Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith ‘The Rite Of The Black Sun’, Film by Stephan Crasneanscki, Editing: Jenn Ruff, Visual Collage: Brian Close, Featuring original footage by Stephan Crasneanscki, Lelio Moehr and Sylvie Marchand., Courtesy, Association Temps Réel, Collectif Gigacircus, France (www.gigacircus.net/fr/)
 
 

SOUNDWALK COLLECTIVE
with Patti Smith
THE PEYOTE DANCE

2019

Featuring Patti Smith and Gael García Bernal

Available via Bella Union
Order HERE 

The Peyote Dance focuses on a brief part of Artaud’s life, when he travelled to Mexico City in early 1936 to deliver a series of lectures at the University of Mexico on topics including Surrealism, Marxism and theatre. In the summer, he travelled by train towards the Chihuahua region, and saddled by horse to the Tarahumara mountains with the help of a mestizo guide, which the album’s opening track, recited by Gael Garcia Bernal, evokes.

Artaud was drawn to the story of the Rarámuri: Native Indian people who live in the Norogachi region of Mexico’s Copper Canyon, the Sierra Tarahumara. One of Artaud’sgoals was to find a peyote shaman who could heal him; allowing him to recover from an opioid addiction. During his stay, encountering the Rarámuri Indians and peyote shamans of Tarahumara, and engaging in ceremonies, Artaud had a transcendental experience which resulted in the book The Peyote Dance.

For the eponymous album, Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith revisited writings from the book, and others texts written after Artaud’s return to France, where he remained in a mental asylum in Rodez undergoing electric shock therapy. During this dark period, the encounter with the Rarámuri stayed with him as his last significant, happy experience. The penultimate track on the album is a poem written by Patti Smith in homage to Artaud’s last hours in Ivry.




The album’s sonic method originates in the idea of retracing Artaud’s steps and returning to the village and cave where he lived. Gathering stones, sand, leaves, and many instruments such as violins and drums that the Rarámuri made themselves, the artists were able to awaken the landscape’s sleeping memories and uncover the space’s sonic grammar. Hearing the wind blowing through the valley, or entering a cave, one will find a specific silence or resonance.

“Taking peyote in those regions, you have the feeling that everything is communicating with you as it was for Artaud – nothing has changed,” says Stéphan Crasneanscki, the founder of Soundwalk Collective who travelled to the Sierra Tarahumara to record on-site. “On an atomic level, there is no separation between you and any other organism: trees, leaves, flowers, but also stones and sand. There is no duality. Everything is embedded, everything has a soul, and the soul is timeless. We are not alone.


These sonic spaces are pre-existing to us and will exist after us, to be able to listen to them is an act of presence.”Listening, reading and improvising to the tracks in the New York studio allowed Smith to channel Artaud’s spirit. “The poets enter the bloodstream, they enter the cells. For a moment, one is Artaud,” Smith says of becoming a conduit for the poet to speak through her, echoing the raw energy of the early punk scene. “You can’t ask for it, you can’t buy it, you can’t take drugs for it to be authentic. It just has to happen, you have to be chosen as well as choose.” The energy of his last poems reverberates and cannot be silenced, Smith says of The Peyote Dance. “We understand that this work and the artist are not dead, they find life in recording them.” The enduring power of Artaud’s text lies in its uncomfortable nature: 80 years after it has been written, it remains a disturbing, raw, explosive and trance-like chronicle of what it is to be alive.

BELLA905V_12_8SP_GF_SLEEVE_PROOF-1-copy

All The Beauty And The Bloodshed by Laura Poitras - Official Trailer

Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith ‘The New Revelations Of Being’

Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith ‘Ivry’

Artistic direction and Realisation: Stephan Crasneanscki with Patti Smith
All music produced by Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith in Mexico City and NYC
in collaboration with Leonardo Heiblum and Nicolas Becker
with original instruments from the Rarámuri Indians of the Sierra Tarahumara, Mexico

All texts written by Antonin Artaud – except Ivry, written by Patti Smith, copyright / © (2019) (Patti Smith)
All texts performed by Patti Smith, except

Una Nota Sobre El Peyote featuring the special participation of Gael García Bernal
Basalówala Aminá Ralámuli Paísila featuring the special participation of Martin Chávez Ramírez “Makawi”

Music by Soundwalk Collective, in collaboration with Leonardo Heiblum, Nicolas Becker, Joel Cruz Castellanos and Martin Chávez Ramírez “Makawi”
Soundwalk Collective: field recording
Patti Smith: voice
Leonardo Heiblum: chapareke, traditional drum, bells, cocoons, raspa, Rarámuri flute
Nicolas Becker: additional field recording, foley, e-bow
Martin Chávez Ramírez “Makawi”: Rarámuri voice, sonajas, cocoons, traditional drum, traditional guitar, raspa, rocks
Clorinda Palma Bustillos “Sewa”: howling, humming
Joel Cruz Castellanos: traditional guitar, traditional violin, foot stomping
Jacobo Lieberman: traditional drum

Line producer: Paul Hance, with the kind support of Ana Paula Pintado and Franziska Stenglin
Recorded at Audioflot Studios in Mexico City and Hobo Sound in New Jersey
Studio assistant: Eduardo VC, Atzin Bravo
Post Production at Electric Lady Studios in New York
Mix and additional production: Russell Elevado at Electric Garden in New York
Mastering by Noel Summerville, London

Special thanks: Gael García Bernal, Jesse Paris Smith, Tony Shanahan, Damián Romero, María González de León, Lee Foster, Beatriz Artola, Ben Kane, Sohichiro Matsumoto, Robert Morgan-Males, Audio-Technica, Alexis Ruiz, Jacobo Lieberman, Matías Cella

Patti Smith appears courtesy of Columbia Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment

® All rights reserved

Front Cover & Labels: artwork by Patti Smith
Rock Drawings: Stephan Crasneanscki

www.soundwalkcollective.com
www.bellaunion.com

With the kind support of The Analogue Foundation
www.analoguefoundation.com

YEAR
TITLE
PROJECT
2023 - 2024
CORRESPONDENCES with Patti Smith
Exhibition, CNA Bogotà, TPMM Tbilisi, FIM Guadalajara, MAMM Medellin
2023 - 2024
CORRESPONDENCES - Live
Live Performance
2023
ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED - Live
Live Performance
2023
MAISON GAINSBOURG with Charlotte Gainsbourg
Soundtrack, Maison Gainsbourg Paris
2022
ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED by Laura Poitras
Film Score
2022 - 2024
EVIDENCE with Patti Smith
Museum Exhibition, Centre Pompidou Paris, CCB Lisbon
2022
IGUANA TOKYO by Kaan Mujdeci
Film Score
2021
LOVOTIC with Charlotte Gainsbourgfeat. AtomTM, Lyra Pramuk, Paul B. Preciado, Willem Dafoe
Audiovisual Installation, FOROF Rome
2021
MEMORY LOST by Nan Goldin
Film Score
2021
A ROOF FOR SILENCE by Hala Warde
Sound Installation, Venice Architecture Biennale
2020
PERADAM with Patti Smithfeat. Anoushka Shankar, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Tenzin Choegyal
Album LP
2020
WE ARE NOT ALONE with Charlotte Gainsbourg, Hussain Al Jassmi, Nina Kraviz, Willem Dafoe, Wim Wenders, Zhou Dongyu, Jean Nouvel
Sound Installation, Louvre Abu Dhabi
2019
THE TIME OF THE NIGHT with Charlotte Gainsbourg and Patti Smith
Sound Installation, Fondation Carmignac
2019
MUMMER LOVE with Patti Smithfeat. Philip Glass, Mulatu Astatke and the Sufi Group of Sheikh Ibrahim
Album LP
2019
THE PEYOTE DANCE with Patti Smith
feat. Gael García Bernal and the Rarámuri Indians of the Sierra Tarahumara
Album LP
2019
THE WOMEN’S MARCH, 1789 by Nan Goldin
Sound Installation, Palace of Versailles
2019
OSCILLATION
Sound Installation, Philharmonie de Paris
2019
AYAHUASQUEROS
Audiovisual Installation, Times Square 'Midnight Moment', NYC
2019
MIRAGE
Sound Installation, Louvre Abu Dhabi
2019
SIBERIA by Abel Ferrara
Film Score
2018
DEATH MUST DIE
Album LP
2018
ULYSSES SYNDROME
Sound Installation, Manifesta12 Palermo
2018
EΞΟΔΟΣ I Exodos by Sasha Waltz
Score for Dance Choreography
2018
WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND
Audiovisual Installation, Kraftwerk Berlin
2018
KREATUR by Sasha Waltz
Score for Dance Choreography
2017
TRANSMISSIONS
Album LP
2017
RESONANCE
Sound Installation, Palazzo Reale, Milan
2017
BEFORE MUSIC THERE IS BLOOD
Album LP
2017
PRINCES AMONG MEN by Stephan Crasneanscki
Film Score
2016
KHANDROMA
Audiovisual Installation, Rubin Museum, NYC
2016
KILLER ROAD with Jesse Paris Smith and Patti Smith
Album LP
2015
A MEMOIR OF DISINTEGRATION with Nan Goldin, Samuel Rohrer and Tina Frank
Audiovisual Performance, CTM Festival, Berlin
2014
SONS OF THE WIND
Film Score and Album LP
2009
KILL THE EGO by Ro Starr
Film Score
2008
CHANEL MOBILE ART by Zaha Hadid
Sound Installation, Hong Kong, Tokyo, NYC

SOUNDWALK COLLECTIVE

Credits
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