Conductor, curator and cultural activist Kelly Lovelady reflects on a collaborative vision traversing cultures and artforms to inspire holistic listening—working remotely with artists Carmel Alabbasi, Zoya Laktionova and Inga Markstrom; and in London with chamber orchestra Ruthless Jabiru and British Iranian composer Soosan Lolavar.
This month sees the release of Ruthless Jabiru’s debut album, Girl, and along with it, the orchestra’s first ever commissioned music video to Soosan Lolavar’s Undone.
As the ensemble’s Artistic Director and conductor, my vision for Ruthless Jabiru is one of socially-engaged storytelling through music. For me, the goal of a performance is to spark the imagination of the listener; freeing the mind to wander, explore, reflect. Our body’s sensory systems are so deeply integrated and so interconnected with memory—I’ve always loved collaboration with multimedia, hybrid artforms and aspects of experiential theatre as an extension of musical logic.
The vast majority of repertoire Ruthless Jabiru performs is instrumental; and without a text or script embedded by the composer, there’s almost unlimited scope for the stories we can choose to tell through our performances. This mode of layered storytelling has become a driving force in my practice: through my score study, I collate the myriad of references and associations innate to each piece of music. I then use these sonic triggers as the bones for a new narrative.
Undone was written by Soosan Lolavar in response to the 2020 lockdown and the unravelling of life that resulted. Its strings similarly unbound, a detuned violin becomes almost unrecognisable: its voice reborn sometimes as the strain of a bagpipe, sometimes a bellows shake at the bottom end of an accordion.
Harnessed with these personal impressions and the spirit of ‘undoing’ as my guide, I chanced upon images of the Sumoud Guirab: a band of Palestinian bagpipers based in Bourj Al Shamali refugee camp in southern Lebanon. Literally “Protest Bagpipes”, I was struck by the musicians’ intensity of focus, instruments carried with such gravitas amongst their pastel robes. Archival footage of the Sumoud Guirab has been incorporated by the first of three collaborators, Palestinian artist Carmel Alabbasi.
“When I initially agreed to collaborate on Soosan’s music using the Sumoud Guirab archive,” says Alabbasi, “little did I know we would soon bear witness to the tragedy unfolding in Gaza: a city being obliterated and my people facing erasure by all means possible.”
Image: Carmel Alabbasi, Undone (video still) courtesy of Ruthless Jabiru
I was similarly moved by photography of the many Syrian accordionists now in exile around the world, and by Los Niños Vallenatos: an accordion academy for children in Colombia, many having fled regional violence elsewhere in their country. The expressions on the musicians’ faces were again so serene and yet intensely focussed—I could really imagine the embodied sounds of Soosan’s music emanating from their accordions in a distant reply to the Sumoud. Stop motion animator Inga Markstrom pays homage to all children of war, fear and forced displacement.
Image: Inga Markstrom, Undone (video still) courtesy of Ruthless Jabiru
The contribution of our third creative, Ukrainian filmmaker Zoya Laktionova, centres ceremonial theatre from her own culture. Malanka is a Ukrainian pagan tradition for which participants dress in the kozhukhs (fur coats) and masks of their grandparents. The kozhukhs tear and deteriorate more every year during this ritual of struggle.
“I’ve used the symbolism of Malanka to show the disappearance of identity by war, totalitarianism, colonialism,” says Laktionova. “Maybe Malanka will end when there are no more kozhukhs in the warehouse. And maybe it will be reborn and look different. In 2023 during Malanka, there was massive shelling and three Russian rockets flew over the participants.”
Image: Zoya Laktionova, Undone (video still) courtesy of Ruthless Jabiru
For me personally, this has been such an enriching collaboration to have guided into being. It began with a sound and grew into a braid of stories—of ceremony, survival and empowerment through music, culture, collective identity. Several times the logistics tried to break us, as projects so often do when they bear the weight of generational resilience and social justice. I hope this film will open people’s hearts, minds and ears to our friends in upheaval around the world; and to the power of contemporary music-led theatre and creation in so doing.
Buy/stream Girl on Bandcamp: ruthlessjabiru.bandcamp.com/album/girl
Out now on all streaming platforms
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
As a queer individual, born in the confines of Al Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp (Syria) and raised in Gaza City, Carmel Alabbasi weaves a poetic visual narrative that captures the status of absence and the unyielding resilience of those who persevere even in the face of erasure. Alongside themes of absence and disappearance, Alabbasi explores the interplay of spaces, bodies, and objects entangled in the complex web of colonial and patriarchal heritage. Using the potential of contemporary photography, video art, film and writing; the mosaic of collective historical imagery of the Palestinian narrative is brought to life.
Inga Markstrom is a self taught stop motion animator and mixed media artist from the Pacific North West (Oregon, USA). She reuses discarded books and magazines as her main medium, cutting out and creating collage puppets and animation sets for her uniquely layered stop motion films.
Zoya Laktionova is a documentary filmmaker and contemporary artist. In her films, she aims to convey emotions through art metaphors intertwined with the dramatic language of cinema. As a result, Laktionova’s films have proven difficult to categorise, having been shown both at film festivals and art museums such as Centre Pompidou (Paris) and MUMOK (Vienna). In her artistic practice, she adopts micro-history, auto-ethnography and creative storytelling to unfold the complexity of greater events and historical contexts.
Kelly Lovelady is a conductor, curator and cultural Activist with a passion for experimental programming, concert dramaturgy and composer advocacy. She is the founding Artistic Director of London chamber orchestra Ruthless Jabiru and has devised, self-produced and conducted massed musical and cross-artform projects for festivals across the UK, Canada and Australia. Lovelady is in demand in the UK and abroad as both a Musical Director and Assistant Conductor with a focus on contemporary repertoire and composer collaboration.
Dr Soosan Lolavar is a British Iranian composer whose music draws on ideas from both western and Iranian traditions. She has been performed across the world, broadcast on BBC television in both the UK and Iran; and on BBC Radio 3, 4 and the World Service. In 2022 Soosan was awarded the RPS Composer prize and partnered with Cheltenham Music Festival; and more recently, shortlisted by the ISCM International Jury for the 2023 World Music Days (South Africa). Soosan’s work explores unique tuning systems using the infinite capabilities of her primary instrument, santoor. She strives to make music that resonates in the world long after we have stopped listening.
CREDITS
Video art: Carmel Alabbasi, Inga Markstrom, Zoya Laktionova
Concept: Kelly Lovelady
Music: Soosan Lolavar
Performance: Ruthless Jabiru / Sarah Saviet, detuned violin / Kelly Lovelady, conductor
Post-production: Adaq Khan / Nonclassical / Ramp GlobalPR
Supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, the Mayor of London’s Back to Business Fund; Steinlia; 83 individual donors through Crowdfunder; and the Hinrichsen Foundation. Soosan Lolavar is supported by PRS Foundation’s The Open Fund.
