To record LAST VOICES FROM HEAVEN, Anthony Copping embarked upon what National Geographic describes as "the most dangerous journey ever undertaken in the search for indigenous music."
His quest to discover the ancient and endangered music of the South Pacific took in 300 islands, 200 performers and hundreds of different languages. The results can be heard on a unique album and the extraordinary story behind the recording can be seen in the accompanying National Geographic film, Last Voices From Heaven. It is the first time the National Geographic channel has ever commissioned a music documentary.
Copping's travels took him to some of the world's remotest places where he found some of the most extraordinary music on the planet, thousands of years old in its origins and still untouched by western civilisation. Music from another world and another time.
While collecting and recording these extraordinary sounds, Copping was confronted by cyclones, civil wars and erupting volcanoes and his life threatened with spears, bows and arrows and guns.
Invaluable support has also come from manager John Wadlow, whose former clients included Seal. "This is the most exciting project I have been involved in over the last ten years. In fact, it's the only reason I am still in the music business," he says.
Copping, British-born but resident in Australia, began travelling in the South Pacific 15 years ago and released his first album based on the music he found there in 1997. But he knew he had only scratched the surface and to record Last Voices From Heaven, he knew he had to go deeper. Accompanied by the Solomon Islands-born singer and guitarist Pascal Oritaimae and a single cameraman, he set off to explore the islands of Vanuatu, the Solomons and West Papua in the vast area of the South Pacific known as Melanesia.
He knew the best chance of finding traditional music still being performed meant seeking out the most remote villages. None of the locations were accessible by road and none of them had electricity. He spent weeks travelling by log canoe hundred of miles up uncharted rivers and deep into dense, unexplored jungle.
And he truly found the Last Voices From Heaven. The music he recorded included ritual and ceremonial songs, lullabies, laments for the dead and sacred spirit songs. In most cases, he was almost certainly the first white person ever to hear such music. He also recorded one of the last practising sorcerers in the South Pacific.
For the most part, the islanders were enormously open and warm. But not always. "We got held up. There were guns and machetes and there were a lot of upset people because they've been displaced and they've had a really hard time. We had occasions when we thought we were going to be attacked and a lot of times when we simply had to run away," he admits.
Then there were more natural but equally hostile elements. In Vanuatu, they ran into Cyclone Zoe. Then, in the Solomons, they encountered Cyclone Benny. On another island, they encountered an active volcano and were hit by flying volcanic rocks. "We had a lot of danger. But we got some incredible music. We recorded literally the last people on earth who know some of these songs. I knew that some of the music was potentially going to die unless I recorded it'."
Back in his studio in Sydney, Copping took the recordings he had made and set about creating a bridge between the world of the islanders and modern western civilisation, helped in the studio by Pascal Oritaimae and mixed in London with Adam Wren (Leftfield / Afro Celt Sound System).
While Copping didn't want an album of field recordings, like some dry exhibit in an ethnological museum, he also wanted to avoid the grab-some-vocal-samples-and-chuck-some-beats-over-them approach. The result is a unique record that is quite unlike anything else in the marketplace of world music.
Woven into a loose song cycle, the melodies are all derived from traditional sources and the songs performed in their original tongue. And yet Last Voices From Heaven also sounds highly accessible to western ears. "I wanted to preserve the music's integrity but also to create something in harmony with the modern world," Copping says.
A percentage of the proceeds from the album is being ploughed back into the islands via local cultural centres and ultimately, Copping would like to set up a local music school. "The islands are being invaded by western culture and realistically we can't save all of this traditional music," he says. "But if we can help to preserve some of it, then we will have achieved something."
“The most dangerous journey ever undertaken in the search for indigenous music,” according to National Geographic. Anthony Copping travels to some of the remotest corners of the earth, records music rarely heard more than 10 miles from where it is made and then puts out an album that hides it all away under a blanket of studio slickness.
Tracklist
1. Mana Part 1
2. Ma'a Mera
3. Shadow Of Life
4. Spirit
5. Mo're
6. Mamberamo
7. Wuroman
8. Lullaby Of The Dead
9. Taria Waraku
10. Lament
11. Possessed
Adapted from: age-net.co.uk, 2003.
