Megaphones for the Unheard: Exploring the voice of women through music and poetry
“My voice is the voice of women who cannot sing, hear me sing it, hear me.”
30 minute or 1 hour programme
At the heart of Megaphones for the Unheard is a poem by the talented poet Jasmine Cooray. Taking inspiration from female musical figures, such as the Iranian musician, poet and political activist, Gissoo Shakeri, German medieval abbess, Hildegard of Bingen, and Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie, Cooray’s words bring these women’s experiences to life. Acclaimed British composers Helen Chadwick, Ayanna Witter-Johnson, Stevie Wishart, and Marcus Davidson develop the core Megaphones theme in their own individual way with new commissions Voice. Further info here
Read a review from Three Choirs Festival 2022 ‘quite simply outstanding..’
How A Caged Bird Sings
After Shakeri
A flutter of white stork feathers: Hildegard von Bingen looks up
from her parchment to the monastery window, sharp eyes
flush with poetry. The clergy awaits her scripture, wisdom-rich,
acute visions: the spark to blast her creations into smoke
stuck in the throats of those coughing weaker sex,
12th century rumblings; the plates of the world: moving.
My voice is the voice of women who cannot sing.
Hear me, hear me, heed my spreading wings
My voice is the voice of women who cannot sing
Hear me sing it, hear me.
From a television studio in Pakistan, Abida Parveen, blue salwar khameez,
raises her arm to the sky, lets loose a note that soars high enough
to haunt the sleeping gods. From her mouth flies a baby chukar partridge.
Propelled by belly fire, it swoops in a treble clef curve to a New York
smoky bar. Billie Holiday’s voice swirls like molasses, drips off
the ankles of strange fruit, sound bittersweet and mournful.
Her face shines through a bloodline of struggle, rasps like the grate of chains.
A ruffed grouse chirps on her stack of records, then takes flight: lands by a door
slammed by a thousand palms. Evelyn Glennie, bundled out on the street.
Her soundless ears sting with prejudice, yet she drums on:
the ground shifts across the nation. An amputee
lands an orchestra place: the record is changed forever.
My voice is the voice of women who cannot sing.
Hear me, hear me, heed my spreading wings
My voice is the voice of women who cannot sing
Hear me sing it, hear me.
A golden eagle bursts from her drum skin, fights storm, ocean bluster,
perches on a radio aerial in Iran. Its tinny mouth seeps
Gissoo Shakeri’s protest melody. Punching through Taliban gaffer tape,
nightingales zig zag through gunshot, bound for freedom.
One lands on a no trespassing sign: a Detroit street corner,
where battle MC Invincible taps her mic, then spits a flow
so tight the mocking brawl crumbles to a cluster
of heads nodding like sea-flora in moving current.
When her last rhyme pulls its knot, the street explodes.
My voice is the voice of women who cannot sing.
Hear me, hear me, heed my spreading wings
My voice is the voice of women who cannot sing
Hear me sing it, hear me.
We sing for women locked in basements, silenced
with fists; sing until glass around loot of agency is smashed,
until our message is swallowed, heavy as suet.
We sing for the girls finally allowed to trace an alphabet,
for buckets no longer stained with backstreet abortion;
sing to unzip the belly-deep silent scream,
turn it up, bring that caged bird through,
and, in a cathedral heaving with an ark of world leaders,
unlock the clasp. Let her sing us into a new time.
My voice is the voice of women who cannot sing.
Hear me, hear me, heed my spreading wings
My voice is the voice of women who cannot sing
Hear me sing us, hear me.
Notes:
1.The birds mentioned in the piece are the respective national birds of the geographical birthplaces of the musicians mentioned in the poem:
White Stork: Germany (Hildegard),
Chukar Partridge: Pakistan (Parveen)
Ruffled Grouse: State of Pennsylvania, USA (Holiday),
Nightingale: Iran (Shakeri)
Golden Eagle: Scotland (Glennie),
2. The first and third choral lines come from an interview with Gissoo Shakeri, Iranian poet, musician and political activist. Much of her music is banned in Iran. She said:
‘My voice is the voice of the women who cannot sing, my words are their words. The bird of freedom captive in your breast sings with my voice.’