[{"id":"9279","cataloger_name":["Ella,Hooper"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast S2E3, Sounds of Trance Formation: An Interview with Penn Kemp, 7 December 2020, Beauchesne and Kemp"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/sounds-of-trance-formation-an-interview-with-penn-kemp/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 2"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Nick Beauchesne","Penn Kemp"],"creator_names_search":["Nick Beauchesne","Penn Kemp"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"name\":\"Nick Beauchesne\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/43083879\",\"name\":\"Penn Kemp\",\"dates\":\"1944-\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2020],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/bbda2b6f-992a-45a6-bbee-f3074a8ccfd2/audio/919f9dbb-30d9-4851-ae29-ef6b52f23820/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"default_tc.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:54:29\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"52,299,694 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"default_tc\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/sounds-of-trance-formation-an-interview-with-penn-kemp/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2020-12-07\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"venue\":\"University of Alberta Humanities Centre\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"11121 Saskatchewan Drive NW, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2E5\",\"latitude\":\"53.5269794\",\"longitude\":\"-113.51915593663469\"}]"],"Address":["11121 Saskatchewan Drive NW, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2E5"],"Venue":["University of Alberta Humanities Centre"],"City":["Edmonton, Alberta"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Print References:\\n\\nPenn Kemp’s Pandemic Poems originally published in: Belanger, Joe. “It’s time to embrace London’s poet laureate, Penn Kemp, and all artists.” London Free Press. 11 Apr. 2020. https://lfpress.com/opinion/columnists/belanger-its-time-to-embrace-londons-poet-laureate-penn-kemp-and-all-artists. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.\\n\\nKemp, Penn. “PENN KEMP – Home.” Weebly. http://pennkemp.weebly.com/. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.\\n\\nKemp, Penn. “Penn Kemp: Penn, poet/playwright/performer.” WordPress. https://pennkemp.wordpress.com/. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.\\n\\nKemp, Penn, and Bill Gilliam. From the Lunar Plexus. Pendas Productions, 2001.\\n\\nKemp, Penn, and Bill Gilliam. “Night Orchestra.” Barbaric Cultural Practice, Quatrro Books, 2017.\\n\\nKemp, Penn. Trance Form. Soft Press and Pendas Productions (reprint), 2006.\\n\\nRecordings:\\n\\nKemp, Penn. “[Night Orchestra] Barbaric Cultural Practice.”  Soundcloud, https://soundcloud.com/penn-kemp/sets/barbaric-cultural-practice. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.\\n\\nKemp, Penn. “Penn Kemp – Trance Form, Live at U of A, February 18, 1977 (1).” Soundcloud, https://soundcloud.com/penn-kemp/penn-kemp-trance-form-live-at-u-of-a-february-18-1977-1. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.\\n\\nKemp, Penn. Trance Dance Form, Pendas Productions, 2006.\\n\\nKemp, Penn. “When the Heart Parts – Sound Opera.”  Soundcloud, https://soundcloud.com/penn-kemp/when-the-heart-parts. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549478178816,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.966Z","contents":["For Penn Kemp, poetry is magic made manifest. While her subjects are varied, and her interests and approaches have evolved over the years, Kemp has always understood the power of spoken word to evoke emotion, shift consciousness, and shape the world. Drawing on a syncretic blend of spiritual philosophy informed by Buddhist, Hindu, and Celtic wisdom traditions, Kemp’s work is imminent and transcendent, embodied and cerebral. The words on the page produce certain effects, while the voices in the air produce others altogether. How do these effects complement and contradict one another? How does literary sound produce bodily effects and altered states of consciousness? Where will the trance take us, as listeners?\n\nThrough conversation with poet Penn Kemp and SpokenWeb Researcher Nick Beauchesne, this episode invites us to explore these questions by tracing the threads of magical practice from Kemp’s early career to the present day. A clip from her performance of Trance Form at the University of Alberta (1977) is brought into conversation with more recent material from When the Heart Parts (2007) and Barbaric Cultural Practice (2017). The episode concludes with a live reading from Kemp’s brand-new Pandemic Poems (2020). \n\n00:03\tIntro Music:\t[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Voice] Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do.\n \n\n00:18\tHannah McGregor:\tWhat does literature sound like? What stories will be here if we listen to the archive? Welcome to the SpokenWeb Podcast: Stories about how literature sounds. [Music Fades] My name is Hannah McGregor, and each month I’ll be bringing you different stories of Canadian literary history, and our contemporary responses to it, created by scholars, poets, students, and artists from across Canada. How often do you think of your own voice as sonic art? What happens when you speak poetry aloud? What effects can voices in the air produce? For sound poet Penn Kemp, poetry is something more than the written word — words must be lifted off the page into the air and sculpted in sound. Her voice is her poetic instrument and sound becomes a verb — the transporting and trance-forming act of “sounding”. In this episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast, Penn weaves us through her creative practice with SpokenWeb researcher Nick Beauchesne. Exploring the magical effects of literary sound to transport us, transform us and entrance us, Penn and Nick take us on a journey through Penn’s illustrious decades-long career discussing archival performances of Tranceform (1977), When the Heart Parts (2007), and Barbaric Cultural Practice (2017), plus two brand new poems from Penn Kemp shared in this episode. Penn Kemp has published 30 books of poetry and drama, and had six plays, 10 CDs, and several award-winning video poems produced. A former poet Laureate of London, Ontario, and League of Canadian Poets Spoken Word Artist of the Year, Penn has been giving creativity workshops, teaching, and performing her poetry since 1966. Here is Nick Beauchesne with honored guest Penn Kemp in episode three of The SpokenWeb Podcast: Stories of Trance Formation. [Theme Music]\n \n\n02:29\tNick Beauchesne:\tGood day, audio lovers. Welcome to a very special episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast. My name is Nick Beauchesne, PhD candidate at the University of Alberta department of English and Film studies and a research assistant on the SpokenWeb Edmonton team. Today we’ll have an interview with a very distinguished Canadian sound poet in Penn Kemp. For Penn Kemp poetry is magic made manifest. While her subjects are varied and her interests and approaches have evolved over the years, Kemp has always understood the power of spoken word to evoke emotion, shift consciousness, and shape the world. Drawing on a syncretic blend of spiritual philosophy, informed by Buddhist, Hindu, and Celtic wisdom traditions, Kemp’s work is imminent and transcendent, embodied and cerebral. The words on the page produce certain effects while the voices in the air produce others altogether. How do these effects complement and contradict one another? How does literary sound produce bodily effects and altered states of consciousness? Where will the trance take us as listeners? Thank you very much for joining us, Penn. How are you today?\n \n\n03:45\tPenn Kemp:\tIt’s a pleasure to be here. I’m well and happy to join you.\n \n\n03:49\tNick Beauchesne:\tSo, I’m broadcasting here from Kamloops, British Columbia, and here you are in London, Ontario coming together over Zoom in these very strange pandemic times.\n \n\n04:00\tPenn Kemp:\tIt’s true. It’s a lovely September day here full of long light approaching Equinox, a balance time.\n \n\n04:08\tNick Beauchesne:\tThe world has seemed so out of balance in many ways. So perhaps we can look forward to that as some sort of omen.\n \n\n04:15\tPenn Kemp:\tIt’s the seasonal transition from summer to fall. And the Celtic new year is coming up.\n \n\n04:23\tNick Beauchesne:\tSo, we’ll get into these topics as we go, because a lot of what drew me to your work was your involvement with the mystical, the magical to some extent the alchemical — although it seems you’ve moved away from that in recent years — but you still have that very strong, magical thread that works through all your work and the way that you use sound as a tool for change and for expanding consciousness. Your website lists you as a performance poet, activist and playwright. And you have a reputation as one of Canada’s foremost sound poets. What does that category of “sound poet” mean to you?\n \n\n05:00\tPenn Kemp:\tIt means that I can do anything I like in performing a piece and how it wants to lift off the page.\n \n\n05:11\tNick Beauchesne:\tSo, what do you mean by “lift off the page”?\n \n\n05:14\tPenn Kemp:\tInto sound, into performance. So, basically, I separate the written word into various categories and if the sound is predominant in the poem, in the original poem, then I lift it into a chant or various ways of expressing it beyond English language.\n \n\n05:46\tNick Beauchesne:\tSo, is it that ability to, to get beyond language that, do you find that that’s what distinguishes your sound poetry from, from other types of poetry —which all do have a component of sound built into it —but how and why do you emphasize sound? What is it about sound that so draws you?\n \n\n06:03\tPenn Kemp:\tSound is both the first and the last sense. [Low chant begins, steadily increasing in volume] Hearing, as we know in the dead, in the dying, is the last sense to disappear. And it’s the sound that we —it’s sound that we first hear in our mother’s womb. McLuhan once said something that the Catholic religion lost its sense of mystery when they moved from the Latin in resounding through the cathedral, through the natural sounds of the cathedral. And when that was replaced by a microphone, it lost the resonance. It lost being inside the cavity of the mother’s womb, where sound is transmitted through the permeable membrane of the stomach. [Low chant ends] And so, I really believe that sound is transporting. It takes you back to primeval experience to first— before —it’s the closest we get to a kind of synesthesia where before sound before, excuse me, the senses are divided into five or 5,000. I think sound is the basic basis of all that.\n \n\n07:38\tNick Beauchesne:\tThat’s such a fascinating connection there between the mother’s womb and the womb of the cathedral space. Before we get into looking at some specific pieces of your work, I did want to kind of ask about that role of place. And it seems like you naturally tied into that in terms of, you know, since sound is so important for you, what are some of the coolest places you’ve been and hearing your voice in a raw environment and the different ways that that sound kind of affects it?\n \n\n08:06\tPenn Kemp:\tYes, I was —as I was talking about the cathedral, I remember performing in the ’80s at the cathedral of St. John the Divine along with a hundred conches that were led by Charlie Morrow. And that was a very interesting way of the voice resonating with the cathedral. And I’ve also done a lot of sounding in the center of standing stones in Scotland and Exmoor. And at the temple of Asclepius in Greece, you stand at the center in the hollow of that temple and the sound reverberates. You can whisper and the sound reaches the outer limits of the amphitheater. But the most amazing place to sound was being in the third pyramids at Giza. I was sat there for a night in absolute darkness, so dark that my mind started to create visual images and oral images. [low chanting begins] And I spent the night sounding. But there’s just another story. I was also invited to lie down in the sarcophagus at the King’s chamber at Giza — first in Cheops’ pyramid. And I had a very expensive Sony recorder at the time, and I was recording myself chanting in that sarcophagus. And when I came out, the recorder had blown a gasket. All the batteries had exploded with the energy. [Sound, ends]\n \n\n09:57\tNick Beauchesne:\tOoooooh.\n \n\n10:01\tPenn Kemp:\tIt was a very expensive lesson in power.\n \n\n10:05\tNick Beauchesne:\tWhat an amazing location to be able to experiment with sound. And then it’s such a strange phenomenon to have your piece of technology just disintegrate like that. Perhaps that sound was too sacred for this world, Penn.\n \n\n10:21\tPenn Kemp:\tI think so. Well, it is very interesting to have a kind of — my way of perceiving the world is, is very Celtic, very old, ancient, and yet to work with technology in a way that acknowledges its power is, has been a very interesting journey for me.\n \n\n10:43\tNick Beauchesne:\tThis podcast will proceed with basically a conversation built around four clips that I selected. I enjoy these clips because they give the listener a broad selection of material from across your lengthy career, beginning with an excerpt from “Bone Poems” which was published in Trance Form. And that recording took place in 1977. I also have clips from When the Heart Parts, two clips from the year 2007, and then the final clip we’ll be playing is from Night Orchestra in 2017. So, it’s something quite recent. And once our conversation around these pieces of sound has been completed, we’ll conclude the podcast with a special reading live by Penn Kemp from two new poems from your collection of pandemic poems. So, looking forward to getting to that material. The first excerpt I’ll play is from “Bone Poems” which is part of Trance Form. [Ambient Music starts] This clip was recorded at the U of A, from the department of English and Film Studies on February 18th, 1977. And this was how I was first exposed to your work, being a research assistant. It was my job to do a close listening of all this raw material and to then try to identify poem titles, collect timestamps, and all that. And so, over the course of listening to maybe 50 of these tapes from the EFS collection at U of A, I heard all sorts of different clips, and I’m always listening for components featuring mysticism, the supernatural, magic as poetic themes. And I identified that immediately in your work. And it’s something we’ve kind of talked about in our kind of private conversations. So, after kind of hearing this and then doing a listening practice back in June, where you joined as our guest, we put together this podcast where I wanted to pursue that strand of sound as a form of magical practice, as well as poetic practice. I’m going to play this clip. It’s about six minutes long. It’ll kind of form the — a good backbone (poem) of the rest of the interview. So, we’ll just listen to this clip and we’ll return with some questions. [Ambient Music ends.]\n \n\n12:59\tAudio Recording,\nBone Poems, 1977:\tAhhhhhhhhh. Oracle. The last section we can do together. This —my voice is running out and I’m sure you’ve got [Cough] a cough. It’s “Bone Poems.” It’s like getting down to the — it’s the last bone we wear that covers our essential emptiness. All you have to do is say, chant: “bone poems.” For those of you with books, you can follow the “bone poem” line along on page. For those of you who don’t have books, you can say “bonepoembonepoembonepoem.” And we’ll start at that. And then I’ll read the the “Bone Poems” supposedly over top of your loud “bonepoembonepoem.” You’re the bass section. Can I hear you please? Bonepoembonepoem…. [Audience chanting] If you want to get into varieties, you can. There’s quite a few. [Cough] Bonepoembonepoem. [Water pouring] You’ve died out. You have to keep it going for the next 10 pages. [Audience laughs] All right. Take a deep breath and then go. [Inhale] Hmmmmmmmm. [Audience chanting begins]\nSkin. A breeze. Hmmmmmmm. Green. Saw. Blue.\nWords. Breathe. Shed their skin. Skin to bone.\nOne bone under. Sun shine, some sun, some,\nsome sunshine, some shine. Hmmmmmmm.\nHmmmmmmm. Sa-sa-sa-hum-sa.\n\nOne bone sunshine shed skin. One bone over,\none bone under. Sun shine. Over under, over under,\nover under. Some. Cloud. Bone be nimble. Bone be\nquick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick. Bone\nbe quick. Bone be quick. Bone be quick. Bone be\nover, under, over, under, over under. Bone be nimble,\nbone be quick. Do. These. Bones. Live? Bone be quick,\nbone be quick. Jump over. Quick dry, quick dry, quick\ndry quick, these be quick, bone be quick, bone be quick,\nquick, quick, quick, quick. Bone be nimble, bone be quick.\n\n[Audience chanting ending]. Music to my ears! [Audience: “ it’s hard work!”]\n\n16:39\tAudio Recording,\nBone Poems, 1977:\tAnybody want a glass of water? [Audience chanting returns]\nSweet marrow sweet morrow, all fleshes as grasses as\ngrasses as whistling down wind, is whistling down wind.\nBare. Root. White. Grow. Tomorrow, tomorrow. Bare. Rock.\nBone. Root. Of fleshes as grass is as grass grows over, grows\nunder. These. Those. These. Bare. Bone. Grope. White. Flesh\nis as grass is. Sweet morrow, sweet marrow. Cell in skull, skull\nin cell. Desert father’s memento mori. Bone shards endure\nwhen soft flesh withers. Slower bone retains our image. As\nby jaw or femur, they determined what we were. What we\nbecome. Our final trance formation. Slow. Bone. Soft flesh.\nTo marrow, tomorrow. Conjure our story. Become the thing\nwe divine.\n\nCome on, don’t get tired! I’ve been reading for an hour. You can’t be tired!\n\nFrame us erect. Base, bed, rock, mountain, tree. Axis\nof our bloodline, pole on which was strung and hung\nour nine-day lives. Oh spine, oh sacred virtue spreads\nher branches as our limbs. Her white, our white. Play us,\nwe are your instrument. Tibia, flute, femur, during, enduring.\n\n[string of high pitched sounds]\n\nHold the femur by its polished leather knuckle. Clang! Clang-inggggggg. Dangling. [Audience chanting ending]\n\n19:16\tNick Beauchesne:\tWow. That was quite something there. Kind of a blast from the past for you, Penn.\n \n\n19:22\tPenn Kemp:\tThat’s for sure. It’s interesting how I have continued to use certain techniques or habits of speech or habits of sounding like the rising ‘ing’. I’ve done a lot of that, of playing with the varieties of sound that can be produced.\n \n\n19:46\tNick Beauchesne:\tThat’s one of the things that really drew me to your work is there’s not a lot of singing in the EFS collection of the SpokenWeb tapes. So that was one of the, well, it was certainly the first, occasion of singing I heard in the collection, although there is another one or there’s another few of them out there. But not something that I’ve heard a lot of in our collection, anyways. So, it’s something that immediately got my attention, you know, being a vocalist and performance artist myself. I just wanted to ask about just that that pun of transform, you know, not with the Tran “N S” but with the, the “C E” of a kind of pond on forming a trance. And, you know, we can hear all sorts of, you can hear the, you know, the crowd gasping for air and, and laughing. And just also the way that the chanting is kind of known to change the brain state, you know, to like a delta or gamma brain state. So just the way that, that sound and chanting, not only like the sound itself, but also through like the breath, the breathwork, as well as a kind of tool of consciousness transformation. So, yeah, I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about that in terms of how you use sound, both not only in your own, but also in the kind of audience participation or interaction forming that trance.\n \n\n21:06\tPenn Kemp:\tYeah. I believe that a poem must be transporting or at its best is transporting you to, not — certainly to an altered state, not a higher state, but a more spacious state of consciousness, where there are more possibilities. For example, we know that a baby [vocal drone begins] by the time it’s a year old has made every sound that it’s possible for a human being to make. But then by the age of 10, the child has — the child’s mouth has condensed, hardened. So that say the African —some click language can’t be, can’t be pronounced properly after a certain age. So, as a person fascinated by travel and languages, I was really interested in reaching beyond English, which is such a lovely mongrel language of many sounds, but into, you know, the more guttural sounds of German, for example, or how, how language is placed in the mouth. The way French has right at the top of the lips, right at the front. And that — or Russian is way back in the throat. That sort of thing really intrigued me. But it was basically listening to how my children at the —as infants developed language. And that’s where the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What that’s where the repetition came in of what in Buddhism or Hinduism we call “seed syllables.” And so, I was very interested as well in the power of seed syllables.\n \n\n22:56\tNick Beauchesne:\tAnd there’s something powerful in the sense of the participation about sound poetry as well, because even you said, you know, “you can feel free to follow along if, and if you have no books, you can just go, bonepoebonepoembonepoem.”\n \n\n23:09\tPenn Kemp:\tYeah. Yes.\n \n\n23:09\tNick Beauchesne:\tSo, it’s —so even people who don’t have the book or have never heard the poem before are able to participate in the village chant. So, so maybe we can call it.\n \n\n23:19\tPenn Kemp:\tSo, it becomes a participatory — all my sound poetry is participatory because then the experience is reenacted in the audience’s body as a collective. And that’s a joyous thing to get beyond the mind, the ego, into an experience that is so spacious.\n \n\n23:45\tNick Beauchesne:\tThey got into that in the “bone poem” section, but I wish a few of them were more adventurous to try some of those variations to, to hear more [trill sound].\n \n\n23:56\tPenn Kemp:\tIf I had a little more time to do a sound workshop with them.\n \n\n23:59\tNick Beauchesne:\tYes. Yes.\n \n\n23:59\tPenn Kemp:\tBut I think Doug Barbour had invited me to do that reading and he very kindly had the kids, students buy the books. So, they had these — the cover is of a bare-breasted, beautiful woman caught in a slant light in a very bright yellow cover. And here they were turning the pages. And at the end they corrected me and asked why I had changed the words in “Bone Poem” because they were following it exactly. And I —I was everything I do is ad lib and improvised and I wasn’t synchronized to what the page was saying. So, they felt it necessary to correct me.\n \n\n24:47\tNick Beauchesne:\tTo inform you that you read your own poem incorrectly.\n \n\n24:51\tPenn Kemp:\tWrong!\n \n\n24:54\tNick Beauchesne:\tSo, if the students commented on where the poem is going and how it should be delivered…Penn, where do poems come from?\n \n\n25:03\tPenn Kemp:\tWell, they have many choices, but for me, the most powerful poems come from sound. But I also write a lot from a translation or a transliteration from visual fields. So, I dream vividly. And for example, after you had sent me the possibility of the podcast, I dreamt, I wrote a poem about that dream. And for me, the dream poems that are astonishing. I’ve got a whole collection called Dream Sequins, but they’re not as powerful as poems that lead me on the way through sound. So, I like poems to lead me, to take me to places rather than translating images that already exist. But let me read you this poem and it’s dedicated to you and you can make up your own mind.\n \n\n26:11\tPenn Kemp:\t\nLiteralizing the metaphor\n\nFor Nix Nihil\n\nThe host asks me to do a Zoom podcast, live in BC. I’m to record\n\non a cloud some metres above ground. The ladder up to the cloud\n\nseems precarious, even with gold underlining and heavenly chords.\n\n \n\nI’m afraid of falling through watery vapour, afraid of heights, afraid\n\nthat my voice will be tremulous. But once embarked upon the cloud,\n\nthe local Indigenous elder teaches me her healing heartbeat chant,\n\n“la-Doe, la-Doe”. She repeats the resounding phrase as I join in.\n\n \n\nSo the recording goes well. As BC is my last stop on tour, I have\n\nrun out of books to sell. A shame, since audiences here buy more\n\nthan anywhere else. My host gladly accepts my last copy as a gift.\n\n \n\nI return to home ground, empty of baggage and replete, complete,\n\nand ready to begin again, earthed.\n\n \n\n27:27\tPenn Kemp:\tNow, if I were developing that poem as a sound poem, I would be playing with “replete, complete, and ready to begin again. Earthed.” I would be playing with “I’m afraid of falling throooooooough.” Wherever the sound takes me. I would play further.\n \n\n27:47\tNick Beauchesne:\tI can also imagine some lah-dot, lah-dot, lah, dot persisting in the background. [Sound: Echo of “lah-dot”]\n \n\n27:52\tPenn Kemp:\tYeah! Well, for sure.\n \n\n27:54\tNick Beauchesne:\tWell I don’t know what else to say, but “aww shucks!”\n \n\n28:00\tPenn Kemp:\tOh, I expect the sound poem in return.\n \n\n28:02\tNick Beauchesne:\tWell, I’ll have to return the favor. No doubt. The next audio clip that I’d like to play is from a sound opera composed in 2007, called When the Heart Parts. Written in honor of your departing father, Jim Kemp.\n \n\n28:24\tAudio Recording,\nWhen the Heart Parts:\tWhen the heart parts. Wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wha-wha-wha-why? why? why? [interspersed sounds] When. When. When. When. When. When the heart. When the heart. When the heart. Hearts, heart, heart, heart, heart, heart, parts, heart, parts, when the heart parts company, heart parts company company, our heart stops. Wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wh- when the company, when the company, when the company parts, when the company parts. Art. Stops. Wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-when the company parts. When the company parts. When the company parts. When the company parts from the hearth. When the company parts from the hearth. Company from the hearth. The heart does not stop.\n \n\n29:29\tNick Beauchesne:\tThat was a clip from When the Heart Parts. That was the first minute of the sound opera. Quite a lot of layers, quite a lot of voices. What’s going on in that opening clip?\n \n\n29:42\tPenn Kemp:\tWell, I’m trying to recreate the experience of driving through snow with the knowledge that I was going to witness my father’s dying. And coming into the hospital, to the room, hearing all the different electronic sounds that were so pervasive, trying to keep him alive. And my voice is asking, “Why? Why? Why? Why?” You know. And so, I was trying to express the immensity of all the emotions through sound.\n \n\n30:30\tNick Beauchesne:\tSo, there’s the sound – The sound of like the male voice is doing like a “lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub.” So, is that like the heart? The heart sounds there?\n \n\n30:37\tPenn Kemp:\tThat’s John Magyar the producer. And then, Ann Anglin, the actor is performing with me the various machine sounds and the sounds of “why” taking the form of my voice and my mother’s voice as we’re in the room.\n \n\n30:57\tNick Beauchesne:\tAnd when you were saying, “company” —I just heard this now. And I don’t know if I, if this was intentional, but— were you attending to say Penny, like your, your name is a child?\n \n\n31:07\tPenn Kemp:\tYes. Yep.\n \n\n31:07\tNick Beauchesne:\tSo, “come, Penny.” So, younger Penny in there as well. And, just like the, not with sound poetry in general, but with you as well, the importance of homonyms, homophones, and puns. So, you go from heart, you know, the organ to a hearth, like a space in a home, to art, like the art that comes from the heart and then parting and leaving. So, you have all these related sounds and these kinds of concepts, in a stream of consciousness, kind of interwoven in there —\n \n\n31:37\tPenn Kemp:\tI’m trying to get whatever works to get below the mental process into a deeper experience of the sound of language. And that comes again from a love of different languages.\n \n\n31:54\tNick Beauchesne:\tThe next clip takes place about 17 minutes into the opera, which is about 45 minutes or so long. It’s about two-and-a-half minutes long, but it really dramatizes that magical power of sound and that instinctive supra, or maybe sub rational power of sound that it goes beyond mind and into direct connection and intuition. So, it was a very powerful moment where you almost succeed in resurrecting your father, just for a moment too, to have this final kind of moment of connection. And so, it struck me as a very powerful moment in the poem, not only in the message and the words, but also the way that you self-consciously use sound to try to connect with your father while he’s deep in his kind of sleep state. Here’s a clip of the sonic resurrection.\n \n\n32:45\tAudio Recording,\nWhen the Heart Parts:\tIn love and ceremony [Bells Ring] he crowns Mom with a Tibetan headdress. Magenta. Magnificent. Something significant has been accomplished. When Jamie and I come home from supper, Penny stays to read Jim the Tibetan Book of the Dead. He asked her to,  ages ago, if he were ever…When she gets home, we know something has happened. I never saw anyone look so worn out. She has worked so hard doing something.\nMy commitment to Dad is to read him the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The old words are meant to appease the fear and confusion of the dying.\n\nDo not let your attention wander. Keep to the clear light. Do not be distracted by other noises or pictures. They are all projections of your mind. Keep to what is happening here. Now, do not let your attention wander. Keep to the clear light. Do not be distracted. Traditionally, this reading is a guide in the process of dying. Do not be distracted. Keep to the clear light. The ear is the last sense to go. But who knows if Dad is listening? They are all projections of your mind. To conjure these peaceable realms, pure lands, at least calms and clears by own anguish. It is true. You are dying. It is true. You are dying. We are not pretending anything else. We are not pretending anything else. We are not holding anything back from you. We know you can hear. Your family is gathered around you. Know this is happening to you, now. To the light. Keep to the light. I whisper close into Dad’s left ear because I hope his right brain might be more receptive. Remembering a super learning technique to reach the deepest typological level of the mind. I call his name in three tones of voice. In between each phrase, I pause to the count of four. Jim Kemp [Tapping] Jim Kemp, Jim Kemp. And then my father flutters his eyes, startled. Squeezes my hand tight. He tries to focus, stares, and sees me.\n\n35:20\tNick Beauchesne:\tSo, a very powerful moment there. And earlier in the clip you say, “in love and ceremony, he crowns my Mom with a Tibetan headdress.” And it seems significant in a kind of a meta level, in a sense, that through the poem you in turn are “through love and ceremony” crowning your own father. So, what about this poem is ceremonial to you, or how is this poem a ceremony?\n \n\n35:44\tPenn Kemp:\tWell, dying is such a time of transition. It’s the opposite of our two great transitions, birth and death. So, for me, yes, it’s important to honor these transitions through ritual. Dad and I were both received — took initiation as Buddhists in 1974. And so, we had studied Tibetan Buddhism and The Book of the Dead. And I had offered to read him The Book of the Dead when he was dying. So, this was a prepared act. My Mom was not part of that. She was much more of a rationalist. So, the dream was such a welcoming of her into the ceremony, which at the point of his dying, she embraced. The moment that I read his name and he came to, it was just before the doctors were to pull the plug, which would mean that he would die, of course. And because he was being kept alive by these instruments. And it meant that he then lingered on [Musical tones begin] for 10 more days. I don’t know whether that was a good thing or not because they’d brought him back six times with pounding his heart and all that. So, it was very painful, but nonetheless, he was there. But when I read to him and when I said his name —.\n \n\n37:31\tAudio Recording,\nWhen the Heart Parts:\tJim Kemp.\t\n37:31\tPenn Kemp:\t— he responded by not only opening his eyes for the first time —.\n \n\n37:36\tAudio Recording,\nWhen the Heart Parts:\tJim Kemp.\t\n37:36\tPenn Kemp:\t— but lifting his hand, his index finger —.\n \n\n37:40\tAudio Recording,\nWhen the Heart Parts:\tJim Kemp.\t\n37:40\tPenn Kemp:\t— on his right hand as a gesture of —.\n \n\n37:45\tAudio Recording,\nWhen the Heart Parts:\tJim Kemp.\t\n37:45\tPenn Kemp:\t— I don’t know, admonition or instruction. I never have been able to figure that one out. But extraordinarily powerful.\n \n\n37:56\tNick Beauchesne:\tAnd from your subjective position there, it must have certainly seemed almost like a, like a spell to wake the sleeper for a final farewell.\n \n\n38:06\tPenn Kemp:\tAbsolutely.\n \n\n38:08\tNick Beauchesne:\tSo just to call attention to, again, the idea of sound as a kind of magical technique, but also as a scientific technique as well: “I whisper close into my Dad’s left ear because I hope his right brain might be more receptive, remembering a super learning technique to reach the deepest hypnagogic level of the mind I call his name —.\n \n\n38:27\tAudio Recording,\nWhen the Heart Parts:\tJim Kemp.\t\n38:27\tNick Beauchesne:\t— in three tones of voice.” So how old were you when that happened? And did you know that technique at the time? Have you used that since in your poetry?\n \n\n38:36\tPenn Kemp:\tI was 39. It was 1983. And super learning was, there was a book called Superlearning that I think the Russians had developed these —I haven’t heard much about it since, so — I think the technique was so powerful that I’ve never used it again. I didn’t dare.\n \n\n38:59\tNick Beauchesne:\tYeah. Sometimes those maybe when something like that happens that’s so powerful once is enough.\n \n\n39:08\tPenn Kemp:\tThank you, Nick, for noticing that moment, because it’s, for me, the pivotal moment of the piece. It was also produced by Theatre Passe Muraille as a play: What the Ear Hears Last. Appropriately enough. And you’re the first person that has, aside from the actors, noticed that absolutely pivotal moment of transition.\n \n\n39:38\tNick Beauchesne:\tSo, we’ll go to another night, maybe not necessarily a night of the soul, but “Night Orchestra” is the next clip. So, this is from 2017 from your Barbaric Cultural Practices. Maybe, before I play it, can you explain what this clip is doing?\n \n\n39:57\tPenn Kemp:\tYes. Again, I’m in the midst of an aural field. This time, it’s a hot summer’s night in the Toronto beaches. And I have my windows open because I don’t have air conditioning, but the flat next door has very loud air conditioning. And so, I make a sound poem out of the experience.\n \n\n40:25\tNick Beauchesne:\tAnd that experience was “Night Orchestra”.\n \n\n40:29\tAudio Recording,\nNight Orchestra:\tDeep, deep, deep, deep, deep, beep,\ndeep, deep, deep in, deep in, deep in.\nDeep in summer stillnessan electric hum of air conditioner in B flat.\nStill hum, still hum. Flat. Flat.\nMonotone entrains my body. Monotonous. [Low chant]\nproduced to cool my neighbors thrums the outside air,\nheats up our collective night. Sleepless in the beaches,\nI resist the single roar — sleepless, sleepless, sleepless —\nas Blake deplores single vision. And Newton’s sleep.The sound of the perpetual 20th century colonized our\nfuture with a dominant beep sales pitch for comfort. Con-\nvenience, reliance on the pliance. The pity is not that\nthe century has wound to a close, but that it’s whining\non and on. Mechanical multitudes self-replicate in chorus.Relentless fridge and clock. The only spell-breaker is a tape\nof Tibetan chant. [Tibetan chant] Deep harmonic overtones\nconjure a resonance, disturb the soundwaves. Somewhere\nbeyond the pervasive rattle, waves break on the shore.\nSpecies diversify. Night. Orchestra.\t\n42:56\tNick Beauchesne:\tAnother hypnotic sound collage there. The line that really jumped out to me is, “The only spell-breaker is the sound of a Tibetan chant”, which to me is almost ironic. The chanting in this track kind of constitutes part of the spell. I didn’t really comment on the past track as well, which also had a low, deep Tibetan-sounding chant. [Tibetan Chant Begins] So, it seems that the, this Tibetan chant and this influence persists through your work and probably in other poems as well, that I haven’t heard. [Tibetan Chant Ends] You mentioned you were initiated with your father. How else has this Tibetan chant kind of worked its way into your corpus?\n \n\n43:35\tPenn Kemp:\tWell, specifically in this piece, the “deep deep, deep, deep” was the actual sound or my replication of the sound of the air conditioner from the neighbors. And as a sort of dueling banjo, I set up my own CD of Tibetan chants. So, it was very specific and very actual in that I was trying to go — it’s like going onto an airplane and rising with the airplane, as it takes off. I convert the sound of the noise of the airplane into an ‘ommmmm’. It’s the same resonance. So, it converts the mechanical into the spiritual.\n \n\n44:23\tNick Beauchesne:\tSo, is that a technique you kind of frequently use in your everyday life whenever you hear obnoxious, ambient sounds? Is this an inner way in the inner monologue to overcode them with something of your own meaning to claim your head space, I guess?\n \n\n44:38\tPenn Kemp:\tThat’s right. For example, the frog, there’s a bull frog in my pond, and if he hears a certain truck, if he hears a certain sound of a large truck, he starts croaking, as in kind of setting up his territory, that this truck will not compete with. So, I think it’s very —a basic technique from the animal kingdom up.\n \n\n45:09\tNick Beauchesne:\tYeah. Laying your claim —.\n \n\n45:10\tPenn Kemp:\tYep.\n \n\n45:10\tNick Beauchesne:\tStaking your sonic territory.\n \n\n45:13\tPenn Kemp:\tYeah.\n \n\n45:17\tNick Beauchesne:\tThank you for commenting on some of these pieces that I selected. I did notice that sound as an instrument of will, and an instrument of change, an instrument of consciousness has persisted through your work for decades. So, I appreciate you joining me for this interview to comment on some of those strands and to help, you know, theorize about, you know, the bones of poetry and the transformational power of sound and how sound can form the trance and change the world. So, thank you very much. Before we end off, I understand you’ve written some new material to document your experience relating to this 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.\n \n\n46:02\tPenn Kemp:\tThat’s right.\n \n\n46:02\tNick Beauchesne:\tSo why don’t you —\n \n\n46:05\tPenn Kemp:\tI’ll read them for you.\n \n\n46:05\tNick Beauchesne:\t— why don’t you talk about that?\n \n\n46:06\tPenn Kemp:\tWell, first of all, I want to thank you Nick, for asking those very astute questions that helped me articulate the process because I usually work without conscious intent until I get to the editing phase. And you helped me articulate what I was doing at articulating the process. So, that’s really fun and useful. [Musical tone begins] These two pandemic poems were published in the Free Press or London Free Press, and the first one was contemplating what we’ll remember. It comes from the spring of this year. “What We’ll Remember.” I think the only thing I’d like to say about it is that — I was saying earlier that poems for me come from either sound or a vision, a visual inspiration, and these two poems come from the visual field. Necessarily they include sound.\n \n\n47:17\tPenn Kemp:\tWhat We’ll Remember\nHow first scylla sky shimmers\n\nagainst the tundra swan’s flight\n\nwest and north, north north west.\n\n \n\nHow many are leaving the planet and yet\n\nare with us, still and still forever.\n\n \n\nHow they linger,\n\nthe lost, the bewildered, the wild ones!\n\n \n\nThough tears come easily these days,\n\nwe too hover over the greening land\n\n \n\nas spring springs brighter than ever\n\nsince stacks are stilled and the pipe\n\nlines piping down.\n\n \n\nWhen the peace pipe is lit\n\nand sweetgrass replaces\n\nsmog— when the fog of pollution\n\nlifts and channels clear—\n\n \n\nEarth take a long breath\n\nand stretches over aeons to come\n\nand aeons past.\n\n48:29\tPenn Kemp:\tThe second poem came from a vision I had of, I call it, les revenants, those who have come before. Those spirits that seem to me to be brought back to a kind of half life from the influenza of 2000- excuse me – 1819. So this is a spell for them to return to their abode.\n \n\n49:05\tPenn Kemp:\tNo Reruns, No Returns\nfor les revenants\n\nThose who died once from influenza\n\na century ago, who now are pulled to\n\n \n\na hell realm of eternal return—are you\n\nrepeating, reliving the hex of time as if\n\n \n\ndoomed to replicate the old story you\n\nalready lived through? Once is enough.\n\n \n\nNo need to hover. You have suffered\n\nplenty. You’ve loved and lost all there\n\n \n\nis to lose. You have won. You’re one\n\nwith all that is. Retreat now to your own\n\n \n\nabode. Return home, spirits. You’re no\n\nlonger needed here. You are no longer.\n\n \n\nAlthough we honour you and thank\n\nyou and remember you each and all,\n\n \n\nall those who’ve been called back, called\n\nup from dimensions we can only guess at—\n\n \n\ncaught in the Great War and carried away\n\nor carried off in the aftermath of influenza—\n\n \n\nby this spell, we tell you to go back to\n\nyour own time, out of time. Just in time.\n\n \n\nMay you depart. We don’t know, how can\n\nwe tell? where your home is. It’s not here.\n\n \n\nKnow this virus is not yours. Know this\n\nwar is not yours. You are here in our era\n\n \n\nby error, by slippage, a rip. You’ve mis-\n\ntaken the signage, the spelling in wrong\n\n \n\nturns. Now return, by this charm, retreat.\n\nYou are dispelled, dismissed, dismantled,\n\n \n\nreleased to soar free from the trance of time.\n\nMay you travel well. May you fly free.\n\n51:50\tNick Beauchesne:\t[Finger Snaps] There’s my finger-snapping of appreciation.\n \n\n51:57\tPenn Kemp:\tWell I couldn’t hear it.\n \n\n51:58\tNick Beauchesne:\tThank you very much for sharing your new work with us here on the podcast.\n \n\n52:05\tPenn Kemp:\tYou’re the first to hear it.\n \n\n52:05\tNick Beauchesne:\tOh, I’m honored. Thank you very much, Penn, for joining us. Thanks to SpokenWeb for allowing me the opportunity to do this podcast. Thanks also to my friend and former bandmate, Adam Whitaker-Wilson for providing the tech support and the studio gear and space on my end here. Anyone seeking to learn more about Penn — she has a blog. Just google Penn Kemp at WordPress, and she also has a Weebly page, W-E-E-B-L-Y for further information as well.\n \n\n52:39\tNick Beauchesne:\tSpo-ken. Web.\t\n52:39\tPenn Kemp:\tSpoooooooo –\t\n52:39\tNick Beauchesne:\t[Ambient Noise Begins]. Thanks. You. Audience. For. Your. Time.\t\n52:39\tPenn Kemp:\tSpo-ken. Spo-ken.\t\n52:42\tNick Beauchesne:\tSpo-ken. Web. Spo-ken. Web. Web of life web.\t\n52:55\tPenn Kemp:\tWeb. Web.\t\n52:55\tNick Beauchesne:\tWeb of time.\t\n52:55\tNick Beauchesne:\tSpokennnn Webbbbb.\t\n52:55\tNick Beauchesne:\tAnd then we’ll “fade out: music.”\n \n\n53:14\tHannah McGregor:\t[Theme Music] SpokenWeb is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from and created using Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada. Our producers this month are SpokenWeb team members, Nick Beauchesne from the University of Alberta with guest collaborator and Canadian poet Penn Kemp. Our podcast project manager and supervising producer is Stacey Copeland. Assistant producer and outreach manager is Judee Burr. A special thanks to Adam Whitaker-Wilson, Douglas Barbour, Ann Anglin, Bill Gilliam, and John Magyar for their contributions to this episode. To find out more about SpokenWeb visit spokenweb.ca and subscribe to the SpokenWeb Podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen. If you love us, let us know. Rate us and leave a comment on Apple podcasts or say hi on our social media as @SpokenWebCanada. From all of us at SpokenWeb, be kind to yourself and one another out there. And we’ll see you back here next month for another episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast: stories about how literature sounds.\t\n"],"score":4.653917},{"id":"9281","cataloger_name":["Ella,Hooper"],"partnerInstitution":["Concordia University"],"collection_source_collection":["SpokenWeb AV"],"source_collection_label":["SpokenWeb AV"],"collection_contributing_unit":["SpokenWeb"],"source_collection_uri":[""],"collection_image_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/_nuxt/img/header-img_1000.fd7675f.png"],"collection_source_collection_description":["SpokenWeb Audio Visual Collection"],"collection_source_collection_id":["ArchiveOfThePresent"],"persistent_url":["https://archiveofthepresent.spokenweb.ca/"],"item_title":["SpokenWeb Podcast S2E4, Drum Codes [Part 1]: The Language of Talking Drums, 11 January 2021, Miya and Luyk"],"item_title_source":["SpokenWeb Podcast web page."],"item_title_note":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/drum-codes-pt-1-the-language-of-talking-drums/"],"item_language":["English"],"item_production_context":["Podcast"],"item_series_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast"],"item_series_description":["Series of podcasts by the SpokenWeb network."],"item_subseries_title":["The SpokenWeb Podcast Season 2"],"item_series_wikidata_url":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117038029"],"item_series_uri":["https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/spokenweb-podcast/"],"item_identifiers":["[]"],"rights":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"rights_license":["Creative Commons Attribution (BY)"],"access":["Streaming and download"],"creator_names":["Chelsea Miya","Sean Luyk"],"creator_names_search":["Chelsea Miya","Sean Luyk"],"creators":["[{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/9162060349751401864\",\"name\":\"Chelsea Miya\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]},{\"url\":\"http://viaf.org/viaf/3146217844209142580\",\"name\":\"Sean Luyk\",\"dates\":\"\",\"notes\":\"\",\"nation\":[],\"role\":[\"Producer\"]}]"],"contributors":["[]"],"Publication_Date":[2021],"material_description":["[]"],"digital_description":["[{\"file_url\":\"https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/28a9da1f-8cca-410c-b5d7-8165a73f9394/episodes/0d03515b-c5f3-4c36-a680-33aa829dd3b1/audio/6facdb5e-1ccf-45ec-a136-c878d15c7429/default_tc.mp3\",\"file_path\":\"\",\"filename\":\"s2e4-drum-codes-pt-1-full.mp3\",\"channel_field\":\"\",\"sample_rate\":\"44.1 kHz\",\"duration\":\"00:39:43\",\"precision\":\"\",\"size\":\"38,192,736 bytes\",\"bitrate\":\"\",\"encoding\":\"\",\"contents\":\"\",\"notes\":\"MP3 audio\",\"title\":\"s2e4-drum-codes-pt-1-full\",\"credit\":\"\",\"caption\":\"\",\"content_type\":\"Sound Recording\",\"featured\":\"\",\"public_access_url\":\"https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/drum-codes-pt-1-the-language-of-talking-drums/\"}]"],"Dates":["[{\"date\":\"2021-01-11\",\"type\":\"Publication Date\",\"notes\":\"\",\"source\":\"\"}]"],"Location":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"venue\":\"University of Alberta Humanities Centre\",\"notes\":\"\",\"address\":\"11121 Saskatchewan Drive NW, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2E5\",\"latitude\":\"53.5269794\",\"longitude\":\"-113.51915593663469\"}]"],"Address":["11121 Saskatchewan Drive NW, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2E5"],"Venue":["University of Alberta Humanities Centre"],"City":["Edmonton, Alberta"],"Note":["[]"],"Related_works":["[{\"url\":\"\",\"citation\":\"Print References:\\n\\nBabalọla, Adeboye. “Yoruba Literature.” Literatures in African Languages, edited by B. W. Andrzejewski, S. Pilaszewicz, and W. Tyloch, Cambridge University Press, 1985, 157–189.\\n\\nFinnegan, Ruth. “17. Drum Language and Literature”. Oral Literature in Africa. By Finnegan. Open Book Publishers, 2012, 467-484. Web. <http://books.openedition.org/obp/1206>.\\n\\nNgom, Fallou, Daivi Rodima-Taylor, and Mustapha Hashim Kurfi. “The social and commercial life of African Ajami” Africa at LSE Blog, 1 Oct. 2019, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2019/10/01/social-commercial-african-ajami-culture/.\\n\\nOwomoyela, Oyekan. The Columbia guide to West African literature in English since 1945. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.\\n\\nSonuga, Titilope. This is How We Disappear. Write Bloody North, 2019.\\n\\nStrong, Krystal. “The Rise and Suppression of #EndSARS.” Harpers Bazaar, 27 Oct. 2020, https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a34485605/what-is-endsars/.\\n\\nTúbọ̀sún, Kọ́lá. Edwardsville by Heart. Wisdom’s Bottom Press, 2019.\\n\\nVillepastour, Amanda. Ancient Text Messages of the Yorùbá Bàtá Drum: Cracking the Code. Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2010.\\n\\nRecordings:\\n\\nAdédòkun, Olálékan. [various tracks].\\n\\nSonuga, Titilope. “My Mother’s Music.” Mother Tongue, Titilope Sonuga, 2013.\\n\\nSonuga, Titilope. “This is How We Disappear – Titilope Sonuga.” YouTube, uploaded by Titilope Sonuga, 21 August 2017, https://youtu.be/JbLwsLYrjzw.\\n\\nTúbọ̀sún, Kọ́lá. “Ọláolúwa Òní reads “Being Yorùbá.” SoundCloud, 2019, https://soundcloud.com/kola-tubosun/olaoluwa-oni-reads-being-yoruba.\\n\\nSound Effects:\\n\\nBBC News. “End Sars protests: People ‘shot dead’ in Lagos, Nigeria – BBC News.” YouTube, 21 October 2020, https://youtu.be/Il5qL7YbawY.\\n\\nBloomberg Quicktake: Now. “Shots Fired in Lagos Amid #EndSARS Protests in Nigeria.” YouTube, 21 October, 2020, https://youtu.be/hu9FzU2TDvQ.\\n\\nThe Dinizulu Archives. “Asante Ivory Trumpets – Ancient Akan Music – Pt 1.” YouTube, 23 March 2009, https://youtu.be/P3XxEefvpr8.\\n\\nfelix.blume. “Dugout On The Niger River In Mali SOUND Effect.” Freesound, 20 January 2013, https://freesound.org/s/174933/.\\n\\nFilmOneNG. “Living in Bondage Trailer 1.” YouTube, 18 October, 2019, https://youtu.be/bQ9pUsXFqoA. \\n\\nLily Pope TV. “MAIN MARKET ONITSHA|| COME WITH ME.” YouTube, 9 July 2019, https://youtu.be/DJ3NyfV7tgs.\\n\\n“Nigerian Crowds – Lagos, native quarter with traffic & crowd atmosphere.” BBC Sound Effects, https://sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk/search?q=07015037.\\n\\n“Outdoor Clock – Church clock striking, 6 o’clock. (All Saints Church).” BBC Sound Effects, https://sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk/search?q=07002268.\\n\\nPasadena Conservatory of Music. “African Roots, African American Fruits: A Musical Journey (Concert Highlights).” Vimeo, 8 March, 2016, https://vimeo.com/158205356.\\n\\nPatrickibeh. “Nigerian Young girls playing ‘Hand-clap’ game.” Wikimedia Commons, 25 February 2019, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nigerian_Young_girls_playing_%27Hand-clap%27_game.webm.\\n\\nProtests.media. “Buhari Must Go Protest in Lagos, 17th of October 2020.” Vimeo, 27 October, 2020, https://vimeo.com/469395263.\\n\\nRueda, Manuel. “Oaxaca whistle language.” Vimeo, 2004, https://vimeo.com/77702616.\\n\\nMuir, Stephen. “City Street Winter Day – Toronto – Bay St And Cumberland St.” Dreaming Monkey Inc.“Wamba Indigenous Music – Repetitive tune using a two tone communication whistle(vocal).” Recorded by John Watkin. BBC Sound Effects, 31 March 1996, https://sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk/search?q=NHU05003080.\\n\"}]"],"_version_":1853670549485518848,"timestamp":"2026-01-07T14:59:53.966Z","contents":["For hundreds of years, the Yorùbá people of West African have used “talking drums” to send messages across great distances. West African languages are highly musical, full of rising and falling tones. The pitch of talking drums can be adjusted to mimic these tones, so drummers can “speak” to one another. The drummer encodes the language, converting it into drum patterns, and in the process, poeticizes it. \n\nThis two-part podcast series explores talking drums as an art, a technology, and an important tool for speaking truth to power. In part one, poets, musicians, linguists and educators share their experiences of this fascinating musical instrument and its role in the fight to preserve local West African languages. In part two, airing next season, we sit down with a master drummer and learn more about how drums function as information compression tools.\n\n00:18\tTheme music:\t[Instrumental Overlapped with High-Pitched Voice Begins] Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do here.\n \n\n00:18\tHannah McGregor:\tWhat does literature sound like? What stories will we hear if we listen to the archive? Welcome to the SpokenWeb Podcast: stories about how literature sounds. My name is Hannah McGregor, and each month I’ll be bringing you different stories of Canadian literary history and our contemporary responses to it created by scholars, poets, students, and artists from across Canada. Here on the SpokenWeb Podcast, we have a fascination with language that goes beyond the novel or the codex and into the many texts and technologies that connect us through sound. This podcast itself is a way of connecting, of telling stories and building a community of literature lovers and sound fanatics across the country and around the globe. But there are many other sonic communication technologies beyond podcasts, radio, or even the humble telephone. And some are much older. For hundreds of years the Yorùbá people of West Africa have used “talking drums” to send messages and tell stories. The pitch of talking drums mimics the rising and falling tones of West African languages, allowing drummers to “speak”. The drummer encodes the language, converting it into drum patterns and in the process turns them into poetic and political expression. In this episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast produced by University of Alberta researchers, Chelsea Miya and Sean Luyk, we will hear from poets, musicians, linguists, and educators, as they reflect on the power and influence of this musical instrument, communication technology, and important symbol for West African cultures. The story of the talking drum connects to the story of written and spoken West African languages and the struggle to preserve them. This episode is part one in a two-part series about the talking drum. Here are Chelsea Miya and Sean Luyk with Drum Codes [Part One]: The Language of Talking Drums. [Feature Audio Opens with Talking Drum Music]\n \n\n02:29\tChelsea Miya:\tLong before text messages, West African communities used drums to send messages from village to village. I am Chelsea Miya.\n \n\n02:38\tSean Luyk:\tAnd I’m Sean Luyk.\n \n\n02:41\tChelsea Miya:\tIn this episode, we consider the talking drum in the context of the struggle to preserve West African languages, and as a way to speak truth to power and protest oppression.\n \n\n02:55\tWisdom Agorde:\t[Drumming] Drumming for us goes beyond entertainment.\n \n\n02:59\tSean Luyk:\tWisdom Agorde is co-director of the University of Alberta’s West African music ensemble. [Drumming ends]\n \n\n03:04\tWisdom Agorde:\tDrumming brings us together for festivals, storytelling, funerals, maybe dedications and weddings and all of that. But beyond that, the drama, the divine drama connects to the ancestral world, which is the spirit world. And they help our priests and priestesses to get into trance and get information from the spiritual world, which is then communicated back to the living. So the drum could be seen as the bridge between the living and the dead.\n \n\n03:43\tSean Luyk:\tIn West Africa, there is a strong overlap between music and language. African languages, like Yorùbá, are highly musical. The Yorùbá language has three tones:low, mid, and high. Solfege symbols, names for musical notes, are used to teach these tones. Do. Re. Mi. The straps on a talking drum can be adjusted to mimic these tones and communicate messages. [Begin Music: Drumming] Listen to master drummer, Peter, one of our featured guests in episode two in the series, demonstrate the tones on his drum. [End Music: Drumming].\n \n\n04:18\tPeter Olálékan Adédòkun:\tSo this drum has ability to mimic my voice. It can speak. It can say your name. If I want to say your name as Chelsea, Chelsea Miya, I can do that. [Drumming] Yes. So look. [Drumming].\n \n\n04:36\tSean Luyk:\tSpeech surrogates are instruments that mimic the human voice so that players can speak to one another. The talking drum is just one example. Some communities also have traditions of using flutes [Sound Effect: Flute], trumpets [Sound Effect: Trumpet] and whistles [Sound Effect: Whistles] to communicate.\n \n\n04:52\tWisdom Agorde:\tYou know, in those days we didn’t have factories and industries. We didn’t have many cars. So the air was not polluted that much. So the talking drum is going to, is able to travel several kilometers. So, if there is a problem at home, let’s say there is fire at home. If the king wants people to run back home, because there was a problem, he uses the talking drum to call all the people to come back. The talking drum also announces if there is a death in the community. Once you hear the tone of it and the language in it, you know exactly that an elderly person had passed away. And if you know the appellation of that person, you will understand immediately who died.\n \n\n05:48\tWisdom Agorde:\tWhen I was in Ghana, I was quite young when my grandfather died and they were playing the royal drums in front of the family house. Normally when a royal dies, the royal drums will come out and we’ll play to send off that person to the land of the ancestors. So, the funeral started on Friday. So that Friday afternoon, we were preparing to bring the body from the morgue. And I was passing by and they were playing the royal drums [Begin Music: Drumming] and I had no clue. It just a nice sounding drum to me. And I know the drums are being played to honour my grandfather. So one of the elders called me [End Music: Drumming] and asked me my name. [Begin Music: Singing] And like, “is that not your grandfather whose funeral we’re having?” I said, “yes.” And he said, “and you were passing and they called you and you didn’t respond!?” [End Music: Singing].\n \n\n06:55\tWisdom Agorde:\tAt that time I was in the university. I had no clue. City boy doesn’t understand nothing. Apparently they were calling the family name on the drum. Man, I’m supposed to acknowledge that, but because I didn’t understand it, I didn’t respond as I should. So I was just walking by. I had no clue.\n \n\n07:20\tSean Luyk:\tHow are you supposed to respond?\n \n\n07:22\tWisdom Agorde:\tMost often you raise your hand. There are times also when, if you can dance, you will respond to the call through dance.\n \n\n07:32\tSean Luyk:\tOne time, Wisdom happened to see across a funeral procession for an important local chief. [Audio Recording: Crowd Chatter and Noise] He remembers watching the royal drummers on their way to the palace and realizing that they were telling the story of the chief’s life.\n \n\n07:44\tWisdom Agorde:\tI was in front of the palace, that there was a huge funeral. The funeral lasted for more than a week. And every day of the week specific people from different parts of the country came to pay homage to the dead chief. And this particular day I was there, the chiefs arrived from another region and they were in a procession walking to the palace to go pay homage to the body of the dead chief that was lying in state. And whilst they were passing, I realized that when they reach the front of the royal drums, the language of the drum changes. And immediately the language changes the visiting chief or king responds through different kinds of dances. And it was so beautiful. I don’t know what the drums were telling them, but definitely be understood what the drum was saying, and the drummer knows exactly who was arriving and we’ll call that person in name. The royal drummer is also a historian. So the royal drummer wasn’t just calling them. He was also telling history. What that person has done, what their ancestors have done, and how they have survived through the years. I am very sure that the divine drama might have learnt all the drum language from all the visiting chiefs and kings in order to appropriately acknowledge them. Unfortunately we the younger generation don’t know many of those songs right now. And there is that fear that some of these things are lost because during that funeral I saw certain performances I’ve never seen before.\n \n\n10:01\tSean Luyk:\t[Music Begins: Instrumental Drumming] Different communities have their own unique talking drum traditions, their own speaking styles interwoven with sayings and proverbs that have been passed down through the generations. The richness of the talking drum is reflected in the incredible language diversity of West Africa as a whole.\n \n\n10:17\tTunde Adegbola:\tMy name is Tunde Adegbola. I’m a research scientist. [Music Ends: Instrumental Drumming] I work in human language technology with emphasis on speech technologies. Also looking at the implications of speech surrogacy, which is the use of devices other than the human speech apertures, such as drums, whistles, and such to communicate.\n \n\n10:46\tSean Luyk:\tCan you tell us a bit about the history of West Africa and what made it possible for so many different languages to coexist and thrive in the same region?\n \n\n10:54\tTunde Adegbola:\tClose to one third of the 7,000-odd languages in the world are spoken in Africa. And West Africa seems to be an area where a lot of these languages are spoken. Some investigators have recognized up to about 512 various languages spoken in Nigeria. My hunch is that the Niger River [Sound Effect: Water Flowing], which deposits into the Atlantic Ocean in the Niger Delta, is a natural attraction of various peoples in West Africa or in Africa to congregate around and expand out of the Niger Delta, thereby bringing probably various languages that now have to co-exist and walk together. [Sound Effect: Crowd Bustling].\n \n\n11:50\tSean Luyk:\tNigeria is one of the most multilingual countries in the world, but over half of its languages are in danger of disappearing. Tunde is the founder of Alt-i, the African Languages Technology Initiative. His organization is searching for technological solutions to the language crisis. As he explains, colonialism fundamentally transformed West African languages chiefly through the introduction of written forms of communication.\n \n\n12:22\tTunde Adegbola:\tMost, if not all, West African languages had strong European influence in their writing systems. In languages like Hausa, for example, which is probably the second-widest spoken language in Africa, had long histories of exposure to Arabic literature. So there is a tradition of writing Hausa in Arabic script, popularity referred to as the Adjami script. [Sound Effect: Writing].\n \n\n12:59\tSean Luyk:\tAjami is an Arabic script for writing African languages and is about 500 years old. So, although there is an assumption that African cultures are purely oral cultures, written Yorùbá has actually existed for quite some time. It is true, however, that Yorùbá literature only really started to take off in the mid 19th century with the arrival of missionaries. [Sound Effect: Church Bells].\n \n\n13:26\tTunde Adegbola:\tThe coming of Europeans, particularly European missionaries, who saw a great level of importance in developing a literate people, because they were bringing a religion of the book to a people that were either oral societies or as Walter Ong would put it, a society with a high “oral residue”. So there was this need to develop literacy.\n \n\n14:05\tSean Luyk:\tAnd so, Yorùbá writing was reinvented once more, this time using the Latin alphabet. But the characters weren’t the only difference. The Yorùbá vocabulary itself was transformed to accommodate new ideas.\n \n\n14:18\tTunde Adegbola:\tI know that effect on the language and other various West African languages, is the fact that Christianity came in with new ideas. Ideas that were not embedded in the culture. So there was a need to develop words for them. And that also had great effect on the languages. The Yorùbá language that I speak, for example, does not take much account of gender. In the language you wouldn’t have such gender pronouns like he and her, uncles and aunties, nieces and nephews. Apart from fathers and mothers, everybody else is pretty the same. But with the advent of Christianity words for a brother in the fellowship, words for sister in the fellowship, some ideas came and was like [Yorùbá phrase] and [Yorùbá phrase] came into the language.\n \n\n15:35\tSean Luyk:\tSo, on the one hand, the writing system, the Latin alphabet reinforced Christian colonial ideas. But, on the other hand with the advent of writing also came a new generation of Nigerian authors.\n \n\n15:56\tAudio Recording:\tStreet Scene, People Speaking]\n \n\n15:56\tSean Luyk:\tThese are sounds from Onitsha, port city on the Niger River. Today, Onitsha is most famous for being the home of Nigerian cinema, nicknamed Nollywood.\n \n\n16:07\tAudio Recording, Film Clip:\tIf we go down, we go down.\n \n\n16:11\tSean Luyk:\tBut it’s also the birthplace of Nigerian print culture.\n \n\n16:15\tTunde Adegbola:\tImmediately after the European missionaries developed literacy, there was great enthusiasm in writing and lots of Yorùbá people try to write. And many printing presses were established in Ìbàdàn, the capital of Yorùbáland. And you saw a lot of printing presses rising up in small shacks. It was like a Gutenberg revolution in Yorùbáland at that time. And these also permeated the whole country seeping into other areas producing what was known as the Onitsha market literature.\n \n\n17:02\tSean Luyk:\t[Begin Music: Instrumental] In the 1940s to 1960s, Onitsha was the home of the largest outdoor market in West Africa. Market stalls were packed with books and pamphlets all printed on hand presses. This was a period of intense creativity and of pride in one’s local culture. For the first time Nigerian authors were writing novels in Yorùbá and winning huge acclaim.\n \n\n17:24\tTunde Adegbola:\tBut somewhere along the line, [End Music: Instrumental] this excitement in writing in Yorùbá seems to be petering out, and less and less of Yorùbá literature is published these days. People tend to think, they see English as the language of administration, the language of officialdom, the language of education, the language of opportunity. And for that reason, people put lots and lots of efforts into getting their children to speak English, to the detriment of the Yorùbá language.\n \n\n18:07\tSean Luyk:\t[Begin Music: Singing] Speaking Yorùbá, instead of English came with consequences.\n \n\n18:11\tTunde Adegbola:\tI was punished throughout my young age for speaking Yorùbá in school. [End Music: Singing] My good fortune is that my parents were educators and they knew better. My mother taught in a teacher training college and students from the teacher training college would come for teaching practice in our school. My mother would come to supervise them and would speak Yorùbá to me when she met me along the path and the school. And everybody’s expressed surprise that Tunde’s mother who is the teacher of teachers is disobeying the law of not speaking Yorùbá. There was a time in Nigeria when institutions felt English is the way of development, English is the way of modernity, English is the way of opportunities. There was a time that there was a slogan in the educational system and the slogan was “fail in English, fail in all.” So if you took five papers, mathematics, chemistry, biology, physics, and did very well in all this, if you failed in English, then you had to repeat the whole class because you failed in English. And this type of retrogressive thinking continues to pervade the educational system.\n \n\n19:48\tChelsea Miya:\t[Begin Music: Drumming and Singing] Yorùbá and other West African languages are continually evolving. The diaspora has been particularly influential. [End Music: Drumming and Singing].\n \n\n19:57\tTitilope Sonuga:\tThere’s always been this balancing that I’ve done between the English language and Yorùbá and recognizing that Yorùbá was acceptable in some spaces. Whereas it wasn’t in others.\n \n\n20:08\tChelsea Miya:\tTitilope Sonuga is a spoken word poet and performer based in Edmonton, Alberta. As she explains, her approach to writing and performing poetry is informed by her Nigerian heritage and her interest in the politics of language.\n \n\n20:25\tTitilope Sonuga:\tI grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, in a household where we spoke predominantly English. Yorùbá, I would say, is a gift that my grandmother gave me. So my grandma was very particular about us speaking Yorùbá. And even though she spoke English, she always pretended like she couldn’t really understand what you were saying if you tried to speak English with her. So there was a way in which like Yorùbá was like the default language and my grandmother’s house. As a child, I regret to say, we were raised to kind of view our mother tongue, our native languages, as inferior to this other, this English language. Right. So there was a sense in which English was the official language that you spoke at school when you were trying to be proper and in certain spaces, the better your English was the more respected. So Yorùbá became relegated to the space of what you spoke at home behind closed doors or with family, but it was kind of an informal language.\n \n\n21:28\tTitilope Sonuga:\tIt took years for me to understand that as a kind of shaming [Audio Recording: Street Scene?] Then we moved to Canada, Yorùbá then became this bridge. It was the way in which we could communicate in public spaces without being understood by other people. It kind of became a refuge as well. So, I would say that my relationship to the language, this shuffling between English and mother tongue has been sort of the balance of my life. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to recognize what a gift it was that my grandmother gave me. And what a connection it is to my roots and to who I am. I don’t write or create arts in Yorùbá, but I definitely feel like there’s a sensibility of how the language works that follows me. You know, these proverbs and dual meanings and things like that, that I carry. Even in my writing in English, I think Yorùbá is as much a part of me as anything else. And so it kind of, it comes out in my work. Always.\n \n\n22:33\tAudio Recording, Titilope Songua, “My Mother’s Music”:\tMy mother sang when I was born, she welcomed me head first into melody. She chanted like a talking drum. She caught Godspell in gospel. And then she named me Titilope. An eternal love song to her creator.\n \n\n22:51\tTitilope Sonuga:\tI remember even as a kid, just being fascinated by the instrument and the way that it sounds. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched or listened to it being played. It sounds like a voice. Like that’s why it’s called the talking drum. Is that like, if you’re still and listen, there is a language that is happening there that is very similar to what it sounds like to tell a story, to speak out loud. I think to do it well, to do it beautifully is to connect to this ancient oral tradition that Nigeria is so rich with, that all of Africa really is so rich with. [Music Start: Instrumental] The proverbs, the prose, the sayings, the hidden messages, this drum kind of encompasses all of that. Music has been such a big and important part of my creating life. I don’t know a poem that I’ve written that wasn’t written to something playing in the background somewhere, or a song that I had heard that inspires something.\n \n\n23:58\tAudio Recording, Titilope Songua, “This is How We Disappear”:\tThis is how we disappear. We fall backwards into our mother’s mouths. Become them. Become the only stories we have ever been told. Stories about women who stay. Women who endure. Women who offer their bodies into the belly of the beast to protect their children. This is how we go missing. We tumble into… [Music End: Instrumental]\n \n\n24:26\tChelsea Miya:\tCan I ask about “This is How We Disappear”? So like a lot of your earlier work, I think it also has a really powerful, sonic or oral quality, but of a really different kind. How does sound or absence of sound factor in this work?\n \n\n24:43\tTitilope Sonuga:\tWell, that’s an interesting thing. I remember in an earlier edit of the collection, I had a line in there comparing the disappearance of the Chibok girls to like a tree falling in a forest. You know, if a girl disappears and nobody’s there to hear her, did she actually make a sound? The book is about disappearances. It’s about silences really, and silencing. But it is also about celebration and remaking ourselves, the ways that women do that, the world over. I would say when I started working on the manuscript itself, I was very heavily pregnant and had just had a baby. And a lot of those poems were written in the twilight hours. I remember listening to a lot of gospel and spiritual music. Somebody said recently to me about how the book feels like it has a lot of ghosts in it. And it definitely feels like a bit of a haunting. It’s interesting that you talk about silences and sound because there was a lot of both, there was these quiet moments in the world. There was me revisiting the ghost of these women who had disappeared the world over, but also there was this hum of this spiritual [Music Begins: Instrumental] sort of awakening that was happening for me as a new mother.\n \n\n26:13\tAudio Recording, Titilope Songua, “This is How We Disappear”:\tThese women who reinvented joy. Who snapped back our broken bones to the rhythm of a survival song, a song about the audacity of living and loving anyway. We became a whole new kind of creature. Something fearless and fierce. Something bold enough to call down even lightning and dare it to touch us. [Audience Cheering].\n \n\n26:36\tTitilope Sonuga:\tPerformance for me was never an option. It was just like, this is what I know. This is who I am. [Music Ends: Instrumental].,and not just performance to read the poems out loud, but performance that connects to a musicality that is grounded in the talking drum that is grounded in Yorùbá language, and Yorùbá songs, and Yorùbá names and naming. The first poets I knew were these people on the drums singing [unknown word] at weddings. Telling you of your entire lineage, the names and the names and the names of your father’s father, your mother’s mother. These people were my first experience of memorized poetry. They’re people who know, who at a glance can tell you who you are. And they know this stuff [Music Begins: Drumming] in their hearts and minds. They don’t need a page or a paper to tell them.\n \n\n27:40\tChelsea Miya:\tThe talking drum is in some ways inherently poetic. This is because of its unique grammar, which creates room for ambiguity. [Music Ends: Drumming].\n \n\n27:49\tKọ́lá Túbọ̀sún: :\tYorùbá is a tone language, which means that meaning can be derived from just a slight inflection of the vowels.\n \n\n27:58\tChelsea Miya:\tKọ́lá Túbọ̀sún is a linguist, poet, and cultural activist. [Audio Recording: Engine Revving] He recently worked with Google to create the Nigerian English version of Siri.\n \n\n28:07\tAudio Recording, Siri:\tNavigating to Hartfield.\n \n\n28:11\tChelsea Miya:\tBut before that, he was a language teacher. He won a Fulbright scholarship to attend grad school at Southern Illinois University in a small town called Edwardsville. While there, he taught Yorùbá to American students and wrote poetry about his experiences. This is a reading of his poem “Being Yorùbá”.\n \n\n28:33\tAudio Recording, Oláolúwa Òní, “Being Yorùba”:\tHow do you teach a state of being? You don’t. You teach instead tone. Do-Re-Mi. Like music on the tongue.\n \n\n28:43\tChelsea Miya:\tKọ́lá explains how the talking drum strips away everything except for the tones, which means that the messages sent by the drummers can be interpreted many different ways.\n \n\n28:54\tKọ́lá Túbọ̀sún:\tYorùbá is a tone language, which means that meaning can be derived from just a slight inflection of the vowel. And tone is realized basically on the pitch level, on the vowel. So when it would like “igba’, is different from “igba” is different from “igba” is different from “igba”. These are different words. You have got “an egg”, you have “200”, you have “time”, you have “Calabash”. All of those things spelled the same way: I-G-B-A. Except for the tone that you put on it when you speak. So it makes Yorùbá very interesting, especially for those who are trying to learn it for the first time. In English, when you say “go”, it’s still go when you say “go” or “go” or “go” the only difference is when it comes at the end of a question. But in Yorùbá, it’s not just the sentence itself that it changes. It changes the character of the word itself. When you’re playing and talking drum it’s about the same.If I say “igba” on the drum, I can make the same sound, “Re. Me.” I mean, Yorùbá tones — Do. Re. Me. is the same three level tones as you have in music. Which makes [Music Begins: Drumming and Singing] the language sound very musical when you speak it. But what is fascinating, really, especially what makes the language more amenable to poetry [Music Ends: Drumming and Singing] and literary expression, is the idea that you’ve got a talking drum, you can’t see the words that is being said. You are playing a drum and all you have is a tone. And the person listening to it has to figure out from just the tone, what kind of words you’re trying to say. If I say “uh-uh” with a drum, I could be saying “igba”, I could be saying “ohwa” I could be saying “ideh”, a number of different things. But when you put that then in a sentence, or in a song, or in tune, then you leave like so many different possibilities that can happen. And in traditional Yorùbá communities, this has either been a cause of conflict, it has caused wars, or a source of entertainment for those who understand it, consternation for those who don’t.\n \n\n31:11\tChelsea Miya:\tThat’s interesting. So the drummer could be praising someone or complimenting them or insulting them, I guess it will depend on the context.\n \n\n31:21\tKọ́lá Túbọ̀sún:\tIndeed. There is an example, actually, a famous example, in the 60s, I believe, when the radio Nigeria, the Nigerian Broadcasting Service started they were looking for a signature tune to play before the program starts in the morning. And it went like this, “dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-deh-dum”. And it meant, “this is the Nigerian Broadcasting Service.” But that was the first time an English expression was played with a drum. So the people who are listening to the show, in the radio every morning, many of them literate in the drum culture, couldn’t figure out what he was saying, because it was not a recognizable tune and pattern. So they decided to make up their own interpretations for it. Some people said, it’s saying [Yorùbá phrase], which means “when the Yorùbá dies, who is next in line.” Or something like [Yorùbá phrase] like “your child is little by little becoming criminal”. And there were several interpretations people just made up. Some of them pleasant, some of the funny, some of them just plain insulting. And it caused a lot of consternation among the people, especially people who were in charge of the radio, who were from a different culture of upper class elites who didn’t care about or know about the drum culture, or the colonialists who were just there to have a radio that people can use to communicate. So that’s how sometimes just a simple piece of expression can have different interpretations just because you’re not sensitive or familiar with how it’s used in society,\n \n\n32:56\tChelsea Miya:\tAs Tunde explains, historically the talking drum has also functioned as a powerful tool of political expression. Because of the ambiguity of the messages, the drummers could use their music to critique leadership and speak truth to power.\n \n\n33:12\tTunde Adegbola:\tThere are lots of narratives around the talking drum. There’s a particular saying, [Yorùbá phrase], “that it is only the drummer that can say for sure what he is using his powerful drum drumstick to see.” There are lots and lots and lots of accounts in history where talking drummers have saved whole communities from unfair leadership, wicked leadership, by naming and shaming negative acts in society to the extent that as such people have had to stop what they were doing, because they could not punish the drummer because they had this facility for plausible deniability. And yet everybody knew that the leadership was being blamed for misbehaving.\n \n\n34:12\tAudio Recording, BBC News:\tNigeria’s president has called for calm and understanding after protests against police brutality turned violent on Tuesday evening, with soldiers reportedly opening fire on demonstrators in the country’s biggest city, Lagos.\n \n\n34:27\tChelsea Miya:\tKọ́lá is well familiar with the role of art and poetry in exposing corruption and facilitating political change. He lives in Lagos, Nigeria, close to where the #EndSAR’s protest took place. [Sound Effect: Crowd Protesting and Chanting] For months, young Nigerians [Sound Effect: Gun Shots] have gathered by the thousands in these city streets to protest against the notoriously corrupt and brutal police force known as the Special Anti-Robbery Squad or SARS.\n \n\n34:58\tKọ́lá Túbọ̀sún:\tSince September and since, especially this #EndSARS movement, the disappointments and outrage I feel about how the government reacted to the crisis has spurred me in a new direction, and I’ve been writing a couple of forms about that. I feel my despair, my hope, my aspiration. There was one that I wrote in the midst of anger at looking at the flag of the Nigerian nation drenched in blood. It was one of the symbols of the 20th, the outcomes of 20th of October when soldiers went [inaudible]. Nonviolent protestors were gathered at night and opened fire. Somebody bled on the, on the national flag and national flag is green, white, green, otherwise. And the white part was filled with blood and many people have changed their Twitter profile pictures to that image. So I wrote a poem called a “Blood Spangled Banner.” ‘In the white of a flag, the bleeding soul of the moment wept blood near the gaping toll/ Ghosts of the nation’s past haunts in the cries their bodies made in that horrid night, singing the words written to mock their hope/ On the streets, the marauders mark the ground with the cases of the killing rounds /picked up horridly to mask the proof that the promises of vain that leaders make/ that the land is still a butcher’s slab.’\n \n\n36:33\tChelsea Miya:\tKọ́lá’s passion for advocating for local languages, including drum languages, is in a way a part of the same struggle. Much like the #endSARS protestors, he’s fighting for Nigeria to find its own voice.\n \n\n36:47\tKọ́lá Túbọ̀sún:\tPeople don’t see this kind of literacy as equally as important as writing literacy or reading literacy. But it is a kind of literacy. When people mentioned, for instance, somebody who speaks only Yorùbá or writes in only Yorùbá is an illiterate, we forget that many of those people can actually learn, can actually understand and decode drum patterns, et cetera. So, I’m interested in how this kind of engines, a kind of civilization, survives along with modern ones as a way of moving the culture forward into the future. There are probably fewer people today who know how to read or listen to the drum as the way in the past, but I’m hoping that the medium of technology keeps them relevant and important for the next generation. [Music Begins: Drumming]\n \n\n37:45\tChelsea Miya:\tIn part two of this episode, airing next season, we’ll look more closely at how the talking drum functions as not just an art, but as technology.\n \n\n37:55\tPeter Olálékan Adédòkun:\tWhat makes a master drummer? It has to do with your years of experience, the ability to lead, and your impact on other people’s lives and society.\n \n\n38:06\tChelsea Miya:\tWe’ll also meet a talking drum master and learn about the art of drum making. [Music Ends: Drumming]\n \n\n38:23\tHannah McGregor:\t[Theme Music] SpokenWeb is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from and created using Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada. Our producers this month are SpokenWeb team members, Chelsea Miya and Sean Luyk of the University of Alberta. Our podcast project manager and supervising producer is Stacey Copeland and our assistant producer and outreach manager is Judee Burr. A big thank you to Titilope Sonuga, Wisdom Agorde, Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún, and Tunde Adegbola for their generous contributions. And a special thank you to master drummer. Peter Olálékan Adédòkun who provided music for the episode. To find out more about SpokenWeb, visit spoken web.ca and subscribe to the SpokenWeb Podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen. If you love us, let us know, rate us and leave a comment on Apple podcasts or say hi on our social media @SpokenWebCanada. From all of us at SpokenWeb, be kind to yourself and one another out there. We will see you back here next month for another episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast: stories about how literature sounds."],"score":4.653917}]