LA-based Lebanese-American artist Nour Mobarak studies the mortality of language on 'Dafne Phono', re-imagining the world's first opera, 'Dafne', by interlacing (and live processing) various translations, from English and Greek to phonetically complex tongues like ǃXóõ, from Botswana, and Silbo Gomero, a whistled register of Spanish from the Canary Islands.
It's safe to say that Mobarak understands the power of the voice. Not only did she go through seven years of classical vocal training, but her last Recital album, 2019's 'Father Fugue', drew on conversational snapshots to make sense of her father's neurological condition - he speaks four languages fluently, but has a 30-second memory. This time, she uses Ottavio Rinuccini and Jacopo Peri's 1598 opera 'Dafne' to trigger an exploration of not just language's rich textural variety but its cruel demise.
The opera itself is a retelling of the myth of Daphne and Apollo from Ovid's 'Metamorphosis', and, inspired by fungal growth, she braids radically different recitations of the narrative on 'Dafne Phono' a stereo version of Mobarak's original 15-channel installation. Rooting the piece in the Western culture the opera emerged from, she initially muddles Italian and Greek, gradually introducing less familiar vocalizations and sonics as the words twist and evolve. It's shockingly effective, snowballing into a dense - but never overwhelming - tangle of old and new, identifiable and alien sonics.
On the flip, Mobarak takes a more hands-on approach, live processing some of the stems - including a translation of the libretto made in Namibia - and creating a noisier, more dissociated alloy of tones, textures and cadences. Words are reversed, slowed, echoed and garbled, distancing the sounds even further from their context and creating a cloud of memory, culture and dialect that lodges itself firmly in the mind.
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LA-based Lebanese-American artist Nour Mobarak studies the mortality of language on 'Dafne Phono', re-imagining the world's first opera, 'Dafne', by interlacing (and live processing) various translations, from English and Greek to phonetically complex tongues like ǃXóõ, from Botswana, and Silbo Gomero, a whistled register of Spanish from the Canary Islands.
It's safe to say that Mobarak understands the power of the voice. Not only did she go through seven years of classical vocal training, but her last Recital album, 2019's 'Father Fugue', drew on conversational snapshots to make sense of her father's neurological condition - he speaks four languages fluently, but has a 30-second memory. This time, she uses Ottavio Rinuccini and Jacopo Peri's 1598 opera 'Dafne' to trigger an exploration of not just language's rich textural variety but its cruel demise.
The opera itself is a retelling of the myth of Daphne and Apollo from Ovid's 'Metamorphosis', and, inspired by fungal growth, she braids radically different recitations of the narrative on 'Dafne Phono' a stereo version of Mobarak's original 15-channel installation. Rooting the piece in the Western culture the opera emerged from, she initially muddles Italian and Greek, gradually introducing less familiar vocalizations and sonics as the words twist and evolve. It's shockingly effective, snowballing into a dense - but never overwhelming - tangle of old and new, identifiable and alien sonics.
On the flip, Mobarak takes a more hands-on approach, live processing some of the stems - including a translation of the libretto made in Namibia - and creating a noisier, more dissociated alloy of tones, textures and cadences. Words are reversed, slowed, echoed and garbled, distancing the sounds even further from their context and creating a cloud of memory, culture and dialect that lodges itself firmly in the mind.
LA-based Lebanese-American artist Nour Mobarak studies the mortality of language on 'Dafne Phono', re-imagining the world's first opera, 'Dafne', by interlacing (and live processing) various translations, from English and Greek to phonetically complex tongues like ǃXóõ, from Botswana, and Silbo Gomero, a whistled register of Spanish from the Canary Islands.
It's safe to say that Mobarak understands the power of the voice. Not only did she go through seven years of classical vocal training, but her last Recital album, 2019's 'Father Fugue', drew on conversational snapshots to make sense of her father's neurological condition - he speaks four languages fluently, but has a 30-second memory. This time, she uses Ottavio Rinuccini and Jacopo Peri's 1598 opera 'Dafne' to trigger an exploration of not just language's rich textural variety but its cruel demise.
The opera itself is a retelling of the myth of Daphne and Apollo from Ovid's 'Metamorphosis', and, inspired by fungal growth, she braids radically different recitations of the narrative on 'Dafne Phono' a stereo version of Mobarak's original 15-channel installation. Rooting the piece in the Western culture the opera emerged from, she initially muddles Italian and Greek, gradually introducing less familiar vocalizations and sonics as the words twist and evolve. It's shockingly effective, snowballing into a dense - but never overwhelming - tangle of old and new, identifiable and alien sonics.
On the flip, Mobarak takes a more hands-on approach, live processing some of the stems - including a translation of the libretto made in Namibia - and creating a noisier, more dissociated alloy of tones, textures and cadences. Words are reversed, slowed, echoed and garbled, distancing the sounds even further from their context and creating a cloud of memory, culture and dialect that lodges itself firmly in the mind.
LA-based Lebanese-American artist Nour Mobarak studies the mortality of language on 'Dafne Phono', re-imagining the world's first opera, 'Dafne', by interlacing (and live processing) various translations, from English and Greek to phonetically complex tongues like ǃXóõ, from Botswana, and Silbo Gomero, a whistled register of Spanish from the Canary Islands.
It's safe to say that Mobarak understands the power of the voice. Not only did she go through seven years of classical vocal training, but her last Recital album, 2019's 'Father Fugue', drew on conversational snapshots to make sense of her father's neurological condition - he speaks four languages fluently, but has a 30-second memory. This time, she uses Ottavio Rinuccini and Jacopo Peri's 1598 opera 'Dafne' to trigger an exploration of not just language's rich textural variety but its cruel demise.
The opera itself is a retelling of the myth of Daphne and Apollo from Ovid's 'Metamorphosis', and, inspired by fungal growth, she braids radically different recitations of the narrative on 'Dafne Phono' a stereo version of Mobarak's original 15-channel installation. Rooting the piece in the Western culture the opera emerged from, she initially muddles Italian and Greek, gradually introducing less familiar vocalizations and sonics as the words twist and evolve. It's shockingly effective, snowballing into a dense - but never overwhelming - tangle of old and new, identifiable and alien sonics.
On the flip, Mobarak takes a more hands-on approach, live processing some of the stems - including a translation of the libretto made in Namibia - and creating a noisier, more dissociated alloy of tones, textures and cadences. Words are reversed, slowed, echoed and garbled, distancing the sounds even further from their context and creating a cloud of memory, culture and dialect that lodges itself firmly in the mind.
Edition of 200 copies in full color jacket, with a foldout double-sided 18” x 24” poster and a 9” x 4” card with graphic and credits, plus a download.
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LA-based Lebanese-American artist Nour Mobarak studies the mortality of language on 'Dafne Phono', re-imagining the world's first opera, 'Dafne', by interlacing (and live processing) various translations, from English and Greek to phonetically complex tongues like ǃXóõ, from Botswana, and Silbo Gomero, a whistled register of Spanish from the Canary Islands.
It's safe to say that Mobarak understands the power of the voice. Not only did she go through seven years of classical vocal training, but her last Recital album, 2019's 'Father Fugue', drew on conversational snapshots to make sense of her father's neurological condition - he speaks four languages fluently, but has a 30-second memory. This time, she uses Ottavio Rinuccini and Jacopo Peri's 1598 opera 'Dafne' to trigger an exploration of not just language's rich textural variety but its cruel demise.
The opera itself is a retelling of the myth of Daphne and Apollo from Ovid's 'Metamorphosis', and, inspired by fungal growth, she braids radically different recitations of the narrative on 'Dafne Phono' a stereo version of Mobarak's original 15-channel installation. Rooting the piece in the Western culture the opera emerged from, she initially muddles Italian and Greek, gradually introducing less familiar vocalizations and sonics as the words twist and evolve. It's shockingly effective, snowballing into a dense - but never overwhelming - tangle of old and new, identifiable and alien sonics.
On the flip, Mobarak takes a more hands-on approach, live processing some of the stems - including a translation of the libretto made in Namibia - and creating a noisier, more dissociated alloy of tones, textures and cadences. Words are reversed, slowed, echoed and garbled, distancing the sounds even further from their context and creating a cloud of memory, culture and dialect that lodges itself firmly in the mind.