Roomful of Teeth presented by the Vail Series, Swasey Chapel, April 8th, 2022
To attend a Roomful of Teeth concert is to attend a cyclical human listening experience. To attend a Roomful of Teeth concert is to listen to the wide range of mouth noises smothered in the narrow imagination of what it means to use your body-your voice-as an instrument. The listening experience does not end with the performers. Rather, as their sound washes over the audience, the audience responds with sound. As sounds of surprise, shock, discomfort, wonder and awe leave the listener, the cyclical performer-listener relationship is complete in a symphony of visceral human music.
The name Roomful of Teeth (I believe?) widens and pushes the physical conceptions of a mouth. It draws attention to the vastness of the mouth, throat, and head in a way that allows for the nuanced vocal placement and control the ensemble is famous for. Their opening piece, Caroline Shaw’s ‘Partita for 8 Singers’, aptly showcases the powerful range and textures of the human voice. The moment the piece began, I thought, “this song is famous!” As the piece continued, every movement was identifiable despite not having lyrics to identify. This challenges the direction of patterns in popular and classical music in the past few centuries that ‘instrumental’ music implies music played on instruments.
Observations from this piece include;
❖ Use of a bass voice not just as subsidizing drone, but as a punctuated, dynamic, and holistic timbral shift in the collective sound.
❖ In sections defined by sustained and flowing textures, there are almost no moments of silence. Those areas are composed in a way that bypasses the need to stagger breaths, a practice in response to the way classical choral music is composed.
❖ High melismas a second and third away from each other moving in parallel and contrary motion by steps and half steps creates a floating texture.
❖ High dissonance for a moment creates a beautifully piercing sensation.
In the second half of the performance, I began paying closer attention to the performer’s movement. The movements, dances, and ‘vibes’ they were getting into are not often paired with the music we associate with very raw human vocalizations. Adding this movement to the concert experience added a resonance seldom summoned in concert halls- resonating particularly with those in the audience struck by their own unfamiliarity with Roomful of Teeth’s techniques. This sentiment is encapsulated with a series of inquiries I overheard a woman asking to the sound technician. After expressing surprise when learning that, contrary to her suspicions, there were no sounds coming from his computer, she asked if the music was notated. Following her question she remarked, “Is it standardized? I mean are there enough people even doing this kind of thing?” The auto technician laughed, he had certainly heard this question before.
Observations from the second half;
❖ ‘Ba’,‘Bi’,sounds with ‘b’ preceding a vowel create a punchy sound with a soft release, like popping a bubble.
❖ In the beginning of ‘Bits from Words, m.4’, the voice is used to simulate reverb.Then when manipulated with subtle reverb in audio processing, the cumulative sound is like an audio mirror hall.
❖ Later in ‘Bits from Words, m.4’, the higher voices ascended into a canon of sirens that used tension and release in their descent.
❖ Quick wet vocal pulses characterized by a ‘r’ sound create a sound similar to that of a
bird call or a taped synthesizer.
I found the textural in Judd Greenstein's ‘Run Away’ particularly beautiful and simultaneously fascinating. The ‘rrr’ backing vocals almost sounded like a wobbly organ with what sounded like higher overtones. From what I could decipher, (I think) this sonic illusion was created by a close second in a higher octave. Although sustained, this texture moves and feels moving in the rhythm of intentional unison breaths and overstated re-entry into the sustained ‘rrr’. Roomful of Teeth’s repertoire enables its singers to practice extended techniques the same way instruments are altered to break out of their conventional use. However, unlike the ‘experimental’ nature of extended techniques in built instruments, these extended techniques are not new. Roomful of Teeth’s repertoire and practice finds its origins in a multitude of ancient cultural techniques from around the world. Rather than unearthing ancient techniques, their work brings old techniques that are practiced in non-western cultures to the western music scene. The beauty in their music is unusual and weird to the average western listener and classical musician, but authentically human and natural to those living unconfined by tonality. Their music is experimental and innovative to the new western music advocate, but both ancient and currently practiced. These juxtapositions of new and old, unnaturally weird and authentically natural, create a listening experience that is present and human. And in realizing the music’s humanness, the western listener realizes the fixed limitations of music when the humanness is governed by tonal theory.
Σχόλια