Music Reviews from the Staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House

 

December 4, 2024
Chillar todo el día - Isabelle Duthoit & Ocnos Arkestra
Label: Sentencia Records
Catalog #: SR-24 CD
Location: Seville, Spain
Release Date: December 6, 2024
Media: compact disc or digital download
bandcamp.com entry
discogs.com entry

 

Chillar todo el día (translated as Screaming All Day) is an experimental opera, interpreting the last short story written by Franz Kafka (July 3, 1883 - June 3, 1924), titled Josephine the Singer or The Mouse Folk. The story is about a singer with an unconventional style and her relationship with her audience. The Ocnos Arkestra invited Isabelle Duthoit, a French vocalist with an unconventional style of her own to perform the piece. We had never read Josephine the Singer or The Mouse Folk and we took our discovery of this album as an invitation to do so. One site with the full text of an English translation from the original German is here.

Faced with this magnificent text, what can the staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House possibly say about the piece that Kafka has not already said much more eloquently? For this reason, we provide a review of the album strictly in terms of brief excerpts from the short story.

On understanding the performance:

...how can it be that we have any understanding of Josephine's performances?... or, since she contends that we don't understand, why is it that we believe that we do? The simplest answer is quite simply that the beauty of her singing is so powerful that even the greatest antagonism is outdone, such sensibilities crumble in her presence...

On characterizing the nature of her singing:

...we still do have some premonition of what song is and our premonition, to be perfectly honest, goes against her artistry, what Josephine actually does when she's singing. For, taken in an absolute sense, is this really singing at all?—perhaps, indeed, all that she really manages to do is a sort of whistling? And everybody knows whistling inside and out, this is the core artistry of our folk or, rather, it's not even deserving of the name "art," rather it's simply how you would characterize us, this is what we do: a soft kind of whistling with an undercurrent that hisses; and there's really just two sorts: the melancholic, ascetic, dreamy sort that typically is weak and pervasive; and then there's the triumphant, full-bodied tone that tends to have sharp contours.

On the impact of her songs:

The way that she sees it is that it's only through her songs that we are to be saved from all of the evil inherent in our political and economic reality, it's nothing short of this that underlies her singing, and even if it should be true that these songs are incapable of driving away and dispelling all of our misfortune and misery, the sad lot of our destiny, well at least they will give us the strength so that we might bear them.

On the presence of the singer:

At her concerts, and most especially during troubled times, there's only a small few who take any interest in the songstress herself, such as she is—perhaps there's a fairly large group up there in the front rows who are curious as regards to how she manages to pucker her lips, how she forces the air out from between her dainty little teeth, that they experience a bit of awe and marvel over how the tone fades away and how she is able to use this transient dissolution to her own advantage, how she practically dies, putting herself out and thereby firing herself up for her subsequent performance, her song that becomes ever the less understandable as it progresses, but the essential mass of the populace—this is very clear to see—the multitude have retreated into themselves.

On her commitment to the role:

Perhaps she shouldn't have ventured down this road in the first place, perhaps she's finally become aware that this was a big mistake right from the get-go but now there's just no way back, reversing course would carry a stigma and be called: being untrue to oneself, now she has to stand or fall with this, her fate has become enmeshed with her petition.

personnel:

  • Isabelle Duthoit (voice)
  • Ocnos Arkestra (website)
    • Alejandro Rojas Marcos (piano)
    • Luz Prado (violin)
    • Marco Serrato (double bass)
    • Borja Diaz (drums)
    • Pedro Rojas Ogáyar (electric guitar)
    • Gustavo A. Domínguez Ojalvo (clarinets, musical concept)
    • Alfonso Camacho (audiovisuals)
    • Ana Sánchez Acevedo (dramaturgy and scenography)

 

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