This April, we’re delighted to welcome Indonesian sound artist Rani Jambak to hcmf// as part of British Council’s Musicians in Residence programme.
Delivered in partnership with the PRS Foundation, Musicians in Residence offers music creators the opportunity to spend extended time immersing themselves in another place. Hosted by a partner organisation, it offers a self-directed exploration into another cultural landscape. Residents will have time and space to develop new ideas, experiment with their practice and make new creative connections. Musicians in Residence 2022 sees music creators virtually embedded with creative organisations in eight different cities in Brazil, Egypt, Indonesia, South Africa and the UK – including hcmf//.
Bridging ecology and psychogeography, Rani’s work is concerned with our experiences of the environment, and our shifting relationship to it. Through field recordings and traditional instrumentation, her work is a shared space for intentional music and sound created by the world as it is. Her pieces bring us closer to ecology, rather than separating us out from it as if it were an abstract concern.
Rani’s projects turn sound into a signpost. Her festival Medan Soundspectives uses music and noise to map out her home city of Medan, showcasing its diverse cultures while also replicating the high-level hum of daily life. Through her ecological campaign #FORMYNATURE, she has provided an anthology of music pieces describing our environmental situation, using sound as a vessel through which to explore our collective role in the climate crisis.
Rani’s work seeks out the global action that we can take, together, for the environment. As a vocalist and composer, she recently collaborated with producer Lyra Pramuk to create Restore, a piece written for Earth Day 2021. Restore marries Rani’s samples of Sumatran instrumentation to a choral performance by the two artists – a cascading noise collage intended to ‘feel like a forest coming to life’.
In partnership with British Council and PRS Foundation, we’re excited to bring Rani’s work to hcmf//, connecting the thriving artistic communities of Huddersfield and Medan. As part of the festival’s current focus on climate change and sustainability, Rani will be using her residency to explore #FORMYNATURE in a new setting, connecting both cultures and ecologies. We’re looking forward to showcasing Rani’s work, and introducing her to our local sound world.