Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival - radio programme transcripts (4)

Programme 4

(James Webb)

The work is called Prayer and involves recording the sound of prayer from different faith groups in the Kirklees area. We’ve been collecting them this week and aim to have at least eighteen different prayers. These will be presented on floor based speakers in Huddersfield Art Gallery. They’ll be playing six at a time so that when you enter the space you hear six prayers creating an occasionally harmonious and occasionally cacophonous environment. But when you kneel down to listen to the one particular prayer, one particular speaker, you can have a more intimate listen with that particular faith.

An audience member can come and interpret themselves, they can discover something, they can learn and think for themselves, and take away something unique to them. The work will have many interpretations. I’m wanting to create a situation that people can take something from: to contemplate, to investigate, to question and to react to.

The piece will be evolving, producing randomly generated potentially unique combinations of the different voices which will have a certain musical element - melody and rhythm will work together. Also the texts and the accents, these will also have a chance encounters with one another.

I first started this project in the year 2000 in Cape Town where I’m based. To listen to the different stories, the different traditions that make up the city.

And then there’s something else in these prayers. These are portraits of people. We are witnessing a person communicating with their interpretation of divinity. And in our contemporary society I think that’s very interesting. And the work, I suppose, investigates the nature of structured belief.

(Heidi Johnson)

Heidi Johnson, Festival Outreach

For this project it’s been really great for us to meet so many different faith groups in Kirklees. You can hear the results at James Webb’s Prayer installation at Huddersfield Art Gallery. It’s on show till Monday the 5th of January 2009.

(Voice Over)

Contributor James Web, artist, speaking from the Langer Hall of the Guru Namak Gurdwara - Sikh Temple; the prayer was the Mool Munter; Festival Shorts produced by Beaumont Street Studios.