ɯǝɹǝpᴉʇɥ ɯouʞ ɐup ʇɥǝ ƃoʇɥɐɯ lnllɐqʎ

 Meredith Monk – an American multidisciplinary artist, minimalist composer, and an awardee of the American National Medal of Arts – is considered to be the pioneer of what can be described as vocal performance. One of her most famous works is the so-called “Gotham Lullaby” – a song that features either a single piano in her solo performance at Lensic Center or strings in an interpretation of the song by the mesmerising Björk.

Although Björk’s rendition is hypnotising and captivating as the original by Meredith Monk, I prefer the original songwriter’s performance. I find Monk’s presence in the original and the sounds of the piano that accompanies her voice a bit more intriguing, playful and powerful. One major reason why the piece feels utterly sentimental and expressive to me is that the vocal, as well as instrumental performance, can easily be varied to focus on different aspects. While in Monk’s rendition I felt nostalgic and connected to a transcendental human experience which I cannot pinpoint to a specific emotion yet, except perhaps melancholy and nostalgia, I felt a lot as though Björk takes the listener right back to the time when music was already established as a common act of art and communication. Distant, ancient days and years where if modern humans traveled back to the languages that people spoke would be completely unintelligible. Yet the emotions that are part of the musical performances are still very much tangible. One piece I would like to recommend as an example of what I mean by ancient music whose emotions transcend thousand of years is a musical rendition of the Epic of Gilgamesh one of civilisations oldest known works of literature which were written about 4000 years ago. If it wasn’t for the translations in the subtitles the lyrics would be just as unintelligible as Meredith Monk’s or Björk’s words respectively. Besides apparently random vocal sounds accompanied by a hypnotising instrumental, they also share the aforementioned idea that music or lyrics is not something that must always be understood to convey any kind of message or emotion. All three performances despite being completely unintelligible give me goosebumps which is something some song with the most profound lyrics can fail to do.

(The title is absolutley intentional.)