SPOKEN WORD MUSIC - a late night improvisation

Hey people! I hope everyone recovered from the heavy partying going on these days and is ready for the challenges and the fun that is yet to come.

(here's a beautiful photo of the New Year celebration in my little hometown of Koprivnica, Croatia)

I've always loved spoken word music. Combining poetry with music often makes for a great result, especially because poetry was always about music. Poetry was initially designed to be performed live in front of an audience with music being played as someone would recite verse. In time, poetry became more of an intimate thing, something to be enjoyed in private and in silence in order to eliminate any distractions from what the poet is trying to say. People decided that poetry doesn't need back up music because it's music in itself so music and poetry kind of parted ways. However, popular music found a way to combine the two together again, mostly in hip-hop and rap. Now, some people might say rap lyrics aren't poetry but rap music is in fact reciting verse on top of music. I never was a fan of rap but I love Lou Reed and what he did was always spoken word music. So, I had yet another improvised session with my band and we ended up with a spoken word track.

I ended up reciting Ana Ahmatova, one of my favorite modern poets. The book was on the table so I grabbed it and marked some verses from two different poems. That way we created an entirely new context out of what was already there. I didn't want to construct the melody of the spoken word in advance so I just read it and we used the first take.

One of the most interesting things we did was switching roles. Everybody played instruments they don't usually play or even don't know how to see what happnes and to get a spontaneous feel of the music. I played a fragment of John Coltrane's ''In a sentimental mood'' on electric piano, our singer Buga played the rest of the piano, our bassist played the snare drum without the sticks and then me and him played a cello together at the same time. I added the melodica and he made a bass loop. We ended up with a really cool sort of an ambient track but featuring vocals.

(this is a portrait of Luc, my bandmate in a living room the recording sessions usually take place. I don't have a better photo and I never remember to take the pictures of the process when it is happening)

Anyway, we called the track ''Weep not for me Mother'' because that particular verse stood out sort of as a chorus. This is the unmixed and unmastered version, just as it was recorded. Our newest member Vedran added some sounds in the whole thing (he is our loop-soundscape-sounds-ambient-fieldrecording Mastermind) using Ableton and it sounded finished right away. I haven't touched it since so I really hope you'll get the authentic thing and feel the atmosphere!

(for those who don't know, this is Ableton, a great must have tool for playing around with sounds and loops)

Here it is! Enjoy and feel free to comment!