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On the improvised stage, vocalist Natacha Muslera draws a singular path. She is not content to consider the voice in its most secret, intimate parts, she also deconstructs language, vocality, and considers the voice as a healing experience. In 2012, she gave birth to the Tac-Til Choir, which brings together sighted and non-sighted people. A partner of the Gmem, she was heard on 4 December at the Dynamo de Pantin in Future Folk Stories, a radio exploration of folklore by Les Bedmakers.
A freewheeling interview with Natacha Muslera.
Anne Montaron : A few days ago at the Dynamo in Pantin, you took part in the creation of Future Folk Stories with three musicians from " Bedmakers " and Fanny Lasfargues. and Fanny Lasfargues. It is a form of radio play, a musical documentary with voices - archives and also voices recorded in situ - around a reflection on folklore.
Natacha Muslera : Yes, it started with the idea of collecting, with a foray into the history of music and ethnomusicology.
Robin Fincker, Mathieu Werchowski and Fabien Duscombs invited me to bring in the dimension of invented language, what I call "langue des bois". There is a link between the invented voices - a sort of invented language - and these questions about what folk music evokes, within a collective factory that proposes attempts to answer the question: "What is folk?
Of course, there is not just one answer. It is the multiplicity of relationships to the song, to folk, that nourishes this creation.
What is folk to you?
That's an interesting question! I have a particular relationship with it, because I've deconstructed it quite a bit over time. Between the ages of 16 and 28, I sang in several music bands for which I wrote and sang my own lyrics, very loose poems, close to the cut up. We played in cafés, bars and concert halls. I also have an Argentinean father who played what was called "Argentinean folklore"; music that was very much inspired by the Indigenous and the Indios, often in Quechua (an indigenous language). The music is inhabited by the idea of struggles. It is often social music, telling in a poetic way how the indigenous people have been dispossessed of their land. They are also odes to the earth and the cosmos, revolting against colonialism and the dominant system.
This is where the music is played: it decolonises a whole way of being and thinking, while remaining relatively framed.
I put that aside. Even though I was lulled by it. Atahualpa Yupanqui was a friend of my father's, and my father sang his texts.
In order to exist, you had to break away from that.
And then from the start, with the instrument I work with, the voice, I deconstructed a lot, on the one hand by forging my instrument through various apprenticeships, and on the other hand by thwarting the "role" of the singer within groups, and more generally the representation of the singer in a normative media culture.
In any case, what was important for me was the life of the group, to share these intense moments, it was vital!
Like in Chœur Tac-il, which you created in 2012?
Yes. It's been almost ten years now. There are ten of us: sighted, blind and partially sighted voices. We work on the relationship with sensitivity, with listening. We improvise and I also compose for the choir, in "companionship" with the choir (I think of the composition from the elements proposed by the choir when we improvise freely). It's a murky place. I take things that we have worked on, I refine them, re-articulate them: it becomes experimental writing, distanced from the visual field.
Was the starting point of this choir only musical?
To be honest, the point of departure was mainly a sensitive one: it was how to find a breath. Maybe I was a bit stifled in what I was doing, in a given social and political context. The starting point was how to educate myself and learn from people who have a different 'look' at things and at listening (even blind people talk about 'look'). Most of them had no experience of free improvisation. We asked ourselves: "how can we go into spaces other than visual ones and how can we experience them together?"
It's also a political position; a place where there is no choirmaster.
And then what interests me is that by sharing vocal techniques, by practising multiple listening, at the end of all these years of practice, several members of the choir have become very independent. Some vocalists compose electroacoustic music, others lead voice workshops...
I see another example of this collective practice in your activities, the UN Orchestra? Is this also a micro-society?
Yes, it's a micro-society where there is no hierarchy. Hierarchical relationships create relationships of domination. The One was born out of a question: how can we invent other things? This does not prevent us from sometimes giving responsibilities to one person within the group, whether it be at the level of organisation, preparation of menus, listening to recordings, production, or different sound experiences proposed in particular situations and contexts; all of this we share and put into practice collectively. The UN is great for that!
How does the UN work?
We don't tell each other anything, we meet at a specific time on a stage or in other contexts. In the UN, in addition to the musicians, there is Yukiko Nakamura who dances, Christophe Cardoen who "opens" the lights, and Michel Mathieu who does actions.
So we meet, we play together, we practice!
We have already done several experiments, such as going down a stretch of the Dordogne together this summer: we stopped on the banks, we played together in caves, we invited researchers to reflect on the relationship between autonomy and the collective (from a philosophical and historical point of view).
The most interesting experiences, in my opinion, are not necessarily the concert situations, where we play head-on, but the moments where we escape from the performance and its codes. For example, when you play for several hours in a row: there, something else is at stake, which really breaks the codes.
We did this at Jazz à Luz, near the chapel of Luz Saint-Sauveur. In this type of situation, on the one hand, there is this notion of individuality - the musician proposes his or her own movement, with an audience scattered about, lying on the grass or out walking - and on the other hand, we find ourselves in collective forms, with the energy of the collective and these unheard-of movements. So that it oscillates between a feeling of solitude that is sometimes dizzying, to be assumed and nourished, and very joyful and enjoyable collective moments.
Around this chapel, the listeners stayed all the time, wandering around. Some spoke to us of this experience as a strong, powerful experience, and a "healing experience" as well.
I believe that within these forms (when you come to whisper or play in someone's ear...) there is a memory that arises, which belongs to each person and which summons things of the order of "healing", in addition to the collective game.
Have you ever worked with people in fragile situations and felt the impression of being "in care" through sound?
Yes... in fact, when we leave the Tac-Til Choir sessions with ten voices in the dark, we are in a state of euphoria, we feel a great strength; the voice oxygenates the brain, it's a phenomenon of hyperventilation; it's mechanical. As we work for hours on breathing, on breaths, it puts us in a state of euphoria and it solidifies us, it helps us, it heals us!
I also sometimes work in psychiatric day hospitals (with so-called autistic people, psychotics) and the fact is that it can undo enormous tensions, support fragile people, on condition that it is done in an inclusive approach: on the principle that anyone can sing or play. The idea is to make collective choirs without a conductor again. We simply start singing... There is often a lot of joy!
Everyone has a voice within them. There is a fragility in the voice; we expose ourselves by singing, and then there are the normalized voices, the non-normalized voices. The non-standard voice is disturbing? I think of Artaud...
The voice, it's obvious, has this possibility of articulated language, with a domination of meaning. As soon as it no longer makes sense, it is problematic... although there are examples of this in the world. I'm thinking of the corpus assembled by Jérôme Rothenberg*: he brought together texts, stories and songs from all over the world from indigenous cultures on different continents, and many of them are at the level of invented languages.
We must remember that in most of our personal histories and those of the places where we live, there are songs, incantations, which do not belong to an articulated language. The fact of being in an organic, vibratory relationship with a language, a patois, remains intrinsic to the imagination of a culture. Now, all this has been standardised, erased, invisibilised.
It is perhaps this articulation that is at the heart of the voice.
Artaud is obviously frightening because there is real violence! How can we welcome this violence? This vital, loving violence, which does not destroy, but opens up other possibilities?
Why 'langue des bois'? I suppose there's a play on words with 'langue de bois'?
Because it's not just "langue de bois"! And also in reference to the place where people used to meet - for example, witches. It turns out that many of these forests have been destroyed. Life forms have been normalised. You could survive there. They were separate lives... Well, I call it "Wood Language" because it works with everything that can be animal, vegetable, human, non-human, visible, invisible...
The "Coyote" duet with Michel Doneda, do you call it a "sound ritual"? Why this notion of rite?
Because it was based on Joseph Beuys' performance with "Coyote". What we do with Michel is not a performance, but at the same time it is not just a concert. Moreover, we often play outside concert venues, in very different places. There is something of the order of a rite, not a ritual, because it is not ritualised. There is this freedom to do something that has nothing to do with a type of religion, but which can be invented! Playing with Michel is fabulous, what freedom, everything is open, possible.
How is the relationship between writing and orality articulated in your work today?
For years now, I have been recording all sorts of sounds: words, struggles, demonstrations, people talking about themselves, sonorous, noisy voices, readings, choirs in situ... Everything starts from there to create writing. The-voices: it's a real obsession!
I look for points of tension and disorder between articulated and inarticulated language; infirmities, ruins of language, wind-breaths... Composing for the radio is what drives me the most. Local radio stations, and also all those that are created, independent, whether they are broadcast by the airwaves or via digital. It's a lively and dense environment of resistance, where it's possible to propose very free forms. There is a record to which I often refer as an inexhaustible source. It is Magny 68, a vinyl where songs, speeches documenting the struggles of May 68, noises, street sounds, a sort of unheard-of collage, created by Colette Magny, William Klein and Chris Marker, cohabit.
I use tarot quite a lot to bring into play compositional modes where the question of sound and care are mutually interrogated. I am thinking of Eliane Radigue, Pauline Oliveros, Alice Coltrane, where the dimension of "care" in music proves possible.
But I remain cautious in this area. It seems to me that there is no one type of music that can be said to "care". I think about this articulation between sound and care, but not literally, not only in a "will" to heal.
We talked about the voice carrying meaning. What is your relationship with the text? Do you sometimes appear on stage with texts?
Yes, I really enjoy reading aloud. We organise readings in Marseille, in people's homes. I also like to read on the radio, for the radio.
At the moment I am making a film with Stefano Canapa. The texts run through it, on very different levels.
But in the performance, in the singing, it's difficult for me to make the text appear.
With Cécile Duval, in the creation ZA OUM BA UMP'F HTLM, we start with futuristic scores and texts by Velimir Khlebnikov - from the beginning of the 20th century until today. It's about language and nonsensical poetry, and also about concrete scores. We both bring scores and texts to the stage.
And how difficult that is! For example, there is a concrete poem by Mary Ellen Solt, a score by ZZZZ. To read it, to make it come alive for two people, with the breathing, is quite a task, which takes time!
We talk about the trio Les Mutantes with Angelica Castello and Aude Romary? What is the alchemy of this trio?
When I listen to the trio's music again, I say to myself that it evolves in very specific and new places for me, perhaps because of the presence ofAngelica Castello, who works with the subconscious.
In this music, there are lullabies, and I allow myself to be crossed by melodies, by tunes, which is rather rare in free improvisation.
It's a bit as if everything is being repaired.
Now, I think I can say that I feel a form of freedom, as the years go by, which makes everything possible, whereas in the past it was unthinkable in free improvisation. We forbade ourselves from doing things, we censored ourselves...
Do you feel like you've forbidden yourself?
I don't think so. We can welcome all the layers that come through us, all the memories, with fluidity and naturalness. I feel like an echo chamber, and I trust it.
In Mutantes, I have the impression that it's a different place.
Maybe because it's not free improvisation.
Angelica is more of a composer than we are: she structures while she plays, with depth, slowly. Aude and I much less, we do and undo more, I feel... and that makes a new music, for me!
Do you like all voices? You've been around so many... How do you perceive other people's voices? No judgement?
I hear a lot in a voice... beyond the voice! There's a scan that takes place, a reading, almost automatic, and that's been the case since I was a child!
But yes, I welcome all voices, whatever they are, without any judgement, and with age, we become more and more open and porous, I find. I like more and more voices in very different styles!
It wasn't like that before, I was closed off sometimes.
Anyway, I find that the critical posture (negative most of the time), is also a form of power, insofar as it can hurt the other, destroy him, and that's very masculine. I can do that too (there is a lot of masculine in me), and I've had it too! It's an attitude that's too easy.
I have a background that helps me to think about this, and some readings have enlightened me. I prefer to ask myself the question in these terms: "what is interesting in this voice, in this music, that I don't understand?
How do you see Choeur Tac-til evolving? Were there any stages of work at Gmem with electronic objects?
Yes, we worked with machines, a robot, with the idea of researching otherness. Technologies interest me in their relationship to otherness.
There is always a power relationship, an authoritarian relationship with technologies. We reproduce the same logic, we give orders to machines all the time, without understanding them, without being able to repair them. We have never been so "proletarianised by machines"! (dixit Bernard Stiegler, Donna Haraway).
Today, we have several creations in progress and a desire: if we don't go to Japan (a tour planned for March 2020 was prevented by the first confinement), we will bring Japan to us!
The idea was to go and meet the practices of the Gozé women - these blind itinerant women who crossed Japan and who were a bit like nomadic radios. They would tell the political stories of the countries. At the same time, they improvised and drew inspiration from the sounds of the echo-systems, playing the shamisen. With their voices, they practised the art of imitating the sounds of nature, known as kikinashi. We wanted to go in search of this history!
The last Gozé died 20 years ago; it is no longer practised today. They had very harsh living conditions (since the Middle Ages), but they had founded a guild, a solidarity fund; a fine example of sisterhood and mutual aid.
If we can't leave, we'll go to other forests!
The GMEM supports us. We are going to create a mixed piece in 2022, "Blind echo-system", a combination of broadcast sounds and voices.
We are getting ready!
Interview by Anne Montaron
