How to Write Songs for a Set

Joe Namy

30 May–10 June, 2022

Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 4:30–6:30 PM (Beirut time/GMT+3)

This seminar will be held online

REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED

This seminar will engage a songwriting discourse around the legacy of the collaborative communion between Egyptian composer Halim El Dabh, American choreographer Martha Graham, and Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi for the iconic 1958 ballet, Clytemnestra. 

We will examine the methodology behind its music, choreography, and sculpture; its references (including the 1932 Cairo Congress of Arab Music); the development of percussion-based music notation; the inception of electronic music; the trap as a trope; and the impact Clytemnestra left on each of its creators. We’ll also be tuning in to broader collaborative strategies, such as the use of the score as a means to communicate across mediums.

Joe Namy is an artist, educator, and composer, often working collaboratively and across mediums—in performance, sculpture, photography, text, video, and installation. His practice focuses on the social constructs of music and organized sound, such as the pageantry and geopolitics of opera; noise laws and the gender dynamics of bass; the colors and tones of militarization; the migration patterns of instruments and songs; and the complexities of translation from language to language, score to sound, and drum to dance. Namy holds a monthly DJ residency, Rhythm x Rhythm, on Radio Alhara; is a Sundance/TIME Studios/Kendeda fellow; and is the 2021–22 artist-in-residence for the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham.