The One Sound
ServiceSpace
--Mia Tagano
2 minute read
Aug 29, 2015

 

Here's a beautiful story I read recently in a book entitled, Conference of the Birds: The Story of Peter Brook in Africa by John Heilpern 
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Once Peter Brook arranged for a private meeting between his actors and the Peulhs. A nomadic tribe, shy of strangers, a mystery even to Africans, with no linking language, how could the actor’s build a bridge to them in one meeting? There was only one way and it was through music. Brook asked the actors to sing a song.

But the Peulhs took no notice, the men just admiring themselves in little mirrors. The actors tried six songs but nothing happened. And then Brook asked for an AH sound (vocal exercise for opening and extending sound), just this one basic sound that was to be extended and developed as far as it could possibly go. It seems an easy thing to do. Yet the group had worked on this one sound for weeks and months. It seemed like an awful moment of truth. The group began to make the sound. The Peulhs were still staring into their mirrors. I watched the actors grow hesitant, uncertain whether to continue. But the sound stretched and grew – and the Peulhs unexpectedly looked up from their mirrors for the first time.

The sound took life, vibrating. The Peulhs discarded their mirrors and joined the sound. Oh, it seemed miraculous! It was as if the Peulhs were pulling the sound from them. They pointed to the sky. Just as the unimaginable sound reached its height, or seemed to, no one would venture any further. Somehow it was frightening. The two sides had met and come together in one sound. And yet it was as if they were stunned and frightened by the discovery.

Ted Hughes has written of the sounds far beyond human words that open our deepest and innermost ghost to sudden attention …. But now the Peulhs offered an exchange and sang their songs. And they told Brook something very precious. He knew at last that he was on the right road for a universal language. Perhaps we were only beginning to understand. But spirits speak there, in invisible worlds.
 

Posted by Mia Tagano on Aug 29, 2015