Folk Songs
Draft
Eitan Ben Moshe
For the last years I have been exploring in-depth Folk songs from few cultures, their sources and influences. I am creating a mix of this ancient core with state-of-the-art image processing technologies (Blender software), 3D, algorithms, and animation. Hence actually producing a kind of new futuristic proposal of cultural ghosts that mixes a dance of the ancient with the new, forgotten with Restored, musical and visual.
Specifically in Israel this aspect of folk songs routes and creation is fascinating. The melodies and words wander across the fences or the sea furthermore in Israel. That is a familiar phenomenon because many of its folk songs originate in the countries of origin of various Jews such as Russia, Arab countries, Europe and Africa.
Every nation has a musical culture that creates its own existential cultural DNA and, in many circumstances, there are surprising effects of folk songs even of peoples considered enemies or lacking any significant geographical connection. The movement of peoples and immigrants creates interesting influences arteries of collective musical memory that passes through the wandering peoples and individuals who migrate.
Through listening and processing the folk songs and the original melodies a connection continues to be created that offers aesthetics and perhaps a new kind of perception of tradition in a hyper technological society.
I see in a way these songs and melodies as the children from which the variety of musical and metaphoric fields of today complex cultures evolve. In this aspect the visual realm of the videos is mostly made from archetypal visual participants like a butterfly, a broken rock, a bubble flowing in the wind and so on.
As listening to these songs I am hearing the long-forgotten sound of the beginning of human memories, fears and hopes.
mother
The video is a new computer made choreography of a Butho dance created and performed by Kazuo Ohno* in 1998, which he performed at the age of 92.
The Dance is a physical and a spiritual journey into a feminine character of kazuo’s mother. In the Japanese traditional dance, it is common that men perform a women figure but in this case the choice to perform one’s mother is very meaningful and it’s the main narrative of this expressive dance.
The Reliefs are printed by a 3d printer and are covered with coloured polymers. The sculptured images are hybrids between flowers reproductive organs and human sex organs of both female and male.
In the middle space is a pale of butterfly’s separate wings made of thine concrete, cracking in its ends. Between them long glass pipes containing emitting led lights.
As is past works I have created the accumulation and assembly of different media and concepts create an unknown event both for me and hopefully to the audience.
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Sahki Sahki
video loop of 2:21 minutes.
This name of this video is two words in Hebrew (שחקי, שחקי) which are the opening words of this famous song by Shaul Tchernichovsky. Several proposals have been made to make the song the anthem of the State of Israel, alongside or in the place of "Hatikva". The important proposal was made by Muhammad Bracha and Avraham Burg. For the song has a universal message and is therefore better in their eyes than the "hope" of a distinctly Jewish character. The melody of this song originates from a Russian folk song about the Don River. As like many folklore songs in Israel the russien folk songs are routed deep in the melodies and words. the soundtrack of this video is an opposite direction processing of one of the performances of this song.
I Believe (Sahki, Sahki שחקי, שחקי)
Shaul Tchernichovsky
Rejoice, rejoice now in the dreams
I the dreamer am he who speaks
Rejoice, for I’ll have faith in mankind
For in mankind I believe.
For my soul still yearns for freedom
I’ve not sold it to a calf of gold
For I shall yet have faith in mankind
In its spirit great and bold
That will cast off binding chains
Raise us up, hold high our heads
Workers will not die of hunger
For souls – release, for poor folk – bread.
Rejoice for I have faith in friendship
I’ll find a heart – in this I’ve faith –
A heart that shares in all my hopes,
A heart that feels both joy and pain.
And I shall keep faith in the future,
Though the day be yet unseen
Surely it will come when nations
All live in blessed peace.
Then my people too will flourish
And a generation shall arise
In the land, shake off its chains
And see light in every eye.
It shall live, love, accomplish, labor
In the land it is alive
Not in the future, not in heaven –
And its spirit shall henceforth thrive.
A poet shall sing a new anthem,
His heart aware of beauty sublime
For him, that young man, above my tomb
Blossoms in a wreath shall twine.
Written in Odessa in 1892. Translated from Hebrew
by Vivian Eden.
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From Aomori
unknown poet
The Japanese folk song From Aomori is all about the changing seasons and it's affect on the mud lark and the singing frog. Summer and Spring being times that are playful where they are happy and free. Winter being cold and full of ice. The visual and sound of the video is inspired from the song and its different versions.
When summer comes,
The paddy pools grow warm
The mud lark and the singing frog
Are happy, are happy
Thinking they're in bath.
When winter comes,
The paddy pools are filmed with ice,
The mud lark and the singing frog
Must think their heaven has stretched
Has stretched and grown above.
When spring comes
There's water in the paddy pools
The mud lark and the singing frog
Are happy, are happy
Thinking they're in the sea.
When autumn comes,
The hills and dales turn red
The mud lark and the singing frog
Craning their necks above,
Must think of the hills are on fire.
Interview about my art
by Sternthal Books for fireflies
Some of my research materials and inspiration