SHELLEY MARSDEN finds out about the fascinating new album from Gerry Diver…

Speech Project is the brainchild of traditional musician, composer and producer, Gerry Diver. A unique collection of musical works, it explores the natural melody and rhythms of spoken word, and is quite fascinating – a reminder of just how attractive the human voice can be. Sometimes it’s the words themselves that draw us in, others it’s the pitch and the rhythm they create.

An innovative, minimalist album it uses spoken word recordings from a variety of well-known names in the music world, but anyone that associates his name with a traditional album can think again. It takes its inspiration from traditional and folk recordings, but that’s where the association ends.

Diver’s cutting-edge project was four years in the making – but the proof is in the pudding, and the results are moving and surprisingly will be going on a tour of theUKin March followed, Diver hopes, by an Irish tour in the autumn.

The show will feature musicians including Gerry Diver, with special guest Lisa Knapp, plus specially commissioned accompanying videos for selected works, all interacting live with the spoken word recordings of the Irish musicians used in the Speech Project recordings.

Diver was born into an Irish family in Manchester and relocated to Ireland in his teens. Former member of Irish world music group Sin é and Shane McGowan's The Popes, as well as guest musician with Van Morrison and uber rock producer Youth, Gerry these days focuses on production and composing, working out of his studio in South London. In 2007 he produced the Mojo Folk Album of the Year andBBCFolk Award nominated album Wild And Undaunted by Lisa Knapp, but had already begun work on The Speech Project…

I’ve heard the idea for this came to you while you were up a ladder in North London, is this true?

Haha, yes, it started by accident really… that was when I heard a well-known interview on the radio from Joe Cooley, the box player.  I wasn’t listening too closely, I just noticed a wee bit of lilt and pitch and all that kind of stuff in the voice. It started from there, and the idea emerged for who else I’d like to interview, and an album unfolded from that really. Christy Moore got involved and then various other people I interviewed, Shane MacGowan, Damien Demspey were very enthusiastic and encouraging.

You talk about the hidden emotional music of speech – is that what you were exploring?

The Cooley interview in particular was one month before he passed away, and it was a farewell concert for Joe Cooley. He knew he was on his way out, so it was a very emotional kind of interview. What I wanted to go for was something creative, something that was a springboard, a different starting point, something that would hint at the link between the voice and also music itself. It was something other than let’s get an instrument and play in the G chord and C chord and go from there.

It must have been a very refreshing approach…

Absolutely, because what you’re writing, the composition has been informed by a motif that you’ve been given by the voice, which you’ve got to work with. There are limitations within it and obviously from limitations you can get into a different creative place which you might not otherwise have reached.

How difficult was it when you got down to it?

The way I wrote the music was very intuitive. It was a question of, however long the various people were speaking, just noticing which phrases jumped out from their speech and were very musical, and then just trusting the soup, the creative process. It was a little bit technical because you’ve got to transcribe what they’re saying into musical notes. There was some un-chartered territory, but that was the delight of it for me. People tended to be emotional when they were talking, as anyone would be in certain conversations, and certain phrases would go into key more. Like when Christy Moore was speaking and he’d get quite emotional, he’d tend to go to D Minor. When Martin Hayes was speaking – where he’d really go into the zone – he would be around G, G Minor which is a lot of what his tunes tend to be in. I don’t know if that’s a coincidence or…

You started off with Christy Moore – did he inspire you to continue?

Yes, I started with him and then a gentleman from Donegal called Danny Meehan, then Martin Hayes, Damien Dempsey, Shane MacGowan and I’ve also got some footage from Margaret Barry, the Irish Traveller fromCork. Christy was very enthusiastic; he got the track and phoned me up and invited me over straight away. For somebody of his stature and standing, he was brilliant. I went to see him at his house and we spent some time there working on it; it was great. It was a boost very early on for me, a real green light for the whole project.

For the full interview, buy this week's Irish World (Issue 4 Feb 2012)!

Gerry Diver is taking Speech Project on a 12-date tour with special guests from March 2012, including…See http://speechproject.net/gigs for dates and to book.