In our Artist of the Month feature on Hayley Suviste so far, we’ve learned that her music doesn’t often start with her. A sound artist invested in community and history, and in unprioritized perspectives, her work comes from the outside. It starts with interviews, sound archiving and research, and the arrangements and structures are put into place later, serving as backdrops to fully realised ecosystems. This is evident in pieces we’ve heard this month, including Edgeland and A Meeting Place, but it’s best exemplified in Lōka, her stunning spatialized sound composition from 2020.
Written alongside Bengali folk musicians, historians and archivists, Lōka immerses the listener in the experiences of Bengali workers who migrated to the UK in the 1950s. Using binaural sound, the piece physically positions its listener within these stories, using the visceral churn of industrial machinery to exact the space they took place in. The effect is that Lōka feels like a first hand document, using interviews to describe the experiences as Suviste brings them to life, her music illustrating the rooms and buildings these experiences are connected to.
Listen to Lōka below, and read Hayley’s description of the project:
From Hayley:
Bengali folk music is greatly influenced by its environment and the occupation of its people. The different forms of folk music represent the people who sing them, the region they come from and the type of work they do. Lōka explores the experiences and music of the Bengali workers who migrated from rural Bangladesh and India to work in the factories and mills of the UK in the 1950s. This journey is told sonically through the transformation of a variety of folk songs and instruments, field recordings, archival material, historical narratives and oral histories into an immersive 8-channel composition.
Part one of the piece takes inspiration from the soundscapes and folk songs associated with the livelihoods of rural and urban Bengali workers, who work as farmers, boatmen, fishermen, cartmen, weavers and rickshaw pullers. It follows the journey that workers took into the cities of India and Bangladesh, having to leave their loved ones behind in search for work.
Part two is informed by the experience of workers in the mills and factories of Lancashire in the 1950s, and the under-representation of the significant community of migrant workers from South Asia who also worked in the mills. The folk songs they played allowed these workers to bond as a community, sharing the feelings of parting, loss and exploitation that they faced. It also draws comparisons between the Lancashire folk songs from the time which sing of similar tales of misery with industrialisation and the shift from rural to urban work.
My thanks go to Anindita Ghosh (historical narrative), Masih Alam & the Krishno Chura ensemble (Bengali folk music and instruments), Les Cartes Postales Sonores (archival Bangladeshi field recordings), Jennifer Reid (Lancashire folk songs, clog dancing and narrative), Manchester Central Library Sound Archive (‘Sounds of the Lancashire Textile Industry’) and Quarry Bank Mill for allowing me to record their machinery.