A multi-media song-cycle MUSIC BY COLIN RILEY inplaceproject.co.uk 1 Contents Introduction 3 In Place has its roots deep in the Weather Words 6 loam of language and landscape. Half Written Love Letter 7 Colin Riley has set out to show Jaan Jalebi 7 Litanies for the Furness Fells 8 how grained words are into Moss 10 our places, and places are into Deep Forest 11 our words. He has made – with Lost Engines 11 Warp in the Rain 12 his numerous collaborators & Beneath Above Along 14 contributors – a kind of musical Water Over Stone 15 deep-map, which it seems to me plots and celebrates one quality above all others: diversity. The voices that speak here come from many different communities, draw on different histories, even reach out to different species. Landscape here is no singular simplicity, and the smooth consolations of the pastoral are resisted at every turn. Thanks Instead we hear – we listen to – All the wonderful writers landscape as a polyphony, fabulous Robert Macfarlane for his inspiration and support and irreducible in its complexity, Fiona Robertson (soundfestival) for her commitment to the project to which this song-cycle is just one Reuben Abbott – keyboard patches and field recordings among countless testimonies. Jamie Lawson – field recordings Robert Macfarlane Katrina Lovie and Kathleen Farquhar – Nan Shepherd readings From Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane (Penguin Books, 2015). Reproduced with permission from the author. From In the Cairngorms by Nan Shepherd. Reproduced with permission from Galileo Publishers. From The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd. Reproduced with permission from Erlend Clouston and the Nan Shepherd estate. From Lights Out by Edward Thomas. Reproduced with permission from Rosemary Vellender. 2 3 My recent compositions have explored how smaller details in the music might be brought to a listener’s attention to illuminate something bigger. In an age when there is ubiquitous use of headphones and a consumption of music as a commodity or mood-enhancer, I feel my role as a composer is to reclaim a more mindful listening mode, celebrating details and potentially hidden intricacies of a piece of music. Discovering Robert Macfarlane’s recent book Landmarks was a catalyst for bringing together my ideas about a sense of place and the way we listen. The book introduced me to the work of several wonderful writers as well as Robert’s own words. It has most significantly highlighted place can make you feel many things. the parallel between reconnecting via lost There is something very powerful words to a keener sense of seeing and my about the intersection of a particular hopes for keener musical listening. location and our moment in it. Places In Place is a gathering together of feelings, are constantly renewed in unexpected associations, geographical details, ways by changing conditions; weather, regional identities, dialects, place names, personal memories, imagined routes, and seasons, times of day, the company historical connections. To help in this I have we keep, sounds and smells, and the commissioned new texts from a broad range of writers for whom a sense of place is very surrounding culture. much at the core of their work. These, along with a scattering of various existing texts, I have always been fascinated with the idea have become the lyrics for the ten songs. In that layers of history leave contours and the very different ways they have each provoked imagined traces of those who have been in and challenged me, enabling the piece to the same space before us. I love the way that be diverse, multi-dimensional and hopefully, ruins and industrial relics act as signs to how unexpected. different a place would have been in a previous time. Tracing the routes of disused railways, Now the set of songs is compete I can see canals and ancient tracks has always appealed that in their own way, each brings the past and to me. present together. All the songs contain what can be seen as a kind of spell or chant, through the naming of places, actions or things. As Robert Macfarlane’s ‘Landmarks’ says, “Words act as a compass; place-speech serves literally to en-chant the land – to sing it back into being, and to sing one’s being back into it.” Colin Riley, 2017 4 5 Weather Words Half Written words by Robert Macfarlane and drawn from his wordhoard in Landmarks Love Letter Language is fundamental to the possibility of re-wonderment, for words by Selina Nwulu language does not just register experience, it produces it. The contours and colours of words are inseparable from the feelings we create in I often imagine my parents came here relation to situations, to others and to places. after hearing the sea of the British isles. Words act as compass; place-speech serves literally to en-chant the land – As if they put their ears to its shell to sing it back into being, and to sing one’s being back into it. and the waves threw themselves tipsy against conch, willing them to come over. Day break - Cock crow - Wee hours - First light (dawn) Then there were the things we understood without words; Grumma – Rafty Grumma – Haar How sun in these parts is a slow swell, Haze-fire – Summer geese the coastal path walks of Dundee, Ammil – Dag – Fret – Roke graffiti hieroglyphics, damp shoes (mist) against Sheffield cobbles and Jaan Jalebi the tastebud clench of a tart apple. words by Daljit Nagra Oiteag – Flam – Fuaradh-froise We learnt this country fiercely Up’tak – Whiffle Jaan of Jalebi Junction whose newfangled my father felt its knuckles crush his jaw Piner – Moor-gallop – Lamkin’ storm rickshaw, outside a shop of sweetmeats, my mother delivered its children Huffling – Gurl – Greann-gaoth confects I have been kissed deeply by its tongue (wind) our pavement with a mega-wok karahi, propped it has licked Yorkshire on my vowels, left me in place of handle bars. For the fulsome day, Aquabob – Clinkerbell – Daggler – Cancervell – Ickle – Tankle – Shuckle with the blushed cheeks of a first crush. the Sanyo pumps heartsore time-bubble (ice) I am a half written love letter bhangra it does not know where to send. Hjalta dance – Simmer kloks – Simmermal brim while Jaan elevates his pastry bag, bloated like Glouse – Blinter So when go home becomes a honey sac, (sun) a neighbourhood war cry, we understand with creamed maida piping the pan-blaze for an Bange – Blatter – Blunk - Cow-quaker - Down-come down-faw – Dreich we are not what you wanted, have been involution! – Dringey – Drisk – Flist – Haar – Haitch – Haster – Hemple – Henting – clean written out of your folklores. Oh memory of village plait, of braided wheat Kelching – Leasty – Letty – Mizzle – Moky – Moor-gallop – Parny – Perry – But we have built here, loved here, died here, sun-lit to bind a dreamer to the origin dream. Plash – Plothering – Rawkey – Scoor – Skew – Skite – Slat – Smirr – Smither – already carry the heartache of leaving. Imagine each Broadway passerby waylaid Snivey – Sope – Spitting – Stotting – Teem – Thunner-pash - Yukken it down When we go home we go back reeking of you. by this one-man band (rain) whose wood wheels are pimped filigree-slick, whose aft of vehicle’s a syrup vat words also taken from Melissa Harrison’s glossary in Rain, 2016 plunging each crusted runnel so it portals Burr – Dark bour – Dimity – Doomfire the arterial cane of balmy motherland. Eawl-leet – Hornlight – Shepherd’s lamp Lethal nostalgia consumed in the guts of a (dusk) Blighty mizzle! From the sweetness of home, that’s phoren, Jaan’s afters are an outbound pleasure that kill for the bite, for the mushy crackle and blood uprooted! The saffron hark of Amritsar. 6 7 Litanies for the Furness Fells words by Richard Skelton and Autumn Richardson between hills mile upon mile church house hare raise pen, the ulpha hill of the heron’s island where wolves played lift from the open veins of close, the harter fell pike how ulpha bridge hill of crow berries between two furrows hills cockley moss hartley crag pike how close ulpha fell hill of the crow at the point that corney fell haws, the pike side underbank hill of the dog fox move with the sun’s blood divides crook crags hazel head pike, the wallhead crag crag of the doves high ground * crook wood height, the rainsbarrow wood wallowbarrow coppice stream of alders and low ground rugged valley crosby gill, crosbythwaite hesk fell raven crag wallowbarrow heald crag of the ewe the road lying between may all your roots crosbythwaite bridge high ground red gill washfold point fox’s earth a line of feathers become winged crowberry hill high stonythwaite red scar water crag rock face of the goat a tenement now lost crowhow end highford beck redgill head watness coy shieling of the gorse [litany one] demming crag hinning house close rigg beck wet gill great crag of the snake * devoke water hole house rough crag whelpsty how cairn-hill of the hare forget: place-names of ulpha dod knott holehouse bridge rough how whin rigg mountain of the red deer ice patterns acre gate dog how holehouse gill rowantree beck whincop, whincop bridge crag by the deer clearing on the blind tarn almshouses, the dow crag holehouse tarn rowantree force whis gill hill of hazels arminghow gill dropping crag hollin how rowantree gill white crag hill of sedge giant’s grave barnscar dunnerdale horsehow crags rowantree how white how cairn-hill of the holly deep in the moss basin barrow dunnerdale forest hows, the saddlebacked how white moss crags by the horse’s hill the wind’s baskell farm ellerbeck bridge iron crag scar crag white pike crag of the horse never ceasing tongue