2022 BabelScores (Daēnã) 2018 Dark Mofo Festival
I began Dionysus during my master’s in ancient Greek philosophy at Edinburgh after leaving Hollywood to restore my balance of music and philosophy. It was released in 2017 on Possible Futures, the personal label of Paulo Reachi, former curator of Berlin Atonal, under my former stage name Omelas. I premiered it on Ableton Push 2 at the 2018 Dark Mofo program “Laterne” held by Berlin Atonal at the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart. Through Berlin Atonal, I received an as-of-yet-unreleased remix by the veteran German electronic artist Jan Jelinek. Creating this piece allowed me to non-verbally explore the what-ness of my path as a cultural minority. The guzheng inspired my digital sound design of the pitch-bending lead synthesizer. Initially following a conventional Western harmonic paradigm, the music then bursts into microtonality and the transcendental, archetypal realm of the Platonic forms, the darker essences of my journey. Dionysus, beyond being a god of masks, ecstasy, and dissolution of conceptual boundaries, is a foreigner from the East and a chthonic god of death and rebirth. The dark night of the soul, once experienced is never forgotten. Shortly after creating Dionysus, I expanded the piece with soprano, Greek chorus, aulos, guzheng, and other instruments that became available to me during my doctorate. I entitled the final composition Daēnã after the older Zoroastrian concept of insight, revelation, and conscience. It is also a homophone of the Greek term “deina”—that which is simultaneously terrifying and wondrous—the approach and experience of which is the essence of Greek tragedy.