Black Notes in the Balkans
Somehow, after the years from 1998 when I joined Ronald in Sarajevo and worked to develop the Gender Initiative in Bosnia, the atmosphere in the Balkans with its passions and its pains had entered into and flooded my being. And as we travelled, and I worked throughout the region[1], I began to feel the music deeply. It was, in fact, a recognition; the gypsy in my soul responded to echoes of the familiar in keys, rhythms, melodies and the rich discordant harmonies. I felt a deep emotional connection to these sounds. Prolonged exposure to them resulted in a particular pulsing and pulsation in the essence of my blood, was what it felt like.
And later, when music had found me again and I was actually playing myself, it was easy to connect with pianos in these places. I was traveling throughout Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, Hungary and Slovakia. It was as if their presence entered my field of knowing before I actually saw them. I could sense them. My awareness began to develop as I sought out pianos and found them, often in abandoned and empty buildings, showing signs and scars of conflicts. They would be hidden under sheets, under thick layers of dust from shelling and fallen plaster and pushed into corners – safely. Shaking off the dust, opening the covers and listening to their first vibrations as I touched the keys, I would wonder what they had been witness to… but in reality, not really wanting to know.
The freezing winters that people in the Balkans region experienced during these unfathomable and inexplicable conflicts had compelled the burning of possessions. Heavy furniture, tables, chairs, beds, heirlooms, bookcases and even books had been the fuel for fires, light, and warmth. But pianos seemed to have been saved till last. The love of music which people in the region embody was evidenced by the presence of pianos, still there, in the empty spaces, after people had moved on to safety elsewhere carrying violins and instruments which could travel. These pianos survived. Silent sentinels. Witness to tragedies unbelievable and unbearable. They had perhaps also been compelled to hold their breath, as the world had done, when the horrors unfolded nightly across television screens.
In the silence, I could almost feel them start to breathe even before I touched their keys and their sounds rang out echoing in the emptiness. And this was the surprising thing to me as I discovered the character and uniqueness of each piano. I would touch a single note, and for some reason it was often a black note which ‘called’ itself into my awareness to be touched. I had my eyes closed and felt the initial sound moving out as a wave from under my finger. It circled out into the space around it, finding its way after the years of silence and solitude. And then a second note would sound, finding resonance with the first. Then the weaving and interplay of harmonics as the notes began their own dialogue. I was simply a catalyst, practically an observer. Indeed, it almost had nothing to do with me.
Sometimes, the dialogue was close to unbearable – as if the notes were sharing shocking memories, undergoing catharsis, purging and releasing. Terrible. Terrible to hear, and to actually feel emanating from the space under my own fingers. Dark memories.
Nightmares. Turn the page!
But sometimes, the sound coming from a particular piano offered a sense of grace, of dignity, of our humanity in the face of appalling outrage. This signature would ring out and I could feel it seeking other sound waves, holding the same resonance and hope-filled – merging together and building a sound field to be nurtured and harvested… some time in the future.
A palette of black notes…
[1] Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, Hungary and Serbia. Slovakia