Building a stage, building a world… The Rainmaker
16th March 2024 7pm at The Old Church Stoke Newington Get your tickets here
The Rainmaker: Building a Stage, Building a World 16th March at TThe Old Church Hackney
I remember seeing Stop Making Sense, the film by Talking Heads, when I was 18 years old. My collaborator and friend Jeremy Creighton Herbert showed it to me, and it was the final nail in the coffin of a ‘normal’ life for me. Like John Giorno says in his poem Thanx 4 Nothing, “Thanks for allowing me that to be a poet; doomed, but the only choice”. I knew I wanted to do that: build the world I envisioned through music and performance. In the film, David Byrne walks onto the stage with a guitar and tape player. He hits play and plays an acoustic version of Psycho Killer. Song by song, the stage is built, new musicians join the show. It transforms from warehouse to theatre: standing lamps appear, shadows are created with a handheld spotlight, he dons his giant suit… and here I am doing just that, building a stage, building a world, with Akinori Fujimoto, a friend who I met a year later after I started my music degree and journey into a life of listening and musicking in London and beyond.
The Old Church in Stoke Newington really is old. The first record of a church being on its site is 1314, and the version of the church we now stand inside was competed in 1563, funded by Sir William Patten, Lord of the Manor. It has been through a couple of new spires and lots of repairs, and needed some TLC after the blitz in 1940. This church is a community arts venue, a place for prayer and people. In Japan, shrines can be found anywhere, in temples, but also in nature. The church sits on the edge of Clissold Park, surrounded by trees and water, and with our drums and flutes laid out across the space, it has an ancient, shrine like feel.
The place is a portal; you step in from the busy street into a peaceful place, another time. The acoustics are warm, the church loves music, and dressing up, too. On the 16th March at 7pm, she will become a temple of sorts, adorned with light and sound from a world that exists between the drum and flute sounds that Aki and I create, music we have written; sounds we have heard somewhere in our imaginations and pulled down into our instruments - our vision of a world that exists musically, in harmony with the land, animals, spirits and weather.
The Rainmaker is a mago, a musician of matter who keeps everything in balance. The rainmaker exists in this world, and in the world of Zashiki Warashi. Like falling asleep to the sound of rain, and finding it is raining in your dreams; water has spirit, it is spirit, and it’s no surprise that sound moves in a similar way to water.
Do you dream of sound? Listen the next time you are dreaming. You might hear the sound of a flute or a distant drum, or the rumble of thunder as the air prepares to clear and let the sun through again.
Join us in our fields and oceans of music and dance, light and story. Music to call the rain. A dance of friendship. Light to guide our way. A story to prolong the day just a little longer…