In this unedited interview, Martha Hawley meets Dutch vocalist Greetje Bijma who uses her voice as a musical instrument to produce sounds that create a certain feeling. Words of songs tend to require thinking first and may get in the way of feeling. Bijma has worked with composers, such as Louis Andriessen, and musicians but now is doing solo performances, with voice improvisations on poems, etc.
In the interview, she talks extensively about music as “a language without words”, and she gives some astounding examples of her talent, in particular snippets of African songs and of a South American Indian language which resembles sounds from the Amazon forest. Quite incredible!
Interviewer: Martha Hawley
Recorded: August 20, 2002