The Nightjar Project
Sound Scrapes
Sound Scrapes
Sound Scrapes is part of The Nightjar project that takes reminiscent recordings of Ghanaian life that evokes Kwame to think of place and transposes them into related environments here in the New Forest. It draws parallels and, naturally, comparisons between the two places. Some common to all and others clearly dissimilar. It gently asks questions of difference, of lived experience within both cultures and colonial histories that sit underneath. The Nightjar Project uses the bird’s migration to represent the fluid movement of people, histories, cultures and ideas between the UK and Ghana.
(Sound 1)
From Dusk Till Dawn and Back Again
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Kwame says, “Dusk is when the birds are preparing themselves. This is where they and we live because we have preserved and planted a lot of trees. Here it is still forest and all the animals and birds in the area come to rest.
My friend who is nervous of animals said, “Can we build on stilts?” And we sat down, and we said we had time, we’re not rushing, and so we started to build on stilts. And everything like snakes and monitor lizards can have the ground and we are up here, and it’s working.
The Dawn chorus, you can hear the river flowing. I feel like I’m sitting there. Most of the time I want to be quiet, basically, I want to move away, where nobody wants to go, so I can be quiet, that’s where I go.”
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An Interesting Fact About Nightjars
During the day, nightjars rest and hide from predators in their camouflage. They spend their days resting on the ground or in trees, well camouflaged by their mottled brown and grey feathers. Their camouflage makes them look like fallen logs, bracken, heather, or gravels.
(Sound 2)
Buipe Frogs
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Kwame tells us about Buipe at night and looking for frogs
“In Buipe, (Bu-pe) we live by the black river, it is a town right in the middle of Ghana which the main road, the Trans-Saharan Highway, passes through all the way from Burkina Faso and Mali to the coast of Ghana, to Accra, the capital. Picture all the countries above without seaports, everything goes through here, imagine how busy that road is.
The time here is the rainy season, and you can hear the sound of a frog. It got me up out of my room and I went looking for that frog. As soon as one starts to come out and sing the rest respond. But one little noise and it is all silent.”
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An Interesting Fact About Nightjars
A nightjar's call is often described as a repetitive "churring" sound, similar to a mechanical whirring or a clockwork toy unwinding, with a slightly rising and falling pitch, often accompanied by wing flapping, making it sound eerie and difficult to pinpoint the exact location of the bird; different species of nightjars may have variations on this call, including croaking, chuckling, or knocking sounds depending on the species.
(Sound 3)
The Penny Bus Station
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Trotr Bus Station in Ghana
Kwame explains “A Tro is a coin, a penny, something low-priced, and it is the price you pay for your travel at the bus station. Trotr means ‘One Penny Station’ or ‘Cheapest Bus Station’. The voices are the drivers calling the routes, and all the towns and places that they will travel through. Nothing is written on boards or signs, it’s all verbal because not everyone can read. So, it’s a negotiation about the route and the possibility to get you to where you want to go. Everybody is calling. You you can hear someone shouting “Hospital” as a destination, and (En-ge-ge) which is a stop on the way.”
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An Interesting Fact About Nightjars
Nightjars migrate in a loop pattern between Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. Nightjars overwinter from September to March in the scrub grasslands south of the equatorial rainforests of continental Africa often making a detour through Western Africa. Nightjars arrive in the UK in late April and May where they breed on heathlands, moorlands, woodland clearings, and recently felled conifer plantations
The Nightjar Project uses the nocturnal bird and its migration to investigate ideas of movement and homeland, between Ghana and the UK. The project takes the rich narrative of migration, folklore, and the environmental peculiarity of the Nightjar to consider life living under two skies, examine cultural and historically views, and share stories of land management. It brings together a group of creative, educational and environmental organizations to explore these questions.
African Activities, SPUD, and the New Forest National Park Authority set out to define the possibilities of creative conversations between these communities. Their aim is to invite us all to think of belonging to places and communities. How work and live alongside each other and to share our stories of belonging. This is a two-year project and to set the agenda for further discussions we are starting with an exhibition by Kwame Bakoji-Hume, multiple workshops in storytelling and environmental creativity, a series of ‘Sound Scrapes’ from Ghana and a commissioning of a film by the artist James Elliot looking at land management.
Tell Us a Story About Belonging
Ghanaian artist, musician and community leader, Kwame Bakoji-Hume, is creating an exhibition of works that shares his story, from his early childhood in Ghana, though building his ‘family’ in a children’s home, migration and how he fits into the bigger picture of dual homelands and being part of an African diaspora in the New Forest, living under two skies. The exhibition will be full of symbolic language, embedded storytelling and interpretation within his painting and sculptural works. It’s the excitement of a living craft of oral cultures that can tell the story historic and contemporary ideas of belonging. Within the exhibition we want to invite people to tell their story of belonging as we build a body of individual stories. From the questions that arise from Kwame’s work and audience responses further work and discussions will be sparked.
Fires Across the Earth
The third strand of questions the Nightjar Project set out to ask is related to the marginal environment that the nightjar choses to live in. How similar or different the threat might be in Ghana and the New Forest National Park Authority, and what benefits might come from sharing information on community and land management, in particular the historic regenerative tool of controlled burning. The artist James Elliott was commissioned to make a film around the community decisions and the physical work of managing a specific environment on The New Forest that encourages and supports nightjars and other biodiversity. The film will be sent to African Activities Foundation in Ghana along with questions from the NFNPA to discuss land management and stories of nightjar numbers and habitat.