Paris — When I first sang, it was an ear. I think it’s common. Toddlers join their favorite characters in Disney movies and echo her parents with the muttering of “glitter, glitter, little star.” When children start singing at school, they usually learn from the lyrics memorized through repetition, not from the score.
Then things change. The melody is written. Some people grow up to be disciplined singers and instrumentalists. Others completely abandon music research. In that last category, what about those who just enjoy singing, whether or not they can carry the song by car or karaoke?
These types of performances (performances just for fun) are usually treated as unsuitable for the sacred space of musical expression.However “The Mutes” Lina Lapelyte’s inspiring, greedy and immersive installation here at Lafayette Anticipations enhances the amateur’s simplicity to high art.
Organized by Elsa Coustou, “The Mutes” takes place in a well-ventilated environment designed to disappoint each turn and runs five days a week, six hours a day, in a loop of about 50 minutes until July 24th. increase. The setup is reminiscent of Lapelyte’s travel-prone opera “Sun & Sea,” created by fellow Lithuanian artists Vaiva Grainyte and Rugile Barzdziukaite, who won the Grand Prize at the Venice Biennale in 2019.
The work and the team’s “Have a Good Day!” (2013), a glimpse of the inner life of the cashier with a kaleidoscope was vast. One of the most effective and indelible operas of the century, “Sun and Sea” hides the unpleasant portraits of climate inaction in a catchy, sedative melody sung from artificial beaches. Anthropocene’s leisure and laziness.
Here, Lapelyte is working on her own, and by comparison “The Mutes” is much smaller. Still, the intimate scale is more relevant and more painful. A script constructed from Sean Ashton’s novel “Living in a Land,” which only expresses what the character wasn’t doing. This is music that emphasizes regret, incompetence, and the feeling of “living in time, not place.”
The performer’s small ensemble was auditioned with something like anti-musicality in mind. Those who were clearly described as bad singers were the most ideal candidates. On Wednesday, they delivered an English line of script with heavy French accents and inaccurate intonation. Some were more outward than others. A man forgot the line on the way.
“I never had a mumps,” the first performer sings coolly as he walks through the installation. I had penpals, learned a language, ate tapas, cried at the cinema, bought and sold at the right time, or at any time. “I’m unlikely to be given the key to the city,” a member of the ensemble declares to Mike. Someone else suggests, “I’m unlikely to be invited back to old school to show what I did in my life and what I did myself.” ..
All of these lines have simple melodies that are easy to learn by ear. More complex are choral passages, especially echo passages, a challenge for untrained performers, but a compelling study to build harmony. These moments look like a community choir rehearsal. This is probably the most popular form of music production, if it exists outside of what is traditionally considered mainstream performance.
The spirit of intentional contradiction-the formal space given to seemingly informal performances and the perceived disorder that balances-permeates the installation. Although nettles are medically beneficial, they are disliked as thorny weeds and are concentrated throughout the indoor soil landscape. Sloping stones form an unstable ramp. The same is true for carved shoes with uneven soles. But with complementary shapes, they create a flat surface to stand together in a stable manner.
Visitors are not allowed to put on their shoes before the performer enters, but they are free to explore the environment and continue exploring as the music unfolds. The singer behaves as if he is unaware of the audience. The audience can follow them all and is responsible for getting out of the way.
Its opening line about mumps adds references to other illnesses such as measles, chickenpox and syphilis. And underneath the vocal writing is a minimalist score typical of La Perite, an ostinato constructed from a two- or three-tone motif that rises and is performed on an electronic device, or a single with a stable beat. There is a sound. However, if the formula had almost a somnolence effect in “Sun and Sea”, here we have added layers of improvisation by violin Laperite and Angarad Davis, saxophone John Butcher, and harp Rodri Davis.
The contribution of their instrument, pre-recorded and played through meticulously spatially designed speakers, betrays the emotions behind the candid song. Jazzy riffs and percussive string techniques add an element of instability and anxiety. It’s too late to realize that you’ve never “ridden a canoe” or “cultivated a vegetable field,” but it’s also sad and frustrating.
But most of the time, these statements are sad, as life is inevitably, because people are telling them. Their sound was unsophisticated, their performance was tough, and these singers were convincing in ways that professionals couldn’t. Everything about them — their emotions, characteristics, and appearance — was familiar. They reminded me of so many friends and relatives, which were more touching than, for example, Schubert’s song cycle or Verdi’s tragic protagonist.
I think it was more difficult for adults to sing together than for children. When we are young, we take up choral music as instinctively as uncritically. Later, a closer and more careful kind of listening will be needed to achieve harmony. It’s as if we’re always forgetting exactly what we need to remember when learning everything else.
mute
Until July 24th, at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris. lafayetteanticipations.com..
