The Performative Power of Vocality

Virginie Magnat

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000710755
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

The Performative Power of Vocality offers a fresh perspective on voice as a subject of critical inquiry by employing an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approach.

Conventional treatment of voice in theatre and performance studies too often regards it as a subcategory of actor training, associated with the established methods that have shaped voice pedagogy within Western theatre schools, conservatories, and universities. This monograph significantly deviates from these dominant models through its investigation of the non-discursive, material, and affective efficacy of vocality, with a focus on orally transmitted vocal traditions. Drawing from her performance training, research collaborations, and commitment to cultural diversity, Magnat proposes a dialogical approach to vocality. Inclusive of established, current, and emerging research perspectives, this approach sheds light on the role of vocality as a vital source of embodied knowledge, creativity, and well-being grounded in process, practice, and place, as well as a form of social and political agency.

An excellent resource for qualitative researchers, artist-scholars, and activists committed to decolonization, cultural revitalization, and social justice, this book opens up new avenues of understanding across Indigenous and Western philosophy, performance studies, musicology, ethnomusicology, sound and voice studies, anthropology, sociology, phenomenology, cognitive science, physics, ecology, and biomedicine.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

1

PERFORMANCE, EMBODIMENT, AND VOCALITY

Without song wind cannot play inside our bodies. [Songs] tantalize the musculature and restore cellular movement in that easy way that the breath of the four winds has of tantalizing the earth, dragging sound through trees, and haunting the world with the beauty of breath’s power.

(Lee Maracle, Celia’s Song)

Coast Salish author Lee Maracle’s poetic invocation of singing suggests that the restorative power of breath animates the air with sound, vibrating and resonating within the human organism as well as throughout the natural world, encompassing a wide range of sonorities that she associates as much with the voicings of wind, earth, and trees as with the voicings of human beings, bound together in a relationship of reciprocity that she honors in her writing.

As a European performance practitioner, researcher, and educator working at a public Canadian university located on the unceded traditional territories of First Nations communities that comprise the province of British Columbia, I am deeply inspired by the powerful cultural revitalization movement for self-determination and sovereignty in which Indigenous Elders, Traditional Knowledge Keepers, artist-scholars, educators, and activists have been engaged for several generations. While developing my previous research project on the artistic journeys of women who collaborated with Polish experimental theatre director Jerzy Grotowski, I was fortunate to meet Cree actor, director, and writer Floyd Favel, who worked with Grotowski during the final phase of his post-theatrical research. Favel shared memories about his experience with Rena Mirecka, the leading actress of Grotowski’s Laboratory Theatre and a trusted teacher, with whom Favel had a special creative relationship, as acknowledged by Mirecka when I spoke with her about him (see Grotowski, Women, and Contemporary Performance 39–43). Inspired by the mutually beneficial intercultural connection between Favel and Mirecka, whose respective artistic journeys have clearly been influenced by what they have learned from each other, I conceived of my new project as a collaborative endeavor engaging with the 94 “Calls to Action” issued by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada in 2015. These include:

• a Covenant for Reconciliation to “renew or establish Treaty relationships based on principles of mutual recognition, mutual respect, and shared responsibility for maintaining those relationships into the future”;
• a National Council for Reconciliation to “promote public dialogue, public/private partnerships, and public initiatives for reconciliation”;
• Education for Reconciliation committed to “building student capacity for intercultural understanding, empathy, and mutual respect”;
• the integration of “Indigenous history, heritage values, and memory practices into Canada’s national heritage and history,” supported by the National Program of Historical Commemoration;
• the development of “a strategy for Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists to undertake collaborative projects and produce works that contribute to the reconciliation process,” funded by the Canada Council for the Arts (www.nctr.ca/reports.php).

In his 1957 Nobel Peace Prize lecture, Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson asked: “How can there be peace without people understanding each other, and how can this be if they don’t know each other?” He then referred to what he defined as “cooperative coexistence,” positing that knowledge and understanding must be reciprocal (“The Four Faces of Peace”). In 2015, almost sixty years later, Stephen J. Toope, who was at the time the President of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the ex-president of the University of British Columbia, invoked a similar form of reciprocity in a Globe and Mail article when he stated that in the wake of “the groundbreaking work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) chaired by Justice Murray Sinclair … Canadians have been called upon to act to contribute to a process of reconciliation with aboriginal peoples in Canada” (“Reconciliation Begins by Closing the Graduation Gap”). Highlighting the role of universities in this historical process, Toope concluded that “dialogue and interaction between aboriginal and non-aboriginal students, faculty and community members must underpin the co-creation of new futures” (“Reconciliation”). This statement followed Justice Sinclair’s address to the academic community assembled at the 2015 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Ottawa, during which he stressed our responsibility as scholars and educators to actively contribute to reconciliation through our research and teaching. When the final Walk for Reconciliation reached the Ottawa City Hall on May 31, 2015, groups of singers welcomed everyone with drumming and traditional songs, and we were encouraged by Justice Sinclair and other TRC leaders to work together to restore trust, solidarity, and social justice in Canada. This powerful call convinced me that the most valuable research outcome for my new project on vocality would be to support collaborative, cross-cultural, arts-based inquiry, fostering reciprocal understanding and respect, and to continue to integrate Indigenous scholarship in my research, a strategy I began to develop in my first book.

Preliminary Research

In 2013, I received a Research Development Grant from the University of British Columbia Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies to conduct preliminary research for my project on vocality, which enabled me to provide an undergraduate research assistantship to Syilx (Okanagan) artist Cori Derickson, who graduated from the National Aboriginal Professional Artist Training (NAPAT) program offered at the En’owkin Centre in Penticton, British Columbia, and who transferred into the Interdisciplinary Performance Bachelor of Fine Arts Program at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan Campus. Cori helped me to organize an event entitled “Sharing Traditional Songs: A Cross-Cultural Encounter” that brought together a group of international students, whom I invited to share traditional songs from their cultural legacy with a group of young Indigenous singers and musicians, mentored by Syilx Elder Delphine Armstrong (Cori’s mother) at the En’owkin Centre on April 3, 2014. Cori also scheduled meetings with certain of her relatives and other community members, who generously shared with me some of the important reasons why songs are considered such a valuable part of cultural knowledge.

Elder Richard Armstrong, who is Cori’s uncle, explained to me that Syilx people have always used songs for thanking, honoring, and giving back to the people of the four kingdoms: the flying people, the water people, the four-legged people, and the plant and tree people. He stated that these are the parents of the two-legged people, who need their help to survive and prosper. Knowledge about hunting, harvesting, making medicine for different purposes, turning animal hide into clothes, and so on, was given to humans by the people of the four kingdoms. This knowledge is reflected in the making of a traditional drum, which necessitates using the hide of an animal and building a wood frame, so that the sound of the drum is the pulse of the land. Singing and drumming during the Winter Dance ceremony, along with sharing fish, meat, root vegetables, berries, and fruits, are ways of showing that humans continue to practice what they were taught and that they still benefit from these gifts. He observed that when singing these songs and when speaking the Nsyilxcən language, the body is involved, and that movement helps in remembering the words and their meaning, which is very precise, a learning process that is an important part of oral tradition. He noted that, these days, students are too busy taking notes, which is a way of relying on the mind to record in writing what they hear and see, and pointed out that the words, sounds, and movements of oral tradition cannot be accounted for in writing without losing stresses, tones, musicality, and rhythm. He maintained that putting spoken words down on paper is a different way of learning than remembering these words in the oral tradition from which they originate and where they are linked to gestures and movement. He highlighted the sensory dimension of the Syilx people’s deep connection to nature, which includes hearing and feeling the different sounds of the land, the vibration and rhythm of the earth. Richard’s sister Delphine, Cori’s mother, stressed that such a sensitivity to natural sounds coming from the wind, the water, the plants, and the animals is reflected in the sonorities and rhythms of the Nsyilxcən language, whose words sonically evoke the natural environment to which they refer. Syilx songs often don’t have words, or sometimes only a few words, so that the meaning of songs comes from how they sound. Delphine pointed out that singing must have a certain quality, which is not conveyed by all singers, as some only sing with their mouth, and she suggested that more is needed, as this quality has to do with vibration, energy, receptivity, as well as singing with the heart.

Glen Deneault, an established Secwépemc (Shuswap) song leader, told me that he had trained for thirty years before being given permission to represent his Shuswap Nation in the Okanagan, where he is a guest. He explained that songs live in the spirit world, which means that they cannot be lost and disappear, even under colonialism, and they provide a connection to the ancestors, a long lineage of people who walked the earth before us and who help the living because they are relatives for whom they care. He specified that songs watch people and visit those who can sing them. They come to certain people because they need someone to sing them. He referred to an agreement: the trees, plants, and animals will give of themselves to the humans to sustain them, and in return the humans will give something of themselves as well, such as giving life to songs through singing. He said that the trees, plants, and animals help with the singing, as it is part of the agreement. Because singing goes up to the spirit world where the songs live, and back down to humans, it is a trail to the spirit world, and lead singers like himself experience the power within singing as a responsibility. He stressed that singers are needed for many different aspects of life, as there are prayer songs and social songs that must be used in specific circumstances. He remarked that in pre-contact times, many people were singing together which was very powerful. This helped them as they needed to be strong to hunt, build things, gather food and medicine, and so on. Everyone had a specialty and people had to collaborate to survive. During ceremonies, singers would “make power,” not to have power, but to be a channel, conduit, or vessel for power in order to help others. Even though things have changed, the role of singers today is still to help the community, and the ancestors also help by sending songs, which are teachings. Like Delphine Armstrong, Glen Deneault remarked that it is not enough to just sing, and emphasized that one has to give a part of one’s life to the songs, a process that takes a lot of energy and that can affect the singer for hours, days, or even months. One has the choice to do it or not, for the songs continue to live in the spirit world, and they are the voices of the ancestors that are heard during ceremonies.

I also had a conversation with Cree performance practitioner and educator Geraldine Manossa about her teaching in the NAPAT program at the En’owkin Centre. She told me that students in this program receive performance training that focuses on their identity, community, culture, land, and ancestors, which is at the root of the creative research they carry out at the Centre. She explained that some of the students initially feel lost and without any connections, yet they have a strong need to find out about their identity. The training enables them to work deeply with their body and voice as they explore singing, dancing, and story-telling rooted in who they are.

K^wunk^wancin

In order to further develop this research, I applied for government funding to offer graduate research assistantships to Cori Derickson and Mariel Belanger, the two Syilx multidisciplinary artists, who had just begun their Master of Fine Arts studies under my supervision. I planned to invite them to collaborate with me on this new project, focusing on the interconnection of orality, relationality, and reciprocity within traditional vocal music practices belonging to the repertoire of our intangible cultural heritage. After learning in April 2016 that my Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grant application for “The Performative Power of Vocality” had been successful, I discussed my plans with my colleagues within the Indigenous Inquiries Circle. Our group meets annually at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI), directed by Norman K. Denzin at the University of Illinois, and includes influential Cree scholars, Margaret Kovach and Shawn Wilson. The Circle recommended that I form an Indigenous Advisory Committee that would provide the research team with advice, guidance, and mentorship throughout the development of the project.

Following this recommendation, I invited seven established Indigenous artist-scholars, Elders and Traditional Knowledge Keepers, who generously agreed to become part of the Advisory Committee: Syilx Elder Delphine Armstrong, Cree Elder Dr. Winston D. Wuttunee, and nêhiyo itâpsinowin (Knowledge Keeper) Joseph Naytowhow, three distinguished singers, musicians, storytellers, and educators; Indigenous Music Therapy specialist Carolyn Kenny (Antioch University); Arts-based Education scholar and musician Vicki Kelly (Simon Fraser University); scholar-practitioner of Indigenous Epistemologies and Indigenous Education Manulani Aluli-Meyer (University of Hawaii); and Indigenous Performance Studies artist-scholar Jill Carter (University of Toronto).

I then applied for and obtained a SSHRC Connection Grant to bring the members of the Advisory Committee and the graduate students together for the practice-based component of my research on vocality entitled “Honoring Cultural Diversity through Collective Vocal Practice.”

The aim was to create opportunities to engage in cross-cultural and intergenerational exchange through collective vocal practice grounded in different vocal traditions, as a way of supporting expressions of cultural sovereignty and self-determination while promoting inclusivity, diversity, and solidarity as the core values of a healthy multicultural society. This project hence raised the following questions:

1. Can engaging in non-colonial forms of collective vocal practice help Indigenous, Settler, and Immigrant communities to develop mutually beneficial relationships based on a shared commitment to collective health and well-being, intercultural understanding, as well as social and environmental justice?
2. Can collective experiences of the value of cultural diversity lead to positive change in Canada in the post-Truth and Reconciliation Commission era?
3. Can the contested term reconciliation be envisioned as a call to active participation in anti/de/non-colonial forms of cultural practice, a form of collective testimony or “utopian performative” (Dolan 5) holding the potential for transformation?

Drawing from my twenty-five years of experience as a performance practitioner and educator, which includes (re-)learning traditional songs in Occitan, the critically endangered language of my cultural legacy,¹ I worked in consultation with the members of the Advisory Committee and in collaboration with Cori and Mariel, who were developing cultural revitalization projects for their MFA degrees in Performance and Indigenous Studies, and two UBC Vancouver non-Indigenous doctoral students: Claire Fogal, a theatre actor, director, and educator, whose father trained with Etienne Decroux, and who was conducting doctoral research on the Decroux-Grotowski lineage under my co-supervision, and Julia Ulehla, a classica...