The idea to make Grains of Voices was born as I was asked to make a musicdramatic piece for the Swedish Radio. I decided to make a composition concerning the human voice, its symbolic implications and its musical applications. I have always been facinated by the richness and variation of voices I’ve heard during trips to different places in the world. Childrens voices, young and aging voices all posess uniqe qualitys in different regions of the world. I had a vision of making a piece of sonic art that would reflect and explore all possible aspects of sound emanating from all thinkable (and unthinkable) voices from all around the world. My aim was to create an image of the the voice, symbolizing the unity of a complex world where ethnic, cultural and idiomatic ideals melted into a new form. In a sense like a large, wild and unrestrained piece of vocal graffiti.

I wanted the voices to be captured at “the source” and not come from preexisting recordings, since one important aspect of the idea was to make my own experiences and relations to the people and cultures “behind” the sounds a part of the compositional process. For this reason I set out for a journey around the world to record the sounds of the human voice. On practical as well as economical grounds, I could not visit all the nations and places I wanted to. The piece far from covers all of the worlds imense diversity of vocal expression, but hopefully the concept comes through anyway.

I was from the very beginning planning to let the voyage and all the random events that would occur along the way, work as a natural “borderline” that I would have to relate to later in the process. The people I met would say or sing whatever they wanted and I would simply record them as our ways crossed. Consequently, when I later returned to Sweden and was looking for some western opera voices, I asked the artists themselves to decide what they wanted to sing. This way I did not (with a few exeptions) control what went into the composition, only what came out. Furthermore I didn’t want to put the sounding material together with a traditional collage technique, but rather use modern means of digital processing and advanced mixing together with a new composing strategy to shape the diffent voices into a multilayered, crosscultural hybrid piece of sonic art.

The field recordings were done between February and May 1994 and resulted in close to 20 hours of recorded material. Additional material was recorded in Sweden during the summer and autumn of 1994 and basic editing and processing of selected material was done from May to October 1994. There are however parts in the piece that not only make use of field recordings. There are instances where I have used archive recordings and/or recordings from television and radio. The actual composing, soundprocessing and mixing was done in periods between September ‘94 to July ‘95 with the major part of the work done from February to June 1995.

In this piece I am not acting like a traditional composer in the sense of one who invents new melodies, harmonies or rythms. Instead I am creating relations between recorded sounds in such a way that a sense of meaning and musical logic may be projected in the mind of the listener.

Thus the listener is forced to “travel” through large portions of the piece, making his or her way through the sometimes very dense weave of voices. Since the piece contains songs and words not only from different cultures but also from different regions within each culture (like streetmarket voices combined with songs from a wedding party) there will at times be portions of the piece witch may seem meaningful to one listener but not to another. Or rather, the level of meaning will change depending on who is listening and when. From a lingual point of view the piece is clearly biased towards english. I felt this to be necessary in order to maintain the dramaturgical continuity of the composition.

The piece is composed as a continous flow where movement-like “islands” of thematical ideas and voices are formed. The opening of the piece uses the biblical words of genesis where “darkness” and “light” has been substituted with “silence” and “sound” rendering the first chaotic section its symbolic character. In this section the piece literarely explodes throwing hundreds of voices and characters towards the listener.

The second part of the piece has the theme of memories of childhood in the form of lullabys and childrens songs from different countrys combined with answers to the two qustions “what is the voice?” and “what is music?”.

The next “island” carries the theme of prayers through the combination of the provocative poetry of Allen Ginsberg, the evening prayer of an old hindu woman, a balinese and a fijian priest and finally a New Dehli citizens right demonstration.

In a rather short section a new theme of time and memories is projected through the poetry and voices of dead poets like Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Herman Hesse, Philip K Dick and Dylan Thomas. This section leads to a long movement in witch the theme of musical drama is explored. The western classical opera meets modern improvised charichatures of itself, balinese shadow plays and the classical tibetan style of opera singing.

The last section of the piece is born as a slow transformation from the dramatic to the ritual music. Rainsongs and aboriginal chanting, fijian warsongs and the agressive preaching of reverand Billy Graham meets fragments of North-American popular culture in the form of cut-up commercials and rock clichès ending in a chaotic sound reminicent of the beginning.

The apocalyptic finale of the piece where God (seemingly tired of all the shouting and noise) with a mighty roar proclaims silence, may of course be understood in its most obvious biblical sense as the dooming of the world.

I prefer however to think of silence not as the opposite of life and light, but rather as the symbol of peace.

Improvisations vocales: Erik Lindman, Marie Selander.

Extraits d’opéra chantés: Ingalill Rask Nyström & Astrid Pernille Hartmann.

Récitants: Paul Pignon et Anna Wennström.

Matériel d’archives: Bibliotheca National de Venezuela, The Swedish Radio.

Remerciements: The Aboriginal Cultural Foundation, les ambassades suédoises de Carracas et de New Dehli, les consulats suédois à Suva et à Bangkok, Nemani Raikuna, Varo, Lance Bennet, Bahrat Sharma, Kathy Barnes, Ida Bagus Tilem, Josefine Melander et Anders Blomqvist.

Vocal improvisations by: Erik Lindman, Marie Selander.

Opera parts sung by: Ingalill Rask Nyström & Astrid Pernille Hartmann.

Recitation: Paul Pignon & Anna Wennström.

Archive material from Bibliotheca National de Venezuela and The Swedish Radio.

Special thanks to: The Aboriginal Cultural Foundation, The Swedish Embassys of Carracas & New Dehli, The Swedish Generalconsulates of Suva & Bangkok, Nemani Raikuna, Varo, Lance Bennet, Bahrat Sharma, Kathy Barnes, Ida Bagus Tilem, Josefine Melander & Anders Blomqvist.