Calliope

“Considered a pioneer in contemporary vocal practices, Canadian singer, interdisciplinary artist, and educator Fides Krucker has been performing, teaching, and challenging the status quo of vocal performance and pedagogy for over 35 years. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that her new book, Reclaiming Calliope: Freeing the Female Voice through Undomesticated Singing, does not easily fall neatly under a specific genre. In it, she weaves vocal methodology with a feminist manifesto all through the lens of a memoir, with voice and its infinite expressive abilities unifying it all. Krucker’s ability to deftly maneuver between autobiographical storytelling, body-based vocal pedagogy, social commentary, and feminist theory is astonishing, yet as is made clear early in the book, that agility is simply her modus operandi…” ** “In Greek mythology, Calliope, as the author explains, is the muse who reigns over eloquence and epic poetry and is celebrated for the ecstatic harmony of her voice. Deemed to be the chief of all muses—Krucker crowns her the “Mother of all muses.” After reading this book, I suggest you might imagine Krucker herself as Calliope, imploring us all–voice students and educators, singers, and actors, professionals and amateurs, indeed anyone with a voice–to reclaim our unique voices: unfettered, unbound, undomesticated, and bursting with expressive agency.” Read the full review here: https://shannonholmes.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Reclaiming-Calliope-Freeing-the-Female-Voice-through-Undomesticated-Singing.pdf

Hello all!This is a missive of requests. I hope you don’t mind and thank you in advance… If you have bought the book on Indigo or Amazon and you liked it could you please review it on their websites? IndigoAmazon And as always can you pass on news about the book to those who you think would enjoy it. REVIEWER KRISTINE MORRIS INTERVIEWS FIDES KRUCKER, AUTHOR OF RECLAIMING CALLIOPE “Soundraker. Marvelmaker. Spinequaker. Truthstaker. Soulwaker. Barrierbreaker. What then can you say without words? You have no idea until you try. Fides Krucker accepted the challenge and her exploration into nonverbal sound and breath just may help you realize what it is to be fully human.We learned of this extraordinary opera singer through Kristine Morris’s review of Reclaiming Calliope in Foreword’s July/August issue. In the review, Kristine notes that Fides went in search of her own “natural soundscape—one that came from her body’s own need to express, uninhibited, the full range of human emotion in a natural way,” and when she found it “her career, her singing, and her life took on a whole new dimension and focus.” And your first step in Fides’s footsteps begins with this reviewer-author interview.” https://www.forewordreviews.com/articles/article/reviewer-kristine-morris-interviews-fides-krucker-author-of-reclaiming-calliope/

I loved my early voice study with Richard Armstrong, loved the permission he gave me to let loose big, rage-filled sound. Thick multiphonics rumbled around within my chest and splayed their way up through my sinuses, many pitches all at once in areas used to being much tidier. I reveled in the tussle of aggressive, complex, layered sound, relied on my “false vocal cords”* for extra heft. At first I accessed this fire only under Richard’s purview; the sounds seemed dangerous, and finding them, mysterious. Sometimes they threatened to knock me off my feet. But my body’s physiological productivity was undeniable—and the dare, potency, and release met a need for which I had no language. Growling, shredding, and shrieking became the soundtrack for personal renovation. Soon I was offering these colors as part of my core artistic identity. Rehearsing for an Autumn Leaf Performance fundraiser in artist Vivian Reiss’s exquisitely idiosyncratic mansion, I launched into chorded sounds within an URGE group improvisation. When the scene ended I felt surprisingly depleted and hollow. After eight years of vocal catharsis, had I come to the end of my anger? Had there been a backlog? Was I “done”? Though I dredged up the feelings needed for that night’s performance, the experience left me unsettled. When I displayed my temper as a child, my mum called me Fifi rather than Fides. I was not “me” when I wasn’t a “good girl.” I can appreciate my mother’s wariness in relation to anger. Her father was known as Red for more than just his hair color, and she married a man who used anger to mask his sadness. Both Dad and Grandpa had ample drive, which helped them become successful, and although neither was physically violent I regularly witnessed my mother counterbalancing Dad’s quickness to rage. She typically defused my feelings of anger before I could acknowledge what was pent up inside. I didn’t learn how to work with anger, honor its strengths, or curtail its excesses. Its useful drive remained emotionally unintegrated, and I ended up using it as fuel for overworking, or as a way to sidestep sadness, just like my father before me. When my oldest daughter was moving into puberty—all breasts, hips, andhormones—I found myself avoiding her when she brought friends to the house. I couldn’t handle the sound of their voices, which had risen in pitch over the course of Grades Seven and Eight. This alarming ascent was not caused by any biologicalchanges; if anything, their voices should have deepened as they matured. I believe that their high, grating, skittish vocal timbre was in response to losing the more equal footing that girls have with boys in primary school. Learning to balance estrogen’s nurturing feelings with innate human aggression is difficult when female anger is taboo, when its healthy manifestation is rarely modeled. These young women sounded as if they were trying to please everyone, all the time, to stay safe … even within their own circle. I recall Magda’s younger sister, Oksana, waltzing down the stairs late one morning, her eleven-year-old abandon expertly shredding, “Rrraaaarhh … Rrraaaarhh … Why did your students have such a hard time with this today? Rrraaaarhh!” That morning’s 9:30 a.m. choir practice had brought up some potent stuff, and the group’s sense of politeness was challenged as they groped internally for more vocal space, more sensate permission. It takes time for a woman to free herself from socially sanctioned constraints in a culture that doesn’t acknowledge, value, or deal responsibly with either male or female anger and drive.

Early this morning I listened to Chapter One of Breath while walking through downtown Toronto. As the heat tumbled in around me author James Nestor explained that aeons ago human mouths, throats and noses became less robust through the eating of softer, cooked foods and although this proved to be a better adaptation for speech it has affected our prowess as breathers. The yawning practice core to my work could be an antidote to the day’s high temperatures through cooling our overheated frontal lobes (so much to process, always!) but for sure it releases the limitations we’ve placed on our upper airways and pharyngeal space, and renders throat, mouth and nasal passageways more open and flexible. Here are teasers from Reclaiming Calliope’s two chapters on yawning. IF A STUDENT asks for homework, I suggest that they investigate yawning, sighing, belly laughing, sobbing, and orgasm. I remember blurting this list for the first time in the late 1990s as an off-the-top-of-my-head answer to a student’s query. Over time, it has become increasingly clear that each of these ecstatic diaphragm-, sinus-, and voice box–releasing activities is not only good for the body, but food for the soul. These five intrinsic human activities have so much to reveal about breath, emotion, vocalization, and the body’s ability to restore itself. When I first became obsessed with yawns there was very little research available to the general public. Most online articles—written by doctors or medical researchers—ended with some version of “and we don’t really know what they are for.” I would often rail aloud: “Isn’t the fact that they make you feel better information enough?” To encourage my students to take the yawning plunge, I had to rely on what I witnessed in my studio or gleaned from alternative health practitioners as well as the occasional scientific tidbit. 1. Tight jaw hinges and gripped voice boxes find relief through regular yawning. 2. Once a yawn has completed, increased mouth space encourages greater vocal resonance. 3. Our eyes, nose, and mouth moisten, which is good for a singer’s mucous membranes. 4. Yawns bathe the cells of the body in chemicals that are deeply relaxing. 5. Most yawns occur as we transition from one activity to another. 6. In primate studies, when the big baboon yawns all the other  baboons get to yawn as well. Now there are countless articles about the virtue and science of yawning – even Gwyneth Paltrow has jumped on the band wagon. I have observed decades of yawning through encouraging 10 minutes of “group-gob-gaping” as part of my “Slipper Camp” practice. (Think of rest and digest rather than a boot’s fight or flight.) Here is a bit from the end of my Mouth Orgasm chapter. I go to each student one last time, tracing the curve of their neck bones right up to the occipital joint, where skull floats on vertebrae. This cue encourages our ten minutes of dropped belly breath to transition seamlessly into yawning. “Our studio has become a safe harbor today, especially given the temperamental weather outside. Yes, the geography of piano, books, and art is well-known terrain for your body, but the coziness you are feeling comes primarily from your own breath cycle’s increased receptivity. The climate of trust now hovering between you and your classmates’ bodies further invites the releasing height of a yawn. When dropped belly partners with yawning’s upward suspension an important relationship is fostered within each of you, that of levity with gravity.” I yawn into my next thoughts, priming my students’ nervous systems through “impolitely” smearing my own words. “Fully inhabit yawning by flying in the face of physically encoded taboos. Unfortunately, social repression can be even stronger than a yawn’s deeply wired contagion. If you are resistant today to the pull of another person’s yawn, or even to your own … well then, lustily fake a few. Let your mouth gape wide. Haul in a little ragged air. Shrug your shoulders for no good reason in case they are holding your yawns in check. In no time your yawning will become real, sincere, authentic, and yours.” As my students follow their yawns, their torsos twist and their hands reach wide. The wave of each delicious pandiculation spreads through the entire body, stretching open more than just ribcage. We aren’t making our physiology do anything; we are becoming devotees of what it wants to do. If you want to know more about yawning or what a pandiculation is, there is plenty of juicy information in my book! Also, please tell your friends about it through liking AND sharing this post. ENDORSEMENT: “Reclaiming Calliope is an eloquent and practical gift for the beginner vocalist to the consummate singing professional. It is also an exciting read for those simply curious about the compelling life of a brave singer who has generously, extensively, and uniquely shared their ever-growing knowledge.” —ERIKA BATDORF, MFA graduate program director, Department of Theatre, York University, Canada

IF YOU WANTED to join my vocal studio, I would ask you to take an introductory private lesson. In that first session you would learn that air wants you to thrive, that it does not discriminate between individuals, that it is not out of reach. As our first hour progressed I would focus on your body and its breath patterns. I would weave in some of my personal story while asking about yours. “How do you describe your relationship to your voice?”You answer and I listen. Empathy toddles between us.“Sit beside me.” I indicate a cushion on the floor of my studio. “I’m going to demonstrate an exercise known as the dark breath, originally taught to me in the late ’80s by my mentor, Richard Armstrong.” I lie down on my daughter’s faded blue yoga mat, nestle the back of my body into its thin rubber skin. Opening my mouth, I invite air to flow all the way into my lower torso, swelling right where my belly displays and betrays … where Buddha softens. Falling in love with gravity, I softly release muscle past pubic bone to vagina, perineum, and anal sphincter. Each inhale silent, gentle, expansive. The work of it does not look or feel like work—it is pure pleasure. Receiving air encourages me to stay present to myself, stay true to today’s challenges and gifts. My goal is not to impress you but to allow you to see me in process; no “measuring up” under the microscope of someone else’s gaze. Follow your hunches with regard to what you see in my body, what you feel responding in yours. If my sound is sad, mad, or glad, you are allowed to note and name it. I am not the emotional expert … we are. I ease my sacrum into the mat with each exhale, melting further into earth. My legs and pelvis come to life. With each “out-hale” soft undulations sluice toward toes. I feel a ripple up my spine as well and allow my head to move as it wishes, skull loosely weighted to the floor. The slow wiggle through my neck bones is a more recent development, led by my body’s gentle intuition as it accounts for the remains of a frozen shoulder. Arms release wider still as I turn into a single-celled creature in love with primordial ooze. For the moment, a persistent tendency to take on too much slips away. I swim in what is current. Exhaled breaths tumble out smoky-audible: unvoiced sighs from behind my sternum, birthed at the base of my trachea. I ask my body, “What’s up? Now … and now … and now.” My inner animal awakes, responds with a touch of phonation, vocal cord on vocal cord, sound within the smoke. Preverbal exploration further loosens breath, allow- ing my voice to fall in more deeply with gravity … to darken. I think of earth, of where my food comes from. I picture my youngest brother’s organic farm, the dirt on our boots when we return from a visit. Chris and his wife, Denise, practice permaculture—a cooperative, indigenous agricultural tradition that returns the land to itself, invites plant and animal species to be true to their nature and to collaborate with one another. This appeals to my mind and heart, but it is the taste of the food and the feeling of deep well-being after a walk on the uneven trails in the woods behind his barn that leave my diaphragm freer. This memory of wholeness encourages me to follow my body, hear what it has to say here on the mat. Lying in front of you, I am both specimen and breath whisperer. Besides today’s earthy memories, I learn that I have been defending myself under the covers. Clutching my ribcage through the night “from the inside out” has left me with a painful ache where floating ribs and diaphragm meet. I note that the opera I recently produced and sang is over, but much as I can let those responsibilities go, I seem to be dragging my feet when it comes to releasing my character’s trauma. (She suffered a brain injury and then killed her ex-lover … not the most relax- ing of times.) I am also holding on to the less operatic, but equally epic, stresses within which my real-life partner and I have been mired for longer than I’d like to admit. Getting out of bed anything but refreshed, our impasse clings to my early-morning body. Allowing my diaphragm to pull wide “involuntarily” as I demonstrate for this new student has clarified where my current physical and emotional stories meet while reminding me of breath’s capacity to renew and heal. Please take your turn on my daughter’s yoga mat.I will talk you through. ENDORSEMENT “With a radical mission in a gentle tone, Fides weaves together elements of wellness that often stay apart—the nervous system, our anatomical components, and our most primal urges and desires…. This book is a personal and professional gem that explores and restores our individual and shared human landscape. There is no-body that won’t benefit from reading this.” —JILL BODAK, M.OMSc, clinical osteopath and anatomy educator

Lake Nipissing’s churned up water crashes wave after wave onto a beach only meters from the rustic cabin within which I am prepping my teacher’s training summer module. Books by Betty Martin and David George Haskell bring to the surface what is shared between the acts of giving and receiving and the acoustic history of the planet. It is all about listening. My current preoccupation with “utopian moments” or “processes” also underpins my planning, in stark contrast to the past weekend’s blared news.  Reactions to the overturn of Roe v. Wade crest and surge. I think of shame. How relentlessly a woman’s sexuality is associated with shame. I think of our two mouths – the one that has been historically silenced or ignored and the one whose self-possession and authority is being robbed and bridled by the American State. This is a form of rape.  My book pairs a woman’s sexual agency with her vocal freedom. That personal reclamation is connected to the raucous, undomesticated sorority we are seeing in demonstrations across the US and Canada.  My book does not start with the thread of rape and sexual shaming but it does begin with community. Chapter 1: Hope is the thing with feathers… is set in Northern India.  It is where my “soloist” starts to slip … Excerpt from Chapter 1: ‘Hope’ Is the Thing With Feathers “Earlier this morning a throng of expansively winged, blue-black birds flew overhead. Reaching up from my second-floor balcony as if to touch their white tummies I hear gasps and “Oh, looks!” from Bella and her father, Dave. Along with Bella’s mum, Izzy, and Bella’s fiancé, Jono, they run the Basunti retreat center, combining intelligence, beauty, brawn, and good humor so that yoga practitioners—and occasionally, artists—can get away and, in my case, become comfortably unsettled. Bella and her dad—even Jono, when pressed—are bird fanatics; they have never seen a flock so large fly so low. I share my exhilaration with my close friend Tessa over lunch. We are both here to write, she a novel set in India and I this book on voice. Between meadow walks and simple vegetarian meals, we bow our heads to the keyboards of our respective laptops.  A few days later, I find myself tapping away against a backdrop of full-on human song. It is coming from the village. I ask Izzy what occasion is being celebrated. She tells me that Holi, the Festival of Colors, is a short festival by Indian standards, lasting only the weekend, and this is the last morning of ritual. The women have been singing and drumming for hours. I have just finished my morning’s work and need a little foot stomping before lunch to clear my mind. It is hardly three minutes to the village, and the women’s insistent voices draw me straight to the bright blue bungalow where they are assembled in song. I can’t help myself; I wave.  The women excitedly call me into the courtyard and motion me toward a brown plastic lawn chair. They remain seated on the ground around a young drummer who looks no more than ten. Her ebullient pace tethers schoolgirl to grandmother through shared rhythm. They sing hard and loud for another ten minutes, the same eight lines, an A section followed by a B section, and then the A again. The song circles incessantly, gathering energy. Their voices are fervent, nasal, strident … fantastically invigorating … full of shared intention. The potency of their singing strikes me as “real.”  They stop for a moment and one of the young women asks me if I would dance. I blush—I don’t dance. But I feel I should offer something. I tell them I sing, and would they like that? Could I sing them a song? The young woman translates and as their heads gently wobble yes, I summon up a beloved Armenian folk song “Loosin Yelav.” I ask my impromptu translator to explain that it is about the moon and that I am singing it in honor of last night’s full one. I launch in.  Seconds later several doors fling open around the courtyard and three men dash out to see what is going on. The women laugh and I want to as well, but instead force my way to the end of the chorus. My voice’s loudness stuffs my ears till I can no longer hear. My heart is pounding. Why am I so nervous? When the song ends we all grin at each other. I excuse myself and hightail it back to Basunti for lunch.  Why did I force myself to finish the song? Why did I rush home? Why didn’t I laugh or linger? Was it necessary to be so loud? Is singing solely about performance for me? I twist and turn through these thoughts while writing, while walking, while talking to Tessa over afternoon tea on the wraparound veranda.  I wanted to thank the village’s women for their voices and their lovely invitation to participate, but the dose of fight or flight I felt throughout my body while sharing my song has left me with a funny feeling about being a “singer.” The encounter revealed the artificial within my art-making, the defense within my performance. I am dis- appointed that, even without a contract in hand, my offering was about something I added on to myself. Their singing appeared to be a part of life, held within the seasonal cycle of belief, ritual, food, and play— shared vibrations, more like the birds. And it looked like so much fun.  As a teacher I believe that everyone can sing. The sounds and impulses needed to express ourselves in this way come from the human autonomic nervous system, the system that gives us butterflies or tells us when we are safe, the one that moans and groans and giggles. Here in India, far from the everyday bustle of teaching, performance, and family, I am tying word to page to describe how to reconstitute emotion through breath and sound—voice integrating flesh and spirit. The truthful fine-tuning