kagablog

Vocal Expression:

Every healthy person begins with the potential to express, through voice, an enormous range of feelings and thoughts, which are a reflection of who they are in the greater context of the universe, an enormously intertwined phenomenon, which brings the full connection of body and the inextricable connection of mind.

We all have a fundamental frequency specific to us. All people possess the phylogenic disposition to sing: Singing is not an extension of speech but a diminution of song. Voice is a complex phenomenon. It is a product (sound) which is invisible, made from a place of the body we can not see (larynx) or sometimes feel, linked to both emotional and physical responses, with an output we hear differently to those around us.

Vocal-Dynamics echo psychodynamics: Voice is a reflection of self. Voice is a reflection of body which is a reflection of mind. There is no vocal change without personal change. There is a cumulative vocal tendency which is a reflection of our culture. Organizational culture is a
particularly divisive culture for voice. If western culture is a psychic prison, the organizational culture is a solitary confinement.

Philosophies of change:

 Vocal and emotional capacity and expression cannot be ‘taught’, but they can be ‘released’.
 Vocal perception does not match reality.
 Voice is a kinaesthetic experience first and foremost.
 There are no right or wrong answers or methods, only personal insights.
 No single path will suffice.
 Manipulating personal sound offers the opportunity to deal with habitually poor body and mind
patterning, which is a result of the way we use that energy to present ourselves in the world.
 Of the jigsaw of independent, hierarchical and necessary elements of voice, breath is the
keystone for all vocal work, for which posture is the foundation.
 Understanding your voice is understanding your personal journey.
 Any pedagogy for the development of vocal intelligence must recognise the intricate connection of
duality such as the emotional and rational brain, the effect of left and right brain hemispheres,
and the extent of unconscious and autonomic functioning as well as conscious processes.
 It is impossible to teach yourself to sing – we do not hear ourselves as others do.
 Work on voice is,therefore, by nature, sometimes directive.

Phonology,Neurolinguistics,Sociolinguistics:

With the study of language in social context. The study currently includes such areas as language and social interaction, language contact and change, Sociolinguistic variation, discourse analysis, crosscultural communication, narrative and oral history, language and identity, language and ageing, endangered and minority dialects, language and health care, and forensic linguistics. Phonology of how sounds are organized and used in natural language and Neurolinguistics which is concerned with the neural mechanisms underlying the comprehension, production and abstract knowledge of language be it spoken,signed or written. These methods, allowed me to formulate vocal expression and create protest sounds,gunfire, shifting, mechanization and sounds of lament in the construction of VOZ DA REVOLUÇÃO.

for more information please check out dimitri’s website

This film by Aryan Kaganof was shot in 2005, during the first symposium organised by our fellow citizen Dimitri Voudouris at the University of Witwatersrand, near Johannesburg. Its final editing was completed this year, as the film is really a formal, musical and, above all, stylistic improvisation, which took time to be transferred onto film.

The film opens with the words of the composer Francisco Lopez and continues with those of the theoreticians George Lewis (an American, thanks to whom the film was shown at the latest jazz festival at Columbia University), Christo Doherty and the musicologist James Sey. The scene is set in a way that’s free and advanced, making us look forward to hearing the improvised and naturally modern music, and goes well with the musical content of the film. Kaganof has brought together a large number of images of the festivities and preparations, and we watch musicians of every nationality experimenting and rehearsing with their musical instruments. These experiments are presented as a visual and acoustic symphony. Voudouris adds that the festival will also be a multi-media event.

The images are of an anguished and poetic nature, marked by an inner desire to see and capture on film as much as possible of this artistic event which is proof of a cultural renaissance in the filmmaker’s country. Several of the people talking or participating in this experimental documentary have already got their own columns on KagaBlog, notably Voudouris, James Webb, Doherty, Michael Blake and Joel Assaizky. With them are other musicians who don’t yet have a column, but who are mentioned in relevant articles on our site, such as the saxophonist Zim Ngqawana, and Luc Houtkamp (see our article from 15-07-07 about his clip “How we learned to stop worrying and love Mandela°), who are the most promising young musicians in the country today.
To conclude, we’d like to quote a French journalist in homage to Lucky Dube, the recently assassinated South African reggae musician. He had given a concert in Paris a few months earlier, and Ngqawana had played at the same venue the day before. Although Lucky Dube was not at the Unyazi festival, (a festival very different from his musical world), we’ like to pay homage to him – “Lucky Dube appeared in Paris for the last time in April, invited by the Cité de la Musique, as part of the “Faubourgs d’Afrique du Sud” series. With formidable energy and supported by an incredibly efficient group, the artist, personifying the doubts and disillusions of the “new” South Africa, performed “Respect”, his 21st and ultimate album which came out in 2006” (Patrick Labesse, “Le Monde, 28th October 2007, p.18).

dionysos andronis

translated from the french by lucy lyall grant

photo christo doherty

The event grew organically out of filmmaker Aryan Kaganof’s request to Rosemary Lombard to organise a Cape Town screening for “Unyazi of the Bushveld” (45 min, 2007), his experimental documentary of Unyazi 2005, Africa’s first international electronic music symposium, an event which was conceived and organised by Dimitri Voudouris, and held at Wits University, Johannesburg in September 2005. Rosemary saw the Cape Town premiere of Unyazi of the Bushveld as an opportunity to facilitate a live collaborative performance by some of this city’s established electronic sound innovators, in context with the spirit of experimentation and exchange espoused at the original symposium.

After the unyazi film screening at 8.30, the live performance will commence with abstract guitarist Righard Kapp, possibly most familiar to audiences from his work with the Buckfever Underground, accompanying spoken word poetry by Kaganof. Thereafter, Kapp will be joined by prolific music producer and sound collector Warrick Sony (aka Kalahari Surfers) and electronica superstar Felix Laband for a loosely structured, improvised sonic tableau, involving esoteric, mostly locally-derived samples, fractured dubby moodscapes and prepared songforms attempting to convey a sense of the hardwired dread and cognitive dissonances embedded in the contemporary South African psyche.

unyazi of the bushveld features performances by zim ngqawana, pops mohamed, michael blake, pauline oliveros, james webb, george lewis and many others. sound design is by joel assaizky and the film was produced by the african noise foundation.

Ce film de Aryan Kaganof a été tourné en 2005, lors du premier symposium éponyme organisé par notre concitoyen Dimitri Voudouris à l’Université de Witwatersrand, près de Johannesburg. Le montage final a été achevé cette année, puisque ce film est vraiment une improvisation formelle, musicale et, avant tout, stylistique et ainsi cette improvisation a pris du temps pour être transférée en film.

Le film commence avec les mots du compositeur Francisco Lopez et continue avec ceux des théoriciens George Lewis (qui est américain et grâce à qui ce film a été projeté au dernier festival jazz de l’Université Columbia), Christo Doherty et le musicologue James Sey. La mise en scène est libre et avancée et elle nous laisse dans l’impatience de connaître ces musiques improvisées et modernes par leur nature. Elle est en accord avec le contenu musical du film. Kaganof a rassemblé un grand nombre d’images sur les festivités et leurs préparations. Ainsi on voit les musiciens de toutes les nationalités en train de faire des essais et des répétitions avec leurs instruments de musique. Ces essais sont présentés comme une symphonie visuelle et acoustique. Le directeur Voudouris ajoute que ce festival serait aussi un événement multi-média.

La nature des images est angoissée et poétique, marquée par une volonté intérieure de visiter et d’imprimer sur pellicule le maximum de cette organisation artistique qui fait preuve d’une renaissance culturelle au pays du cinéaste. Plusieurs personnalités qui parlent ou qui participent à ce documentaire expérimental ont déjà leur rubrique personnelle au KagaBlog. Je vous parle surtout de Voudouris, de James Webb, de Doherty, de Michael Blake et de Joel Assaizky. Avec ceux-ci il y a les autres musiciens qui n’ont pas encore de rubrique mais dont des articles relatifs de notre site en parlent. Par exemple le saxophoniste Zim Ngqawana et Luc Houtkamp (voir notre article du 15-07-07 sur son clip « Comment nous avons arrêté de nous inquiéter et aimé Mandela ») sont des jeunes musiciens les plus prometteurs du pays aujourd’hui.

Pour terminer nous allons utiliser les mots d’un journaliste français comme hommage à Lucky Dube, le musicien reggae sud-africain assassiné récemment. Ce dernier avait donné un concert à Paris quelques mois avant. Ngqawana était sur le même concert un jour avant lui. Même si Lucky Dube n’était pas au festival Unyazi, un festival très différent de son univers musical, un petit hommage s’impose par nous : « Lucky Dube s’est produit à Paris, pour la dernière fois, en avril, invité par la Cité de la Musique, dans le cadre du cycle «Faubourgs d’Afrique du Sud ». Formidable d’énergie, entouré d’un groupe à l’efficacité épatante, l’artiste, qui incarne les doutes et les désillusions de la «nouvelle » Afrique du Sud, y présentait Respect, sorti en 2006, son ultime et vingt et unième album », écrit par Patrick Labesse in «Le Monde » du 28 octobre 2007, p.18.

dionysos andronis

POW Ensemble at the Unyazi festival. The first festival for electronic music in Africa. Johannesburg September 2005

This is a collage of two pieces, made by Kaganof.

Line up:

Luc Houtkamp, Matthew Ostrowski (computers), Burkhard Stangl (guitar), Marc Duby (bass), students from Wits Jazz department

Director: Aryan Kaganof (edited because of youtubes 10 minutes maximum)

DIMITRI VOUDOURIS

What we presented at the Unyazi 2005 festival would be a broad spectrum approach on what could be done with electronics in music. Where electronics would address from interactive processing in live performance, lap top performance, automation, where instrumewnts would work by themselves, signal processing and also as far as multi-media theatre.

(view unyazi of the bushveld here)

(view unyazi of the bushveld here)

for tladi website click here

2-5 July 2008
The University of the Witwatersrand
Johannesburg
South Africa
Following on the success of Unyazi, the first electronic music festival that took place at Wits University in 2005,the organisers bring you a developed and expanded festival and conference that will build on the achievements of the first event. Tladi the second festival of electronic music at Wits University will feature international and South African musicians in performance; but will support this festival with a strong educational outreach of workshops, dance performances and digital arts installations and a conference.

Tladi 2008 is an international festival in contemporary electronic music performance and digital arts and will be composed of four sections.

Conference
Live performance
Installations
Workshops
The following academic institutions will be represented at Tladi 2008:
Stanford University USA, Plymouth University UK, Georgia tech USA, Sao Paolo University Brazil University of Puerto Rico, Conservatorio Nacional de Música, Buenos Aires Argentina, Leeds University UK, Monash University South Africa, East Coast University Ghana , Maseno University Kenya, Obafemi Awolo University Nigeria, Stellenbosch University South Africa, Tswane University of technology South Africa, University of Kwazulu Natal the host University of the Witwatersrand.

The following themes will be explored in all four sections of the festival.
· Robotics in live performance and mechanical orchestras
· Multimedia theatre and interactive dance performance
· Acousmatic music performance and electro acoustic music
· Artificial intelligence,
· Sound ecology
· Interactive installations.
Tladi 2008 will offer excellent training opportunities for both students and educators alike:
· To create new and more advanced computer composing skills.
· To develop new and improved compositional, sound-engineering and production techniques.
· To develop and offer training in interactivity between musician, dance and visuals.
· To create an awareness of the cost effectiveness in owning and developing of the home studio.
· To create and develop outreach communication programs in music creation and interactivity that will involve a variety of disciplines from digital arts, film, drama, physical theatre, science and technology, electrical engineering, architecture, artificial intelligence and environmental engineering to name a few, allowing the composer to broaden there horizon in both creative techniques and also to allow for more possibilities in finding work.
· Will be an excellent training ground for students working both on film and television as they will obtain live experience in filming the festival and conference that will involve interviewing, filming live performances etc.
· To create an exchange program for both students and educators between Africa and other countries.
· Projects will be created between different institutions allowing for long- term development.
· To give a platform for composers and musicians, as well as other disciplines interested in
interactivity.
· To create an awareness of this music for young composers.
· In the long run Tladi 2008 will have an impact on contemporary music in South Africa and Africa at
large.

The Conference
Will take form in paper sessions that will focus on topics relating to electronic music and technology in the Southern Hemisphere. Its aim will focus on finding solutions and create an active plan that will address the needs of composers/musicians within less advantaged communities.
The Workshops
Will have a strong emphasis on hands on electronics, thus improving software and hardware development skills as well sound engineering and composition and performance skills. Huge emphasis will be spent around topics on dance motion visual projection and sound diffusion as part of the interactivity program. The workshops will focus on drawing students and scholars from various institutions as well as educators. The workshops will also focus on open source software and affordable ways to set up a home studio.

Live performance
Is an excellent opportunity for young sound engineers and performers to work in groups with other professional sound engineers and international performers that could learn about sound diffusion in a theatre and improve skills in sound spatialization techniques in the acoustics space and will cover areas of automation, electro-acoustic music, multimedia theatre , and interactivity.
Installations
Increasingly important on the International and South African art scenes are installations that integrate multiple forms of media and are usually reliant on audio components. Workshops will cover low budget techniques for gathering and editing sound and the applied principles of sound design for artists and musicians working in this exciting area.

The participants so far : -
Zim Ngqawana South Africa
Darius Weinberg South Africa
Warrick Sony South Africa
Urlich Susse South Africa
Jurgen Brauninger South Africa
Dimitri Voudouris South Africa
Funda College [Soweto] South Africa
Aryan Kaganof South Africa
Mozambique
SO Adedeji Nigeria
Caleb Okumu Chrispo Kenya
Konono No1 Congo
Richard Amuah Ghana
Lindsay Vickery Australia
Chris Cutler UK
Mihla Ciglar Slovenia
Vietnam
Manuel Rocha Iturbide Mexico
Ricardo Dal Farra Argentina
Carlos Alberto Vazquez Puerto Rico
Edson Zampronha Brazil
Eduardo Reck Miranda Brazil
Mark Applebaum USA
Jason Freeman USA
Gil Weinberg USA/Israel
Lukas Ligeti USA/Austria
Carl Stone USA/Japan
Margaret Schedel + Alison Rootberg USA
Nic Collins USA
Hildergard Westerkamp Canada
Barry Truax Canada
Klaus Hollinetz Austria
Pierre Bastien France
Projet Insitu France
Kasper Toeplitz France
Company CulturArte Maputo
Vun Hat Tan

Dimitri Voudouris was born in Athens in 1961 and now lives in South African. He began composing in the 90s for acoustic instruments,electronic sound sources and multimedia including dance and theatre.Now he is taking African materials as the basis for electroacoustic composition.NPFAI.1 [ New possibilities for African Instruments 1] is a piece for kundi and m’bira [ finger piano] with computer assisted processing.The kundi is a bowed harp originating from the Congo.NPFAI.3 uses African tenor marimba in a Xhosa Just Intonation tuning, processed using granular and subtractive synthesis,while Palmos features Hammond organ,oboe and bandoneon and use subtractive synthesis to enhance certain inaudible frequencies to an audible level.The use of organ carries reminiscences of Terry Riley’s early work in its purity of intention and tonal qualities.Praxis is a four channel tape piece using a recording od a Greek Orthodox male choir,which builds on the distrorted nature of the sound source into the composition in a way that disorients the listener.But the African-directed pieces are more attractive the originality of Voudouris’s compositions lies in the sound sources-an attempt to draw on African music in the service of Western art music’s often academic environment of electroacoustic compositions.The problem remains that he doesn’t weld this material into a really convincing unified composition.But even though his work doesn’t show the mastery of composers such as Jonathan Harvey and Trevor Wishart,Vodouris’s work is never less than engaging.

ANDY HAMILTON [April 2007]
The Wire [UK]

Issue 278

Dimitri Voudouris
NPFAI.1 / PALMOS / NPFAI.3 / PRAXIS
Pogus

Dimitri Voudouris was born in Athens in 1961 but relocated to South Africa quite early on, where he studied pharmacy, science of religion, philosophy and socio-cultural anthropology (whatever that is). He came to composition quite late, it seems (in the 90s), and describes his approach as being based on “research of cognitive psycho-acoustic behavioral patterns in humans” – though I dare say that would apply to just about any composer, whether s/he realised it or not. NPFAI.1 – that stands for “New Possibilities For African Instruments” – comes with a rather dry, detailed set of notes explaining how the sounds of a kundi (bowed harp) and an m’bira (thumb piano) are processed into 15 different sonic layers, manipulated and recombined. There’s also a forbidding-looking diagram of the “sound field construction” which is well nigh impossible to understand without a powerful magnifying glass, but presumably designed to impress, as if the music wasn’t impressive enough. NPFAI.3 gets busy with the sounds of a tenor marimba (tuned in Xhosa just intonation in case you’re interested), applying granular, algorithmic and subtractive sound synthesis to end up with 13′30″ of intriguing swoops and squiggles. To what extent it triggers archetypal images and thought patterns in accordance with the composer’s Jungian intentions depends, I guess, on how closely you listen. Palmos is slower, longer (33′34″ in fact) and easier to get lost in, weaving sounds sourced from a Hammond organ, an oboe and a bandoneon into a rich and carefully worked texture of great precision and beauty. But the best is saved until last: Praxis commemorates what Voudouris describes – alarmingly – as the Croatian genocide (the Croatians’ systematic victimization of Orthodox Christians during the recent war), processing recordings of an Orthodox church service in Johannesburg into no fewer than 556 “sound compartments” which combine considerable complexity with real affective power. It’s this kind of mixture of serious science and raw emotion that we associate with another famous Greek exile, Iannis Xenakis, and Praxis could stand alongside any of Xenakis’ electronic works with pride.–DW

this review first appeared in the april 2007 issue of paristransatlantic.com

Listen to the ‘Office Ambience’ [40k mp3 stream]

Tujiko Noriko: Solo (Editions Mego)
Michael Cashmore: The Snow Abides (Durtro)
Flower-Corsano Duo: The Radiant Mirror (Textile)
Dimitri Voudouris: Npfai 1/Palmos/Npfai 3/Praxis (Pogus)
Zu & Nobukazu Takemura: Identification With The Enemy: A Key To The Underworld (Atavistic)
Christa Pfangen: Watch Me Getting Back The End (Die Schachtel)
Githead: Art Pop (Swim)
Marginal Consort: Marginal Consort (Improvised Music From Japan)
Glenn Jones: Against Which The Sea Continually Beats (Strange Attractors Audio House)
Deerhoof: Friend Opportunity (ATP)

Dimitri Voudouris, NPFAI.1, Palmos, NPFAI.3, Praxis, Pogus, New Possibilities For African Instrument, computer, software, m’bira, kundi, marimba, experimental, acoustic, digital, electroacustica, drone music, dimitrivoudouris_npfai.jpg CD - Pogus

Dimitri Voudouris is Greek, long time Johannesburg citizen, chemist, electroacoustic composer, and founder of Unyazi first African electronic music festival. He’s not new to digital audio and multimedia experiments, with researches innervated with a specific attention to contemporary social and cultural phenomena. The outcome is notably vivid, considering the peculiar geographical origin that makes immaterial approaches less likely there as well as relaxed relationships with technology. He records as Npfai.1 (New Possibilities For African Instrument) and digitally processes the traditional m’bira (a.k.a. kalimba) and kundi sonorities. Kundi is a sort of ritual harp, able to articulate spaced atmospheres, loosely glitched, never too synthetically or naturally typified, directly avoiding certain improvised exoticism. There are looped tonalities, drones and harmonic tone colors deleting the non-audible frequencies in ‘Palmos’, a flat but extremely suggestive composition, listed just before NPFAI.3, weighed on the use of a tenor marimba that loses its percussive nature through a granular amalgam and synthetic textures. Praxis is the last track where an Orthodox male choir peeps from meticulously divided, spaced out sounds, minimally modulated in frequencies.
Aurelio Cianciotta

Posted at 07:10 PM - Mar 16/2007
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this review first appeared on neural

A South African composer of Greek birth, Voudouris is interested in the “research of cognitive psycho-acoustic behavioral patterns in humans and the behavior of sound in relationship to continued environmental changes”. Don’t let the composer’s difficult description fool you into thinking about some kind of cerebral pretentiousness, though, as this album contains instead four magnificent examples of his approach, music that’s always challenging and, in many of its expressions, of extraordinary beauty. “NPFAI” stands for “New Possibilities For African Instrument”; the two namesake pieces are electroacoustic studies, one for kundi and m’bira, the other for African marimba. In both cases, Voudouris processes the instrumental sources via computer to originate soundscapes that mix the “percussive and organic” sonic environments generated by these fascinating textures. An extremely individual character comes out of these experiments, which produce hundreds of separated aural events that nevertheless find their unique place in the air once they’re out of the speakers, finally spreading like an indivisible whole; the properties of the main instruments are soon forgotten in favour of a multidirectional modification of our sense of belonging to the very music. “Palmos”, for Hammond organ, oboe and bandoneon, is a wonderful pseudo-static, ever-morphing halo of interacting overtones; Voudouris states that “consciousness itself is a vibration pattern” and I take my hat off to him for two reasons: one, he’s the first artist who confirms what I’ve always believed and two, the awesome radiance of this piece, which really throws us into an ocean of doubts without a clue about the relationships between safe mental harbors and the perennial fear of the unknown. “Praxis” makes great use of a Christian Orthodox Greek male choir (computer processed, too), ending the disc with the most heterogeneous offer, a cross of mournful recollections and radical experimentation that will put many contemporary acousmatic composers under the threat of sounding surpassed. Sepulchral lamentations and modified pitches, obtained from a damaged recording of the memorial services for the Croatian genocides held in 1999 in Sofiatown, Johannesburg, work much better as a means of protest than a million words.

this review first published on touching extremes

Artist: VOUDOURIS, DIMITRI
Title: NPFAI.1/Palmos/NPFAI.3/Praxis
Label: POGUS
Format: CD
Price: $13.00
Catalog #: POGUS 21043
Not familiar with Voudouris before, but this is one of the most sonically pleasing electro-acoustic albums we’ve heard in recent days… “South African composer Dimitri Voudouris (b.1961 Athens, Greece) began composing in the ’90s. He composes for acoustic instruments, electronic sound sources, multimedia, including dance and theatre. He bases his technical and theoretical compositional approach in research of cognitive psycho-acoustic behavioral patterns in humans and the behavior of sound in relationship to continued environmental changes. His socio-cultural interests have led him to research the survival of music in the 21st century and the impact that media and technology have on the composer. ‘NPFAI.1′ (New Possibilities for African Instrument) is an electro-acoustic composition for kundi and m’bira with computer-assisted processing. Kalimba or m’bira is a finger piano made of wood and metal strips used in ceremonial music. In ‘Palmos,’ Voudoris chose three Western instruments — the Hammond organ, oboe, and the bandoneon — whose overtone and harmonic capabilities allowed for interlocking moments to take place, a phenomenon that is ever present in African traditional music. ‘NPFAI. 3,’ third in a series of electro-acoustic studies, is for African marimba and computer-assisted processing. ‘Praxis’ is a four-channel tape piece using a recording of an Christian Orthodox Greek male choir and computer-assisted processing. 566 sound compartments were created that ranged from 10 to 40 seconds in time duration.”

Dimitri Voudouris (Greece, 1961), based in South Africa, founded “Unyazi”, the first electronic music festival in the African continent.
NPFAI.1/PALMOS/NPFAI.3/PRAXIS (Pogus, 2006) collects four of his electro-acoustic pieces: NPFAI 1 for kundi harp, mbira piano and computer; the 33-minute droning sonata Palmos for Hammond organ, oboe, bandoneon and digital processing; NPFAI 3 for marimba and computer; PRAXIS for male choir, tape and computer. Each one explored different facets of sound, using the computer to create a focus for the listener. Basically, Voudouris’ post-processing hijacks the mind of the listener so that it will listen to specific aspects of the sound and not to what would normally be its center of attention. In a sense, it also hijacks African music, by turning its traditional instruments into sources of emotions that are antithetical to the original spirit.

piero scaruffi