Music devised for the film Viva Voce by Keith Piper

I was asked by Keith Piper to provide some musical material for the film, Viva Voce. He and I then shared ideas about the music of the 1920s that could have been heard by the frequenters of the Gargoyle Club of which Rex Whistler was a member. The heyday of the US ragtime craze had passed by this time but left influences in the music of a number of touring bands one of which was the Plantation orchestra with American jazz singer and dancer, Florence Mills whose song I’m a Little Blackbird, Looking for a Bluebird was a hit, and has since been seen as a plea for racial equality.

Keith Piper’s Viva Voce film, 2024 is installed in the old member’s dining room, Tate Britain. In Viva Voce, Keith Piper stages an imagined conversation between artist Rex Whistler and a fictional academic, Professor Shepherd, who asks Whistler about his 1927 mural 'The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats', challenging him on its racist narrative and imagery