The radiance is everywhere

Cities and Memory - remixing the world

I. Breathing Steps
II. Lightwell
III. To fight? No, to sing!
"In the field recording I chose, a street musician plays and hums the tune of the Kozachok on the accordion, while people are heard passing by in Jerusalem’s Armenian Quarter. I was immediately captivated by the sound of the accordion, but also by the unforced openness with which the musician hummed the tune. Reading about the recording, I learnt about the history of the Quarter, its antiquity and the monks who first migrated there. This brought me back to a theme that has been a constant in my life and artistic practice: travel and migration as an act of faith.
"Leaving one’s country is an enormous leap of faith; it is both proof and a test of the strength of that faith, its trust in a kind of Divine Grace. You must believe that you will be looked after both along the way and when you arrive at your destination; you must believe that the residents of other lands, the ones you pass through and the one in which you might settle will be friendly and welcoming, and not hostile, distant or indifferent. You travel and migrate trusting that in Others, you will meet the face of what in Sufism is called the Beloved; and, approaching travel in this way, you are the vulnerable Foreigner, the Stranger, the Wanderer.
"This is true if you are a merchant, a monk or ‘holy person’, a family or a roving musician; but it is especially true if you are a woman. In researching for the piece, I stumbled across a poem by contemporary Armenian poet Hasnik Simonian, who speaks of an autumn ‘stretched and squeezed like an accordion’ while she wanders, ‘praying with my hands in my pockets’, as ‘poet-girls’ do, ‘step by step’. I thought about the privilege of walking and travelling alone, and just how much of an act of faithful defiance to restrictive social norms it can be for some of us. A part of the poem is included in the piece, read by Eleni Sisti.
"For years, I have returned again and again to the figure of a Persian-speaking Armenian-Jewish merchant, poet and mystic called Sarmad Kashani, who travelled to Mughal India in the 17th century. In his Rubaiyat (parts of which are heard read by Navid Fayaz) he expresses with undaunted sincerity the nature and struggle of a form of faith that wishes to remain open, trusting, non-sectarian, undogmatic, and accepting of its own uncertainty and fallibility. In the poem which gives the title to this piece [here in English translation by Syeda Saiyidain Hameed], he writes:
If the heart has Wisdom, its embrace will hold the Friend
If the eye can see, the Radiance is Everywhere
If the ear can listen, what else but praise of God?
If the tongue can speak, every word reveals the Mystery
"Despite the evident depth of his faith, Sarmad was executed by Emperor Aurangzeb, allegedly for atheism and unorthodox religious practices. One of the reasons why he has captured my imagination for years is exactly his fate as an apostate, a daring objector to the dogma of power and religious hypocrisy. In choosing a recording of the Kozachok from Jerusalem at this time of senseless bloodshed in Israel and Palestine, Ukraine, Sudan and other parts of the world, I felt that both Sarmad’s objection to tribalism and his understanding of the Other as the face of God are a fitting counterpoint to the kind of religious and ethnic hatred that pits people against each other and which is used by ruthless, cynical leaders to kill, control and indoctrinate.
"Travel and migration, at their core, hold the belief that the earth is to be shared and experienced by all of us – and not just all of us humans but also other forms of life. The Armenian folk song ‘Mer tan itev’, from the historically Armenian region of Shadakh in modern day Turkey, is a hymn to the sharing of the fruits of the land and to marriage. It is heard here sung by the acapella quartet Asma Cordis. In another Armenian folk poem, read by me, the speaker mourns the loss of their beloved, who has left to join a war. Perhaps it was a war that was seen as justified, against a neighbour turned enemy, against a heathen, an infidel, an adversary; but if we are all each other’s Strangers, why must we continue to fight, when we can sing in praise instead?
"The composition is structured around fleeting field recordings (sometimes manipulated) from my own walking travels, mostly of street musicians, or musicians practicing and heard from the street, but also of various ambient sounds, including recordings from London, Athens, Cagliari and Reykjavik. Poets, musicians and birds migrate from far and distant places; they too wander and bring the sounds of other lands and languages with them, mixing and blending along the way. Overall, my aim has been to pay homage to this: the travelling Radiance everywhere; the road that welcomes everyone and everything unconditionally."
Contributors
Chris Sakellaridis: Composition, Field Recordings, Voice (English)
Eleni Sisti: Voice, (Armenian)
Navid Fayaz: Voice, (Farsi)
Acapella group Asma Cordis (Georgia Palioura, Anna Maria Markantoni, Irini Athanasoula, Marianna Athanasoula): Folk Song ‘Mer Dan Itev’
Various Street Musicians
Birds, Sea, Bells, Wind
Jerusalem street soundscape reimagined by Chris Sakellaridis.
Part of the Migration Sounds project, the world’s first collection of the sounds of human migration.
For more information and to explore the project, see https://www.citiesandmemory.com/migration