LOKAAL – Winter Solstice Night

19 December - Dokzaal, Amsterdam
€ 8 – € 20

In this Winter Solstice season, LOKAAL invites you to the Plantage Dok to gather around the fire and celebrate the human voice. From furious growling, through storytelling, to collective, harmonious soundscapes, we will enjoy the wide range of possibilities of our voices. Let’s get together to leave the darkest nights of the year behind us and celebrate that the sunlight will return.

Writer and artist Jacob Dwyer (UK) will present his new live audio drama, combining storytelling and sound art. In the performance GRUNT, by Dutch-Iranian performance maker and sociologist Diane Mahín, we will meet a woman who communicates solely through growling: Raw, physical, and drenched in sound. We will also get a chance to use our own voices in the Anti-Choir workshop with Wouter Mol: a playful, participatory, community encounter for improvisation, open to everyone regardless of previous experiences, age and skill set. A communal, unpredictable sound machine. And lastly, the wonderful Mola Sylla with treat us to a solo set. Capable of improvising freely with his incredible voice, he accompanies himself on traditional African instruments: kongoma / m’bira, xalam and flutes.

JACOB DWYER – TOM”S HOUSE
Jacob Dwyer is an artist based in Amsterdam working with audio, moving-images and writing. His work often centres around personal encounters that could equally be seen as fables or heresy. He will present his new work Tom’s House: a one person performed audio-drama. It incorporates voice, live foley, field recordings and an original soundtrack composed by K.Freund, Kareem Lotfy, Jacob Oostra and Zuza Banasińska. In Tom’s House, we listen to the diaristic meanderings of someone who’s returned to the UK for the first time in 15 years. Walking up Haddon Drive he spots the house of an old friend, Tom. The front door is open, so he goes inside. Wandering around the empty Tudor cottage –making cups of tea, rearranging CD collections and zoning in on the minutiae of domestic space– he ruminates on ideas of emotional intimacy, friendship and grief.

DIANE MAHÍN – GRUNT
“A single sound from the body can open up an entire world.” Dutch-Iranian performance maker and sociologist Diane Mahín creates space for the ugliness and darkness of daily life without softening it, sometimes provoking laughter you did not see coming. Her work is raw, physical, and drenched in sound. What first feels strange, disturbing, or taboo often turns out to be deeply familiar. Inspired by the distorted voices of Death Metal, Diane Mahín uses growling to explore the effects of violence through the primitive language of voice and body. The performance channels a woman’s voice caught between composure and eruption, civility and fury. Within these growls, hidden layers emerge, revealing a raw, direct, and unfiltered expression of inner turmoil.

ANTI-CHOIR WORKSHOP
In this vocal expression workshop with Wouter Mol we’ll engage in voice and movement exercises, share experiences in the group, and play with improvisation. You don’t need to be able to sing beautifully. Through your voice, you connect with what’s alive inside you, the group and everything around and in between. Wouter is a vocal performer, songwriter and music therapist who delved deeply into vocal expression: a playful, body-oriented approach to working with sound and resonance through voice.
vocal sessions video

MOLA SYLLA
Mola Sylla sings and plays traditional African instruments, such as the m’bira, the kongoma and the xalam, with which he creates a unique sound world. Born in Dakar, Mola Sylla grew up in the tradition of the griots, who play an important role in the culture of West Africa. It’s this huge and rich heritage from which he draws his inspiration as a singer and musician. Sylla arrived in Europe in the 1980s and was established in 1987 in Amsterdam, where he still lives. He sings mostly in Wolof, the language of Senegal that has survived alongside the French and which is spoken by 90% of the Senegalese people. Mola Sylla sings in his songs about the loneliness of exile, certainties and doubts of the life of a man, the story of the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed and the expectation of the Senegalese people that foreigners keep their word.

The people at LOKAAL have kindly offered a limited amount of free tickets for Subbacultcha members. Please make a reservation by sending an email to mailinglist@subbacultcha.nl with ‘LOKAAL winter’ in the subject line + your name in the email.