To Histories in Sand
for SSAA choir, mezzo-soprano soloist, piano, and cello
An unknown legend says, our mothers wailed onto the beach,
their blood stained the rocks,
their tears salted the sea.
Sometimes you hear their cries in the wind.
To Histories in Sand is a fusion of Yiddish folk music and Ovaherero wailing dirges or Outjina, which are elegies performed at funerals by women. As part of the oral tradition, the elegies which are rooted within the landscape, provide an historical account of the deceased person’s birth and demise, tracing their genealogy back to ancestors who survived adversity. During the Ovaherero Genocide mothers who lost their children as they fled German colonial troops, wailed. In their wails, the spot where a person died, or water was poisoned, is often remembered with vivid descriptions of landmarks.
Jewish and Ovaherero histories intersect at their meeting with German, genocidal ideologies and the ensuing mass graves people were buried in. To Histories in Sand is an acknowledgement of the untold tales of those who died and were interred before they could pen down their experiences. By combining sounds from the Yiddish folk scale, and the Ovaherero wailing dirges, we hope to draw attention to the tenacity of all those who came before us. We hope to remember that we are here because our mothers and fathers resisted.