Words turned to music

ONE OF THE finest compliments an artist can be paid is to be told they were the inspiration for another’s creative output


ONE OF THE finest compliments an artist can be paid is to be told they were the inspiration for another’s creative output. This month has seen the release of a highly unusual album, recorded by Mancunian fiddler, composer and producer Gerry Diver. Taking as his raw material interviews with Joe Cooley, Martin Hayes, Christy Moore, Margaret Barry, Damien Dempsey and others, he’s harnessed the cadences of their speech patterns and composed melody lines to complement the musicality inherent in their words.

Diver premiered his suite of music, called The Speech Project,at last October's Liverpool Irish Festival, and has now released it as a remarkably cohesive CD. This is more a musical landscape than a series of words and music tracks. It's at times evocative of Gavin Bryars' Jesus's Blood Never Failed Me Yet,particularly on the haunting Music For Tape Loop, featuring Shane MacGowan. At other points, it shadow-boxes with what Ani DiFranco did with the spoken words of Utah Phillips on her 1996 release, The Past Didn't Go Anywhere.

What could have been a hokey homage to traditional musicians and singers has instead emerged as a compelling collage uniting past and present, with the content of the chosen interview excerpts stimulating reflection and provoking debate every bit as much as the musical landscape Diver has conjured.

“Really, this all started as a happy accident,” Diver offers. “I heard an interview [with Galway accordion player Joe Cooley] and just happened to notice his voice pitch. There was no grand plan unfolding, you know. Some of it was about the speech melody: taking the pitch and rhythm and putting those into a musical context by finding the musical and melodic contours that are there. For me, the parts that tended to stand out were where the interview became quite emotionally charged. So, for example, when Christy [Moore] talked about something that was quite emotional for him, he tended to go into D minor. So there’s a link between emotion and the more tonal parts of speech.”

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The Speech Projectalights on some deep-seated themes, such as the experience of the Irish diaspora, belief systems and their impact on artistic expression, and the shared inheritance that characterises traditional music: the sense that it is not lodged in the ownership of any one individual, but is a shared community resource and experience.

"I think that people might listen to The Speech Projectat different levels," Diver says. "They might listen to the content: to what is actually being said, but, in terms of the context, there's more of a sleight of ear pattern happening as well. Music sometimes expresses things which words can, and I hope that I've managed to find that balance between content, emotion and context."

After Diver’s first foray into composing for the spoken word, with his work on the Joe Cooley interview, Christy Moore made contact to lend his support. From there, it was a circuitous journey that drew Diver to his chosen artists. Martin Hayes’ east Clare voice “drips with musicality”, according to Diver. There were obvious parallels in Hayes’ words and music, he insists. “A lot of his tunes are in G minor and Martin speaks a lot in G minor, too.”

The live performance of The Speech Projectcarries rich echoes of the stage adaptation of Timothy O'Grady's 1997 novelised account of Irish emigrant life in England, I Could Read the Sky. Each interview and its accompanying music are set against a visual backdrop of projected images: some archival, some abstract. The one thing they all have in common is their ability to knit the disparate elements of each excerpt together, urging, but not forcing, the listener/viewer to delve deeper into the worlds conjured by the music. It's a multi-media approach that bridges the gap between interviewees, composer, musicians and audience.

Although Diver has chosen musicians with a clear connection with Irish music as his starting point (bar, perhaps, Damien Dempsey), he’s optimistic that his work will appeal to a more diverse audience.

“I think contemporary music audiences might be drawn to it,” he says. “People who listen to The Crash Ensemble and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh: more left of centre, I suppose. I listen to a lot of contemporary maximalist and minimalist music and I love it, but I also love trad music. So I don’t see it as just for Irish audiences, although it is very, very Irish. And it’s not tradmusic either.”


The Speech Projectis out on One Fine Day Records. See speech project.net