Roxanne nesbitt Q&A

Nov 17

By Ado Nkemka

Ahead of ‘Moon Bells,’ an upcoming installation and experimental performance, Roxanne spoke with NWC Journalist and Marketing Intern Ado Nkemka. This interview was edited for length and clarity. Visit Showpass for tickets to ‘Moon Bells’ on December 2nd and 3rd, 2023.

Ado: Can you briefly introduce yourself?

Roxanne: My name is Roxanne Nesbitt. I’m an inter and multidisciplinary artist. I work between the worlds of sound and design. I do experimental instrument design, sound installation composition, improvisation, and performance. I also make music as a dance collaborator for film and live performance. I make instruments from wood, metal and clay primarily, but I just love exploring different materials. So I’m always kind of expanding what I make. My families are Indo-Caribbean and European and I’m currently living on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations which is colonially known as Vancouver.

What draws you to the experimental end of the music-making spectrum?

I just related to the openness, and the curiosity, and the investigation that I perceive to be going on in experimental music, and the openness to ambiguities, and to multiple ways of doing things, and exploring things. I identify with the experiment and the trial and error process, and with the need to be free to explore and try different things.

Where did the idea of creating a musical instrument that doubles as an installation come from?

It’s something that I’ve been working with since 2009. It comes from considering the performance space as an essential element of the work. I did what I used to call a concert installation at the Banff Centre, in 2009, in this very reverberant stairwell and I stretched this viola across the space with elastics, so that you could play the whole space. It comes from an interest in acoustics and architecture and the way that space changes sound. That’s not always what we get to explore, we end up, often, in theater spaces or spaces where the sound is really treated. But that’s where the initial idea comes from.

You’ve got a quote attributed on your website that says “By making my own instruments, I seek to divorce myself from macho, misogynistic attitudes which still dominate avant-garde, experimental music and new instrument design.” Could you expand on the subversive nature of your work?

I guess this is kind of an old quote now, it needs an update. I do feel like the balance is changing, that there’s more women, gender diverse, and BIPOC people making space for themselves in avant-garde and experimental music. I’m really happy to see that and to be a part of it. I really believe that new instruments can empower people to develop new ways of working that let go of negative legacies from the past, in both music and in life. And by a negative legacy, I mean moving beyond hierarchy, and white supremacy in music, misogyny, and competition, and the idea that there’s only one way and a right way to do things. And to instead celebrate multiplicity, and hybridity, and difference, and the value of each contributor. When you make a new instrument, you really have to discover how to play it; there are no rules or established technique that you can apply to it to find out how it sounds. I think that really allows people to explore, and to discover without being tied to the techniques and traditions of the past. Obviously, some elements are based on tradition; when we hit an object, that’s based on a very long ancient tradition, but the on-going exploration of other ways of activating the instruments are more inventive.

What are you the most excited about when it comes to “Moon Bells?”

I really love my collaborators on this piece. I’ll be working with Ben Brown and Parmela Attariwala. They’re both incredible improvisers and they both bring an openness and exploratory way of playing to the project. We also did the installation and performance recently in Halifax and Parmela wasn’t able to make it so she recommended Nicole Rampersaud who played trumpet and electronics, so we got this totally different sound world with Nicole. I’m interested in developing the piece. I’ve done it once before with Ben and Parmela in Vancouver. So this is going to be technically the sixth and seventh performance of this project (December 2nd and 3rd). And of course, the installation is different every time. We’re learning and growing with each exploration, but it’s just really nice to see pieces like this develop. Also, because in my own work, sometimes I work really hard to put on a show or installation and then there’s so many barriers to doing it again that it kind of just gets dropped and becomes a page in a portfolio or a section of a website, and it’s not possible to do it again. So yeah, I’m just excited to do it again!