Loom Music
Musician Phoebe Vlassis lived in New Orleans for 13 years, where she learned to weave. Her research focuses on unpaid and women’s labor, handicrafts, workers’ songs, and living traditions.
In her most recent work, a “one-woman band” titled “Loom Music,” she uses a loom equipped with a contact microphone, with live sound processing and electronic beats, connecting weaving with music: she plays it as a percussion instrument and sings while weaving, in time with its rhythm.
The loom is, by its very nature, a rhythmic tool; even if it doesn’t want to, it will make a sound. An ancient sound, common to many cultures, repetitive, sometimes annoying: the sound of work. A labor that, in traditional Greek society, was among the heaviest for women, as the couplet reminds us: “Embroidery is a joy, the spinning wheel is a stroll / but the loom is slavery, slavery indeed.”
From ancient Egypt to Konitsa, there are many references to women who sang while weaving; by contrast, there are very few references to songs composed by the weavers themselves. Usually, these are songs written from the perspective of someone who isn’t weaving: the observer, the romantic, the groom, the musician, him, him, him. So the time has come for the loom and the female weaver to take center stage.
The tapestry, which will take shape during the performance, will be raffled off at the end to a member of the audience.