a new prayer for thundergod
drummers at the Thundergod festival outside Denu in January of 2007.
live parts
eden macadam-somer, violin
lautaro mantilla, guitar
myself, cello
recorded parts
eden macadam-somer, violin
lautaro mantilla, guitar
myself, cello
recorded parts
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BOSTON
Peter Negroponte, percussion Andy Fordyce, percussion Aaron Gelb, bass clarinet Peter Bauer, clarinet Amir Milstein, flute Jason Belcher, horn Andy Allen, saxophone Nigel Taylor, trumpet David Cordes, bass myself, field percussion Lautaro Mantilla, field percussion Eden Macadam-Somer, field percussion |
KOPEYIA
Ruben Agbeli, percussion Paul Traku, percussion Odartey Kwasi, percussion David Bedi, percussion Eric Bedi, percussion Mensah Ali, percussion and visitors at the Thunder God festival in January 2007 near Denu, Ghana |
I caught the Thundergod festival during my second trip to Ghana, and recordings I took form the piece.
It's been five years since I first visited Ghana and conceived of A New Prayer for Thundergod. I was in Kopeyia, a small village on the border with Togo, learning Ewe percussion music and soaking up West-African culture. I still remember laying under my mosquito netting, ears buzzing from a long day of trying to wrap my hands (and head) around this challengingly unfamiliar music, and listening with amazement to the soundscape of the rainy season after dark. The extraordinary variety of noises were all universally alien to my ears, but it was not only their number or novelty that held my attention – instead, I was most impressed by how powerfully reminiscent they were of the music I had spent the day trying to play. I could swear, lying awake, ears wide open, that some crafty frog had stolen into the village and liberated a few gankogui, that the bugs had made off with the drums, and that I was listening to them play their own dances. How cool would it be, I thought, to write an electronic piece based around Ewe percussion music in which sounds took the places of drums? Little did I know that seemingly innocent idea would redirect the substance my creative efforts for the next five years.
downtown Kopeyia
Just as the process of learning how to write this piece shaped my general output and artistic approach, my ideas about globalization and culture – the thematic underpinnings of Thundergod – also have been challenged and overturned on an almost annual basis since that night in Kopeyia. The product is a reflection on the joys and limitations of visiting and imagining other people, and how these processes are deeply shaped by modern systems of globalization that may be on the verge of a sudden reversal.
The song that begins and ends this piece is a prayer to Thunder God, one of the most prominent deities in the pantheons of West Africa. While he is usually recognized as a vengeful, angry god, this song asks him to allow the singers to visit America and return to help their native country. The percussion music occupying the middle region of the piece is Gahu, perhaps the most internationally ubiquitous Ewe dance. In this setting, the master drum and gankogui (bell) begin accompanied not by other drums but by a variety of sounds that alternately toy with freely imagined rhythms, wander into other Ewe dances, or trespass into the music of only distantly related cultures. Each line of sound gradually undergoes some process of transformation into an instrumental part, and at the end of each process the dance is reunited with one of its errant rhythms. Eventually, the original form is complete, and possibility, variety, and imagination have calcified into a very specific place and moment. The larger form of the piece follows a similar process of becoming: the first notes are from a live string trio playing an African song in Jordan Hall; the dance unites live musicians with recorded ones, acoustic sounds with electronic sounds, audio and visual media, and people of many different origins; and in the end, the video cuts out and we are left only with a recording of people singing in Ghana about America. After the music is over, we are all left where we began – as different peoples living in very different places and with our own very different thoughts.
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The version of the piece you hear here is a mash-up of a live recording from its premier in Jordan Hall last May with the original multimedia part. The Gahu drumming is from my work in Kopeyia during my first visit, and the song was taken as villagers walked to the Thundergod festival during my second visit. The next step with this piece will be to produce a new video featuring closer footage and mic-ing of the live performers as well as a lot more fast, quiet musique concrète from sources in the United States. Before that, however, I'll be sending it off to Kopeyia to get the reactions of those whose contributions made the piece possible but who were unable to attend the show in America.
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 I was pretty hard to miss in Denu! |
Many of the recordings featured on this piece were completed with funding from Princeton University, the Princeton Religious Life Council, the Martin A. Dale ’52 Fellowship, and the Carl A. Fields Center for Equality and Cultural Understanding. Thanks to all the musicians who agreed to play on this piece, Lautara Mantilla for his help on the trio sections, Katie He for her help in the recording process, Katarina Miljkovic for advice on the improvised instrumental cells, John Mallia for his incredible generosity with time, advice, and equipment, and Anthony Coleman for trusting I’d actually pull this whole thing off. Thanks also to Robert Levin, who first taught me about Ewe music at Princeton, Makeba Clay, who made my first visit to Ghana possible, Emmanuel and Rubin Agbeli, who hosted me in Kopeyia, and Paul Traku, who accompanied me throughout my second visit. Greatest thanks to my teachers and friends in Kopeyia and the visitors at the Thunder God festival who graciously included me and my microphones in their lives for a short but - for me - deeply profound time.
