What was the brief?
Chris Eyre reached out to me with a project he was working on in collaboration with the team at William Morris Big Local.
I’m a HUGE fan of the Art & Crafts movement, and having the chance to be in some small way teniously connected to the man himself was (and still is) a big deal. Let’s not forget, William Morris’s cause of death was…
“simply being William Morris and having done more work than most ten men”
Nuts.
So, anyway, the brief was centered around promoting local businesses in Walthamstow. The music I was being asked to write should be uplifting and motivational, with some tender moments to suit the variety of stories the local business owners were sharing.
What was really special to see in this project, was just how deep the roots of local businesses can be. How much community can gather around these places and how important they can be for hubs of safety, places of friendship and an all round sense of local togetherness.
Developing the sound
Chris and I have worked on a fair few projects together. Our usual approach is a conversation that turns into a playlist of music that Chris feels supports the narrative. This time, we also threw in pizza and a screening of test footage. I’m in awe at how much footage an editor faces.
On the playlist, we had a fairly strong 90s indie summer vibe, with songs from the likes of Blur, Kula Shaker and Beck.
Getting into these playlists is something I love about writing music for people’s creative projects. It’s a great opportunity for me to leave my comfort zone and listen to music that I wouldn’t normally reach for. It’s brilliant to get under the skin of a vibe and tone and to humbly see what I can do with it.
Boiling down the brief, as well as striking a positive musical tone, I also had keywords like ‘Walthamstow’ and ‘local’ to explore.
The people Chris spoke with talked about change and the value of community, what community meant to them. I wanted a way to bring these themes together, somehow providing a context within the music that pointed to a shared sense of Walthamstow.
I knew about a searchable folk song archive, wonderfully put together by the Vaughn Williams memorial library at Cecil Sharp House. I wanted to see if there was a folk song collected in Walthamstow that would tie all these stories together. There is.
Walthamstow, before it was what it is now, was known for watercress, and wetlands. The song shared generously on the archive is called “watercress cry”. I used the melody from this song in a variety of ways in a larger film that also draws on these interviews, and I use fragments of it in one of two of these promotional films. This is the record in the archive, it’s superbly special to me to see documentation of oral folk song tradition.
What were the challenges?
As ever, time was a challenge.
I typically start a project by writing a sketch for the director that shows the instrumentation and tone I think the music should take, before getting too committed to a particular direction. When we’re agreed on that, I know I’m pointed in the right direction.
I ended up writing 4 pieces of music, each with different sections, so that Chris would have a variety of music to draw on as he approached his locked edits. This was a new way of working for both of us, and for this project it worked well with the constraints we had.
how to Watch the films
The release of the films has seen great local engagement on social media, particularly on Instagram, where people continue to support their favourite local businesses.
You can check them all out on my Insta, or over on Chris’ YouTube. Here’re two of the films which show the different sonic approaches I took with the music, while broadly keeping in the same world.
If you like the films and you live near Walthastow, go check out the local businesses and say hello!
thanks for visiting
I appreciate your time and hope you’ve found what you wanted. If you have any questions or want to talk about working together, please feel free to reach out.
Martin Walsh | Composer 