On music collaboration, part 1…

The following was intended as a 500-word overview of working in collaboration with musicians as a poetry/lyrics writer but ended up being much longer, so I’ll post in two parts. Part 2 will be up on Dec 28th.

Over the past few years I’ve done a lot of work with musicians, writing poems & lyrics to compliment music in many different styles.  I love working this way.  The ways that music speaks to poetry and vice versa, and how they can create one another, thrills me.  At the point in the process when the poetry and music click (or merge or melt or become one) I literally feel it physically; sometimes in the belly, sometimes in the heart ,throat, even in the brain (ever get those brain tingles?).  It’s a glorious feeling, it’s how I know I’m on the right path.

I once had a conversation with a poet who isn’t a fan of poetry/music collaborations in general, believing they tend to lead to bad poetry.  I don’t disagree with that entirely, it can indeed, but let’s face it; so can everything (flowers and weather?) They believed the music took something away from the poetry and that the poet basically didn’t believe the words themselves were enough.  Again, don’t disagree, that can and does happen.  What I disagreed with was this person’s (not spoken, but strongly implied) belief that this was an inevitable pitfall.  Thinking on it now, I’m not convinced they actually believed it.  What they meant to say was that they didn’t like the work I was doing in that regard.  I had been experimenting with music styles after a long period of falling out of love with writing that was reviving my interest big time.  Some of it was shite, some of it wasn’t.  The point of it had been to rekindle a flame at the heart of my creative self; not to be marketable, popular, or even good.   Anyway, it worked.  Since around 2017 most of my spoken-word output has been music collaborations.  I love it again.  I mention this because that person made some good points that serve me to this day, particularly about letting words breathe and their being self-realised enough that they can stand alone without the music.

It took me until a collaboration with Basork on their track ‘Whose Land is This, Whose Land is That’ to really appreciate the importance of giving the words, ideas, and music space to breathe.  When I started out down this musical path I used to believe my job was to fill the track with words.  The results were that sometimes the words and music felt as if they were having a scrap; they didn’t click or merge or melt.  Where there was poetry, its impact was wrung out; mainly in cases where syllable count trumped poetry (now, I don’t have an issue with this necessarily, syllable count trumping “poetic quality”.  There’s plenty of examples (especially outside the traditional realms of poetry, e.g rap) where it works, but it depends on the piece of work, what its aims are etc and is a whole other essay).  My earliest collaborations were with hip-hoppers who would send me their beats: I’m sure that influenced the belief that I needed to fill every second of the track.  Hip-hop tracks tend to follow a relatively simple, repetitive pattern.  It’s the lyricist’s job to provide the meat.  But in a collaboration such as with Basork – an Irish/European/Middle-Eastern inspired orchestra ten members strong (sometimes more) – every instrument (voices included) is doing subtly intricate work that need its space.  Further, considering a collaboration I did with Waterford-based street spectacle company Spraoi this year -namely their performance installation titled Prism - not only was sensitivity required to the fact that the instruments needed space, but there were also dancers, a light show element, a set etc. Some of the poetry I wrote for this show needed cut because there were circumstances where a line or two was more impactful in the grander scheme of the show than, say, an entire stanza.  I’ve been finding this sort of collaborating rich in teachings about restraint in writing.  I’ve aways to go, but there’s definitely been a corresponding change in my poetry writing style (this change also happened because of lockdown and the influence of live performance no longer being a thing; again, I can do a whole post on this and likely will but not here).   If you’re a poet who’d like to collaborate this way, keep this in mind.  In the collaborative process it’s best to remember that the poem can be just one colour in a whole picture, part of the collage, rather than the main f/vocal point.  There’s a surrendering of control required that, at the end of the day, should be welcomed rather than feared – same’s true for all artists and artforms, or else stale and stagnant can lumber in. 

Writing process & launch pads…

I make the distinction between poetry and lyrics because there are times when I don’t consider what I’m writing to be ‘a poem’ per se.  There’s surely thousands of examples where to make the distinction is pointless, same as there are when making distinctions between ‘spoken-word’ and ‘poetry’, but they’re definitely not always the same thing.  For example: I recently wrote an spoken word piece comprising about 7 or 8 sections; it was written specifically to be recorded in the studio where we were experimenting with binaural recording.  One of the sections - ‘Can I Touch Your Hair?’ - a cacophony of voices making daft and offensive statements related to the title – doesn’t work on the page as a poem.  Poetry wasn’t the aim; it was to present examples of actual things that people have said to me and give some sense of the sheer variety (they’re rarely poetic in real life, trust me!) but it works as a spoken-word performance to be experienced audibly, binaurally.

Typically, a musician will send me their music - usually because they’ve heard me perform and think my voice/style/whatever will suit their vibe.  Sometimes they’ll  have a specific focus – it may be part of an album with an overarching theme, for example.  When they do, you have a launch pad.  If you need to research etc, then you know where to start looking.  In which case I tend to sit there with a pen and a pad of Post-Its as I research while playing the music in the background, writing down any (and I mean literally any) idea/image/words/sentences/facts that present themselves.  From there it’s a matter of sorting the nuggets from the shite, then organising it all.  This approach won’t always work for you: sometimes you’ll be approached with ideas/themes that you don’t vibe with.  That tends to make the whole process slower and harder and the results unsatisfying if you try to batter on ahead with it. Not every invitation is right for you. 

Sometimes you’ll find that you do vibe with the theme and music but that the writing keeps throwing up roadblocks, triggers etc - because of where you’re at in life or where you’ve been.  In 2020, I collaborated with Warriors of the Dystotheque on a track called An Island Affair.  The composer, Jonny McAllister, was inspired by his experiences of life in Ibiza, in times that now feel like some utopian dream, so he was looking for an homage to music, sunshine, friendship, joy...  I was looking forward to getting stuck in: liked the idea, loved the music, all good to go.  But I found I couldn’t get the motor running on it.  I abandoned writing session after writing session, a bit at a loss at first as to what the craic was.  Eventually I realised that to write the lyrics for the track I was having to conjure up a lot of special memories about special people in my life, special concerts and fields, music and dancing and all the modes and colours of human touch.  Given lockdown and the devastation unfolding all around us, I couldn’t bear it.  It got to the stage where it had taken me so long that I was going to give up.  Eventually I tried, as a last resort, to make longing in lockdown the subject; the protagonist in their grey hometown fantasising about when life was a sunshining, beat-pulsing island.  That worked.  The words stuttered then flowed from there on. Sometimes these creative bumps work themselves out like that, sometimes they’re just too much at a given time.  You never know until you’re in it, as they say…

(to be continued…)

Part 2, on writing without the launch pad and other suchness, will be here on Dec 28th.