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〜故 三宅晶子先生を偲んで〜 | INDEX お知らせ |
Variety of Voices
Akiko Miyake
November, l999
The project of my practice today is the vocal variety. How can I try for such a practice? In my whole life I have neither tried one mimicry, nor even the shortest piece of acting! So in my embarrassment, I chose to talk about the variety of different people’s voices.
First, here is a question. Do you
believe different voices have different colors?
This surrealistic statement is Graham Green’s,
the famous English novelist’s. He
declares, “Black voices gobble. Yellow
voices sing, and white voices just talk.”
Now I definitely disagree to the first statement that the black voices
gobble. Let’s see--what creatures
gobble? Oh, yes! The turkeys.
I heard the American song some forty years ago.
Old Macdonald has a farm, ya,
ya, yo!
In his farm there live turkeys,
ya, ya, yo!
And it is those turkeys that gobble, “Here
gobble, there gobble, everywhere gobble, gobble!” That ’s a nice way to let children
dance. But never in my life, I heard
black people gobble, like, “Good Morning!”
though their voices are as sinewy, robust and strong, as their shoulders
and chests are.
On the other hand, I agree heartily with Graham Green that yellow voices sing. I am not thinking of the standard Japanese language, which has staccato rhythm. It is that most musical language of Chinese that represents the Oriental languages. I know very few Chinese words, Despite that my Chinese friends encourage me saying that my Chinese accent is very natural, but I stay away from the language in which we must constantly sing, with four voices, such as “Nie how ma” and “Za-an,” that is only, “How are you!” and “Good Morning.” If I were born a good musician, how delighted I would be to learn Chinese!
Do white voices actually just talk as Graham Green says? Yes, they do. Last summer, I traveled by bus through the highland of Scotland. The Scottish speech was amazed me, for It was entirely unintelligible, though it sounded more colorful and musical than English speech. When the bus was going along the dark water of the highland lakes, which mysteriously do not reflect the pale blue sky, suddenly I heard behind me perfect Oxford English. The voice was saying to my friend from Japan that he was visiting his wife, spending the summer there. I turned back, and there he was, a typical professor of Oxford with a hard-lined nose and gray hair. It was there and then that I recalled Graham Green’s idea that white voices just talk. His voice was just talking indeed, pure and authentic, being the very essence of intelligence itself.
Not only Oxford English but also any language has its own unique voice, rich with traditions and connotations. Today, let me introduce to you particularly the voice of the ancient Hebrew language.
How different this sounds from the English translation! “Listen Israel Jehovah your God is the only Lord.” Here God Almighty is speaking in the voice like the thunder. Whenever God speaks in Hebrew, my heart trembles to realize that God the Creator, in his immensity of love chose one human language to make it his own voice.