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Sheet Music: ScoreDance of dispossession : SATB a capella / Becky Llewellyn ; lyrics by John Kinsella, adapted by Becky Llewellyn.by Becky Llewellyn (2001)
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Product details
Dance of Dispossession was inspired by listening to poet
John Kinsella read at the Adelaide Writer's Festival. I went
straight to the book tent and found his poem
Dispossession which seemed to sing off the page with its
lists of words associated with what happened at and after white
settlement. I met John and asked his permission to set the poem,
which he agreed to. As I worked on it, though I could hear
distorted words coming out of his words - how they sounded rather
than how they looked, so the music embodies my imagined meanings
of his words: John's 'protection' becomes my 'protect/shun'.
Imagine how aborigines must have heard or misunderstood such
words.
I have used a kind of Elizabethan dance form, the height of
civilisation's gift - a jaunty counterpoint to the reality of the
words, as the settlers remained in their cloistered 'society'
mostly very unaware of how the fact of their presence changed
everything for indigenous people here. Within the busy text
narrative are moments of musical atonement (my take on John's
word 'autonomy' is 'Atone! Ah, me!'). It is all artifice, at once
playful and light, masking very dark subject matter and pain.
Published by: Australian Music Centre — 1 facsimile score (17p. -- A4 (portrait))
Difficulty: Advanced
Duration: 5 min.
First performance by Syntony — 16 Feb 02. Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Flinders St, Adelaide
Includes song text.
Protest song.
Text from 'Dispossession' by John Kinsela, adapted by Becky Llewellyn.
Typeset edition.
ISMN: M-720037-43-1
Related products
This work is also available in the following products:
CD: Selected Works by AMC Represented Artists, vol. 128.
- Browse other works for Unaccompanied SATB Choir
- Browse other works by Becky Llewellyn
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