Birth Song<\/strong><\/p>\n When we began our search to re-discover birth songs, to re-animate them as part of modern birth and from them to create new sound art, we could not know that our discovery would be about pathways rather than objects.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Our first pathway was to Nodar itself. This pathway opened up to mountains and valleys, with terraced hills held back by stone walls,villages nestled in corners and on ridges, a mystery of narrow lanes,hairpin turns, and terraced vineyards eventually dropping deep into a river valley, smaller then narrower and then a cobbled lane over which arched budding grape vines.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Nodar was a sonic miracle before a song was sung: wind, birds, goatbells, doors, latches, foot steps on cobbles. Among all, the pathway of water\u2014trickle and river and rain\u2014ruled. It sluiced down from the hills, along the cobbles, through houses, into cisterns, down culverts, into the ground and the river, into the vines, into the grapes, into the wine. It spoke\u2014it sang\u2014at each point in its path.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The water soon drew me in-literally, as I fell from a ledge into the Paiva. With the river\u2019s baptism, I with drew from self-focus, and drew from the sounds of the water, the bells, a creaking door and the voice of Manuela Barile the first and last electroacoustic works of the residency,\u201cThree Songs for Manuela\u201d. Although we continued to record the environment, our roles shifted to discovery of song.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We interviewed the women of Nodar in hopes they would recall birth songs\u2014but no, that was distant past, the midwives long gone,birth now tended in hospitals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There were songs\u2014lullabies and songs of celebration, weather,childhood, love, harvest. Donz\u00edlia Duarte sang first; her voice was rich and clear, and the songs she remembered detailed, some major, some modal. Her songs\u2019 purity and simplicity stripped away one more layer of our artificial search for Something To Document.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And then came another gift\u2014two very old women from Candal singing while baking bread. Only two women were left alive now tosing a three-part song\u2014shiveringly beautiful in quavering voices,with the simple harmonies major and modal at once, rising to amelodic seventh. It was the genesis of our ultimate Nodar document, teaching us about music and work and life in just a minute\u2019s time, transforming our premise to, in Stevie\u2019s words,\u201cbread and birth,\u201d and in mine, \u201cvoice and song.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n More singing opened to us. Piedade Tavares sang a verse for us, and Donz\u00edlia and her mother sang, one after another, some twenty songs. The mother\u2019s voice was crackly in speech, but clear and smooth in song. Out of memory came the songs, restored to the present in laughter and family.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Soon came another gift: After we drove a narrow path on a dark night to the neighboring village, the women of Sequeiros sangwilder than the wildest of American sacred harp singing.With occasional breaks into parallel harmony, it was unison singing,phrase-based, shifting from implied major to implied minor midway through many of the songs. Women from the benches along the side joined in on some, as did two little girls. These were songs of every subject, including a salacious \u201cchallenge improvisation\u201d actedand sung in men\u2019s clothing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Another event twisted our expectations. We followed yet another path, this over the mountain to Manhouce, to hear Isabel Silvestreand her singers. These voices were more practiced than the Sequeiros group, but still had a forward sound and clarity with parallel harmonies. After a public presentation, Isabel led them through a beautiful and mysterious Christmas lullaby for us. It set the tone for our ride back over the mountains, where we stopped to look out from an ancient church.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In Nodar we lived in a world spanning time\u2014we had laptops, yet washed our clothes in a cold water cistern and hung them to dry in the sun. Goat bells played while we washed,and a local pony watched. Villagers worked the terraced fields by hand, so we heard the hoes and the plunk of potato seeds dropped into furrows. New lambs called pitifully for their mammas as they are kept separate,away from predators.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As we shifted fromour rural Vermont selves to rural Nodar selves,we wrote texts for our project, mine influenced by a mothcamouflaged against the house\u2019s granite:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n To see what we have forgotten to see,<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n To hear what we have forgotten to hear,<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n To sing what we have forgotten to sing,<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n To uncover what is hidden in plain sight,<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n To find beauty in ourselves,<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n in our fields<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n in our home<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n in our town<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n in our place<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Patterns and rhythms that join our experiences.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In the meantime, Stevie explored the meaning and integration of home and song:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Of our home, we sing<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Of each other, we sing<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Of our history, we sing<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Among the stones, we sing<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Of love, we sing<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Of sorrow and loss, we sing<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n For the little ones, we sing<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n With thankfulness, we sing<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n For tomorrow, we sing<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Together, we sing<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n We translatedand Luis corrected. And now before us we had scattered sounds and images and words that represented the path our project had followed. Yet no songs of birth, and nothing beyond a few electroacoustic compositions and variations on the breadsong. What had we learned? What had we done? Would we be seen as intruders who had twisted the village and its residents into our view? Would we insult them?And so we turn to Tia\u2014aunt Ilda Duarte Paiva\u2014life long resident of Nodar whose presence had informed our beings. Tia did not sing for us, and we could not understand her words. But her sense of being, of place, always witnessed. When we baked bread, we hoped she would take some. When we washed, she was there.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And so we presented our video in Fernando\u2019s bar, filled with interested audience. Drinking and talking were a fisherman, tourist drop-ins,and a man from Sequeiros complete with walking stick. Dogs foughtand barked. But as the sounds of our video\u2019s birds rose into the music and Donz\u00edlia\u2019s voice, the bar quieted.When it was over there was sincere response\u2014including from Tia, who appeared behind us.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Our residency in Nodar began the first phase of our search for song sonce so important in women\u2019s lives and for birth songs in particular,providing a spectacular setting for our work and with a wealth of song. We gathered, recorded and documented more than sixty songs. In this beautiful terraced village, we created new electronic compositions and acoustic arrangements, as well as recording hours of environmental sound in place and during soundwalks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Our artistic exploration at, and pathways through, Nodar were asuccess\u2014but our search for birth songs continues. It is even clearerto us now that birth song is being lost. A woman\u2019s ability to birth,supported by other women and their song\u2014with trust in her body\u2014is also being lost. Even a single song will help renew awareness of musical expression of birth in the modern world.<\/p>\n Dennis B\u00e1thory-Kitsz was born in 1949 and is a composer, author, editor, teacher, and technologist. He is engaged in the advancement of arts and technology from both a humanist and experimental perspective. Dennis has composed music for vaudeville shows, orchestras, sound sculptures, soloists, tape & electronics, dancers, multimedia environments, and performance events. He has finally decided to make his income via music and audio, while he has directed the Dashuki Music Theatre (Plasm over oceanand Stone world\/Grey) and I l Gruppo Nuke Jitters (Echo), runs the awkwardly eclectic arts coop Malted\/Media, and has composed for real-people squawkers such asorchestras, chamber ensembles and soloists\u2014some of whom have actually played his music.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n His \u201cDetritus of Mating\u201d, an electroacoustic soundscape, is 27 years long. He has recently completed is kajtbrz for electronic sounds; Spammung for voice and electronics; LiquidBirds for 3 theremins, 3 voices, and video; North sea BalleticSpicebush for solo string bass; Genial Music for strings, piccolo, and glockenspiel;and several of his continuing Glossolalia studies. He lives in Northfield, Vermont. Hismusic is published by Westleaf Edition.<\/p>\n Stevie Balch (USA 1950) is a mother, midwife, nurse, author, and editor. She has attended the births of hundreds of babies since the early 1970s as one of Vermont\u2019spioneering midwives, bringing both new and ancient concepts to birth practice,enhanced by the ideas of Michel Odent, Cornelia Enning, and many others. Her attention toward disappearing traditions in her home country brought her to the notion that birth song, lost in the medicalization of U.S. practice, might still flourish else where.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>ARTISTIC WORKS<\/h4>\n<\/div>