What do you fancy listening to? An Ethiopian engineer singing the songs of Whitney Houston? Karaoke singers from Seoul? A spot of traditional Chinese opera? An earful of communal singing from a party in a New Zealand bar? Or an American death-metal band? These and greater curiosities are what you will hear if you ring a special number this Saturday, putting you through to Dial-a-Diva, a unique globe-spanning music event masterminded in Glasgow.
“I’m aiming for it to be a fun thing,” says Zoe Irvine, 33, who dreamt up the 24-hour, multitime-zone event with the help of a £30,000 Creative Scotland award.
“The right singers are game people. The kind of response I get back is, ‘That sounds amazing, thanks, I’d love to participate — what is it?’” The event begins at 8am GMT, when the first performers in New Zealand, including the Wellington Male Voice Choir, will sing into their telephones. As time moves on, concerts will begin in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe, all co-ordinated and cued in by Irvine and her team at Glasgow’s CCA.
By the early hours of Sunday morning, they’ll have worked their way around the planet to the Americas — ending with singing groups in Honolulu and Anchorage — with sets ranging from five minutes to half an hour. “We’re making a giant conference call,” says Irvine, who is Scotland’s only lecturer in sound art, teaching part-time at Dundee’s Duncan of Jordanstone college.
Anyone who dials the number (01452 583 087) will be able to listen to a live singer from somewhere around the globe. They might be a sound artist in Hungary, a singer with harmonium accompaniment in Sweden or a favela singing group accompanying a bossa nova singer in Rio. You will hear Christmas songs, rap, bluegrass, punk and classical.
Irvine relishes the variety and has made no attempt at quality control. You can hear some of the world’s greatest singers alongside some of the worst. So if you love music you might be disappointed by what you hear. It all really rather depends on who is at the end of the line at the particular moment when you make your call.
“Some things might be truly atrocious,” says Irvine. “But there is quite a range of real opera divas from across the States. And I’m looking forward to the girl from Ethiopia, a student engineer who sings Whitney Houston songs. We’re trying to convince her to sing some of her own songs too, but she’s currently lacking in confidence. In Spain we’ve got some flamenco divas. They’re all doing it for the love of it. It’ll be a great listening experience.”
The event doesn’t stop at the singers. Irvine has roped in a call centre as well. When you phone you’ll be given two options, either to listen to the music or talk to an operator. Those operators will be briefed on the project and will be able to give you up-to-the-minute statistics about the number of calls and their duration.
In the CCA’s bar area, the same statistics will be projected on a screen, while Irvine and her team busy themselves with the link-ups. At 8pm, you can see a 25-minute performance taken from the work of Debussy by the mezzo-soprano Monica Brett-Crowther and the pianist Caroline Dowdle. They’ve already recorded some rather gorgeous “on hold” music that will satisfy anyone who calls during a technical hiatus.
The Debussy connection is significant. When the telephone was still a novel invention, people saw it as a medium for entertainment. Networks were set up, allowing subscribers to hear live performances in opera houses and theatres, much as an outside broadcast works today.
One of the pieces transmitted was Pelléas et Mélisande at the turn-of-the-century Opéra Comique in Paris. Among the subscribers to the “théâtrophone” was Marcel Proust, who broke the silence he imposed as he wrote Remembrance of Things Past to listen to Debussy’s opera, originally performed by the Aberdonian soprano Mary Garden.
“I’d never even heard of a théâtrophone despite my interest in broadcasting and sound, but it was the first broadcast medium,” says Irvine, pointing out that Brett-Crowther will be singing Mélisande’s part as if it were a one-sided telephone conversation.
“It was first used in 1889, when radio did not exist except in ‘beep-beep’ form. It got me interested in the idea of the telephone, the voice, song and the party line — and miraculously I was able to do an installation based on these things.”
Irvine’s previous work includes Magnetic Migration Music, a series of pieces she created from discarded audiotape found snagged on trees or dropped in gutters. Such haphazard and accidental sounds appeal to her.
“It won’t be seamless, it’ll be extremely flawed,” she says of the 24-hour performance. “That is the nature of the beast. I’m interested in the defunct, the redundant and the glitches. I’ve had lovely experiences listening to music when somebody lifts up their phone to a concert or the radio. You just get this tschh-tschh-tschh noise. We hope to be able to hear things as clearly as possible, but that sense of the live is all part of it.”
To prove the point, Irvine will herself be singing twice during the day; first a Basque song performed as a duet with a friend who will be in Spain, then a Spanish song with two friends in Montreal and Madrid. Any delay on the intercontinental telephone system will add to the effect, since Irvine confesses she cannot sing. “My friend in the Basque country is also an atrocious singer, so we’re keeping that very short.”
It sounds like the ultimate crank call and Irvine is happy to add to the spontaneity by scheduling singers right until the last minute. Would-be warblers can register at her website, www.dialadiva.net, and even on the day she will allow new singers to fill any remaining slots. It will make a change from singing in the shower.
Dial-a-Diva, CCA, Glasgow, December 3, www.dialadiva.net. Call 01452 583 087 (standard call rates apply)
