Sound Walk Composition

To create the music for Sound Walk, I followed Jane into her community dance classes, set up some microphones and captured the sounds her students were making while they danced, shuffled, stepped, clapped, laughed and talked. Foot sounds, chairs squeaking, Jane instructing and encouraging, and the joy that bubbled out in laughs and whoops as they twisted and turned, stepped and clapped, became the fabric of the compositions.

Each location had its own energy and presented me with a unique direction to pursue. For Circles, as I listened repeatedly to the audio tracks recorded at JK Polk Elementary, melodies began to emerge from the tapes. The combination of children running and laughing, shoes squeaking and stomping somehow created a distinct melody that to me sounded like it was being played by violins. I merely echoed that melody with real violins. The melodies were, plain and simply, given to me.

The themes in Interview and O’Clock were my musical reaction to what I was hearing in the recorded sound clips from Ft. Henry Gardens Affordable Housing Corporation after-school program and Walter Reed Senior Center. For Inner View, recorded at Walter Reed, I wanted a sweet, enveloping background to embody the intimacy of the voices of the women that I interviewed. The exuberance of the children from AHC is captured in the shortest piece, O’Clock that is punctuated by the slapping, rhythmic intensity of a Flamenco guitar.

The schools and community centers of Walter Reed, Ft. Henry Gardens AHC, Arlington Mill, Langston Brown Senior Center, and JK Polk were all represented in My Name Is. I chose to use only recorded sound clips to design the composition and create “music” without any traditional instruments. I wanted this piece to be a full reflection of the cacophony of sounds inherent in her dance classes, and the voices of the people that encompass the community to which Jane Franklin is so very dedicated.

-Gina Biver