Counterflows At Home

Who are you from and where is your country? In June 2023 the artists from the Ghost Tunes project met face to face in Western Australia for the first time to discuss identity, race, country and the power of listening. In this second episode of the podcast we hear excerpts from a series of conversations between the Scottish and Australian artists Cass Ezeji, Cass Lynch, Theresa Sainty, Mei Swan Lim and Josie Vallely as they reflect on the themes of the residency. We follow their journey as they navigate differing perspectives on land, race and belonging and how this relates to their own research and practice.

How is language tied to landscape? What does it mean to belong to the land? What does it mean to be on someone else’s country? In June 2023 Ghost Tunes brought musicians and writers from across Australia and Scotland together for the first time in Fremantle, Western Australia to discuss language, landscape and culture as part of an artistic residency. In this two part podcast series we follow the artists as they negotiate ideas around identity, ethnicity and contested histories ahead of a one-off live performance.

Credits -

Voices - Cass Ezeji, Madeleine Flynn, Cass Lynch, Theresa Sainty, Mei Swan Lim, Josie Vallely and Alasdair Campbell

Podcast Producer - Alannah Chance

Associate Producer - Emmie McLuskey

Music and sound from Cass Ezeji, Theresa Sainty, Josie Vallely, Mei Swan Lim, Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey

Thanks to all the artists, Auntie Marie Taylor, Noel Nannup, Bureau of Works, Kat Wilkinson, Creative Scotland, British Council, PS Art Space and the Fremantle Arts Centre, WA

Ghost Tunes is a project initially conceived by Counterflows and the artists Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey and supported by the British Council and Creative Scotland. It was originally presented as part of Counterflows 2022.

The Ghost Tunes Podcast Episode One - Finding the words

What does it mean to reclaim a lost language? Language revitalisation has been a part of a process of decolonisation in both Scotland and Australia, but the history of a language can be complex and contested. In this first episode of the podcast we hear from four artists from Ghost Tunes who speak minority languages.

How is language tied to landscape? What does it mean to belong to the land? What does it mean to be on someone else’s country? In June 2023 Ghost Tunes brought musicians and writers from across Australia and Scotland together for the first time in Fremantle, Western Australia to discuss language, landscape and culture as part of an artistic residency. In this two part podcast series we follow the artists as they negotiate ideas around identity, ethnicity and contested histories ahead of a one-off live performance.

Credits -

Voices - Cass Ezeji, Cass Lynch, Theresa Sainty, Josie Vallely and Alasdair Campbell

Podcast Producer - Alannah Chance

Associate Producer - Emmie McLuskey

Music and sound from Cass Ezeji, Theresa Sainty, Josie Vallely, Mei Swan Lim, Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey

Thanks to all the artists; Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey, Auntie Marie Taylor, Noel Nannup, Bureau of Works, Kat Wilkinson, Creative Scotland, British Council, PS Art Space and the Fremantle Arts Centre, WA

South Korean musician Park Jiha first met English artist and writer Roy Claire Potter for a collaboration session by BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction in 2020. This time they reunited on stage at Glasgow’s community central halls for the opening night of Counterflows 2022 and focused their improvisation around a series of photos which Jiha had sent Roy in advance. The photos were snapshots of Jiha’s everyday life in Korea: a cake she had baked; cat paws poking under a door; an eroded shell. Roy used these cues as the jump off point for their texts.

In this podcast episode, Jiha comes together with Roy to talk directly to each other’s work in a way they generally avoid doing in advance. Jiha reveals the story behind the images she chose and Roy discusses how she interpreted them, all interwoven with a recording of their live performance.

Produced by Alannah Chance.

Susie Ibarra and Michele Koppes present a podcast of soundscapes and stories in Water Rhythms: Listening to Climate Change. Water Rhythms is the story of climate change as told by the ice and water. It is the acoustic story of our entanglements with a changing climate and changing landscapes of our own making. Through Water Rhythms, we invite listeners into more embodied ways of understanding how we are inextricably connected to the Earth’s freshwater, by bringing sound, music and science together, in dialogue.

This is a 2 part podcast exploring the cultural context of Nawken (Scottish Traveller) song traditions and their links with wider social justice struggles for Scottish Travellers. This is part of a wider piece of work that me and Davie have been doing looking at the relationships between Nawken cultural ‘outputs’ (song/storytelling/craft) and access to sites. Davie Donaldson is Nawken.

This is a 2 part podcast exploring the cultural context of Nawken (Scottish Traveller) song traditions and their links with wider social justice struggles for Scottish Travellers. This is part of a wider piece of work that me and Davie have been doing looking at the relationships between Nawken cultural ‘outputs’ (song /storytelling/craft) and access to sites. Davie Donaldson is Nawken.

Yan Jun lives in Beijing. He writes poetry, makes music and works with sound. A few years ago he noticed a group of other artists in the city who, like himself, had begun making performances which slipped past easy definition. These could take the form of one person having a conversation with their mum on the phone on stage, an audience member disassembling a mandolin or a woman eating an apple. There was a playfulness at the core of this scene which wasn’t interested in manifestos or comparisons to Fluxus. In this podcast we hear Yan’s personal journey through the idea of non music. We hear from some of the Beijing artists and promoters who are at the centre of this group and how musicians navigate being in this experimental music scene while often existing simultaneously in other musical worlds. Yan talks to Li Qing, the drummer in indie rock band Car-sick cars and snapline, in a local restaurant. We hear from promoter, music and label boss Zhu Wembo underneath a large underpass and from Ake, an outsider artist who taught herself violin after finding one in a local junk store.

""I am from a Brahminical background. Nrithya comes from a marginalised community. So, how do we work out those politics?"" The composer and singer Nakul Krishnamurthy embarks on an ambitious project with the dancer and activist Nrithya Pillai. Can they successfully navigate caste politics and class-based structures, the reimagining of an Indian epic, the subversion of a ""classical"" art form... and a physical distance of over six thousand miles? This podcast goes behind-the-scenes of their remarkable collaboration for Counterflows At Home, 'Lal̩itam Varn̩n̩am Asuram'.

What are the sonic manifestations of trauma? In this podcast the artist and musician Thefuries explores how the experiences of sexual violence can manifest in sound and in the act of listening. We hear their journey through the making of a series of intensely personal pieces for Counterflows At Home, including the making of several bells and exploring how the idea of the bell resonates as both alarm or announcement. Thefuries culminates in five pieces of music which cycle through some of the emotional states associated with the experience of trauma. These are woven through the podcast, interspersed with their insights on how the process has been.

Kuduro is the electronic dance music of a generation born and raised during Angola's traumatic and protracted civil war. It started life on Angola's margins, in the clubs and ghettos of the nation's capital, Luanda, but its influence can be heard in Angolan hip hop, R&B, and techno. In the twenty-first century Kuduro is the official, state sanctioned international sound of young, post-war Angola. Broadcaster and music obsessive Edward George takes us on a journey through the social history of Kuduro. He looks at what this insistently joyous club music can tell us about the relationship of dance music to the machinations of state power, and what is left unsaid both during and in the aftermath of the civil war.