ShamanSong, by Joan La Barbara

ShamanSong

by Joan La Barbara

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1.	Rothko 24:35	info	buy track
2.	ShamanSong 25:26	info	buy track
3.	Calligraphy II/Shadows 19:58	info	buy track

about

ShamanSong is a concert suite comprised of selected excerpts from a film score I originally composed for "Anima," Elizabeth Harris Productions, with additional material composed specifically for this new recording. The film tells of a woman's journey into the desert, carrying the "baggage," literally and emotionally, of a lifetime. There, she performs the labors and rituals necessary to enter "the world where magic happens." As there was no dialogue in the film, I wanted to create music that would have a correspondence to the visual perspective of the film, done on location in White Sands National Monument in New Mexico, and so most of the voice and percussion recordings were done at a location high up in the rocky cliffs of Diablo Canyon, New Mexico, utilizing the natural acoustical situation, with ravens and echoes, birds and thunder. As the film made extensive use of symbolism, I chose to relate certain instruments to a particular character, event, or feeling, and used specific sonic motives to signal symbolic image references. Thus, the voice is a comforting spirit ("The Voice of the Land"); the cello reflects the main character's somewhat Victorian nature; the raven is a messenger; the drums mirror the exuberant youthful energy of a young stallion, the woman's sole companion on her journey; the music-box waltz is memory, and so on. In creating "The Voice of the Land" I alluded to the softly undulating landscape with microtonal melismas reflecting the complicated shifting terrain of the dunes. I used a series of resonating plucked sounds for cello, harp, and music box to refer to specific image material: crystals and stones dropping, stars twinkling and falling. For some of the "memory scenes" I manipulated sounds to alter their quality: a metal rod strummed across the ridges of a cut glass crystal bell I modified electronically to heighten and soften the edges of the sound; a sharply heaved sigh I stretched and twisted to reveal its innate otherworldliness. Plaintive descending chords of soft hammers striking a gender (from an ancient gamelan), tar and dumbek, shakuhachi, music-box tines, rain-stick, and African rattles all are blended with sighs and whispers, lamentations and ululations, calls, cries, lullabies, and vocal winds to weave a strange mystery.

– Joan La Barbara

credits

released January 1, 1998

Joan La Barbara, voice, percussion, computer, electronic keyboard, synthesizer
Polly Tapia Ferber, hand drums, tar, dumbek
Erika Duke Kirkpatrick, cello
Kristina Melcher, gamelan
Gaylord Mowrey, bowed piano
Tao Chen, dizi
Si-Si Chen, yangqi and percussion
Bao-Li Zhang, erhu

Released by New World Records in 1998

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New World Records Brooklyn, New York

Anthology of Recorded Music, Inc., which records under the label New World Records, was founded in 1975.

We are dedicated to the documentation of American music that is largely ignored by the commercial recording companies.

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