Simplify Simplify Simplify

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Simplify Simplify Simplify

“The musician is the document. He is the information itself. The impact of stored information is transmitted not through records or archives, but through the human response to life” Ben Sidran

A short while back we submitted our proposals illustrating what we intend to do in response to the residency at the School of Scottish Studies archive. Around the same time I was reading Ben Sidran’s book Black Talk where I found some interesting parallels between the oral culture discussed in his book and the recordings of an oral culture contained in the archive. What does recording do to oral culture? It makes the oral aural and in my opinion as well as an act of preservation, helps to keep something of the oral tradition alive through mimesis, adaptation and transmission.

My proposal therefore is a simple one: to sing songs and to talk both about the songs and why I sing them and more widely about my time in the archive. It is refreshing to think of speech as an “improvisational and spontaneous act” and I’m not particularly interested in rehearsing some script to be repeated unerringly throughout our tour. I prefer to think and speak on my feet, so to speak. This simple approach is also a reflection of the recordings I have listened to in the archive. They are not “performances” in the concert sense; often they are intimate sharings, in the singer or storytellers home, where the gap between audience and performer is diminished. In these recordings I get a grasp of the idea of the “democratic muse” and hear music weaved into the fabric of everyday life and self generated, not mediated by other forces more interested in short term profit. This do it yourself aspect of culture ought to be preserved and propogated, not mourned.

Posted by Drew Wright