Dennis Bathóry-Kitsz e Stevie Balch

Birth Song

When we began our search to re-discover birth songs, to re-animate them as part of modern birth and from them to create new sound art, we could not know that our discovery would be about pathways rather than objects.

Our first pathway was to Nodar itself. This pathway opened up to mountains and valleys, with terraced hills held back by stone walls,villages nestled in corners and on ridges, a mystery of narrow lanes,hairpin turns, and terraced vineyards eventually dropping deep into a river valley, smaller then narrower and then a cobbled lane over which arched budding grape vines.

Nodar was a sonic miracle before a song was sung: wind, birds, goatbells, doors, latches, foot steps on cobbles. Among all, the pathway of water—trickle and river and rain—ruled. It sluiced down from the hills, along the cobbles, through houses, into cisterns, down culverts, into the ground and the river, into the vines, into the grapes, into the wine. It spoke—it sang—at each point in its path.

The water soon drew me in-literally, as I fell from a ledge into the Paiva. With the river’s baptism, I with drew from self-focus, and drew from the sounds of the water, the bells, a creaking door and the voice of Manuela Barile the first and last electroacoustic works of the residency,“Three Songs for Manuela”. Although we continued to record the environment, our roles shifted to discovery of song.

We interviewed the women of Nodar in hopes they would recall birth songs—but no, that was distant past, the midwives long gone,birth now tended in hospitals.

There were songs—lullabies and songs of celebration, weather,childhood, love, harvest. Donzília Duarte sang first; her voice was rich and clear, and the songs she remembered detailed, some major, some modal. Her songs’ purity and simplicity stripped away one more layer of our artificial search for Something To Document.

And then came another gift—two very old women from Candal singing while baking bread. Only two women were left alive now tosing a three-part song—shiveringly beautiful in quavering voices,with the simple harmonies major and modal at once, rising to amelodic seventh. It was the genesis of our ultimate Nodar document, teaching us about music and work and life in just a minute’s time, transforming our premise to, in Stevie’s words,“bread and birth,” and in mine, “voice and song.”

More singing opened to us. Piedade Tavares sang a verse for us, and Donzília and her mother sang, one after another, some twenty songs. The mother’s voice was crackly in speech, but clear and smooth in song. Out of memory came the songs, restored to the present in laughter and family.

Soon came another gift: After we drove a narrow path on a dark night to the neighboring village, the women of Sequeiros sangwilder than the wildest of American sacred harp singing.With occasional breaks into parallel harmony, it was unison singing,phrase-based, shifting from implied major to implied minor midway through many of the songs. Women from the benches along the side joined in on some, as did two little girls. These were songs of every subject, including a salacious “challenge improvisation” actedand sung in men’s clothing.

Another event twisted our expectations. We followed yet another path, this over the mountain to Manhouce, to hear Isabel Silvestreand her singers. These voices were more practiced than the Sequeiros group, but still had a forward sound and clarity with parallel harmonies. After a public presentation, Isabel led them through a beautiful and mysterious Christmas lullaby for us. It set the tone for our ride back over the mountains, where we stopped to look out from an ancient church.

In Nodar we lived in a world spanning time—we had laptops, yet washed our clothes in a cold water cistern and hung them to dry in the sun. Goat bells played while we washed,and a local pony watched. Villagers worked the terraced fields by hand, so we heard the hoes and the plunk of potato seeds dropped into furrows. New lambs called pitifully for their mammas as they are kept separate,away from predators.

As we shifted fromour rural Vermont selves to rural Nodar selves,we wrote texts for our project, mine influenced by a mothcamouflaged against the house’s granite:

To see what we have forgotten to see,

To hear what we have forgotten to hear,

To sing what we have forgotten to sing,

To uncover what is hidden in plain sight,

To find beauty in ourselves,

in our fields

in our home

in our town

in our place

Patterns and rhythms that join our experiences.

In the meantime, Stevie explored the meaning and integration of home and song:

Of our home, we sing

Of each other, we sing

Of our history, we sing

Among the stones, we sing

Of love, we sing

Of sorrow and loss, we sing

For the little ones, we sing

With thankfulness, we sing

For tomorrow, we sing

Together, we sing

We translatedand Luis corrected. And now before us we had scattered sounds and images and words that represented the path our project had followed. Yet no songs of birth, and nothing beyond a few electroacoustic compositions and variations on the breadsong. What had we learned? What had we done? Would we be seen as intruders who had twisted the village and its residents into our view? Would we insult them?And so we turn to Tia—aunt Ilda Duarte Paiva—life long resident of Nodar whose presence had informed our beings. Tia did not sing for us, and we could not understand her words. But her sense of being, of place, always witnessed. When we baked bread, we hoped she would take some. When we washed, she was there.

And so we presented our video in Fernando’s bar, filled with interested audience. Drinking and talking were a fisherman, tourist drop-ins,and a man from Sequeiros complete with walking stick. Dogs foughtand barked. But as the sounds of our video’s birds rose into the music and Donzília’s voice, the bar quieted.When it was over there was sincere response—including from Tia, who appeared behind us.

Our residency in Nodar began the first phase of our search for song sonce so important in women’s lives and for birth songs in particular,providing a spectacular setting for our work and with a wealth of song. We gathered, recorded and documented more than sixty songs. In this beautiful terraced village, we created new electronic compositions and acoustic arrangements, as well as recording hours of environmental sound in place and during soundwalks.

Our artistic exploration at, and pathways through, Nodar were asuccess—but our search for birth songs continues. It is even clearerto us now that birth song is being lost. A woman’s ability to birth,supported by other women and their song—with trust in her body—is also being lost. Even a single song will help renew awareness of musical expression of birth in the modern world.