For a few days before going to the protest, I gathered images of women and girls and arranged them in a group: ancestors, dolls, figures, goddesses, paintings, the living and the dead, some with whom I had been communing. Some are hidden in veils and masks and voodoo. Some are brides or in braids or shy or bold. Daughters, stepdaughters, daughters-in-law, mother, mothers, aunts, grandmothers, great greats, sisters-in-law, relatives in hiding. C. D.
Sonic thresholds
Transitions and transformations
This post’s playlist presents recordings from the PennSound archive that explore the continuum between language, music, and other types of sound.
I want to begin with a few related recordings of Nathaniel Mackey and his ongoing serial poem Song of the Andoumboulou. In Mackey’s introduction to a 1997 KWH reading he discusses the poem’s relationship to the Dogon funeral song of the same name, recorded by Francois Di Dio in 1974. Listen to Mackey’s poem Song of the Andoumboulou: 18. I am always struck by this moment when, near the end of the Dogon recording, as the pitch from the horn wavers up and down, I hear an ambiguity between what could be perceived as a human shout and the sound of a musical instrument. It’s this type of threshold point that has been in the back of my mind when I listen to poetry recordings lately.