Philip Miller takes as his mission the reverberation of the voices of apartheid’s victims. He wants to give remembrance a materiality, in the form of a cantata, that gives the past a presence in the future.
Rewind: A Cantata for Voice, Tape and Testimony is a total work of art, a sort of postmodern Wagnerian opera minus the libretto, but one that relies on the listener’s poetic sense to construct meaning and narrative. The work uses myriad elements available to the modern composer, but also to the filmmaker and artist as creator of images and concepts. The music is performed against the backdrop of a large screen upon which images and films are projected, making for an experience that is aesthetic and political — but also profoundly spiritual.
The music is performed by a string octet, a large choir and six soloists and by a sort of disc and video jockey who strategically fires off samples of what is perhaps the most resonant element of the work, the recorded voices of those testifying in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Indeed the entire work is structured in such a way that it transforms the testimonies into a deep well of meaning, multiplying the significance of the slightest pauses, hesitations and phrases, monumentalising the effort of reconciliation.
Miller’s score is the result of the reversal of the more conventional method of composition. The centrality of the aural qualities of the testimony is evident in their transformation into music: a sob is rhythmically rendered by the sopranos, PW Botha’s paranoid wagging against laughter, the sighing of a witness is repeated by the choir as musical breathing.
Miller began with words and sounds, the accompanying music that makes the cantata an engaging piece of work only came later. Speaking to the Mail & Guardian after a rehearsal, he pointed out that a project of this nature is subject to certain ethical considerations — the artist doesn’t want to cheapen the testimonies, the sighs, the wails and traumas of the living and of those departed.
Miller says his work is part of the nation’s public and political memory. Responding to a question about the relation of trauma and art, he says artists ‘often work with pain”. He believes the testimonies, made in 1996, should continue to be heard, especially since the nation has not really reconciled. When four white students make black cleaners drink soup laced with urine at the University of the Free State, Miller wonders about reconciliation. ‘Are we yet talking to one another?”
The many forms of voice give the work a peculiarly South African identity: the choir is the most central of our musical institutions and its repetition of TRC testimony suggests a series of aesthetic and conceptual relations: the contrast between the lone voice and the surging masses suggesting the embrace of the victims by the nation, the transformation of knowledge of evil into sublime wisdom.
During the rehearsal, soprano solo Kimmy Skota conveys Miller’s instruction to the Gauteng Choristers ‘not to sing the testimonies but to cry them out”. As we sat through the rehearsal we were touched by the high-pitched whimpers that seemed to come from the belly rather than the throat. Later, as we sat talking with Miller, he explains his ringing call to the choristers: ‘I am interested in the feeling. I want the emotion and the power of the testimony to come through. I want the small moments — what I call the shards of the people’s testimonies - to become metaphors of something bigger.”
The title of the work, Rewind, is illustrated by a sample of a tape in reverse, in conceptual continuity with the organising principle of the entire work, the tragic near impossibility of undoing the past, the inertia of the evil that casts its shadow long into the future.
When Miller started listening to the hearings, one of the first recorded testimonies he heard was that of a mother, Eunice Tsepiso Miya, whose son Jabulani was killed by the security police. ‘The reason why I am here again is because I saw my child on TV and nobody had come to tell me that Jabulani had passed away. First of all, we were listening to the news — with my daughter. One of the children was shown on TV who had a gun on his chest. Only to find out that it was my son, Jabulani. I prayed. I said, oh no Lord! I wished the news could be rewind.”
Miller was inspired by this ‘shard”. ‘The word ‘rewind’ stuck with me and became an important metaphor for how I could approach composing this cantata. I’d pick sounds and fragments of the people’s narratives.”
Miller doesn’t think ‘he is making a huge political statement” but he believes the work ‘is a form of empowerment” — the voices, the testimonies and the text should not be relegated from this nation’s consciousness — we should continue to hear the voices, the text.”
The music itself might be considered a postmodern mélange: a series of forms strung together, from baroque church music to avantgardish uses of the choir that sometimes suggest a humourous Penderecki, from toyi-toyi protest rhythms to bluesy call-and-response exchanges — but these are not experienced as disparate elements because their content gives them a unity that escapes the frivolity of the postmodern. ‘I worked with different musical styles, including traditional hymns and the protest song form,” Miller says.
The idea of the cantata — a form that uses voice — came from writer and journalist Antjie Krog, who wanted the TRC’s 10th anniversary commemorated by a piece of music ‘that captures the South African spirit as it manifested itself during the TRC hearings”.
Miller’s work has enjoyed great success, both locally and internationally. It premiered in Cape Town on December 16 2006, the Day of Reconciliation, and was subsequently performed in New York and Massachusetts to critical acclaim.
Its Gauteng premiere is being directed and designed by Gerhard Marx, featuring soloists Sibongile Khumalo, Kaiser Nkosi, Kimmy Skota and Arthur Swan, with the Gauteng Choristers, and conducted by Sidwell Mhlongo.
When Miller started listening to the hearings, one of the first recorded testimonies he heard was that of a mother, Eunice Tsepiso Miya, whose son Jabulani was killed by the security police. ‘The reason why I am here again is because I saw my child on TV and nobody had come to tell me that Jabulani had passed away. First of all, we were listening to the news — with my daughter. One of the children was shown on TV who had a gun on his chest. Only to find out that it was my son, Jabulani. I prayed. I said, oh no Lord! I wished the news could be rewind.”
Miller was inspired by this ‘shard”. ‘The word ‘rewind’ stuck with me and became an important metaphor for how I could approach composing this cantata. I’d pick sounds and fragments of the people’s narratives.”
Miller doesn’t think ‘he is making a huge political statement” but he believes the work ‘is a form of empowerment” — the voices, the testimonies and the text should not be relegated from this nation’s consciousness — we should continue to hear the voices, the text.”
The music itself might be considered a postmodern mélange: a series of forms strung together, from baroque church music to avant-gardish uses of the choir that sometimes suggest a humourous Penderecki, from toyi-toyi protest rhythms to bluesy call-and-response exchanges — but these are not experienced as disparate elements because their content gives them a unity that escapes the frivolity of the postmodern. ‘I worked with different musical styles, including traditional hymns and the protest song form,” Miller says.
The idea of the cantata — a form that uses voice — came from writer and journalist Antjie Krog, who wanted the TRC’s 10th anniversary commemorated by a piece of music ‘that captures the South African spirit as it manifested itself during the TRC hearings”.
Miller’s work has enjoyed great success, both locally and internationally. It premiered in Cape Town on December 16 2006, the Day of Reconciliation, and was subsequently performed in New York and Massachusetts to critical acclaim.
Its Gauteng premiere is being directed and designed by Gerhard Marx, featuring soloists Sibongile Khumalo, Kaiser Nkosi, Kimmy Skota and Arthur Swan, with the Gauteng Choristers, and conducted by Sidwell Mhlongo.
Rewind opens this weekend at the Market Theatre in Newtown, Johannesburg