Memory dances (op. 42a) is an arrangement for two guitars of Solo for guitar (op. 42), which was commissioned by Julian Bream and completed in 1986. Memory dances was created in 1998.

My imaginary context for Solo was the following scene: sometime during the nineteenth century in the southern states of America, an old Black slave sits picking at a guitar, trying to recall half-forgotten tunes which he played and sang as a young boy in his family's village in West Africa. The melodies gradually return to him as he pieces the notes together, and the work passes through a series of short contrasting sections on a voyage of memory.

Many Africans transported into slavery in America originated in north-west Africa, where the kora (double harp) was  an important instrument in the old Mali empire. The Wolof and Mandinka languages of that region contributed massively to Black American culture; evidence of this is the American word "Wow!" which means "yes" in Wolof. The repertoire and sonority of the kora (which inherited the even older tradition of the kontingo, a simpler plucked instrument not unlike the ukulele) is almost certainly the source of Blues guitar repertoire. I had worked with several jalolu (the Mandinka word for hereditary praise-singer/musicians) in Senegal and The Gambia in the course of research in 1981.

During the first half of the 1980s I drastically trimmed my musical language , eliminating harmonic clutter and most of the dissonance, and restricting myself to a modal sound-world and physically grounded rhythms. Although this stemmed from my deep and abiding interest in African music, I was careful not to imitate it. Canto for cello, Magnificat I, Riff-raff, A song for Haddi, Symphony for small orchestra, Naaotwa Lala and Missa Tiburtina are examples of this period of radically reduced vocabulary.

By 1986, when I was working on Solo, I had achieved the purpose of washing out the ears of my musical imagination, and was ready to re-enter a broader sound-world. Solo and Memory Dances remain within a modal context, and much of the music is pentatonic; but the mode is gradually transformed and extended as the piece goes on; and eventually all twelve semitones are in play. This process of change seemed to me an apt musical expression of the poignant human subtext.

Giles Swayne
2025