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
(Sound 4)
Goji Music
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Kwame tells us a story of a dear friend and his music. “The instrument that is being played is a Goji and you have to “Sing it with your own song”, you can’t copy anyone else’s song, so it has to be original. The player is a good friend whose name is Kim Abaya, may he rest in peace, he passed away. He is addressing me, my family and friends, welcoming everyone. The original sound from the original people. The Goji is a one stringed instrument made from a Gord and played with a bow.”
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An Interesting Fact About Nightjars
The song of a nightjar is a sustained churring trill that can last up to 10 minutes. The song is often described as unearthly, whirring, or mechanical. They often move their head as they call, throwing their voice and making it difficult to locate exactly where they are. As if to make things even more eerie, the churring is often combined with a percussive flapping of the wings.
(Sound 5)
The joy of Rain
When it rains, the whole side of the road is like a river, the gutters are full. You have to be careful everywhere you go walking, because you can fall into a hole. And the speed of the water, coming down at such a rate. I like the rain in Ghana it fills the soul.
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An Interesting Fact About Nightjars
Nightjars live in a variety of climates, from deserts to rainforests, but they prefer open areas with some vegetation. They are most active at dawn and dusk, hunting for moths and beetles. Wet and stormy weather can delay migration and reduce the amount of food available for nightjars and their chicks. Cooler summer weather can negatively impact breeding success.
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(Sound 6)
Story Time
We don’t write stories down because they become fixed and boring. When you tell stories again and again each time, they become different. So, when your grandpa or grandma sits you down every day there is a news subject inside. Every week there are different voices, different readings. Here is one story told in two languages, Gonga and Ashanti. They are slightly Risqué versions of the European tortoise and the hair fable.
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An Interesting Fact About Nightjars
Nightjar myths are familiar and as strong here as they are in African countries. The Nightjar is known by many names – the Fern Owl, the Wheeler, the Nightchurr and the Dor-Hawk. But the oddest is surely the Goatsucker. Long ago it was thought Nightjars would drink milk directly from goats, poisoning them so their udders wasted away, and they went blind.
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(Sound 7)
Damba Festival
Kwame talks of food, music and coming together. “Gonga music played at a Damba Festival celebrating this year’s food crops, a harvest festival in Ghana. You can hear a talking drum addressing individuals and groups of people as it makes its way through the festivities. It’s a time when different ethnic groups come together and celebrate good fortune as food is the key to everything.”
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An Interesting Fact About Nightjars
A nightjar it is most active at dusk and during the night, hunting for insects like moths and beetles on the wing by flying silently and capturing prey with its large, wide-opening mouth. They are often seen at dusk and dawn when insect activity is high, and their excellent camouflage makes them difficult to spot when not in flight, usually resting on the ground where their plumage blends with the surroundings.
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(Sound 8)
Life On The Black River
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“We hear the river flowing, you can hear it talking to you.” Kwame reflects on the presence of the Black River as it flows through history. “I tell people to stop and listen as the river is speaking to us. I love to hear the children playing in the river, the laughing voices, their joy. You can also hear the old chains now, clanging away. The old colonial chain ferry built by the British across the Black River. The ferry has gone but everybody still uses the chains as a way to anchor yourself and pull yourself across the river.”
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An Interesting Fact About Nightjars
A European Nightjar is a small, nocturnal bird with a distinctive appearance, characterized by its cryptic, mottled grey and brown plumage that closely resembles tree bark, a flat head, large dark eyes, a small but wide mouth, and long pointed wings and tail; male nightjars have noticeable white patches on the tips of their wings and tail, which they flash during display flights; overall, they look somewhat like a small falcon when in flight, and are more often heard than seen due to their excellent camouflage.
(Sound 9)
Kids Have Come to The River
Kwame can relate the idea of home to many places and activities that tie in social life to the forest. There is an association of listening to landscape as if it were a being. “I tell people to stop and listen as the river is speaking to us. I love to hear the children playing in the river, the laughing voices, their joy.”
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An Interesting Fact About Nightjars ​
Nightjars have been associated with death and misfortune in many folklore traditions. They are variably known as Lich Fowle, meaning "corpse bird". In Norway, The Night-raven, associated with Odin's ghostly procession of fallen warriors. In other stories The Soul-bird, where a bird carries the souls of the dead to the Underworld. In British folklore, nightjars were believed to be the souls of unbaptized children.
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(Sound 10)
The Bird That Can Fly Between Worlds
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Their habits have given the nightjar an eerie reputation, associated with lost souls and otherworldly forces. Imagining his own death, the Dorset poet Thomas Hardy used a nightjar to symbolise his soul passing,
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If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid's soundless blink,
The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight
Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,
"To him this must have been a familiar sight."
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An Interesting Fact About Nightjars
The call of the European Nightjar is often a churring sound that is mechanical and eerie. The call can vary in pitch and volume and can last for several minutes. They often move their head as they call, throwing their voice and making it difficult to locate exactly where they are. Different species of nightjar make a variety of sounds, including croaking, growling, grunting, and hissing. As if to make things even more eerie, the call is often combined with a percussive flapping of the wings. This is done by rapidly throwing them upwards and then sharply bringing them down with considerable force, creating a distinct "cracking" sound that is more akin to a whiplash effect. This behaviour is primarily used by male nightjars during courtship displays to attract mates.
(Sound 11)
British Museum
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When you stand in the Great Hall at the British Museum you are struck by the irony of its existence. There is a constant hum of multiple languages all communicating at once. On this particular day in January there must have been around 80-90% of sightseers from overseas to visit a collection of objects that continue to be controversial in their collection and motivation of housing them. Europe took great care to identify and name as much as possible, spreading enlightened thoughts around the globe and writing down a significant history about themselves in the pursuit of knowledge.
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An Interesting Fact About Nightjars
We the Europeans named our one and only type of nightjar resident here in the UK where it lives for four or five months. Of some five different types of nightjar they might meet, the Akan people have one common name for all the birds ‘Santhrofie’, in English ‘Trouble Should Happen At Home’ Its translation perhaps alludes to some of the folklore that follows it and a very different taxonomy of words used in naming things.
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.