The Use of Sound in ‘Handsworth Songs’ and ‘The Radiant’.
2024
The Black Audio Film collective was a group of British Filmmakers founded in 1982 by seven undergraduates in Portsmouth and later based in East London. Known for their innovative approach to filmmaking, they used blended documentary styles, experimental film pieces, and fiction to explore, dissect and bring light to various issues of race, identity, class, and representation within Britain. The collective was made of seven members: John Akomfrah, Lina Gopaul, Avril Johnson, Reece Auguiste, Edward George, Claire Joseph, and Trevor Mathison (Tate, n.d.). One of The Black Audio Film Collective’s most known works, and also the main work of theirs talked about within this essay, is Handsworth Songs (1986). This is a documentary style essay that examined the impact of the 1985 Handsworth Riots in Birmingham, England, as well as the broader social and political context that surrounded them. The Black Audio Film Collective produced work that made significant impact in challenging dominant representations and narratives of Black British experiences. The Group’s legacy continues to influence and change many filmmakers and artists today, one collective that took great inspiration from them being The Otolith Group. The Otolith Group is a collective based in London, founded by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun in 2002. The group works with a variety of mediums including film, video, writing, curation, and exhibition. Their works explore themes of post-colonialism, globalisation, technology and science fiction. Their choice of name references the structures of the inner ear that help to identify gravity and movement, this reflects the group’s focus on perception and how individuals or communities navigate the social, political and technological environments on earth (The Otolith Group, n.d.). The Otolith Group’s works incorporate archival material, found footage, and interviews to form visually striking and engaging pieces of film. This essay specifically focuses on their film The Radiant (2012), where their use of sound is particularly important to the story. The Radiant (2012) documents and explores the impact of the nuclear disaster of the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant that followed the 2011 Tō hoku earthquake off the northeast coast of Japan. Both the Black Audio Film Collective and The Otolith Group use sound as an important and useful tool within their works to highlight aspects otherwise missed or unfairly captured by its visual accompaniment. This essay will be focusing specifically on the way the two film groups have used sound in their work to boost and capture aspects that the visuals could not do alone.
In Handsworth Songs (1986), the sound design is an integral accompaniment to its visual counterpart in pushing across its exploration and themes. Trevor Mathison utilises a mixture of sound elements such as voice overs, interviews, music, bird song, and ambient street noises to form a textured and immersive viewing experience that captures the viewer’s attention and drags them, ears first, into the atmosphere of the Handsworth riots and the various communities that were affected by them.
Focusing first on the soundtrack of the film, Mathison incorporates a diverse range of music including reggae, jazz, and electronic. This spectrum of music helps to reflect the cultural diversity of Handsworth, Birmingham, whilst adding layers of meaning to the imagery and narratives presented in the documentary. At a Tate discussion, Kodwo Eshun remarked that the use of Mark Stewart and the Maffia’s dub-refracted cut-up version of ‘Jerusalem’ endeavours to present an interpretation of “Englishness from which ‘Blackness’, far from being something that can be excluded, becomes instead the only possible fulfilment of the millenarian promise of Blake’s revolutionary poem,” (Fisher, 2020, para.11) Jerusalem (1820). Mathison’s reference to said poem through his choice in music could be seen as a symbolic desire for social justice and spiritual renewal, questioning the social and political structures of the time just as Blake’s poem did. The inclusion of Stewart’s music within Handsworth Songs (1986) underscores the film’s part in the cultural movement that was partly influenced by post-punk. Within this period, there was deliberate effort to challenge conventional understandings of ‘Black’ and ‘White’ culture. Trevor Mathison’s noteworthy sound design for the film draws on inspiration not only from dub music but also from other post-punk artists such as Test Department and Cabaret Voltaire. These musical influences help to reflect the wider cultural spirit of the post-punk era of experimentation, defiance, and refusal to follow conventional standards, that provided a sort of cultural backdrop to the Handsworth Riots.
Mathison’s sound design in Handsworth Songs (1986) is both captivating and alienating at the same time. He has focused on making the audio fit the film by removing the typical aspects of music that make it personally emotional, bringing in a more abstract and liberated form of expression. This can be heard at 00:03:50 where Mathison incorporates some eerie and distorted industrial sounds over a video of police stationed at the riots, portraying to the viewer the feelings of distrust and fear that the police instil upon the people of Handsworth. As Mark Fisher comments, even if you were to remove the visuals, “Handsworth Songs can [still] function as a gripping audio-essay” (Fisher, 2020, para.13). This reinforces the idea that Mathison’s sound design works in harmony with the visuals but is also capable of standing as its own piece which builds upon the same themes.
The Radiant (2012) subjects the viewer to a more contemplative approach to sound. Seeing as the film revolves around nuclear weapons testing, power, and the ramifications of such a dangerous material that the visual cannot necessarily capture, the film’s sound design attempts to draw attention to the invisible, emphasising silences that sandwich eerie ambience and archival recordings. The Radiant (2012) uses silence as a powerful cinematic device. These moments are dotted throughout the film and work to draw the viewers complete attention to the visual. The first use of silence within The Radiant (2012) is around three minutes in and accompanies archival footage of the
Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant’s partial explosion. Up to this point, the film has only shown the disasters that came before the meltdown such as the earthquake and tsunami. This use of silence so suddenly is an interesting technique as it differentiates the invisible and silent dangers of oncoming radiation in comparison to thrashing waters or collapsing rubble. This is the viewers first glimpse of uncertainty, the silence disrupting and producing anxious anticipation.
At certain times, Handsworth Songs (1986) also uses the audio technique of silence. There are fewer complete silences in the film, with some sort of audio playing almost entirely throughout. This means that the moments that are silent are shorter in comparison to The Radiant (2012), often appearing between clips or as someone is about to start or has just finished talking. These moments of complete silence allow time for the viewer to quietly reflect on the information that they’ve just been given within the bombardment of sirens and shouting. An example of this can be seen at 00:10:15, when a local politician is talking and Mathison removes all background music to draw the viewers entire focus to the narrative that the media pushed in regard to the riots. This reinforces, in the viewer’s mind, the gravity of the events taking place.
Sound design in The Radiant (2012) sometimes comes together to create ambient soundscapes that try to capture the otherworldly and incredibly eerie atmosphere of nuclear landscapes. These ambient moments of sound throughout the Oilm include wind, distant explosions, and mechanical hums, most of which are taken from the original footage that the viewer is looking at. For example, at 00:01:15 there is footage of skyscrapers shaking due to the earthquake with a deep, rumbling sound to accompany. This raw use of the footage to form these soundscapes help to contribute towards the overwhelming sense of uneasiness and tension that lingers throughout the film. Inciting such emotions also amplifies the sense of imminent danger, helping the film to portray its cautionary narrative of radioactive fallout. The use of ambient sound is similar to that in Handsworth Songs (1986) where Mathison has taken noise from the streets of Handsworth and captured a sense of the everyday noises of urban life. This can be heard as early as the beginning of the Oilm with a siren at 00:00:52 and hustling street sounds coming in around 00:01:24. These sounds help to immerse viewers into the environment of the black working-class communities shown and provide a sense of authenticity to the documentary.
Handsworth Songs (1986) features voiceovers and interviews with various individuals, including residents of Handsworth and archival footage of political figures. The use of more personal experiences of Handsworth at the time is an important addition to the film. This is seen first at 00:04:30 where an interview with two men from the community is brought into the film, talking about what the riots mean to them, how they started, and how hard it is living with such a cultural divide, heavier policing, and lack of awareness. These interviews with community members help to provide the viewer with insight into the social and political context of the Handsworth riots whilst offering more personal perspectives on the events depicted in comparison to the various news clippings, and politician’s opinions that the film shows. By doing so, The Black Audio Film Collective begin to undermine the news and media, implementing contrasting information to what was being pushed out at the time such as “this murderous criminality is not about parentage, genes and homeland” (Handsworth Songs, 1986: 00:06:51). These news headlines put the black community of Handsworth as the enemy of the people, which is made even more evident by the way they refer to the police as “the front line” (Handsworth Songs, 1986: 00:07:11) despite their blatant discrimination being one of the main causes of the riots in the first place. The media used scare tactics, “screams for mercy as four died” (Handsworth Songs, 1986: 00:07:17), to instil a national fear of harm, baiting the public to turn against the rioters rather than listen, support, and stand with them.
Like in Handsworth Songs (1986), The Radiant (2012) also incorporates voiceovers and interviews with various individuals. These include the likes of activists and scientists, but also survivors of nuclear disasters. This can be seen at 00:03:24, where journalist May Shigenobu is talking about how “Japan is becoming a guinea pig for the effects of nuclear radiation...this very dangerous material that we really shouldn’t be using” (The Radiant, 2012, 00:03:24) explaining to the viewer a bit about the relationship that japan holds with radioactive technology. The use of this audio technique provides the viewer with insight, context, and personal perspectives, just as in Handsworth songs (1986), but centred around the devastating impacts of the use of nuclear power and the ethical dilemmas that come with it. This is important for the documentary style of filming, incorporating other perspectives and opinions to build on the narrative and points they are trying to bring light and attention to.
Mathison implements the use of sound effects throughout Handsworth Songs (1986) such as, sirens, Chanting, and gunfire. By incorporating these sound effects, the Oilm conveys the intensity and chaos of the riots. When in combination with the footage of the crowds, destruction, and police brutality, an immersion into how it must have felt to be part of the community is forced onto the viewer. For example, at 00:02:50, the footage of a politician, who is being ignorant to the issues arising, is accompanied by sounds of chanting and whistles before a voice over comes in. Mathison has purposefully left the original sound in the clip to begin with so as to build on the streets intensity before moving onto the voiceover. These sound effects also help to create a sense of urgency and tension, feeding into the emotional impact that the film holds.
Japan has a long and complicated history with regards to radiation that feeds into the film’s narrative. After the World War II atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the country’s efforts towards political and economic reconstruction changed the traumatic experiences of those attacks. Instead of focusing on the ultimately devastating and lasting effects of nuclear weaponry, there became a deliberate portrayal of nuclear power as a “form of potency with an ironic guarantee of safety, capable of supporting Japan’s national pride and it’s aspirations to international hegemony” (Albano, 2022, p. 43). This new-found, ironic, source of safety and strength within Japan led to a changed position on nuclear power as a support for Japan to regain its national pride and strive for international dominance, despite the obvious, inherent dangers of nuclear technology. The Otolith Group reflect this sense of danger in the soundtrack of The Radiant (2012) by taking inspiration from New Wave Science Fiction films. This is first introduced alongside found footage that originally went viral at the time of the accident in Fukushima. The clip shows a power plant worker, Kota Takeuchi, pointing directly into the lens of a security camera in a possibly accusatory fashion. This clip, paired with the cinematic musical descent, evokes feelings of culpability within the viewer whilst simultaneously showing that, despite being labelled as an ‘accident’, there is a level of blame to be felt, particularly in those that took part in the use, advertisement, and supposed safety of nuclear power. This builds upon the connection with Science Fiction as a common theme within the genre is rebelling against authority and holding it accountable for the consequences of its actions.
Both films, Handsworth Songs (1986) and The Radiant (2012), use field recordings of bird song that function as a powerful audio element, conveying deeper thematic layers. In Handsworth Songs (1986), the use of bird song amidst the urban landscape of Handsworth highlights the complex relationship between nature and human life by juxtaposing the natural world within the human made environment and infrastructure. The bird song itself could be symbolic of the resilience and hope of freedom held by the people of the community whilst at arms with the disingenuous and derogatory political reign and policing. In The Radiant (2012), the use of bird song serves a similar purpose just within the context of environmental destruction and nuclear landscapes. The bird song may symbolise a search for purity within a land tainted by radiation, or possibly, when used amidst scenes of nuclear testing, could be a way to show nature’s resilience in the face of human destruction. Although, an alternative reading to this could be that the bird song instead serves as a reminder of the environmental impact that human interference has caused, particularly when experimenting with nuclear technology. Within The Radiant (2012), the bird song is also combined with the sounds of the Geiger counter. This blend of sounds creates, as Eshun described, “a kind of trilling, trebling sound,” (Eshun, n.d. Para.5) forcing the audience to confront the environmental dangers of nuclear technology. This contrast of the innocent natural world and the dangers of radiation could be directly compared to the use of bird song within Handsworth Songs (1986) where the juxtaposition of nature against scenes of unrest and urban decay forms its own contrast between the innocence of nature and harsh urban life.
In conclusion, the use of sound in Handsworth Songs (1986) and The Radiant (2012) contributes to, and elaborates on, the film’s meanings and narratives. By utilising the various audio techniques discussed, the sound helps to evoke emotion, convey meaning, and engage the viewer in the exploration of complex themes. The soundtrack of Handsworth Songs (1986) incorporates music, voiceovers, interviews, sound effects, ambient sounds, and silence, that serves as an important tool used to capture the atmosphere and intensity of the riots in Handsworth, as well as providing social and political contents of the events taking place. The soundtrack in The Radiant (2012) combines the use of music, sound effects, field recordings, and audio manipulation to form this undeniably haunting and immersive experience. The use of these sound techniques within the film evokes a sense of foreboding and uncertainty, like some oncoming storm, perfectly reflecting the film’s themes of anxiety and dread caused by the nuclear fallout. There are differences in the matter of subject and approach, but both films demonstrate a multi-level use of sound as a fundamental component of cinematic storytelling and artistic expression.
Pieces Mentioned
Handsworth Songs (1986) [film] directed by John Akomfrah (61 mins)
The Radiant (2012) [film] directed by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun (64 mins)
MarkStewartMusic (n.d.) Mark Stewart & The Maf<ia – Jerusalem [online video] Available at: https://youtu.be/dZa-OAF0unk?si=rPt48JAZh5zRJNmB
[Accessed: 8th May 2024]
Blake, W (1820) Jerusalem
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