weaving Voices 01.04.2025 issuu - Flipbook - Page 77
the choir and choir leader. I propose that the relationship between
the motifs of the carpet and the specific sounds resulting in the
musical improvisation are influenced by the natural environment,
and by the collective consciousness of the creative group.115
This experiment in creating a musical improvisation which responded
to the actual woven carpet, was proposed, and guided by the
founder and former conductor of Soharóza choir, Dóra Halas. The
‘sounding carpet’ improvisation was therefore also an outcome of the
weaving workshop, since the wall carpet was created by dozens of
participants from the village of Szalatnak. The musical interpretation
of the carpet by Dóra and the participants, in this way might then be
thought about as the sound de-codification of the village carpet. The
result was an improvisatory musical interpretation of the carpet that
we could use and perform as a choral piece.
Beyond the traditions
When a select group of people are creating the de-codification of a
textile pattern, the question of ‘why’ might arise in one who observes
the working process. Why might the participants choose to do one
thing instead of another in this kind of vocal improvisation? This type
of vocal improvisational activity actively encourages playfulness. Not
the playfulness of winner and loser in the context of competition,
but the playfulness of an infant who is still in a pre-verbal phase of
childhood. I am left wondering just how much the attitude of the
participants, might potentially reconnect to the state of mind of the
pre-verbal communication of an infant.
in a participation that frequently becomes consubstantiation. […] By virtue
of the participation, to act on the symbol of a being or object is to act on
the being or object itself.”116
The main intention of such an activity is to re-experience the
relationship between objects and the natural environment, enabling
a reconnectivity to language as a lived experience through a preconceptual observation of the environment. This state of mind
has something to do with a childlike approach of discovering the
world, like an artist who immerses themself in the first reception
of a material context. In this pre-conceptual perception, lights,
shapes, sounds, touches, smells, and all the senses are more freely
interpenetrated: tastes can take shape, or lights can sound. As Géza
Balázs, a Hungarian linguist states:
“The general opinion among folklorists about the beginnings of folk
poetry is that in the world of ancient and primitive societies, thought
and consciousness were indivisible [...] ancient (primitive) language was
closely related to ancient forms of consciousness, including art. [...] In all
aspects, we can speak of a total art that was fluid, undivided, initially not
permanently established, but then living in very solidified forms.”117
The same question can be seen from a different perspective when
we think about the analogy between the infant and the member of
a tribal culture, (termed ‘a primitive’) by the French anthropologist
Lucien Levy- Bruhl in the early twentieth century. Lévy-Bruhl states:
“The symbols of the primitives are not generally based on a relation
established in the mind, between a symbol and what it represents, but rather
115 An extract of the mentioned improvisation can be seen and listened to in a short documentary about the
Weaving Voices project events in Szalatnak: Hangfonalak a közösség szövetében [Weaving Voices as Threads of
Community] (2024) Available at: https://www.sinumtheatre.eu/erasmus-2/ [Accessed 20 September 2024].
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116 Lévy-Bruhl, L. (1938) L’experience mystique et les symboles chez les primitives. Paris: Alcan, p. 225. See
also: Czertok, H. (2016) Theatre of exile. Translated by R. Elliot. London, New York: Routledge, p. 81.
117 Balázs G. A művészet és a nyelv születése - Szemiotika, művészetelmélet, antropológiai nyelvészet. (2021)
Budapest: MNYKNT–IKU, p. 140. (Translated by G. Pintér-Németh.)
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