New Video Out - SHAVI An African Story

It’s always fun to premiere a new work! This one is particularly fascinating. I love the African backstory:

In Shona traditional religion, shavi is the spirit of a person who died far away from home, too distant for rituals to be held to bring that spirit back again. So, the spirit can find a host anywhere to possess. The song 'Dendera jikwe' is about the shavi spirit of a bird, and Raimon Jaket imitates that bird very well on his friction bow. But my version is not very bird-like, and so I think of it as an imitation of any shavi spirit.

This video performance marks the premier of Shavi by South African composer James Wilding. Notes from the composer: A 1951 recording of the Shona song 'Dendera jikwa' by Zimbabwean blind musician Raimon Jaket inspried this piece. Jaket played a chizambi friction bow, and effected a beautiful contrast between the high ethereal sounds made by bowing the bow-stick, and the low mysterious notes that he produced by drawing his breath in past the palm leaf bow-string.