What’s the story behind the Performance and Lives gallery?
Performance and Lives is one of six new World Cultures galleries
in the redeveloped National Museum of Scotland. When we were
planning these galleries, we knew that the musical instrument
collection was an under-researched and under-used part of the
collections and so it seemed clear that we should develop a gallery
looking at music and performance.
As well as showcasing our collection, we wanted visitors to hear
the instruments on display, which range from classical to folk and
hail from all parts of the world. We also wanted to provide
visitors with the chance to play musical instruments in the
gallery, to express and experiment with their own creativity.
Now, in the gallery, visitors can listen to over 50 recordings,
the majority of which were made by the American ethnomusicologist
Jean Jenkins (1922-1990), and can send themselves mixed tracks as
MP3 files, using the World Music
Composer. Visitors can also play four new musical instruments
designed and constructed by the musician, composer, artist and
instrument maker Victor Gama. These instruments were commissioned
for the collections and are unique to the National Museum of
Scotland.
Who is Victor Gama?
Victor Gama is Angolan, of Portuguese descent, and lives and
works out of Portugal. He uses his dual heritage as a starting
point for his compositions and musical constructions. As a
performer and composer, Gama creates his own instruments using a
variety of materials, ranging from traditional sources, such as
gourds, to carbon fibre, and he incorporates all manner of design
and fabrication techniques.
Gama has a history of working with museums, most notably the
Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York, and his compositions
and instruments have been played by such groups as the Kronos
Quartet.
How does Victor Gama create his instruments?
For Gama, instruments evolve, and he believes that for
non-classical and non-western musical forms, there is a greater
degree of innovation in instrument making than is acknowledged.
Each time an instrument is re-made, it incorporates the responses
of the instrument maker and player into the prior version. The
Museum invited Gama to use this creative method to explore the
sounds of National Museums Scotland’s collection of musical
instruments gathered from Africa, the Middle East, East and Central
Asia.
The production process of the instruments involved visits to and
from Portugal. Gama visited the Museum several times, for research
and meetings, and took the opportunity when he was travelling
elsewhere to collect the right materials for the instruments. He
took photographs, sent initial designs and then refined them in
discussion with curatorial staff, taking into account the
instruments’ need to be accessible and robust.
From his research into our collection, Gama created four new
instruments entitled Tipaw, Tartul, Tonal
Matrix, and Vulk. Each of these instruments responds
to a theme explored in the gallery, as well as drawing inspiration
in terms of construction and materials from our collections. Each
comes with a story concerning its sound and origin.
Click on the images below to see Victor Gama's creations in more
detail, and the instruments that inspired them.
Tipaw
From above Tipaw looks almost like tiger paws; its body
is a round kidney shape, made of layers, and is both solid and
somewhat transparent. For Gama it looks like the ground squashed
under the tiger paws. with the ridges a sign of his impact.
Part of the inspiration was commuting from Kolkata to Edinburgh.
Kolkata is where the Tibetan ringing bowls which make the ‘pads’ of
the paws were collected, and it is often the jumping off point for
visitor wishing to see Bengal tigers. Gama participated in British
Council events in Kolkata and collected the ringing bowls himself,
rather than have them shipped; this proved more economical and
allowed him to select those that he thought be would especially
tuneful. When Gama came back from Kolkata he passed by Edinburgh
Zoo, and the connection was made in his mind.
On Tipaw, the ringing bowls are used differently than
is traditionally the case: they are struck like bells from the
side, and this creates an extraordinarily tuneful, ethereal and
sustained sound, best heard when the ear is close to the bells.
You can see Tipaw being
played here.
Tartul
Tartul looks like a slightly unsettling spider with
spindly legs. It uses gourds on the bottom to act as resonators.
These were collected by Gama when he visited Colombia. Inspired by
the African trough zithers and xylophones in the Museum’s
collection, plucking the steel ‘strings’ gives a harmonious though
slightly raw sound, Like Tipaw, Tartul can be
played by two people simultaneously.
You can see Tartul being
played here.
Tonal Matrix
The Tonal Matrix is played vertically. This instrument
has sixty keys that are plucked, arranged in four groups according
to a pentatonic scale. It generates clear and delicate sounds that
can be played in quick succession with up to three other people.
The Tonal Matrix evokes the sounds and the construction of
African thumb pianos, which are played on the move. The design of
Tonal Matrix plays with this idea of movement; in its
vertical design the body of the instrument is on four steel legs.
This makes it look animate, as if it is just about to walk off.
You can see Tonal Matrix
being played here.
Vulk
Finally, Vulk has dramatic colouring with red and
orange stripes, evoking an image of lava, so it looks like an
erupting volcano. Some of the detailing found in the design of the
zithers in the collection – the open star, for example – is a
frequent detail on musical instruments. Vulk is composed
of cymbals stacked on top of each other. When played they can give
distinct percussive sounds, and if played enthusiastically can
sound more like a roar.
You can see Vulk being
played here.
Why are these instruments important?
The Museum was very lucky to be able to work with an
internationally known musician and artist and the instruments are a
phenomenal addition to the World Cultures collections,
demonstrating how new instruments can be developed using archival
recordings and folk traditions, whilst also showing how innovation
in music is a constant. Gama sees music as a dialogue and all the
instruments were created for collective use. Made from a mix of
natural and high-tech materials, they are unusual, shiny,
colourful, visually compelling to invite the visitor to tap and
pluck, to make sounds and explore.
In the run up to the opening of the Museum, the instruments were
tested with staff and students from the University of Edinburgh.
With very little encouragement, the usually quiet and secure object
storage area was ringing with sound and music. The instruments were
again played just before opening, and now they are now being
enthusiastically played in the galleries.
The slideshow below shows Victor Gama and visitors playing the
instruments in the Performance and Lives gallery.
Victor Gama playing Tartul.
Victor Gama playing Tonal Matrix.
Victor Gama playing Tipaw.
Young visitors playing Tipaw.
Young visitors playing Vulk.
Visitor playing Tartul.
Visitors playing Tonal Matrix.