MUSIC, SINGING AND MENTAL HEALTH, WITH NACHO DIAZ

Nacho Diaz is a sociologist and PhD student at the Centre for Narrative Research, CNR, University of East London under the direction of Maria Tamboukou. His professional life has taken place in different psychiatric hospitals and prisons, in the field of reinsertion. He has also worked with different NGOs.

So I am spending this beautiful morning with Nacho Diaz at the South Bank Centre. Nacho is a sociologist and writer who founded the group “Four in Ten”, the LGBT service users organization at the Maudsley Hospital. I read his collaborations in the Spanish digital diary Politica Local, and the multiple activities that he does, but finally opt for asking him how he would introduce himself for the Singing4Health publication. This is what he said.

Nacho: I am many things yes. I am a bipolar, writer, PhD candidate, mental health activist and performer.

Maria: We are here today to talk about singing.

Nacho: I am also a performer who unfortunately doesn't have the ability to sing well. However, I love singing with all my heart.

Maria: How does singing and music benefit you?

Nacho: Music makes me stabilize my moods. I listen to music all the time. When I'm at home,

working, studding or writing I listen to music, I have various choices, I listen to radio 3 or depending on the day or the hour I listen to jazz or to some sort of new musics that make me feel good.

I think that music gives me a sense of calm and relax. When I need different kings of inspirations to write, I listen to Spotify and review my musical taste over the years.

Over my life I have managed to overcome bad experiences listening to music. And when I understand the lyrics of a good song, I try to get immerse in that song and create my own fantasy about it.

Maria: What about the physical fact of yourself singing?

Nacho: I love singing and I love to be in a stage.

Whenever I am in a stage and I try to perform, would like to give the best of me, but I sing whenever I can. Before I was diagnosed my singing used to be a symptom or my stress, anguish or my anxiety. It's like I existed through music.

My first childhood memories where watching singers, feeling the special magic of Paloma San Basilio. I know she is in a way a gay icon and also for many Opus Day people, I don't really know or understand the connection but I've seen this quite often in Spain.

I suppose I saw in Paloma a very special kind of femininity. She represented to me some very happy, joyful and innocent feelings. Even if she would talk about adultery, she would do it in such a sweet way... Paloma was in a way my model.

Maria: Has singing been important at some point?

Nacho: I have met lots of bipolar people like me who ended up subscribing to Spotify too to regulate their moods and creating playlists for their different moods. I also met other people who need the background music in order to have a peaceful existence in their homes.

Maria: So this is something you recommend.

Music? Absolutely. And it's not just about singing, but about listening to the music!

The book I am writing and part of my PhD will include talking about some music and singing memories, as it comes in many ways from images and memories I have from my childhood. When I performed as a woman singing “chica yeye” I had this memory from my childhood of the actress who would normally sing it, Conchita Velasco.

Maria: Any British or American singers?

Frank Sinatra was my hero. Dean Martin. In my teens my father used to travel to London quite often and used to bring me the top 1 in the lists, so in a small provincial town I had the chance to spend a lot of time on my own listening to Rick Ashley, Bananarama, Donna Summer, Diana Rose and disco music from the 70s.

Maria: In what way have you related your singing to your writing?

Nacho: I am a writer, and learned the tricks of my trade by listening to tangos. I also love coplas, because they are stories that people sing, and that's what I'm after.

Shall we sing? -said I. Nacho sings with energy and extroversion.

And this is all for today.

ON BEAUTY AND CREATIVITY, WITH MENNO KUIJPER

I am interviewing Menno Kuijper, a great cabaret artist based in London, a very clear mind and a lovely person. I wanted to know more about his views on Cabaret and the way that music and song writing has become an important part not only of his career but also of his personal development. Our talk was long (it will give me scope for a second episode on Cabaret). This is an excerpt of our discussion.

Maria: When did you start writing?

Menno: From a very young age I was always writing stories, or singing or drawing, I used to draw loads, and all these things are about story telling, but just in different ways.  In my teens, and especially in my twenties, I gravitated much more towards the songwriting, but always more from the point of view of the lyrics and the idea of the song rather than melodically putting a song together.  I don’t really consider myself a ‘melody’ person as I’ve never learned to play an instrument and think ‘OK, I should work together with people who really understand music and melodies’, but having worked with composers I’m now beginning to think more in terms of melodies and instruments, how we could harmonise it...so that's quite new to me.

One morning I woke up and I had a melody in my head and I didn't know where it came from!  It was just there in my head, kind of sad and melancholic, and the words where just there!  So I quickly got my phone, recorded myself humming the tune and wrote down the words, and within minutes had it all down. I looked at the words and the thought “What the hell is this? What the hell is this song? Where did it came from?”  It's called “Fuck me senseless!” I just thought “How bizarre”, and I looked at the lyrics and I thought “Is this me?”, “Are this things I feel?”, “Is this desire on my part?” or “Is it just something that came out of a dream?” Who knows!

Maria: You are a very good lyricist.  Do you see yourself as someone who tells stories through music?

Menno:   I’ve always seen myself as a storyteller before I call myself a singer or a performer – its about the story telling.  I like to write, I like to perform, I like to sing, I like to draw, I like to put songs together... it's all about taking something and find the right way to express it.  So, what form is it going to take? What I really like is when something takes shape by itself, to have a very organic approach. And I think this is something I'm focusing much more now, like you have an idea and you just go with it, you don't have a plan, you just see what happens.

Maria: Has story telling help you survive to some extent?

Menno: Yes, I guess, I was always in this fantasy world.  I remember my mum, she used to check up on me when I was supposed to be sleeping and then she would say “You're still awake!” and I'd say “Yes, I’ve got too much going on in my head”. Now, of course, as a child, you don't have stuff like bills or your job to worry about, so it was all fantasy and weird stuff!

Maria: so did you get rid of so much stuff going on or you always got more?

Menno: Well, I think that from the age of about six-seven I got bullied a lot in school because I was quite girly, and not like a ‘traditional boy’, so I think it was part a escapism. My dad would say to me “get out of that pink cloud”, and by “pink cloud” he meant this fantasy world I lived in, because I was always bumping into walls or breaking things. I tried to sit on the sofa once and I sat over the side table instead and broke this beautiful lamp that my mother had inherited. So that was always like a drama because I was like “in another world” most of the time, so he just wanted me to get my feet on the ground. That's why he said “get of that pink cloud!”, and I never liked that because I didn't understand it, I would think “what pink cloud? I'm not on a cloud! I can't see it!”. But I would just be writing, writing, writing stuff...and then when I was a teenager I wanted to perform, I had seen cabaret artists and comedians on TV and I thought “Oh, I wanna do that!”. And I started doing some performing in high school. And then I started to write songs, but in Dutch.

Maria: Cabaret has to do with critic. It can be very political. Does that help you express your ideas?

Menno: For me, nowadays it’s even more like that, I have a clear point to get something across. As a teenager it was mostly whimsical stuff, but now I want to write a whole play about religious based homophobia, which of course, stirs up a lot of emotions.

Maria: The song you sang the other day “Equal opportunity shagger”, makes a point!

Menno: yes, and what's really interesting about that is that I've performed it in different places and it does make a point on how people today face online dating, and how we use apps and meeting apps for sex purely, how you commodify people and you don't see people as a person but just as a body, people can look at you as a collection of body parts, and “Do you have all the body parts that I want in one body?” Or “Do I even care about your body? --I just want a particular type of penis”. It get's broken down and compartmentalized so much.  It's not about knowing someone anymore.

Maria: that's interesting, specially coming from someone who also works for the beauty industry. Do you relate those thoughts to that other job?

Menno:  I see it as something very different and separate, I've never consciously related it to the work I do for hair salons (because I also work with hair salons and spas and beauty saloons).

Maria: That has a lot to do with people who want to look good.

Menno: Or feel good.

Maria: We do live in a day and age where the physical is very much emphasised all the time.

Menno: Yes, if you look at all those girls in adverts and see how much they've been enhanced, through lightning, through make up, afterwards in photoshop their eyes are made bigger, the jaw line is made sharper...or whatever, so much of what we are presented is fabricated, and I am quite political about this. “Equal opportunity shagger” is about, “Lets be a bit more open minded”.

Maria: and it's a beautiful song.

Menno: I did it in a bar in Dublin, and one guy heard it and came to me afterwards and he was saying “Actually, that really made me think”, and that is to me a great compliment, because as a story teller I like to do two things: I like to inform and entertain. Together. But if someone gets more from the informing part that I do, that to me is the end goal. And it's not that I say “I know everything and this is what you should be thinking”, that is not what it is about, but obviously, you go through life, you observe things, and you want to address them.

Maria: what is beauty for you?

Menno: Away from performance?

Maria: Away from performance.

Menno: it's all about the eyes and the feeling a person has around them. At the end of the day if I find someone who is very grounded a very calm, then that's beautiful, ‘cause I tend to be all over the place and need someone to balance that.  And someone who is understanding and is open, that is beautiful. 

Menno and myself spent some minutes improvising, and this is part of what happened next. A most enjoyable morning!




 © Maria Soriano 2014, Singing4Health

SINGING WITH NO WORDS

Singing in harmony is lovely... but so it is playing with sound. To allow ourselves to stop and listen to the sound of the voices that are together, not worrying about being or not in a particular "tune", and being able to pay attention to this cluster of sounds, and understand that it's also a material that can be explored and it's bound to be a fantastic experience.

I have many times been approached by people who love singing, and from whom singing in a group is a very meaningful experience. There are others who might enjoy to sit and listen, but won't say they like to sing. When asked, the reply is variations of:

- I don't like it because I don't do it well

So the more self-conscious one is, the most likely to not enjoy singing if they are aware that they cannot follow a tune. But we did various experiments. Last December, at Kingston Centre for Independent Living, I offered a session with both people who enjoed singing and people who didn't like singing. I said that nobody should do anything they did not feel like, and started to create a group dynamic and some fun warm up exercises. No need to leave your chair, no need to sing. But we started to produce sound, and do play and paint with our sounds in the air.

In less than 20 minutes we had a joyful circle of improvisers, who where happily participating in a common musical piece, each one at their own pace, with their own contributions. Those not so comfortable with tune, could do percussion sounds... or atonal melodies that where integrated in the whole circle that was becoming more and more happy!

Needless to say that those who "don't like singing" had a great time too. :)

We did a similar experience at Leith Hill for the challenge event that Heritage2Health took there last October 2013. In this case it was people with learning difficulties, their friends, carers and families. And again we played with sound, using some techniques that have been used by free improvisers and contemporary composers. One discovery was to find out that sometimes people with LD where much more outgoing and daring to produce much more kinds of different sounds, that the people with no LD, so in this situation the edges between disabled and not disabled where very much merging. People who didn't have LD but where much more self conscious, would need more time before they are ready to produce a variety of sounds without becoming very critical with themselves. Finally everybody bind together in sound production without many worries about how they should call the experience.

But people who is familiar with the work of Evan Parker, Fred Frith, John Cage, Morton Feldman, John Zorn, Eddie Prevost, Keith Tippet would identify this kind of approach to voice and sound. And those who don't... it was pure joy and enjoyment on the freedom of the voice and the body! 

I came back home on the copilot seat, relieving the scene in my mind and thinking on the enormous possibilities that playing with sounds can have to make us feel non judgamental, at ease with our voices and bodies, and free.

Looking forward to more.