URMILA - ENCHANTED MOTHER
A Virtual Exhibition of Artworks
SOUND COMPOSITIONS
please click on play button to listen
Hildegard Westerkamp MotherVoiceTalk Sound Composition; audio; length: 15:00
program note
The making of MotherVoiceTalk was a journey in search of resonance with the work and life of Roy Kiyooka. The final piece could be called a ‘thought piece in sounds and words’. Due to Kiyooka’s Japanese-Canadian past—like so many other Canadians, myself included, he carried within himself another language and culture and learnt to integrate it into the cultural environment of the Canadian world around him.
Kiyooka’s book Mothertalk, created from interviews with his mother, accompanied me throughout the making of MotherVoiceTalk. Roy seemed to connect frequently and strongly with his mother in her old age, just as I have been connecting with mine for many years now—connecting in other words, with their powerful female presence in us, their stories and thus the language of our childhoods.
I was struck by the multitude of moods and expressions in his speaking and sound making. Short excerpts of these became the sonic/musical materials for this piece, e.g. sounds from his zither, or ‘harp’ as he would call it, from a whistle, and his spoken voice. The Japanese voice of his mother Mary Kiyoshi Kiyooka, and the German voice of my own mother, Agnes Westerkamp, both found their way into the composition.
Hildegard Westerkamp MOMENTS OF LAUGHTER Sound Composition; for female voice and audio (solo female voice: DB Boyko); length: 15:00
program note
Dedicated to my daughter Sonja whose voice when she was eleven years old forms the basis for this composition. Sonja’s voice brought me in touch with an openness of perception, uninhibited expressiveness and physical presence that I had long forgotten. I have made recordings of her voice since she was born and from the age of four on, she has made her own recordings of stories and songs. Moments of Laughter utilizes these, tracing musically/acoustically the emergence of the infant's voice from the oceanic state of the womb: from the soundmakings of the baby to the song and language of the child.
According to Julia Kristeva, moments of laughter are those moments in infancy and early childhood in which the child recognizes the "other" as distinct from the "self". They are the first creative moments that speak of recognition of self and place. The child expresses these moments with laughter.A female voice interacts with the 2-channel audio, trying to find its own language and music, and imitates, reacts to, and plays with the child's voice. Moments of Laughter explores the edge between the "wilderness" and natural flexibility of the child's voice and the cultural formations and extended vocal techniques of the female voice.
HILDEGARD WESTERKAMP
Hildegard Westerkamp’s pioneering musical works and writing, at the intersections of environmentalism, acoustic communication, radio arts, listening practices and soundwalking, activate an awareness that sound is a decisive dimension of the world, an idea that underpins contemporary thinking across social, political, artistic and scientific practices of environmental respect and concern. Initially she worked with R. Murray Schafer and the World Soundscape Project. She is a founding and board member of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology and was long-time editor of its journal Soundscape.
She has conducted soundscape workshops, given concerts and lectures, and led Soundwalks locally and internationally. Her compositions draw attention to the act of listening itself, to the inner, hidden spaces of the environments we inhabit and to details both familiar and foreign in the soundscape. Excerpts of her compositions appear in Gus van Sants’ films “Elephant and Last Days” and more recently in soundtrack of Nettie Wild’s film “Koneline, Our Land Beautiful”. In 2017 Hildegard’s ways of composing and listening were presented on CBC IDEAS: http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/how-opening-our-ears-can-open-our-minds-hildegard-westerkamp-1.3962163
DB BOYKO
(female solo voice in the sound composition featured here “Moments of Laughter”)
One of Canada’s most adventuresome vocalists, DB Boyko has explored the boundaries of vocal music as a performer and a creative collaborator. Her vocal tour-de-force with singer Christine Duncan, on projects Idiollala, Hubbub and the Canadian tour of “Stall” set in public washrooms invite whimsy and serious listening. For 24 years DB also championed experimental practice in her role as Director/Curator of Western Front New Music, realizing innovative music productions in Vancouver. DB is currently working on Ayelet Rose Gottlieb's 13 Lunar Meditations: Summoning the Witches.