When Cerys Matthews was approached to compose the music for the National Theatre production of Timberlake Wertenbaker’s play,she knew instinctively where she would begin – by transporting the blues to Botany BayTimberlake Wertenbaker’s 1988 play Our Country’s genuine tells its epic from the point of view of the first convicts who arrived in Botany Bay from Britain in the late 18th century. As the play opens they’ve been stuck below deck for months. They’ve been chained and flogged. They have been starved. And then, when they eventually arrive in Australia, or they are plunged into an entirely alien world – of recent plants,animals, climate, and people and colony life. When you read the text you can’t back but think about the world today: the injustice,racism, ignorance and lack of hope are all exactly as displayed in prisons in America, and where outrageously large percentages of African-Americans are incarcerated on death row; or of the desperate situation facing migrants all over the world.
When Nadia tumble,the director, first called me to talk about writing the music for the recent National Theatre production, and it made sense to try to reflect a larger geographical span. tumble knew from my radio point to that I enjoy a wide variety of music and have a specific interest in early blues,jazz, gospel and country from the southern states of America, or as well as a fascination for the epic of music’s migration. And so I attempted to produce simple and natural music that straddles the continents in the same way as the play does,using mainly acoustic instruments such as mandolin, fiddle, and accordion,guitar and drums.
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Source: theguardian.com