The radio musical radio tale Together (sl. Skupaj) was a commissioned by Radio Slovenia, in their series of radio plays that explores the soothing potentials of the radio-phonic medium, for children with an experience of hospitalization. It is a part of 'B-Air: Art Infinity Radio' project, in which we are also partners with our non-profit organization, TWIXTlab, from Athens, Greece. We are coming from the fields of anthropology, contemporary art, pedagogy and musicology, and in B-Air we are working on a different theme, particularly teaching and making music and sound art with Deaf and hard-of-hearing adolescents and young adults. However, we were greatly informed and inspired by RTV Slovenia's research-for-creation work with neuroscientists and developmental psychologists towards radio- creation. We also find a common denominator in our research about the Deaf, and the Radio Slovenia inquiry about hospitalized children, namely the notion of "vulnerability", and the feeling of being "left out" or "marginalized". And to some extent, we are bringing our own findings, but also our own experiences and artistic intuition in play, to address those issues. With this work we sincerely hope to contribute to the cause, for both the general audience, and to the arts-and-sciene research that underlies the project.
The story is about the unexpected friendship of a bird and a feather. It departs from a bed -presumably a hospital bed- where the feather lives inside a pillow. As the bedding is shuffled, the feather finds itself out of the pillow, flying around in the room until a slight breeze takes it out of the window. It softly lands onto the city, amidst the urban environment, where the feather sees a wounded bird by the sidewalk. They meet, exchange wishes and needs, and they decide to fly together combining what each other misses: The bird has a wounded wing and asks the feather to mend it by joining it. And the feather urges to see the world, after being enclosed in the pillow, and asks the bird to be its companion. Together they start their voyage, a flight over pleasant locations around the world. It is in fact a story of anti-heroes, or at least of heroes that are somehow troubled, non-wholesome, and they gain power by helping each other out.
For the composition, we are drawing upon various musical elements. The plain vocal melodic lines are inspired by lullabies. The whole composition follows an oneiric (dream-like) approach, without the intention to necessarily make audiences fall asleep. Rather, we aim at evoking the feelings you get from a dream of flying, which, according to several psychologists, is associated with relief.
The piece is written for two "instruments", that are seldom in music for children. The first instrument is a Minimoog synthesizer, which is responsible for the straightforward musical parts, a legendary monophonic analog synth born in the 1970s. Minimoog's sound is blended together with the second "instrument", which is today's "tape player", namely the use of field recordings.
In one hand, field recordings are meant to represent, simulate and blend into actual living environments. For hospitalized children, those environments are not necessarily pleasant -partly because of the feeling of loss of agency that they entail. So their swift incorporation into the melodic and rhythmical structure is meant to bring about a position of control, or trans-substantiation into something positive. In the other hand, the Voyager's vast range of timbres enables us to perform this bridge.
Minimoog is a modern day church organ, able to perform the sounds of an orchestra by itself. With numerous presets, and the ability to change the envelope and parameters of all sounds, it can create new timbres to match with the soundscape compositions that engulfs the entire radio piece. This instrument has a powerful ability to create new sounds that don’t exist, that are created ex nihilo, thus matching such an oneiric theme in its core. We depart from something quite realistic, and through the Minimoog we introduce the oneiric textures, "fly" for a little while in its dreamscape, and land back again into reality -having gained this flight-feeling in the meantime.
In the vast range of timbres of Minimoog we sought mainly for subtle and soothing textures, adding intensity only in the crescenti. We opted for more quiet sounds that would match the imaginary flight of our two friends, specially fixing the parameters of sounds to inspire calmness and to spark imagination.
We are quite used to more "traditional" sounds in children's music. Although sound effects and sound samples have been used widely as supporting elements in children's narratives, not enough work has been put into the use of electronic musical timbre. This is why nowadays musicological research focuses on it, added that, since the late 20th century, we experience a digital revolution in music technology. We do not go into the discussion about the healing properties of particular musical frequencies. But the fact that electronic sound is gaining more and more ground into both popular music and the avant garde, made it quite interesting for us to use it in a piece made for toddlers. Besides, the history of music is an ever-evolving field, and we find that radio for children is a fine medium to introduce this emerging musical reality to young audiences.
Credits
CONCEPT, SCRIPT, DIRECTION, MUSIC • DANA PAPACHRISTOU, YORGOS SAMANTAS
SOUND DESIGN • DANA PAPACHRISTOU, YORGOS SAMANTAS, URBAN GRUDEN
TRANSLATION • ANA OBREZA, SAŠKA RAKEF, DANA PAPACHRISTOU
INTERPRETATION • MOJKA KONČAR, SAŠA TABAKOVIĆ
PRODUCTION • Radio Slovenia B-AIR
