{"id":384,"date":"2019-09-24T08:23:34","date_gmt":"2019-09-24T07:23:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/?p=384"},"modified":"2019-09-24T08:23:36","modified_gmt":"2019-09-24T07:23:36","slug":"spoken-voice-and-soundscape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/2019\/09\/24\/spoken-voice-and-soundscape\/","title":{"rendered":"SPOKEN VOICE AND SOUNDSCAPE:"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

JUXTAVOICES: JUST BRILLIANT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a\nlarge number of Rochdale-based arts organisations providing a wide range of\nfantastic services all across the arts. These organisations not only provide\nentertainment but also boost the Borough\u2019s sense of community and help the town\nstand steadfast against those who come in seeking to create racial tension.\nWhilst there are areas of huge deprivation in the Borough, these organisations\nhelp the drive to improve levels of literacy and opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With so many\nlocal arts-projects taking place across the Borough, there was rarely any need for\nall across the arts<\/em> to report on\nevents from beyond our borders. Sometimes, though, all across the arts needed\nto explore and to look at what else is \u2018out there\u2019 so that we could work with\nour local artists to develop their own art forms and respond to new\ninnovations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was for\nthat reason that we once went to see a Sheffield-based group called Juxtavoices\nperform in a church in Whalley Range. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was a\nthought-provoking, engaging, dramatic but ever-so-slightly-uncomfortable\nexperience. However, it was precisely what art should be; challenging,\nreflective and dislocating. Voices, struggling to articulate thought and\nemotion, whispered and screamed and seduced and accosted from nowhere as a\nsetting sun slanted through a stained-glass window scene of crucifixion. Some\nof the words were spoken from the head, others sung from the heart and others\nwrenched and torn from the soul of Mankind. At times the words clashed in\ndiscordant, primeval white-noise, (though I know that phrase is both\nincongruous and anachronistic) and at others sounded like the coherent\naspirations of founding fathers of a newer world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Darkness\ndescended and shadow changed this \u2018imaginate\u2019<\/em> landscape so that, as members of this thirty-odd strong antechoir (as\nthey call themselves) moved stealthily through the pews and peoples congregated\nthere, they seemed to be ghostly, of no substance; wanderers forever, leaving\nonly echoes in the air that were the here-and-gone warnings we all hear each\nday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Juxtavoices, here in rehearsal,
created a dystopian soundscape in performance <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

We heard\nwhispers of danger, accusation, fear and suspicion and we, the individuals\nhearing those words, were left to interpret them and to prioritise them in our\nown way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was\ntheatre of the mind, so carnival-esque as to be almost grotesque. It seemed\nastonishing at the end of the show, (though in truth it was more revelation<\/em>\nthan show) that these characters who had seemed so wearied, so beaten, so\nblind, so lame, so hungry and so poor, so pleading for liberation from\nconformity and yet so pleading to be part of a caring society, were simply\nartists and writers delivering a performance they hoped might give us all more\nself-awareness and create more tolerance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\nperformance was all a comment, perhaps, on how we deal with dementia, respect\nour elders, and learn to live together, whatever our ethnicity or religion, in\ntrust. Juxtavoices in many ways delivered a soundscape of our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was,\ntruly, exceptional. What we saw was poetry being used in a new way, and\ndelivered as broken snippets of overheard conversation, some of it repeated\nover and over in mantra-like pleas or statements of affirmation or simple\nrequests for help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We drove home\nremembering, for some reason, films like Network with Peter Finch but our heads\nwere filled, too, with the opening scenes of Under Milk Wood<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was a\ntechnique we had seen employed only briefly by Rochdale writers, when\nTouchstones Creative Writing Group and Spiral Dance had created words for the Dance\nMeets Sport showcase earlier in the year. Just Poets and the Touchstones\nCreative Writing Group even explored how to persuade Juxtavoices to consider a\ncollaborative performance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The forum of\nRochdale borough revenue-funded arts organisations held later that week was\nbuzzing with talks of new initiatives and it is inevitable that some\nadventurous productions will struggle to capture mainstream audiences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, all across the arts<\/em> will always applaud\nthe courage of artists seeking to deliver their art form in new ways, with the\nsame courage as shown by Juxtavoices with their full-on, even almost\nconfrontational deliveries. A visit to their site at  https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/juxtavoiceschoir\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n

would be a\nrewarding journey, and you can find much of interest about them, too, at the\nBBC artists\u00b4 pages. Formed by Martin Archer in 2010, this Yorkshire based\nso-called antechoir has open membership for all singers and orators respective\nof their levels of training and expertise. Voices are often allowed to\ndetermine the shape of a performance as it proceeds through a mix of simple\nmusical scores, recited poetry and improvisation. Performance pieces usually\nsimply emerge from workshop rehearsal exercises designed to increase group\nconfidence and sense of adventure through improvised non-standard techniques.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That first time I saw them made a\nmassive impact on me. A few nights later Steve Bewick and I created and\npresented a sixty minute all across the\narts<\/em> programme devoted to them on Crescent Community Radio and Steve also\nincluded frequent references to them on his Jazz programmes on fcum radio,\nbroadcasting on line. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later that same year my own poetry\nperformance group, Just Poets, slightly adapted (ie slavishly followed) a\nJuxtavoices-styled performance of original material for a National Poetry Day\nevent in Blackburn Cathedral to an audience of around six hundred people.  The \u00b4show\u00b4 we delivered certainly had a more\nprofound impact than our usual more refined readings of traditional and\noriginal poetry. Juxtavoices don\u00b4t accept a soporific audience but instead look\nto create involvement and reaction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Had we stayed on our own territory,\nrather than follow Sidetracks And Detours all\nacross the arts,<\/em> we might never have found out how dramatic these almost\nflash-mob style performances can be. So, if you like your arts to be\nprovocative, engaging and even somewhat disturbing, look out for a Juxtavoices\nperformance near you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JUXTAVOICES: JUST BRILLIANT There is a large number of Rochdale-based arts organisations providing a wide range of fantastic services all across the arts. These organisations not only provide entertainment but also boost the Borough\u2019s sense of community and help the town stand steadfast against those who come in seeking to create racial tension. Whilst there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-performing-arts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}