South finds unique voice
The South Coast jewel of Denmark will be the place to have your voice heard, along with those of many others this weekend.
The Denmark Festival of the Voice is one of only two in Australia devoted to the mass exercising of the vocal chords.
Now in its 11th year, the festival encompasses every vocal expression from choral and sacred music to poetry, storytelling, indigenous and world music, folk and country to jazz, blues and hip-hop.
Festival artistic director Vivienne Robertson places emphasis on speaking out in all manner of ways.
One of the first acts she engaged was Sydney kora player, guitarist and singer Miriam Lieberman, who will be part of Friday’s opening Sacred Songs concert spanning Hebrew, African and Noongar- Yamatji indigenous music.
“She has an amazing earthy, yet nuanced voice,” Robertson says of the performer, whose fourth album Birds of the Moon was roundly praised last year.
“She’s someone who’d I say is a true vocalist, using her voice to explore tonal colour, rhythm, texture and meaning. The instruments are there as support — beautiful yet allowing the full flavour of her voice to be prominent.”
Lieberman spent time in West Africa learning the traditional 21-string harp, the kora. Hers is made from a gourd, covered in buffalo hide, with 21 fishing lines and a whipper-snipper cord as the bass.
Conductor Rachel Hore will lead this year’s community-based Big Sing and the Local ’n’ Vocal project to create a new song for Denmark.
Other guest artists include Riley Lee, Tenzin Choegyal, James Khidir, Michael Askill interpreting the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Persian-jazz artist Tara Tiba, author Kim Scott, world music-opera singer Heather Lee, the Hi-Jinks a cappella quartet and vocalist Alice Hui-Sheng Chang.
Robertson says the Denmark festival is a 10th of the size of the Tasmanian Festival of Voices, which is held in July and is the only other festival with a focus on voices in Australia. She says both events celebrate the collective power and beauty of the human voice “part audience, part participant, part highly polished, part raw and rough”.
“Being a smaller festival, we can create an intimacy which breeds something magic. We become a family of voices over the weekend, and over time,” she says.
The festival began as a community singing activity and has expanded to include guest acts and the spoken word.
“I see it as being about ‘vocal music’ in a very broad sense,” Robertson says.
“And then there’s vocal exploration like Alice Hui- Sheng Chang, who’s showing use of voice in extraordinary ways that may not be easy to listen to, but show the remarkable ability of the voice to soar and express and make sound beyond what we may think of as ‘music’.”
The festival will also encourage the act of what Aboriginal people refer to as “deep listening”, listening to the silent sounds of country. That will be held in the new storytelling tent, a handmade Mongolian/Fremantle yurt which will host tales from as far afield as Mongolia, Tibet, Japan, Africa, the Middle East and Ireland.
Robertson’s comes from a family of singers. Her grandparents met at the London Gilbert and Sullivan society, her parents met over Brahms and she has a passion for mystical and sacred songs.
“Singing unlocks happiness,” she says. “It reminds us that this happiness is always there, waiting. We don’t do it enough, alone or together.”
The Denmark Festival of the Voice runs May 29-31. Details: denmarkfestivalofvoice.com.au
