1 Seeds
The first theme of Seeds wants to represent a wide universe from where the HumanTree appears to breathe. I wanted to direct to the audience as who I am, with my body breathing as a sign of birth and beginning. This strong thought came from some meditation practises and by meeting Mr Nuchhe Bahadur Dangol, a distinguished Newar musician from the Kathmandu Valley, whose words and presence was impacting meaningfully. In the following audios he talks about his morning routine of meditation, forty minutes of listening to the internal mantra, the breath. As I wrote in my diary after one of the lessons I had during my field trip to Nepal:
I can describe the whole session with a breathing, with the internal silence of inhale and exhale. He talks about his routine of meditation, one hour each morning, only listening to the internal mantra, the breath. I record his words or better said, I absorb its essence while he insists on breathing in and breathing out in front of anything that happens in your life. (Personal diary entry, 4th of June 2019)
Clearly these talks with Mr Nuchhe Bahadur Dangol planted some seeds in me. These talks about breathing are also connected with topics such as dying, and it will be reflected as well in the seventh theme Freedom and peace. The starting point of all the HumanTree music creation aimed to be sounds of breath coming both from me and from the accordion.
In this music creation we collaborated with Repkat in the live electronics. In our first session together I shared the meaning of the theme with him and from there we started a collaboration. The process of creating started by recording accordion sounds that would be the material used for the electronics. Together we builded a structure that was supporting our improvisations, keeping it open to interact in the moment of the concert. The structure started with breathing sounds, effects of accordion such as keys and bellow, continued introducing the sound of accordion with rhythmical material and ended fading until breathing sounds appeared again.
This composition has musical materials of the coming songs, done with the aim to connect and build a musical unity rather than independent pieces. In this composition, there are present two clear influences: one rhythm from the ritual in Nepal and the Catalan song, El cant dels ocells. The middle part of the piece has the rhythm inspired from the ritual, even though it is not used as explicitly as it will in the fifth theme, The relief of forgiveness. Similarly for the Catalan song, where you can hear a few melodic lines that already present what will come later in the last theme. I believed that this could give a whole sense of unity to the programme, from beginning to the end. The musical seeds for this first theme of the HumanTree were therefore the seeds of spontaneity (called so because improvisation played a big part), the seeds of freedom (through the melody of El cant dels ocells), and the seeds of diversity (through the rhythm in five).