Song of Ceylon

The text and the video excerpt below document Philippe Langlois’s book, Les cloches d’Atlantis, Musique électroacoustique et cinéma, Archéologie et histoire d’un art sonore, éditions mf, Paris, 2012.

In the British documentary by Basil Wright entitled Song of Ceylon (1934), one can come across several sound effects that are very interesting both technically and dialectically. Song of Ceylon was originally a commission from the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board, intended to relaunch the tea market in Great Britain; fortunately, Basil Wright was able to push the idea much further than the initial objective.

When Basil Wright entitles the third part of Song of Ceylon : The Voices of the Market, he makes no reference whatsoever to the vocal fervour that traditionally animates Indian markets. It is in fact international commerce that is at issue, and more particularly communications between the Indian trading posts and the wholesalers of the metropolis. The messages are sent in Morse by telegraph and concern the orders for Indian products placed by the states with their various trading posts. Voices become entangled in every language, French, English, German, mixed with the sounds of the telegraph, the beeping of Morse and telephone rings, forming a sonic Tower of Babel. The speed of the editing, the modernity of these means of communication, as well as the superimposition of noises and voices, are so many propositions for the ear that create a striking contrast with the tranquil life of the islanders.

The religious aspect occupies a very important place in the life of the inhabitants of Ceylon. Daily, the prayers at sunrise and sunset, the rites of offering to the gods and the practice of ritual dance punctuate the islanders’ lives. This is the theme that dominates the last part of Song of Ceylon, where a small group of dancers perform the sacred dances of Kathakali, a ritual dance of southern India – in Kerala – which, in the film, leads to an ecstatic state.
Basil Wright films the dancers by placing his camera at the centre of the circle they form. The rapid camera movements, in pans and dissolves, symbolise the sensation of dizziness that overcomes each of the dancers. To support this action, a dull rumble appears very softly, before swelling and taking over from the rhythms and chants of the kathakali, to finally fill the whole sound space. This is work carried out from an eminently sacred instrument in our Western tradition : the bell.

a complete video of this film is available on the American site Internet Archive