Confluence
Talkative River
Talkative River was a concert held in early 1999 which brought together amateurs and professionals, young and old, as well as a hugely diverse selection of musical styles. The title paraphrases John Heath-Stubbs' poem River Song, 'Talkative river carry our songs away'. It evokes an ease in the relations between culture and nature.
Long before the superhighway zapped our messages around the world, rivers carried generations of songs, dreams and stories along with a bright burden of symbolism out to the insatiable sea... This concert aimed to demonstrate that the river - and this river, the Stour - features strongly in our conscious and unconscious lives, and that its babble, with the languages of music, the ballad and the narrative poem, continues to help people to tell their stories, weaving and re - weaving local culture, maintaining the fabric of locality.
One of the reasons that Confluence came to the Stour Valley was to help people realize their own importance as unique sources of information about the river, its history and moods, nature and legends. An element of this involves coaxing stories, memories and anecdotes from local communities and presenting them as part of musical compositions. This has the multiple advantages of keeping alive personal recollections which might otherwise be lost, challenging people to involve themselves in creative worlds they might never have dreamed of entering and drawing them towards the river, which might have dwelt too long on the periphery of their consciousness.
During the spring of 1999 , Karen Wimhurst, with oral historian, writer, and broadcaster Helen Weinstein, met with people within the settlements known as the Stour villages - Buckhorn Weston, West and East Stour, Kington Magna, Stour Provost, Todber and Fifehead Magdalen, making recordings of their stories and memories which were then integrated with, as well as inspiring, Downstream - that's another story, a composition by Karen for the wind nonet of the Bournemouth Orchestras.
In parallel, Helen Porter, with Shaftesbury-based folk musician Tim Laycock, encouraged and helped people from the area to write new ballads. These ballads were based on stories, memories and legends from the villages about their local springs, wells, the River Stour and all of its tributaries, ditches and pools.
Both of these strands came together in perfomance in Talkative River.
We found a good venue in Buckhorn Weston's new village hall. It had never hosted a serious musical concert in its first year. In more ways than one we challenged both the hall, the performers, players and the audience to experiment with us. Around 120 people thoroughly enjoyed (and joined in) with the new ballads, performed by their authors, in the first half of the programme; for the second half, Downstream, they were attentive and intrigued and they gave generous applause. We were pleased with the response and although one of the speakers was distorting which caused difficulties in the amplification of the spoken voices, we felt that the format had much to offer.
Downstream ... that's another story
