Everyday life is punctuated by song. There’s the nonsense you sing to keep the baby entertained on the changing mat, the earworm you hum while washing up, the current favourite that you blast out in a traffic jam, and the inaudible mumbling emanating from a stranger’s headphones. Then there are the songs we sing communally at religious ceremonies, royal events and with arms round each other at the end of parties. Without realising it, we are constantly digesting and regurgitating narratives, recalling history and finding our place in the world through words set to a melody.
What Let the Song Hold Us wants to know is, what happens to us if the song is loosened from its usual confines – if its conventions are altered or the lyrics question identity instead of reaffirming it? Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind are two of the artists trying to find out, fusing Palestinian and European music practices to create an Arabic-language opera. Elsewhere, Korakrit Arunanondchai and Alex Gvojic create a narrative of both fact and fiction, while Rae-Yen Song’s choral echoes move from understanding into feeling.
