach me about life’s purpose. They wanted me to have good grades and do well in life, but spiritually they were just beginning their own journeys, and their messages were mixed or confused. I literally had no idea why I ought to do anything in life. For a while I moved through it cluelessly or mechanically. Definitely the relative wealth of my upbringing (never a lot of money but never existential scarcity) made it possible for me to float and feel depressed.
It was only through my own confrontation with this question of death in a non-intellectual, more holistic way and a great deal of suffering that I grew more in touch with the finite beauty of life and realized that the absence of death was like a severed limb, an absence ultimately rendering life meaningless.
And these were just my personal experiences. But of course I am just a part of the human family and this eventually led me to think about the state of consciousness of the world I grew up in, and live in today. So what is the consciousness of our current time? How are the majority of people dealing with the problem of not knowing? And why do we seem largely incapable of admitting how little we really know about life?
I always found it impressive to hear highly intelligent people such as Fritjof Capra, Albert Einstein, and Werner Heisenberg utter humble statements, outlining the limits of their knowledge. There is so much fear hidden behind human surety. When we can’t admit what we don’t know, we will never truly be able to accept the great unknown and flourish in it. Instead we will try to conquer it, label and name things and in the process pretend that we have already mastered it.
Never in human history has it been easier to look away from the sacred and the mysterious. Our bodies know it more than our intellects. Everything is always in flux and the creative expression of cosmic intelligence flows through us all. But it’s easy to be comfortable and distracted these days, as we are supplied with a constant steam of digital bread and circus by large corporations… Netflix, Facebook, endless TV shows, swipe right, double click to like. It has many shapes and names. It’s a complex web of distractions set up to turn us into mindless pleasure seekers and to direct our gaze away from the mystery.
So the question that I, along with many of my contemporaries, now ask ourselves, is how do we get away from a world where we dominate nature through a fear that expresses itself in short-term greed, selfishness, and which is devoid of a deeper meaning?
My personal and practical answers are: look at death; look at nature; listen to the silence; look at the limits of knowledge; try to find poetry and wonder again. Psychedelics are a wonderful pathway to the mystery. Spending more time wandering in the wild is always good. Look at what indigenous peoples have done for thousands of years sustainably, gently taking and giving back to nature. We need better ideas than those ascendant today. We require subversive joy in the face of immanent death and demise.
Thank you very much for reading, and I wish you a wonderful life!
Here’s a poem I recently wrote:
The Unspeakable
You’re a being of light and time now the universe is opening its mind to let you in to the other side where the streets are empty no cars nothing left behind let’s take a ride morning’s broken it was a long night we’re standing in the doorway of an old beginning in a new design and a new god to pray to in a branded shrine praying to the mundane but keep finding the divine even with a blind eye you can see how it all combines where beauty and disaster intertwine how a storm sometimes can help your mind to communicate with the undefined the things you can never say even if you tried what’s rotten and raw what’s deep and macabre what’s infinite slow the words that don’t grow what you cannot let go the places inside unspeakable things unspeakable mind how it grinds and grinds the unstoppable device even if you slow the ride it’ll rapidly unwind the machinery of time when you’re the sensitive kind likely to get undermined it just hurts sometimes to see humankind scared and unaligned afraid of the breathing of the night a world of wrongs turned into a world of rights an animal so lost in sight confusing darkness with the light but maybe it will all clear up in time and the storm will pass us by another animal assigned to read the signs while the sun still shines on more disaster, more design more unspeakable words of an unspeakable mind a being of pure light you’ll be. An old beginning in a new design.
Following on from last months ‘Alone EP’, Greg Clifford has released a music video for ‘Brontide’, which features on his forthcoming LP ‘Lines Of Desire.’
Brontide, which is defined as the sound of distant thunder (created by seismic activity), is a song and video about isolation, alienation, confusion and fading memories. According to Clifford, ‘this is an emotionally layered and charged production. Brontide, for me, symbolises impending doom and gloom. Dementia, in this case, is the suggested source of sadness’.
The video was filmed in Co. Sligo earlier this year. Clifford explains
we filmed in my Grandaunt’s house. She was a big part of our family and would spend almost every Christmas with us. She sadly passed away and the house was left to my Dad. Earlier this year we travelled west to clear out the rest of her belongings before the new owners moved in. It’s surreal and rather harrowing making sense of someone else’s belongings. It’s quite incredible how much one accumulates in a lifetime. It’s subsequently prompted me to de-clutter, as I don’t wish to be someone else’s burden when I’m gone. To break up the emotionally and physically draining days my Dad and I decided to shoot some video footage. I felt it was important for the family to have this sentimental visual documentation, irrespective of its artistic merits. In a reversal of our usual roles, I manned the camera while he featured in the video. The house was like a time capsule and is quintessentially Irish in nature, equipped with the obligatory Catholic iconography and mismatching, and rather barmy, wallpaper and carpets.
Greg and his father, who release work under the moniker CLIFFORD CLIFFORD Productions, made the most of the location and opportunity. According to the songster: ‘it’s incredible getting to work with my Dad. He’s a true artist, who has inspired me throughout my life. He’s incredibly thorough and committed to artistic disciplines. He cuts no concerns. We have a unified artistic vision and are both influenced by the German filmmaker Werner Herzog’, who is a proponent of trusting impulse and intuition.
Werner Herzog’s aesthetic was the driving force behind the video’s approach: ‘Coincidence always happens if you keep your mind open, while storyboards remain the instruments of cowards who do not trust in their own imagination’.
In Clifford’s opinion, ‘I feel the video truly captures the themes expressed in the song. The emphasis was placed on suggestive footage rather than conveying a clear narrative. I held the camera very close to the back of my Dad’s head at times to coax the viewer into immersion, allowing the audience connect with his abandonment and reflections. I filmed through glass, which distorted his face, and shot him staring vacantly into mirrors, which creates a sense of loss and confusion. This, for me, suggests he is being denied access to his memories’.
The poignant video, which is layered and open to interpretation, captures a sense of beauty in decay and the importance of letting go. Time waits for no man.
In the presence of great music we have no alternative but to live nobly … and indeed one can hardly think of life without music. Sean O’Faolain
In March the live music industry essentially ground to halt in Ireland. Sadly, owing to safety concerns, live music remains prohibited under current restrictions, and now even buskers are banned from playing.
Undoubtedly, the first lockdowns provided for a period of reflection, and many artists appreciated getting off the merry-go-round of gigs and promotional events.
Indeed, music was to the fore throughout the spring. Who can forget the indomitable spirit displayed by musicians singing from balconies? Although in Ireland, where few of us live in apartment blocks, most musicians were reduced to entertaining the birds, or other local fauna, in their gardens.
It is apparent that many musicians used the time wisely – drawing inspiration from introspection – embarking on new projects, and finishing off old ones that had been gathering proverbial dust in hard drives.
Yet as time goes by it is clear that among the biggest losers from Covid-19 are musicians, and others involved in the live music industry. The term ‘gig economy’ actually derives from the way most of them have been earning a crust since time immemorial. But in March the taps stopped flowing.
Lacking a live audience that is intrinsic to a performance, and which no Zoom session can replicate, we’ve heard that some are no longer even taking up their instruments.
It was a mad enough career at the best of times, with many doing it for the buzz rather than the money. Sadly, many may never resume their careers.
As we strike a balance between safety and the wellbeing of the population, music should figure prominently in the conversation, and state funding of the arts should be at least commensurate with other EU countries. In the short to medium term, concerts may take a different form, but we do need to make them happen or face a cultural decline that we may never recover from.
We asked a number musicians and others working in the industry to strike four notes in response to the pandemic.
From the top:
Fin Divilly – Songwriter and Performer John Cummins – Poet, Musician and Creative Workshop Activist David Agnew – Musical Artist and Legendary Concert Performer David Keenan – Songwriter and Performer Aisling Moore – Songwriter & Performer Gareth Quinn Redmond – Ambient Composer Daniel Lambert – Music Venue Owner, Band Manager and CEO of Bohemians Football Club Avoca Reaction – Drag Artist & Producer Ger Murphy – Live Streaming Host, Photographer and Gig Organiser Robbie Dingle: Songwriter, Busker and Artist Stephen James Smith – Poet
Fin Divilly – Songwriter and Performer (Also featured in the cover image by Daniele Idini)
Optimistic Note: In the face of financial and social pressure, songwriters have far more to sing, think and talk about. Dreaming of comfort and stability is far more fruitful than the real thing.
Pessimistic Note: Read above on a bad day when you can’t even support your arse in a pair of trousers.
Practical Note: More time alone allows for more self-reflection on what it is you truly want to be creating and who you are.
Existential note/How you are coping: Read above and picture me smoking, drinking and writing in peace at home in my underwear, forgetting what day of the week it is.
Veteran Oboe player David Agnew by Virtuoso Fotografia
David Agnew – Musical Artist and Legendary Concert Performer
Optimistic note: Lucky to be supported by the broadcaster I work for, recorded many pieces remotely and lucky to have performed live several times despite restrictions.
Pessimistic note: Worried that vaccines won’t bring the live experience back in a meaningful way for classical music. It will be a long time before older audiences will congregate, I’m sure.
Practical note: It has given us all the time to evaluate exactly who we are as musicians, and value what we do. It has been difficult to maintain match fitness, going from one hundred concert performances a year for the past forty years in my case, to six small-scale live performances with twenty-five people in the large church. You need the constant organic and charged musical environment with colleagues and the big audience-throng to sparkle.
Existential note/How you are coping: Online teaching has been rewarding. Remote recording on your own is difficult but fantastic to see it mixed and realised in the final cut. Writing, collaborations with others, when we haven’t had the time before has opened up new avenues and friendships. When we get back to something, and we still don’t know what that is going to be, we will have a greater sense of value and appreciation of everything we’ve probably taken for granted, and assumed would last forever.
John Cummins. Daniele Idini/Cassandra Voices
John Cummins – Poet, Musician and Creative Workshop Activist
Optimistic note: time to take stock, see where my art is at…time to plan an approach when allowed to play again … levelling the playing field somewhat in the industry across the board, artists can stream easily enough, if they so choose…
Pessimistic note: the impact on the mind and the pocket of so many people who have had the rug pulled…
Practical note: difficult and frustrating for people to plan anything with certainty…
Existential note/How you are coping: trimming the day down to its particular parts – having a morning, slow and steady … being in the afternoon … embracing the evening … connecting to the night … whether we like it or not, we are all in this together … I try to keep an eye on the bigger picture and not get bogged down in just me and me and …
Songwriter David Keenan by Mark William Logan
David Keenan – Songwriter and Performer
Optimistic Note: Being creative and expressing observations, internally and externally has always been the go to reaction, a means of understanding. I sense a unity in the artistic community in the face of the current restrictions and the trauma inflicted on our way of life. Swells of creativity are stirring as people are going to their tools and collectively spewing. Adversity breathes action and there’s a duty to self and to the craft to try to articulate what we’re seeing now and beyond.
Pessimistic: The eradication of live gigs has been a severe trauma on the individual, the facilitators and the audience. Live medicine, that age old human ritual is being denied. Psychologically this is so destructive as well as to the livelihoods that have been erased. It brings into question the concept of essential work and how reverence for the Arts has diminished in recent times. I worry that the Arts are not being valued as crucial sources of emotional and psychological wellbeing and will continue to be devalued in the new year.
Practical note: Those involved in the production side of the industry have vast experiences to teach. I suggest that initiatives to support unemployed teachers such as these should be set up to help them pass on this knowledge to young and old. The same goes for funded workshops for artists be it online or in person. We have to revalue the work, not devalue it even more in a time where so much is given away for free online, almost expectedly so. The shop local concept should be encouraged and applied to Irish Musicians / Artists. Buy a physical copy of a record / t-shirt / book from your favourite artists or venues. Streaming is of no use in terms of making a viable living.
Existential note/How you are coping: I’m doing my best to stay as creative as I can and trying to protect my energy reserves, building for the new year. These past few months have invoked a lot of anxiety, confusion and anger but it’s important to me that I try to grow and turn the base into something pure. Expressing myself through music and words has always gifted me healing and renewal. I’m staying as tight as I can to those lights, hopeful of what’s to come.
Ashling Moore by Megan Shannon Photography.
Aisling Moore – Songwriter & Performer
Optimistic note: I think there is a lot of opportunity to wrote and really find myself as an artist. In terms of the music industry, there is more and more recognition from the government and others of how important music is. I just got awarded a grant to start my EP which is a helping hand. Also a scheme might be coming out that pays musicians hourly like other jobs which is ideal.
Pessimistic note: Trying to be inspired to write about things other than the lockdown can be difficult. It is hard to know how long it will take before performing can go back to the way it was
Practical note: Lack of practice with performing.
Existential note/How you are coping: I’ve started reading books again. I’ve started exercising and being more aware of what I’m eating. It’s been hard but I have a socially distanced gig coming up so that has helped a lot. Knowing that there is solutions being created gives hope to us musicians
Gareth Quinn Redmond by Daniele Idini
Gareth Quinn Redmond – Ambient Composer
Optimistic note: I felt very vindicated having spent so much money on recording equipment at the start of the first lockdown, it has been a lifeline being able to continue writing and recording throughout the year. I’m not sure what state I would be in now if I didn’t have this set up.
Pessimistic note: It has been a tough year mentally, which got even harder at the start of October when I lost one of my best friends and bandmates to suicide. I have a great support network of friends around me but nevertheless it is so hard to grieve his loss when nothing about my day to day life reminds me that he is gone.
Practical note: It has been a great year for reflection but this is constantly overshadowed by the eternal dread of possibly not gigging ever again, not like I did before anyway. I can’t imagine doing anything else in my life, so I’m worried about the impact the new reality will have on the arts.
Existential note/How you are coping: Taking it day by day, my family and friends are so supportive. Compared to many I am very fortunate, I just need to keep reminding myself of that.
Daniel Lambert – Music Venue Owner, Band Manager and CEO of Bohemians Football Club
Optimistic note: we’ve been given the space to somewhat remove ourselves from the rat race, to breath and contemplate.
Pessimistic note: the lack of a clear date for the restart of live music as we knew it makes it hard to motivate each other.
Practical note: spend the time wisely, develop the online shop, investigate opportunities outside of core gigs, see the opportunities in difficult times.
Existential note/How you are coping: by swimming in the sea every single day.
Optimistic note: It’s nice to have a break from the hustle.
Avoca Reaction by Kyle Cheldon Barnett
Avoca Reaction – Drag Artist & Producer
Optimistic note: It’s nice to have a break from the hustle.
Pessimistic note: Performing on Zoom/similar platforms is a paltry substitute for a real crowd at a regular gig.
Practical note: All of the work opportunities I’ve had since March have been better paid than pre-pandemic.
Existential note: The first lockdown showed me how much my self-worth was tied up in my work/output. Over lockdown I’ve been working on finding satisfaction outside of performing.
Ger Murphy – Live Streaming Host, Photographer and Gig Organiser
Optimistic note: I’m in the unique position of doing pretty well out of Covid so not sure my opinion counts! But here ya go…. A lot of people and businesses were working nonstop, gig to gig, so this break has given time to look at how they work and hopefully come back stronger.
Pessimistic note: Can’t see live events coming back for another 6-12 months so bulk of my mates jobless until then.
Practical note: I have a live streaming company so never been busier.
Existential note/How you are coping: I’m graaaaaand.
Robbie Dingle by Daniele Idini
Robbie Dingle: Songwriter, Busker and Artist
Optimistic note: I’m finding this time to be very productive and am using the time to hone and polish my skills. I have surrounded myself with great musicians and am learning and busking on the street every day (with safety precautions). I am finding myself to be more focused and driven as it gave me the time to really think about what I want to do, projecting myself and thinking about my future in music. In the band I am in we have been chosen to be part of a Covid series called “justtheone” alongside some great artists and this gave us a kickstart to release more which I am very excited about.
Pessimistic note: The fact that bars have been closed and sessions I used to play at, open mics, jams I attended and hosted I am missing the interaction with a crowd and artists. In these spaces artists share their ideas and performances. Artists polish and cut the fat off songs to see what works and without this space I feel it will have a detrimental effect on art, creativity and an artist’s livelihood.
Practical note: With no gigs and regular busking I have set up a PayPal and moved into the city centre to play every day. The money earned from YouTube videos via PayPal has paid for a bike I now use to travel mobile and light around the city. The bike has a rack and I just use my busking amp and guitar which is very handy. No time on buses which is saving me money and I can access and travel to places that I could not before as I used to carry a hiking bag with all my busking stuff for the day. Now I can busk, go home for lunch, relax, recharge my batteries and even busk a second time.
Existential note/How you are coping: Recently I moved to the city centre to busk and play every day and sometimes struggle with rent (like everyone if you’re not a politician). Some days can be very bad and others brilliant. This can be due to the weather, location or getting stopped by the police if there is a congregation of people. The public are very generous to us and I feel we are much appreciated during these hard times. People light up as many have not heard live music in weeks or even months, they dance and sing and for us to bring that out of them while doing something we love outweighs anything negative about a buskers life.
Poet Stephen James Smith by Babs Daly Grace Photography
Stephen James Smith – Poet
Optimistic note: What won’t kill you….
Pessimistic note: Many won’t recover.
Practical note: We’re learning
Existential note/How you are coping: ‘Let everything happen to you / Beauty and terror. Just keep going / No feeling is final ― Rainer Maria Rilke.
Are you a musician denied a living from live music? Answer these questions in the comments section.
Optimistic note: Pessimistic note: Practical note: Existential note/How you are coping:
I’ve always experienced music as a way to access another kind of reality.
My earliest musical memory is of falling asleep in the back seat of the family car, drifting through the Northern suburbs of Brisbane.
Enveloping Darkness, the hum of the engine, the radio playing, soft orchestral music, timpani drums, cavernous reverb, drifting into dreams.
I’ve spent most of my life searching for musical experiences of that access profound wonder, the ephemeral and transcendental.
It began with guitar. First, five years of classical guitar tuition followed by an inevitable turn to the dark side. The Blues. Rock N Roll. Grunge. Punk. Indie. Lo-Fi and Post-Rock.
Eventually, I succumbed to the lure of drum machines and samplers. IDM. Trip-hop. Drum N Bass. Ambient and Glitch. Then, inspired by the work of John Cage, I gave up making music altogether and worshiped the primal vindication of noise. Tape Loops. Junk Ensembles. Free Jazz. Avant Metal. In my mid twenties, I got involved in Zen and took lay Buddhist vows. I was enchanted by Zen’s focus on the elusive dichotomy of sound and silence. Reciting sutras. Drumming on wooden blocks. Clanging Bells.
Following the footsteps of the historical Buddha, I went to India.
But while in a monastery in Bodhgaya, I had an argument with the head abbot.
He told me that I wasn’t allowed to play a small wooden flute in my room at night.
No music in the temple.
So, I packed my bags and went in search of music.
Then, in Varanasi, I heard the sarode for the first time.
I was hooked.
Luckily in 2003 I met my first teacher, Sougata Roy Chowdhury in Kolkata. Through him I found a channel to that inexpressible world of the profound. I became obsessed with learning Indian Classical music. For five years, I kept returning to India for talim (learning) with my teacher. I practised like a demon. Soaked up the Kolkata vibe. Drank loads of chai, smoked biddies and ate far too many biscuits. Eventually, I became competent on the instrument. With the blessings of my teacher, I began to perform and settled in the West of Ireland.
While living in Ireland, I became aware of the idea that there was some sort of connection between Irish traditional music and Indian culture. I wanted to explore how Irish music might sound on the sarode but I also wanted to avoid it becoming a gimmick relying on cliches. So, I undertook a four-year structured PhD (Arts Practice) in the Irish World Academy at the University of Limerick. During these four years, I apprenticed myself to a number of traditional musicians in an attempt to learn Irish music in somewhat of an authentic manner. Through Ged Foley I began to learn tunes on the fiddle and learnt how to behave at a session. Steve Cooney put me in touch with something deep and ancestral and Martin Hayes guided me into a world of feeling.
The Sound of a Country
Moving to East Clare, I was lucky enough to find a common bond (and neighbour) in legendary percussionist Tommy Hayes. With our project An Tara, we began to explore the spaces in-between Irish traditional and Indian classical music. We experimented with different rhythms, improvisation approaches, tonalities, timbres and new compositions. Eventually, this partnership became less about being Irish or Indian and more about us becoming authentically ourselves. Playing with Tommy gives me an incredible freedom because I feel like I am supported no matter where I go, that Tommy is really with me, both aurally and in spirit.
Through the freedom and support given to me by many other musicians previously mentioned, I began to feel more and more confident to ‘compose’ my own music on the sarode. What came out was a music that was neither Indian nor Irish. Sometimes tunes. Sometimes not. Over the last few years, I have become very interested in going deeper into this creative space which is not just in between cultures but perhaps pre-cultural, pre-cognitive and intuitive.
Then lockdown happened.
In April 2020, I moved myself into a small wooden cabin surrounded by woodland in Faha, East Clare. I setup my recording equipment. I left my instruments laying around. I watched the sunrise. I listened to the morning robin song. Watched the stars. Shook with the wind. Absorbed the rain and sun. Then let my intuition guide me. The result is my third solo album The Other Side of Knowing. Everything on the album came in the moment. Captures something of my knowing or more accurately my unknowing in that moment. The tracks were then sent to be mixed and mastered by the wonderfully talented Seán Mac Erlaine. When I listen back to it now, it all feels like a dream fragment.
And I am reminded again of my childhood, being in the back seat of my parent’s car with the radio on. I feel into my memories of my parents; my father’s sense of humour, his love of the blues, soul and sixties rock; my mother’s intuitive creative world view, her deep empathy and thoughtfulness. I think of my sisters; two mischievous identical twins, one of them outgoing and gregarious and the other quiet reflective and loyal. I remember myself as a quiet curly haired kid who lived in a world of fantasy amongst the backdrop of noisy, yobbo beer drinking men, spendings hours down at the creek or in a make believe world in our backyard pool. Then, I am back again, here in Ireland, in my middle aged body, the feeling of damp and the sound of rain. And I wonder what I have learnt from the musical journey of my life so far. The honest answer is, I do not know. And yet, when I sit with my instrument and listen; to my own body, the room, the rain, the sound of breath, the gentle scraping of a string, I feel that something can come which is beyond me and my experience. An Other Side of Knowing. I can’t put anymore words on it than that.
When the film is over, with the lights still off and the low buzz of people leaving the room, I like to stay in my seat while the credits roll. There is a special kind of magic hidden in the image of thousands of scrolling names, like a vibrant tapestry carefully knitted, carrying the ideas of countless people working together for one single creative outcome.
We met in Dublin, as students. It was in the MA room, in the recording booth, in a fully-packed Ryan Air flight with destination to Sofia that a small but important concept emerged in my mind. By experience, or by force of habit, I had a fixed idea of the isolated composer working for countless hours on end; a dim light, a dark room, a head full of ideas. A familiar concept really, that’s how I had been making music for years. But the familiar changes, and it was in that MA room, on that crowded plane, sitting by the cliffs of the Irish west coast or on a summer night in the living room of a beautiful countryside house in Spain, that I realised that being a composer doesn’t necessarily have to be a one-woman show; that composition feeds on other creative forms, it feeds on other people, and that’s when many seemingly impossible things start to happen.
American writer Kurt Vonnegut once said, ‘We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.’ I find this phrase to be a very concise and accurate representation not only of life in general, but also of creative practice and expression. Sitting in front of an empty page, hands hovering a few centimetres above the piano, scattered thoughts trying to form an idea, all often feel like standing in front of a cliff, both terrifying and exhilarating. I find that when other people enter the scene the picture changes substantially.
I am standing just a couple of steps away from the cliff, and I get to see one, two, three, seven, or even ten jumpers. Displayed right in front of my eyes, there’s a whole new collection of movements and wings; I want to try all the different shapes and colours; I can jump on my own or hand-in-hand with someone, eyes closed, eyes on the ocean, or facing the sky with my back turned around – the possibilities are infinite. It still is terrifying, it still is exhilarating, it feels new and different every single time.
The entire neighbourhood is out of power, Néstor and I are stuck in the rental house with a huge set of lighting equipment to carry, the recording starts in a couple of hours, and it’s pouring rain outside. The team is scattered around the city in pairs, each with a mission, each with a problem or two to solve. I can feel the energy, I can feel the tension, the impetuous movement, and the meticulous detail. After almost an hour of anxiously waiting, we manage to find our way out and get to the church in Rathgar. Everyone is in motion, the room swirls with zeal. Cables rolled on the floor, music stands upright, paper lanterns hanging, fog machine on, mics in place, parts laid out. I am standing in the second row, score in hand. We all are in position and ready to charge when I see the silhouette of the baton coming down and the music starts to play… nothing else matters.
When the credits roll and the room is dark, I can see the names scrolling. And if I read between the lines, figures start to emerge in my mind; a playground full of curious children, a pool for stirring sparkling thoughts, a collection of manifold imperfect pebbles washed up by the shore, eleven jumpers facing the edge of a cliff and ready to develop wings on the way down.
Sharing
Néstor Romero Clemente
The throne room of the Aljafería Palace is a serious place – it was, after all, meant to be one. I have vivid memories as a child, listening amongst the audience, and gazing upwards at the golden pinecones that hung from the ceiling. They looked heavy. Would they fall and smash my head? I was often suppressing a cough, terrified to disrupt the revered atmosphere of the moment, but always enjoying the music. As a kid, I was lucky to attend a couple of old music concerts that took place in that room. My mother’s mentor, Jorge Fresno, was an Argentinian guitarist – a pupil of Narciso Yepes and good friend of Tomás Marco – and used to play there quite often. It is safe to say that Jorge was one of the greatest guitar players to grace the concert halls (and throne rooms!) of Spain.
I must have been eight-years-old or so at the time. It would have been unlikely for someone my age to be spotted in that room, not for lack of access, but for lack of interest. Often, in these concerts, the room was half empty. The thought would have seemed unlikely too of me and my friends recording our music in that very same place almost twenty years later.
I often feel that composers and musicians are unlikely beings, but I hesitate to word it that way, for I am one them. And the thought of naming them as such invokes a narcissistic feeling in my gut, which I dislike. I don’t want to feel special, nor meaningful – that would be distracting – and I don’t think I am. I don’t mean unlikely as a synonym for ‘better or worse than.’ What I mean by ‘unlikely’ is that it requires a succession of demographically unusual events for someone to not only want to be a composer or a musician, but to be able to pull it off to the extent that it becomes a liveable existence. There is a lot of drive, hard-work, discipline and all that. But I feel that there’s also a lot of luck. You have to be lucky to be given the opportunity to do this, to grow up in a place where it is a possibility, where your family and friends support it, where you can share it openly and sincerely, where you can progress academically, professionally, mentally, emotionally… Actually, maybe the word isn’t ‘unlikely’, but ‘lucky’!
Either way, to me, the formation of our collective is a consequence of two things. On the one hand, that very series of unlikely situations happening simultaneously in each and every one of our lives. On the other hand, once together, a great reciprocal need to share between the people that form our also unlikely group of friends. Matan comes from Australia, Caterina is Colombian-Italian, Haku is South Korean, Jan is German, Ciaran is Irish, Edu is Brazilian, Rekha is Malaysian, Guillaume is Belgian, Rob and Jeremy are American, and I myself am Spanish. We all come from tremendously different cultural backgrounds, educations, faiths and musical traditions. And we share so much. Above all, a great friendship, fuelled by our common interests and passions, and by that need for sharing them all with each other, to keep in touch, to collaborate and make things together, music, films, whatever comes. If the path is shared, then it is special and meaningful. And I dare now say this, for it is common, and it is shared.
Back in the throne room, during the recording, there were some new faces, and many familiar ones as well. Some of these musicians had held me as a baby on their laps. A few of them I had just met. My mother, my uncle, my childhood mate at the town’s children’s orchestra, my new composer friends. And the lovely members of O’Carolan. How unlikely that a local band which I listened to on repeat as a kid – the very one that introduced Irish traditional music into my life – was in that room, as members of the ensemble, smiling as part of this unlikely project of Irish conception. Ireland has been a blessing to me as a composer, filmmaker and in general as a person – but that’s a story for another time… That day I was as sick as I’ve ever been. I had a terrible fever and I was feeling nauseous. And I felt like the happiest person, lucky to be sharing with all these people, back in that room that all of a sudden didn’t seem that serious.
And that’s really what it’s all about. Sharing and learning together. Meeting new people, reconnecting with old friends, making music, filming stuff, and having a good time together.
Sadly, Jorge passed away in 2015. I only met him a handful of time, but I somehow miss him so much – he played such a huge role in my life, and he didn’t even know. The image of Alba, his daughter, playing her Viola da Gamba next to my mother, first in Aljafería, and then in the Christ Church down in Rathgar, bringing to life the music of this wonderful group of people, makes me feel that perhaps it wasn’t all that unlikely. It was such a gift! Being a musician, a composer, is indeed an uncertain path. However there is something that I know for sure within all this. If I grow to be an old man, I will joyfully look back on a life well shared.
https://vimeo.com/371108468
Strength in Numbers
Matan Franco
The common thread, it can be argued, which unites most music composers and their creative practice is that, in most instances, their work unfolds in intense isolation. Sure, there may be elements of collaboration – rehearsing with an ensemble, working with a writer whose libretto you are setting to music, or, in the case of music for film and media, working closely with the director to achieve a common vision. However, when it comes to the nuts and bolts of composing, the actual meeting of pen and paper, when small black dots, lines and dashes are applied to an overwhelmingly blank manuscript, it is these extended periods of time which most commonly occur in laborious solitude.
This idea of walking a singular (and at times lonely) path is often reinforced by the tertiary institutions which train us, in their critiques/feedback/emphasis that we should be aspiring to find a ‘unique’ and highly ‘individualised’ compositional voice – no pressure! And so, going against this dogma can feel somewhat counterintuitive to many young composers in the early stages of their careers.
And yet, this is exactly how Sonic Gate Studios came to be. As we reached the conclusion of our 12 months of full-time study together, two things became abundantly clear:
With most of us being international students and having left our families behind in our home countries, we found a deep friendship and kinship with one another – we had become a family, and an incredible support system that we could each depend on. This was a serendipitous meeting of souls, one which we were eager to nourish and grow well into the future;
Each one of us had a unique skillset and ‘area of expertise’, which were fully complementary and compatible – so why not make the most of it?
And so, the idea to form SGS, to go ‘into the world’ as a united collective of multidisciplinary artists, came quite intuitively and organically. It has been a means for us to keep in constant contact, even from all corners of the globe (we have fortnightly SGS Zoom meetings). More so, it has held us all creatively accountable, both individually and collectively. While many of us were faced with the challenge of having to re-integrate and re-settle back into our local creative communities in our home countries following graduation from the course, our SGS projects have enabled us to expand our horizons while lessening the distance which separates us.
To date, we have created a music-driven non-narrative film exploring the history and significance of the Aljafería Palace in Zaragoza, Spain (in collaboration with musicians local to the area); we orchestrated the music for a Malaysian horror film, which was recorded by a 60-piece orchestra in Sofia, Bulgaria (for which we typeset and prepared all the music); we have recorded an EP in a church in Rathgar in collaboration with Irish musicians – a ‘love letter’ to the country in which all members of SGS met; we have composed bespoke music for the 2020 European Press Prize, celebrating the best journalistic stories to come out of Europe in the last year; and we are currently composing a suite of works in collaboration with a Belgian-based Piano Trio, to be performed and recorded in Ireland next year, as well as a number of choral works (composed by our female members) with texts by female Irish poets, also to be performed in Ireland in 2021 – with each passing project, it feels as if the distance between each of us diminishes, enabling us to ‘visit’ parts of the world we may not otherwise have been able to.
In light of the unprecedented global pandemic which has severely impacted the whole world at large this year, as well as the serious climate concerns, social and political unrest we are witnessing, the idea that ‘strength lies in numbers’ perhaps rings true now more than ever before. Our ability to weather these storms and reach the other side as intact as possible will heavily rely on our putting aside our differences and coming together in support of one another. With the global arts industry being one of the first and hardest hit, and which will likely be the last to fully recover, our ability and desire to collaborate with one another (as we do in Sonic Gate Studios) will go a long way not only in extending our individual arts practices and revitalising and rebuilding our industry, but in reminding the world of the magnificent beauty that exists all around us – and this is something which we shouldn’t have to experience in isolation.
Sonic Gate Studios is a collective of international sound artists engaged in interdisciplinary projects.
The team comprises:
Néstor Romero Clemente (Spain, based in Ireland)
Caterina Schembri (Colombia/Italy, based in Ireland)
I am a visual artist and improvising musician. I trained as a painter, but also worked with various media including sound, installation/performance, sculpture, print and photography during my studies. My visual work since leaving college in 1987 has largely centred around photomontage, and in recent years has moved into painting and drawing (still using photography as source).
I began using sound pretty much from the start in college, using found metals, initially to record with, and later use in live work, inspired by the work of Test Dept., Einsturzende Neubauten, z’ev & Bow Gamelan. I was also inspired by the work of Dome, :zoviet*france:, Hafler Trio, Strafe Für Rebellion, Nurse With Wound and others, and began constructing very simple tape collages which were used for tape/slide works and installations.
Apart from a brief flirtation with guitar in my teens, I am not musically trained. I got the hang of drums some years later and really enjoyed the physicality of that instrument, but never played in a band. Since college, I have continued in the vein of constructed and adapted instruments and tape collages.
Cabinet Of Curiosities instrument, in concert with Judith Ring, I&E Festival 2006, Printing House TCD (photo: Sean MacErlaine)
I’ve been passionate about music from an early age, and my love of the post-punk spirit of DIY and experimentation found a crossover with the further reaches of sonic exploration coming from the Fine Art approaches to sound as a sculptural medium. I then discovered improvised music and was smitten. The possibilities just seemed wide open. There was a directness and a simplicity that was really appealing. It was also a much quicker route to producing music by sidestepping years of training. Of course, it’s not just musical ability you bring to the table, it’s imagination and intelligence too.
The possibilities expand further when working with other players in an open dialogue with parity of presence, no grandstanding, all listening attentively as much as playing or not playing. Listening is key. I established a strong connection with drummer David Lacey early on, and went on to play and record on many occasions over the years in a very sympathetic and satisfying working relationship for which I’m really grateful – the natural chemistry is a source of great joy.
I’ve also worked with other Irish players such as Judith Ring, Jurgen Simpson, Paul Vogel, & Dennis McNulty, as well as UK players Max Eastley & Mark Wastell. We put out a trio album to critical acclaim on Mark’s Confront label in 2019, The Map Is Not The Territory.
I have pursued this area of exploration ever since because it’s really where my heart’s at. I’m in my element. It’s a completely obsessive and highly fetishised world for me. I’ve always loved the idea of making something from discarded materials, the idea of transformation; base metals into… not quite gold, but something beautiful or intriguing at least.
Percussion stand adapted from roto-tom stand photographed in studio, c.2009.
These materials inspire a particular approach with all their tactile and evocative qualities. Whole worlds can be constructed with these sounds with the compositional possibilities of the computer (4 track in the early days forced a particular discipline that’s served me well since). That’s the other side of it for me: the idea of making your own unique sound world, evolving a voice that establishes a particular presence, one that hopefully moves beyond your influences and into something different, something engaging and satisfying.
Brian Eno’s work in the 70s and early 80s was another significant inspiration for me, especially his On Land album. In his liner notes, he speaks specifically about the idea of landscape, memory, and a sense of place. He also mentions the notion of psychoacoustic space—the idea of using recording technology to create imaginary spaces and atmospheres: the suggestive power of sound. This absolutely got the hook in me.
Field recording has been a core element of my practice since 1986, when I bought a secondhand recording Walkman whilst on summer work in London (no summer work in recession-hit Ireland in the 80s). My immediate environment in all its fascinating detail became framed between my ears whilst listening on headphones. I was completely taken with the possibilities this offered for further manipulation/recombination, enriching my sound palette.
I went on to buy a DAT recorder in the 90s, and latterly have used the Zoom H4N flash card recorder, as a handy device that can be carried in a back pack. A lot of my recording would be opportunistic – hearing something that takes my fancy and capturing it, or returning later. For more involved recording, especially wildlife recording, I use a Sound Devices hard disc recorder with DPA mics in a windshield, or a Telinga parabolic reflector for capturing bird song. I’ve built up a considerable archive over the years, which I dip into for compositions which are either wholly field recording-based, or are one part of a composition, to add particular colour, texture and depth.
Feedback set-up with contact mics in metal vessels, from launch gig for A Congregation Of Vapours album at the Goethe Institute, Dublin, 2012.
When composing, improvisation is essential in building the material from the ground up, mainly because I can’t conceive of structures in the abstract as someone traditionally trained would do. But then that is only one system. Mine is another, admittedly more labour-intensive and time consuming one. I’m approaching it from an artist’s perspective – painting and sculpting with sound. Sound as raw, malleable matter to be manipulated – prodded, poked, pushed, pulled, beaten, hammered, scalded, stretched, scarred, chopped, diced, dessicated, burnt, and glued, taped, nailed and bolted back together again.
The editing of the material is where the pieces find their form. The painterly/sculptural analogy is apt as the sounds get built up and hacked back quite brutally, cross-hatched with other material, further distilled and recombined, depending on what’s working or not. Pieces can start out relatively long and end up a fraction of their original length. And sometimes shorter pieces that weren’t strong enough to stand alone end up being stitched together into a larger piece. Listening is a really important part of the editing process. I would usually put rough mixes on CD and audition them at home for a period of time, let them settle – hearing them in much the same conditions as the listener. If there’s areas where I find I’m losing interest, then it’s got to be pruned. I shouldn’t lose interest for a second. I’ve got to be totally involved all the way.
4 & 6 string devices made with guitar and bass strings mounted on teak beams, made in 2014.
In 2005 I established my CDR label Room Temperature. I’ve released mostly solo material on the label since, in EP and full length album form, as well as two collaborative albums with David Lacey and a live album with David Lacey, Paul Vogel & Dennis McNulty. I’ve also released albums on Farpoint, Stolen Mirror, Unfathomless and Confront. September 2020 saw the release of my 16th item on my label, Plundered Lumber.
This is a 52 minute album comprising 13 tracks using mostly bass guitar and metal percussion. It’s a return of sorts to a form of composing last used about 20 years ago, where an emphasis on rhythmic interactions and melodic interplay was the main driver. I’ve used little or no processing (apart from some delay and reverb) and no field recordings. Some delays were added after, some used during recording, as a phantom rhythmic element to play against.
I did a lot of this kind of thing on the technically limited but (with lateral thinking) creatively manipulable 4 track in the 90s with a mixture of drum kit, gongs, non-European percussion, found metals and bass and various small stringed instruments picked up in markets and the like. I used to put compositions on tape and give them to friends. Before graduating to digital tape and CDR, and long before online presence and downloads, the cassette underground was a lively and many-splendored thing.
One other recent development in my practice has been the creation of tribute pieces to artists whose work has had an influence on me. It began with a piece to celebrate ex-Wire member Bruce Gilbert’s 70th in 2016, and went on in 2017 to celebrate the work of Bow Gamelan Ensemble’s Paul Burwell, marking the tenth anniversary of his death. I also marked Wire’s 40th anniversary in 2017, and the 40th anniversary of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures in 2019.
These pieces usually have about a 10 – 15 minute run time, and use a combination of edits of their music and music that influenced them, as well as other cultural influences – film, TV and radio, which I combine with current affairs snippets, comedy and interviews to create a rich portrait. This year I produced my most ambitious tribute yet – to the 1970s music of David Bowie, which ran to just under 22 minutes:
Another work recently completed in a similar vein, though it’s not a tribute as such, is Spectral Vectors, which was composed for Come Hell Or High Water, a monthly series of live events on the Thames foreshore at Poplar, organised by Bow Gamelan Ensemble’s Anne Bean and others. I was to have performed at this in September but the pandemic put paid to that. So Anne suggested I make a sound work in lieu. The piece I’ve composed takes as its starting point the idea of ghosts of the Thames; river revenants in the form of lost sounds of previous times from the river’s busier industrial past, such as ship’s horns, tugboat horns, foghorns and other industrial sounds.
Expanding on this theme, the idea of things lost/buried/hidden/removed came to mind. Documentary radio footage relating to sunken unexploded WWII ordnance and tragic drowning was combined with recent field recordings of mine made with contact mics attached to cabling beneath Millenium Bridge at St. Paul’s, amplifying sounds hidden to the naked ear, when the bridge is animated by foot traffic, wind coursing through it and sun warming it.
Hydrophone recordings also capture hidden sounds – various vessels passing, sounding thin and insubstantial as wind-up bath toys from a submarine perspective. Delving deeper, recordings made inside Greenwich foot tunnel feature; resonant metallic sounds buried beneath the river itself echo along the tunnel’s length.
Municipal greed and acts of resistance also form part of the documentary material with Bob Hoskins enlightening Barry Norman in 1982 about various development scams along the river, Malcolm MacLaren talking about the Sex Pistols’ 1977 riverboat gig, and riverboat men going on strike. This footage is animated by the addition of lost ship’s horns, populating the river with a lively, boisterous presence.
Fergus Kelly is a Dublin based visual artist/composer/improvisor. Working with field recordings, invented instruments, electronics, photomontage, painting and drawing, publishing albums via his CDR label, Room Temperature (www.roomtemperature.org)
My name is Gemma Dunleavy and I’m a yapper. I’d talk the handle off a cup. I also write and play music. I see myself as a storyteller first, then a musician. It’s where I feel my true gift is, my natural comfort is in meandering through my memories, picking out the best details to paint the clearest picture in the heads of those listening.
I’m from Sheriff Street in Dublin 1. My whole family grew up there and I still live there now. Like any inner city community there’s the good and the bad. The flats had problems with drugs and crime being rampant during the ‘90s. The heroin epidemic tore through the area and claimed the lives of many young, unemployed, and vulnerable people that were left to rot by the system. The skeletons of that epidemic still haunt us today. There were many effects of this: lives were lost, families destroyed, crime in the area rose, and the resulting social stigma from outside the community. The most important side effect was something different: resilience. People had nothing else but each other, no other options but to push through and that’s what we did and continue to do up to this day. Our community is rich in spirit, hope, and support. We have some of the best talent: athletes (boxer Pierce O’Leary), writers and artists (see ADUANTESby poet Michelle Byrne and painter Tara Kearns – playwright Sean O’Casey lived here too), and a string of musicians and directors hailing from our area (Luke Kelly and others). I’m extremely proud of where I’m from and my desire to preserve our community and protect it from aggressive redevelopment will never diminish.
I learned the value of a good story from a young age – I grew up in between my two nannies and their friends talking around the sitting room table. They would talk about living in the tenements and their memories there, describe the poor conditions and tragedies with a smile on their faces, and a gleam in their eyes, as if they were chatting about green meadows and clear skies. They spoke with such fondness you could almost feel the warmth from their bodies. They were proud women with strong roots and they made me proud to be from Sheriff Street. I loved their sense of togetherness, the laughs, and the community. Growing up with them meant growing up in a community, being raised by a community of people – something that’s not so common anymore. Through telling my own story I saw parallels between myself and them, finding comforts in things that from the outside might sound jarring. I had an aha! moment where in some strange way I was in my own version of their tenements. Their voices saying “We had nothing but we had it all” made sense.
I delved into my memories to tell five of the most important stories I had. Each story was from a different perspective based on a stereotype I grew up around. I dressed each one in chords and melody – and I had the help of the gritty voices that shaped my childhood. I tied it all together under the name of Up De Flats. For the concept I created five characters based on friends, family, neighbours, and myself. I would step into each of these characters and tell their story for each song. Before any of this became music, I gave each character a name and I’m going to take a moment to introduce you to these characters whose names haven’t yet stepped outside of my head (until now):
Chantelle is a seventeen-year-old from Sheriff Street. She goes out with Dayo, a fella who is a couple years her senior. He’s mysterious. People never quite know what he’s up to exactly but it’s probably not good. He’s not shy of a police chase, but he never gets caught. Chantelle knows his moves but he protects and respects her and their nights cruising down the Boundary Wall in the car where they can forget about everyone else are enough to show her he’s for her only. The boys on the street respect him and all the girls fancy him – he has street cred, making him feel all the more desirable to Chantelle. Edel is a desperate mother whose son has fallen victim to the heroin epidemic. “He’ll never change, but I made him this way” she wails as she describes him as a beautiful setting sun while watching him fade away from the devastating effects of drugs.
Paulie is a young man who’s grown up in the flats with his single mother and six siblings. Being the eldest, he was often left to raise his siblings as alcoholism took over his mother after his father’s death by suicide. He spent his later teenage years in detention centres and has only ever earned money through drugs and robberies. Now out of prison, his past means he will always be looking over his shoulder – but he will never let anyone in because in his eyes, the pain he has suffered is enough of a weapon to wipe anyone out. And if it was necessary that’s what he would do. He has a stern look – no one would dare cross him – but he would die for his siblings, and grandmother whose voice he hears at night when he’s alone and scared telling him, “It’s alright, son. I’m here”.
Kelly is a young single mother tired of the cyclical patterns of working class life. Her three kids, and the housing crisis, make it hard for her to ever get on her feet. She longs to be able to escape to a better life but is locked in the social welfare system. When times get hard she’s plagued by memories of her brother’s face who she lost to suicide. With pride as high as the sky, she’ll never let anyone know how she’s feeling, coming off as a fun-loving, strong mother who sometimes gets tired, but never gets low.
The last story is a love letter to my community and the only one that is fully from my own perspective. I was a young girl who had to move away to pursue her career and in doing that I realised that everything that people search all over the world for had always been on my doorstep: a sense of purpose. I reminisced about the soundtrack of the summer getting played by the police sirens and the blue lights flashing through my window at night being something that calmed me down.
Making this release was a tough – yet cathartic – journey to go on, down the dark and dreary, soft and warm lanes of my memory. At times it was hard, revisiting certain memories, but I felt privileged to finally understand and be able to articulate my frustration at the classist discrimination and prejudice that effects working class areas in Dublin. There was a fire burning inside me to give a voice to the other side of the traits these stereotypes were often demonised for. Behind the anger, the frustration, the addiction, and the crime was a common denominator: pain. I wanted to give a voice to that pain to show all our flaws and beauty, vulnerability, and rawness. I wanted to strip back all our layers because I know no hearts like the hearts I’ve grown up around in my community. I wanted to reveal our characters in a space where we weren’t going to be demonised.
I had no idea when I began shaping these stories that they would become my debut EP, but four months later, the stories have been listened to thousands of times, falling on many different ears. Something I’m so, so grateful for. For years, the media and authorities slandered us and we had no voice. But now, people are finally listening.
