So what is someone who is primarily a sound recordist (wildlife and natural soundscapes, at that) doing interviewing older people in Northumberland?
Well, yes, I have done an awful lot of nature sound recording over the last 25 years – and before that, arranging and recording music. However my interest is not so much just making the recordings, but using sound to communicate with people. And there are two rather distinct ways in which sound weaves through this project.
Firstly I’m recording what our respondents have to say. I love the sound of voice and what it expresses of an individual, whether that be a great black-backed gull trumpeting on the harbour wall at Seahouses, a singer putting their heart into the delivery of a song or someone talking casually about their life and feelings, with all their idiosyncracies of language, accent, dialect and emotional articulation. In where we belong I’m building the material to compose a kind of collective soundscape poem from the recordings, that reflects older life in this rural area.
Secondly I’m particularly interested in how our respondents relate to the natural world – the landscape, countryside and wildlife here in north Northumberland. How does this aspect of the world contribute to their desire to live here (or otherwise), their enjoyment of the place and their sense of home? And in this I’m using sound as a way of engaging and stimulating thoughts and feelings about places and scenes. I have a large library of specific and ambient recordings from all over the area – from the Cheviot moors and valleys, farmland and woods, riversides and marshes, through to the varied habitats along the coast. And I’m trying to play our respondents extracts that I think will be relevant to them, that will have meaning for them and take them to the particular place, or somewhere else in their minds. I’m exploring the potential of using ‘natural’ sound as a medium for associative communication and emotional stimulation.
Straightaway in the first session there was a nice moment of affirmation when I played a small extract from a dawn chorus in Holystone woods and one of the ladies ‘felt the air’.
I’m not only playing ‘pure’ nature recordings in our sessions: people are in there too, in various cultural settings. I’m thinking of them as scenes and all the scenes have a rural context: a small fishing village harbour on a summer morning (with fishermen preparing for a trip out to sea); children playing in a village garden at a birthday party; children singing in a village church at christmas. Whatever the particular recording, I’m thinking in terms of the soundscape; my feeling is that a less focused, less objectified acoustic stimulus can make a broader sweep through our minds and memories. Though when we do come across someone with a strong affinity for the natural world, or possibly even music, I may play a choice individual songbird.
What is important is that the sounds I play convey the feel of being somewhere – somewhere else. Many of our respondents have restricted mobility, so it’s a way of getting beyond the four walls of wherever we’re holding the session – usually rooms with something of an institutional atmosphere. Taking them somewhere personal, individual and subjective.
And I think there’s also an element of novelty. I’m not sure that many of our respondents, if any at all, will have listened to soundscape compositions, or have considered listening to recordings of nature for pleasure.
Romi has her own particular interests and methods of working and we feel the two rather different but inter-related approaches should create an unusual and rewarding framework through which we can guide our conversational sessions and encourage our respondents to express themselves and contribute their voices and experiences to the collective work.
"where we belong ..." 