Viriditas
By Ceara Conway, in Galway
Editor’s Note:
by Néstor Romero Clemente
Viriditas – Latin for Greenness – Meaning vitality, lushness, verdure, or growth.
When you fell on the ground as a child, your mother would wash the wounds and sing you a song in order to comfort you through the healing pain. Throughout history, singing to hearten the sick has been a common practise, so culturally embedded in ourselves that it feels just as natural as breathing.
Starting with the words “How are you?” – a prosaic question for most, yet so consequential for others – Irish artist, singer and composer Ceara Conway opens the door to her Viriditas, a response-project born out of her exploration of the notions of healing and well-being. This song cycle features several of Conway’s own compositions (an amalgamation of her absorption in various Galway Hospitals), as well as a selection and re-interpretation of traditional healing songs from Georgia and Italy.
In Conway’s own words:
“A huge part of my arts practise is recontextualizing and contemporising traditional song and folk practises (across cultures) and utilising them as forms in which to respond to current issues and themes.”
Ceara Conway developed an interest in Georgian music when she was an artist in residence in Limerick City, between the years 2015 and 2018. It was there where she met Dr. Sydney Freedman, at the Irish World Music Academy, who had extensive knowledge in Georgian chant. After receiving her Viriditas commission, she decided to travel to Tbilisi on a research grant to learn Georgian healing songs.
“While I was there I learnt that in Georgia when an individual was ill, members of the community would visit and sing specific healing songs to them. I knew then that I wanted to create a contemporary performance work for the Hospital inspired by this tradition”
The songs that make up Viriditas co-exist in a timeless place, taking the listener back and forth between our past and our present, Europe’s very own North and South. All the while, we are accompanied by Conway’s colourful voice – chanting along others, at times shadowed by southern rhythms – reminiscent of the sounds and themes upon which the project is constructed. Roughly 21 minutes in length, Viriditas is best listened to and absorbed in a quiet space, as it invites and encourages personal reflection and introspection.
Presented by Irish Arts and Health organisation Saolta Arts as part of Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture, Viriditas couldn’t have been conceived at a more relevant time. With this year’s pandemic bringing the world's population to a vulnerable standstill, the themes it explores are ever present in the collective consciousness of all Europeans. And it brings a feeling of warm familiarity to an otherwise sterile scene.
“The songs and voice in this space are offered up for the purposes of creating moments of joy, fun and poignancy and to bring patients and staff together in ways outside normal daily routines and patterns. The practise of singing to soothe and heal is ancient, and while this a contemporary work, it is rooted in tradition, making the performing of it in a hospital, feel like it belongs in the space.''.
At times invoking the works of medieval abbess and composer Hildegard von Bingen, Viriditas echoes an old tradition of healing across Europe, and is a worthy proponent of the now fading relationship between medicine and music. It will hopefully bring comfort and healing for some, and perhaps open a conversation for others. Either way, it is an ode to the European healing traditions as well as a timely reminder of our own humanity. And just like the memory of a mother’s lullaby, it is heartwarming and simply beautiful.