This year I was commissioned with Audrey Tait and Lauren Gilmour to create a track for the Measuring Humanity Project run by Dr Marisa de Andrade. After attending several sessions in Govanhill held by Dr de Andrade with members of the community and health and community professionals, I began to get my head around the complex but very important concept of the Measuring Humanity Project.
Then came the challenge of translating the essence of the project into a three minute track. Explaining what I had learnt in the sessions to Audrey and Lauren went a good way in helping to solidify an understanding of the key messages of the project. They worked their magic with the melody, beats and production, Lauren coming up with a gorgeous hook for the chorus of the song and Audrey working her wizardry on the production side of things. It amazes me to watch these musicians come up with musical ideas and we had already begun to develop a method of co-creating, allowing the text to be influenced by the music and vice versa.
Once the piece had been created Dr de Andrade and I shared the track with some musicians local to Govanhill including a Roma folk band and Beatboxer Bigg Taj. During this session these musicians improvised over the instrumental track Audrey and Lauren had created. Their improvisation was recorded in situ and Audrey was then able to mix it in to the final track.
Finally we shot a video for the track on location in Govanhill and at the Lighthouse in Glasgow city centre.
You can watch the video and find out more about the Measuring Humanity project on the website here: