BY LEAH BLANKENDAAL
Ashlee Clapp is a composer, conductor, musical director and educator known for her creative versatility. She graduated from the University of Western Australia, winning the Dorothy Ellen Ransom Prize of Musical Composition, and is currently completing her Masters of Fine Arts, Composition at the Victorian College of the Arts.
In 2014, Ashlee spent three months in Nepal on a cultural exchange as part of The Music Generation, developing her craft and undertaking Masters research in the compositional process of writing music in different languages – as well as running music workshops. Last year, she was awarded the Jim Marks Postgraduate Scholarship with which she spent six weeks implementing a music program in a village school called Southern Cross Kenya Aid To Educate in Mombasa, Kenya, whilst learning traditional Kenyan music.
Ashlee has spent the past two years running workshops for outreach organization MusoMagic, facilitating songwriting workshops in remote Aboriginal communities. This year, she was commissioned to write a choral piece for a boys choir in a West Australian Aboriginal language, and it will be part of the St Gothlan competition in Edinburg, Scotland for a 2018 world premiere.
What do you enjoy about working in remote communities?
It’s amazing to see so many different landscapes and learn about the many languages and cultural customs within Australia. I facilitate songwriting in remote Aboriginal communities with a production team as part of MusoMagic to create a music video. Although the product is a song and video, seeing students’ personal transformations during the process is truly rewarding.
What are some of the challenges involved in this work?
I’m currently in Haasts Bluff, which is a few hours west of Alice Springs and it has been raining for almost a week. So it doesn’t look like our team will be able to make it out to the next community in time, as the roads are flooded and there are limited supplies. I have also done similar music work in Nepal, India and Kenya, so living without luxuries such as hot water, or having a house with running water or plumbing, is something that you adjust to fairly quickly. There are also cultural and communicative challenges, as sometimes communities don’t speak much or any English. We do our best to write songs together in Language, or partially in Language which is really fun, but obviously rather tricky to facilitate.
What have you learnt about yourself?
To be more open minded and flexible. Every community is so different, with different cultural customs. I can’t always work off my schedule. Sometimes, half the school will be away for various reasons, or this week, it has rained most of the time and we can’t have our excursion to film at iconic locations around the community, so I have to think on my feet and be adaptable.
What’s your most embarrassing story from being on the road?
Working with primary school students in outstations and small homeland communities is always full of fun. They’re so honest and fearless and tell you how exactly how it is. They have tried to teach me phrases in Language to then repeat to the teachers, and most of the time they’re rude. I’ve learnt my lesson a little too late.
So what inspires your own composition?
I find listening and watching anything from classical to world music, film, theatre etc. will eventually spark compositional ideas, and I always feel inspired after I watch live performances.
I enjoy so many forms of music. I really love orchestral music as so many composers do. Rite of Spring is one of those pieces that gets me really excited. I also really love Ligeti’s string quartets. I think I’m attracted to exhilarating music that’s a little chaotic, which probably says a lot about me and the projects I undertake.
How do you juggle all that you do?
I make lists all the time. I sometimes make a list to preference my lists. I also have a very organised calendar. I like to spread my time across different projects, so although I’m really busy, every day is different.
Where are you off to next?
After Watiyawanu next week (an Northern Territory Aboriginal community), I head to India and Nepal for three months to run empowerment-through-music workshops. As part of The Music Generation, I will be partnering up with various not-for-profit organisations in Mumbai, Baruch and Pokhara and am really looking forward to sharing my musical knowledge as well as learning more traditional Indian and Nepali music and dance.
This feature is part of CutCommon Young Writers’ Month. About the author:
Leah Blankendaal is a versatile and diverse musician. She has been recognised as an up-and-coming composer and an accomplished arts journalist, having received awards in both these fields. As a composer, Leah specialises in creating performance art and cross media installation. In 2013 she created A Thousand Facets, a sound and photography installation with photographer Darren Smith. This work was recreated in 2015 as The Light, The Night, and the Half Light for an exhibition at the Brunswick Bower. She has had pieces performed across Australia and Asia, including most recently at the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Tasmania and at the Australian Flute Festival in Canberra.
As a journalist, Leah is active in broadcasting and print. She currently coordinates the Con Fuoco series with CutCommon, has written previously for Xpress Magazine and artsHub, and has presented papers for the Musicological Society of Australia and the New Zealand Musicological Society. As a broadcaster, Leah produces Music and Melbourne and presents Australian Sounds on 3MBS FM. In June 2016, she begins work on her first radio feature, Permission to Speak: A Chamber Opera, for the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia’s National Features and Documentary Series. She is a member of the Making Waves’ Making Conversation interview team.
Images supplied. Ashlee Clapp photographed by Daniel Marolla.
