Worldview
by Dr. Adam Walters

Abstract

Worldview is an original piece of music written as UTT’s contribution to the Searchlight Live pilot project held on Zoom in November 2020. It was commissioned by Kwamé Ryan, Chairman of the youth art NGO Searchlight International during the Covid-19 pandemic. The music and thematic idea are by Adam Walters, and the final concept was developed during international discussions via video link between Walters, Ryan and Josh Watkins, Assistant Professor of Music (Percussion), UTT, and Searchlight International Board member.

The piece combines body percussion parts intended to be recorded by participants (aged between 12 and 15) along with a synthesised backing track. Worldview concerns itself with the first Moon Landing in 1969 and, by incorporating quotes from key political voices of the time, encourages participants to consider this event in a wider historical and social context.

Context

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Searchlight International’s 2020 summer camp had to be moved online, giving rise to the Searchlight Live virtual platform. Kwamé Ryan asked Adam Walters to compose a new piece for this purpose, and Worldview was the result. Walters wrote the score at home in London, UK.

The subject of the Moon Landing was arrived at by happy accident. The original date for the Searchlight Live camp was 20 July 2020. Wishing to know what day of the week this was, during one of the initial phone conversations about the project Ryan asked Google "What day is 20^th July?". The reply "Moon Landing Day" gave Walters the idea for the focus of the piece.

Due to technical challenges, the completion of the score was delayed so it was decided to postpone the pilot until later in the year. It ultimately took place on 23, 25 and 27 November. Participants attended the 75-minute sessions on Zoom from Trinidad, the US and the UK, with hosts Ryan and Watkins working from Germany and the US respectively.

Process

Walters initially wrote a piece for body percussion incorporating relevant quotes concerning the first Moon landing. Hearing it, Ryan felt that a backing track would provide a "motivational" context for the participants. Walters then composed a backing track using synthesisers on Logic Pro software to evoke a "spacey" atmosphere in a recognisably filmic musical style.

Walters spent a long time researching the first moon landing online, looking at comments from astronauts, Civil Rights activists, journalists and politicians. He also took inspiration from the documentary film Overview which talks about the fragility and uniqueness of life on Earth. (This provided a lot of material for the online sessions themselves, as explained in more detail below.)

The quotes in the piece are from Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, J. F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Richard Nixon, Thomas Paine and Neil deGrasse Tyson. The quotes were chosen to illuminate on the one hand the excitement surrounding the Moon landing and, on the other, the sense of frustration felt amongst members of the Civil Rights movement regarding the amount of money spent on the endeavour when there was so much social inequality and poverty in certain communities in the US.

The body percussion parts underwent several revisions to make them appropriate for learning by participants who would not be reading a score but responding to a tutor (Watkins). A variety of sounds is incorporated into the score: participants are required to hit a box with a pen and a bottle with a spoon, while using their bodies to generate different percussive and vocal sounds. "Bottle and Spoon" is an element used in certain Trinidadian percussion ensembles, so the inclusion of this in the score recognises the fact that Searchlight International is based in Trinidad.

Walters structured the piece in four sections:  Introduction, Take-Off, Orbit, Landing and Epilogue.

Walters, Ryan and Watkins met on numerous occasions via Zoom to discuss the format of the Searchlight Live sessions. The original plan was for the piece to be rehearsed and then performed live online during the third and final session. There was some uncertainty how successful the live element would be, so Ryan had the idea of jettisoning this altogether to create a recording project. This turned out to be highly effective and was a fresh and innovative approach to an online musical project.

A "take list" was drawn up to indicate what the participants would need to record during each session. A tutor’s script was the written by Ryan and Walters and this was used by Ryan and Watkins during the online sessions. Watkins recorded videos that participants were required to watch in advance of each session. In these videos, Watkins speaks to the camera, teaching the participants the body percussion parts.

In the sessions themselves, Ryan encouraged discussion about musical, historical and environmental themes, and Watkins demonstrated the body percussion parts. After these demonstrations, the participants were asked to record short sections of the music using the Dolby On mobile phone app and then send them to a special Worldview email address for editing.

The format of the sessions proved highly successful, and participants seemed to be engaged and enthusiastic about their roles in the piece. As this was a pilot project, only a small number of young people took part, but the number could certainly be increased in a later incarnation of the project.

During the after-action review, Watkins felt that some of the sections of the body percussion parts were too challenging for the age group that took part in the pilot project. Walters said it would be easy to revise certain passages but also felt that a variety of levels works well as it means that the piece can be used for different ability levels and age groups. Ryan felt that, in a post-Covid environment, a classroom version of the piece for Searchlight Schools would be effective, with large groups of children recording elements of the piece together, thus providing a more collective experience of music making.

Walters used Logic Pro software to edit the clips and assemble them over the backing track. Once this process was completed, the file was sent to Maarten Manmohan who provided a final mastered track.

Finally, Walters created a film of the piece that blends video footage of the participants with archival footage from the Apollo 11 mission. The video can be here: