For the sun

Researching this sound and the U’wa people gave me an opportunity to scratch the surface of their deeply complex seasonal customs, involving dance, storytelling and performance. Ann Osborn (the sound recordist) documents this in her study "The Four Seasons of the U'wa: A Chibcha Ritual Ecology in the Colombian Andes".

What I learned inspired me to tell a new story. In this piece you hear about Ray Collective, a dance group who couldn't be more culturally, temporally or geographically removed from the U’wa, but for whom performative seasonal ritual is the connective tissue. 

Looking back on it, I can see how this piece subconsciously reflected my wrangling with the ethics of this project and concerns I had around cultural appropriation. It's interesting that even in Ray Collective, where members are drawing from and reworking a shared UK-based cultural/folk heritage, similar themes about what constitutes respectful reinterpretation and what is fair to use or repurpose came up a lot. 

It got me thinking about themes like rightfulness, ownership, permission and agency - and more specifically, how female and non-binary people relate to these within the context of a British cultural heritage that has for the most part, precluded their meaningful involvement. 
This may sound heady in retrospect, but ultimately, I set out to make peace that was fun, and in which the listener would get a sense of the real and present joy experienced within Ray Collective. 

I can see why it might feel problematic that I'm in any way drawing a line between the complex mythos of the U’wa culture and a group of women mucking about in Bournemouth, but my intent was purely to focus on commonality - the need to gather, dance and create rituals in harmony with the rhythm of the seasons. 

All of the instruments/sounds you are hearing in this piece have been created by sampling recordings from Ray collective sessions (usually people singing the word Sun) and mixing them with the U’wa sound (which from my research, I believe is a conch shell signalling the beginning of a ritual performance). I've never used this sampling technique, nor really made bits of bed music for a piece before, and it was a really tough but rewarding process. 

The voice you hear speaking is Lizzie Maries, founder of Ray collective. I cut so much nuanced and insightful discussion from our interview and hope she'll forgive me. 

I should also credit both Lorna Rees who composed the 'Singing for Sun' refrain that crops up a lot, and Billy Nomates, Ray Collective's composer- you hear a rough sample of her song at the close of this piece. And of course, all the wonderful Rays for humouring me and my recorder. 

U'wa drones reimagined by Laura Irving.

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Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds