Derek Charke - Silenced

Silenced (24') 2007
clarinet in b-flat & string quartet

Commissioned by Stan Fisher
Funding provided by Nova Scotia Tourism, Culture and Heritage

Sample Score PDF - (opens in new window)
Sample Audio on myspace.com - (opens in new window)

The genesis of Silenced

Stan Fisher approached me well over a year ago asking about a project. He wanted to deal with the issue of violence against women, and essentially asked me for a work of an elegiac nature. I thought about the project quite a bit before responding. At first I wasn't too sure about tackling this subject matter, for one thing I'm not a woman, and I didn't think that I had any direct experience with violence against women. But after a while I came around and realised that this is a subject that affects us all; our wives, sisters, daughters, or friends and other relatives.

Inspiration

Watching the horrific events unfold in the Robert Pickton trial. I grew up in the lower mainland of BC. This was such a terrible tragedy, made worse because of the lack of interest from the police for such a long time. All of those missing women, and no one really paid any attention until just recently. I decided to call the work "Silenced" so it would be more encompassing. Stan also began talked about centering the premiere to coincide with the École Polytechnique Massacrein Quebec, so the title became more apropos.

The premiere performance

I composed the work over a four-month stretch, on my own in my studio. I then talked with Donna Smyth about her poem, we met and she read it and we recorded it. I then created a soundtrack of voices based on her poem that is played back for the final six minutes. Students from Acadia were recruited to extinguish 14 candles, representing the 14 women who were killed in Montreal.

Spirit-wind
By Donna E. Smyth

Note:’the Highway of Tears’ is what locals call Highway 16 in northern BC. The “War Zone” is what locals call Eastside Downtown Vancouver

O my sisters, can you hear the Spirit-wind?
It blows along the Highway of Tears,
Rattles bones in ditches where discarded
Bodies are tossed like empty coffee cups,
What about the others? the Disappeared?
Sometimes you hear whispers, snatches
Of sound…give you a lift? Hitch a ride,
No money for the bus, cold outside….
And a mother walks this highway:
My daughter, she was so pretty,
Give me back my daughter!
And a father walks this highway,
Calling the name of his baby girl
Who grew up sassy, spunky, helped
On the boat, Dad, don’t worry,
I can take care of myself….
Her name was Tamara, Natalie,
Delphine, Monica, Cecilia…,
Mysterious transformation, how quickly
Flesh turns to numbers, items
In a police file, cold cases unread.
O my sisters, can you hear the Spirit-wind?
It blows from the sea, salt-taste on lips,
Brine for pickled pigs’ feet; he sees

Slaughter as a way of life, someone
Has to do it…don’t you eat pork?
The secret is sharp knives, look
How softly flesh falls away from bone,
Warm gush of blood, red river flows,
Slows to a trickle, stench of yellow fat
As the guts are yanked out, pink and smooth,
Flung onto the killing floor where one
Heart looks the same as another, no name
Revealed, lites and liver, who can tell?
Her grandfather says, I wrote her name
In the sand, watched the tide wash it away,
Her name was Lisa Marie, she was 21,
Trying to get off the street, the drugs,
Her name was Sereena, she strutted
A fur coat, wrote poems in the War-Zone,
Poems for 26 women vanished, sucked
Into a black hole on the edge of town,
Sereena never gave up, she wrote:
We fought so hard to find you…you
Were all part of God’s plan…
Then it was her turn to fall into God’s
Terrible plan as revealed in Port
Coquitlam in a courtroom where strands
Of DNA revealed her name was Angelina,
Her name was Leanne, Sereena.

O my sisters, can you hear the Spirit-wind?
It blows in the heart of the city, weeps
For 14 voices silenced by a man
Dressed as a soldier, weeps for the women
Who run away to shelters, for those who stay,
Crouched in fear behind a door, black eyes,
Broken ribs, crushed dreams: how many
Bodies does it take to make a war?
Seeking love, we dig up corpses,
The living and the dead, we pilgrims
Meet on the Highway of Tears:
That girl who used to run with the wind,
Where is she now? Do you remember
How she spread her arms like wings,
Cried,Grandmother, look at me!
I can fly! They put her name
On a brass plaque nailed to the sky.

funding provided by