binaural || artists || dennis báthory-kitsz and stevie balch || texts

The residency of Dennis Báthory-Kitsz and Stevie Balch had an apparently specific subject: birth songs and maternity issues, which revealed to be more complex than initially foreseen.

In particular, the Binaural team had identified some starting points for the research phase of the project:

Traditional Songbook of the region of Lafões (which includes the village of Nodar) compiled by the Alafum collective and that it includes the transcription of four lullabies.
Scheduling of an interview with Isabel Silvestre, the famous singer and promoter of the musical traditions of the neighboring village of Manhouce.
Identification of women of Nodar and neighboring villages that potentially knew lullabies and interesting histories related to maternity.

The authors used the first days of the residency to hike across the surroundings of Nodar and to make sound recordings and take pictures.

On the other hand, in the first weekend of the residency, Dennis and Stevie gave a lecture at the Conservatory of Music of Seia, a city about 80 km from Nodar. The lecture was divided in two parts: in the first one, Dennis spoke (with both wisdom and humor) about his career as an electro-acoustic composer, and on the second, he and Stevie explained their Birth Song project, either in artistic and thematic terms.

The fact that Dennis and Stevie have a rural background (Vermont, U.S.A.) and a “down-to-earth” spirit and also that they had learned some Portuguese, lead us to believe that their adaptation to Nodar and to the demands of the project would be easy and, therefore, some level of autonomy in the contact with the local population would be possible.

But after the first days of the project, it became naturally evident that the authors of the project would depend to a great extent on the organization team to carry out their fieldwork (interviews, recordings of traditional songs, etc.) and even for some guidance on the artistic conception of the project, given their obvious unfamiliarity with the local reality.

A yearning to collect as many material as possible in the shortest possible time;
Some disappointment (both of the authors and the organization) when some of the villagers were not available at the scheduled date/time for the interviews and with the fact that some of the interviewed people didn’t know or remembered any lullabies;
A programmed view of their own project which at times collided with the fluid and flexible daily life of the villagers, in particular regarding social commitments;
A strong set of ideas about the theme of the project (child births and motherhood) some of which were not fully confirmed in Nodar (for instance, the preference local women seem to have for hospital births instead of home births);
The dependence on the organization team for the location of the people to be interviewed and for the conduction of the interviews.

Given these difficulties, the authors of the project gradually started to think about alternatives/complements in thematic terms, namely by trying to integrate into the project a broader vision of maternity, including the generic paper of women in the familiar and communitarian organization (the agricultural works, the metaphor of the bread, feminine solidarity, the relation with the masculine universe, etc.).

This widening of scope of the project was mainly induced by the concern of not collecting enough material related to the initial idea of the project. However, it ended up to coincide (perhaps unconsciously) with an holistic vision according to which the diverse realities of the region are understood: For example, in the particular case of the popular songs, a clear functional segmentation does not exist (songs of work, lullabies, etc.), in such a way that a work song can be used to make a child sleep.

Another relevant aspect of the project was that a “non-artist” (Stevie Balch) was one of its authors, which happened for the first time in the Nodar’s center of arts residences. This fact ended up having a very positive influence in the development of the work and in the residency’s daily life:

by the incorporation of an humanist vision, given the professional experience of Stevie Balch as a midwife;
by Stevie’s sheer sensitivity, not excessively codified by aesthetic references, which ended up being incorporated in the project itself;
by her invaluable contribution to the dynamics of the residency (her aid in the kitchen, the exchange of gastronomy ideas, her kindness and availability towards the daily activities).

These factors attenuated the initial anxiety and greatly helped Dennis and Stevie to deal better with the unexpected situations that they were faced with, therefore contributing to the success of their project.

As it would be expected, the seeds launched in the first days gradually started to give fruit:

After a first recording of traditional songs sung by a local inhabitant, Donzília Duarte, the possibility of a second recording session was raised, with the presence of her mother, who knows tens of traditional songs.
On the other hand, a non-programmed visit to the neighboring village of Sequeiros created the opportunity for organizing a meeting with a group of local women for a recording session in the local communitarian center.
The meeting with Isabel Silvestre, the most emblematic singer of the region, was finally scheduled.

At the end of these sessions, more than fifty traditional songs had been recorded and transcribed, 10% of which were lullabies. In parallel, hundreds of photographs had been taken, several hours of soundscapes and interviews with local women had been recorded and several pieces had been composed from the sounds previously recorded.

From this moment on, the challenge that the artists were faced with had changed: how to organize, filter, and rework the immense quantity of collected material?

The holistic vision mentioned before ended up being the obvious solution: an electro-acoustic sound & photographic poem of about 30 minutes was conceived, which very successfully incorporated the diverse elements collected and worked throughout the residency.

In fact, it seemed interesting and relevant that people like Dennis and Stevie who have a strong personality and experience in their respective areas of intervention produced such a poignant and simple work, understandable for everyone that was at the final presentation of the project.

Other relevant element was the fact that the video made by Dennis and Stevie was spoken/written in Portuguese, which constituted an important effort of communication by the authors, which also contributed in a decisive way to the receptiveness of the final work by the audience, which was composed mainly by people whose only language that they know is Portuguese.