Anthony Copping
Anthony Copping (born 4th March 1966) is a British entrepreneur, TV presenter, music producer and composer. He is the founder and CEO of the creative tech company Binumi, and the co-founder and director of the virtual events platform Totem Hybrid.
In 2004, Copping’s television documentary series Last Voices from Heaven was broadcast on National Geographic Channels International. It followed Copping’s journey into the remote jungles of the South Pacific islands to capture the music and cultural spirit of people that the West knew little about.
Ten years previously, Copping had begun working on an idea to make a series of concept albums - recording and preserving the last tribal voices of the South Pacific. It was following the success of the first album, Siva Pacifica, that National Geographic commissioned the Last Voices from Heaven television documentary series, filming Copping’s continuing journey of musical exploration and preservation.
The TV series, described by National Geographic as `the most dangerous journey ever undertaken in the search for indigenous music’, was nominated for the Most Outstanding Documentary Series at the 47th annual TV Week Logie Awards in 2005.
Copping’s expeditions gave rise to 8 albums - each featuring a fusion of modern sounds and field recordings of indigenous music. The best known are Siva Pacifica, released on Virgin EMI in 1997 and Last Voices from Heaven, released on Sony BMG in 2004.
The 20-year project involved 35 expeditions to over 100 islands in Polynesia and the Melanesian archipelago, including remote jungles inhabited by tribes which had rarely encountered people from outside their community.
Early life
Copping spent his early childhood in various rural seaside villages on the coast of Norfolk and later in Lymington in the New Forest. Aged 7, he witnessed the death of his father who was building the family home. This devastating experience, with emotional and financial consequences for his family, has informed the rest of Copping’s life. From then on, he became self-sufficient. At 12 years old, along with his siblings, he began working to help support the family.
As a means of escape from the difficulties at home, Copping became obsessed with adventure, travel and exotic locations - in particular, the islands of the South Pacific. Despite, or perhaps because of a childhood ear condition, his other love was music and sound, and he developed a habit of listening closely to the background ambience that others may take for granted.
At the age of 18, Copping moved to Camberwell in London where he played bass guitar in a succession of punk rock bands, none of which were a success. On his 21st birthday, and with just AU$100 in his pocket, Copping flew to Sydney, Australia.
Early career
In Sydney, Copping secured a position at Sun Studios, named after the famous Sun Studios in Memphis, where he worked as an unpaid runner before being put on the payroll as an audio engineer.Copping worked with a large number of Australian indie bands and artists, starting his own studio, publishing and management label Monsoon Music (a co-venture with Universal Music) before co-producing the platinum selling debut album Make It Come True by Girlfriend. The synth-pop album, released on 21st September 1992, was hugely successful - at the time, Australia’s highest-selling debut album.
It was around this time that Copping was approached by Andy Ayamiseba from the well-known West Papuan group Black Brothers. The band were in Canberra, having gone into voluntary political exile several years previously, and wanted Copping’s help to record a new album. Several tracks were recorded at Sun Studios, but work was halted when the Samoan lead singer brought in for the project, Roger Mohi, suddenly vanished.
Back in 1988, after visiting Fiji, Copping had come up with an idea for a concept album - combining ancient South Pacific music with modern sounds. He described the idea to Ayamiseba, who introduced Copping to Solomon Mamaloni, the Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands. Mamaloni supported the project, and paved the way for Copping to meet tribal elders across the Solomon Islands. It was here that much of the music for the first album, Siva Pacifica, was recorded. The two formed a close friendship which lasted until Mamaloni’s death in January 2000.
Musical exploration
In 1990, Copping started work on field recordings for Siva Pacifica - a musical bridge between the world of Pacific islanders and Western civilisation. In the event, the album gave rise to a project which lasted for 20 years. Between 1990 and 2010, Copping visited over 100 Pacific islands to make field recordings - ritual and ceremonial songs, lullabies, laments for the dead and sacred spirit songs. On many occasions, he was almost certainly the first outsider to have heard such music.
In 2002, National Geographic commissioned the documentary, Last Voices from Heaven, and Copping was joined on a number of expeditions by a film crew.
Trips to the outer islands were usually by small propeller plane, landing on grass strips. Exploration was also made via small fibreglass motorised boats and in West Papua, an attempt to find `the oldest song in the world’’ involved a month-long trip in a dugout canoe down the Mamberamo River.
Arriving and leaving villages were major events. Hundreds of people would turn up on beaches or chase planes down runways to welcome them or wave farewell. Gaining permission to record or film village performances generally took days of negotiations, including payments, and the choice of which music they’d capture was debated in village huts into the early hours over intoxicating betel nut and kava. On the island of Ambrym, one tribe permitted Copping to hear and record their music, but sang from behind a wall of palm leaves because it was forbidden by the spirits for outsiders to see them.
Playing back the performances on headphones, often to every villager, took many hours and caused considerable amusement. For many villagers, it was the first time they had ever heard their own voices played back to them.
The process was far from easy. Early on, in the Solomon Islands, Copping developed malaria. The condition reoccurred numerous times throughout his expeditions, reaching crisis point during a trip to a remote part of Choiseul Island. Delirious, and with a dangerously high fever, Copping was taken by boat to Buala, on Santa Isabel Island, and treated by a witch doctor whom he believes saved his life. While filming in a remote jungle village of West Papua, Copping and his cameraman were caught up in a violent tribal altercation after filming the `strangers’ of a neighbouring village. Surrounded by men armed with spears and machetes, they reached their boat by handing out tobacco and clothing before escaping downstream.
Field recordings and production
Copping’s field recordings were made using a pair of battery-powered condenser microphones, often in the open air. Village huts were refashioned into soundproofed rooms, and the team made use of local churches, guest houses and government buildings as well as studios in Auckland, New Zealand and Sydney, Australia.
Locating power for microphones and recording devices was a challenge. It often involved hours or even days of travel to a generator or electricity source. When all else failed, they would record using a small dictaphone.
To capture a realistic sense of place, Copping recorded ambience in each location - the sounds of a particular village, jungle or river as well as the weather conditions at the time. These sounds were used alongside the songs themselves to create an accurate representation of what it felt like to be there.
Historically, musical instruments in the Southern Pacific islands[1] were made almost exclusively from local materials such as wood. Metal was rarely used. To reflect this soundscape, falling or husking coconuts were used as drums and percussion, rhythms were insect sounds and voices provided harmonic movement.
Knowledge of ancient music was generally held only by tribal elders whose recollections were sometimes limited to just one or two lines. Despite Copping’s efforts to uncover the ancient traditions, it became clear that much of the music had already been lost. Spoken word was therefore recorded, and used in fragments to add context to some tracks. Back in the studio, instruments such as flutes were electronically sculpted to provide a modern feel, and Pacific islander musicians based in Sydney came in to play drums and other instruments. Copping also used recordings by the English composer and explorer David Fanshawe, a major inspiration.
In the course of his exploration, Copping noticed a distinct difference in mood between Polynesian and Melanesian music - explained by each region’s use of major and minor keys. Polynesian music tended towards bright cheerful major keys, Malanesians favoured the darker, more sombre minor keys. While these mood differences are reflected across the albums, Copping also wanted to foster intercultural dialogue by representing music throughout the whole region, He therefore amalgamated recordings, melodies, languages and voices from separate islands within individual songs. Log drummers from multiple countries feature across all the albums.
Some performances and voices represent a spiritual connection to ancestors, others are laments in free form, sometimes in an unknown language. The last medicine men and sorcerers, often in their very late years, were invaluable sources for the provenance and significance of these performances.
Albums
The albums are a fusion of modern sounds with ancient Polynesian and Melanesian music, taken from over 1,000 hours of field recordings. The first album, Siva Pacifica: Les Chants du Pacific was released on the Virgin EMI label in 1997. It features more than 200 performers singing and chanting in 40 different languages.The title comes from the Savosavo language in which siva’ translates as `rhythm’. The second album, Last Voices from Heaven, was released in 2004 on the Sony BMG label. An 8 CD box set was released independently in 2010 under the title Last Voices.
`Jungle’, a single from Last Voices from Heaven, was released in 2010 and has become widely known, featuring in series 7 of the US reality television series So You Think You Can Dance. `Mana, Part 1’ was a signature tune on Sarah Kennedy’s early morning programme on BBC Radio 2.
Many tracks feature the singing and guitar playing of Pascal Oritaimae, from the ꞌAreꞌare province of Malaita, whom Copping met during his very first expedition. The two became close friends, with Oritaimae working closely on compositions, and accompanying Copping on many of the subsequent trips. Pascal Oritaimae is now a champion of indigenous music, encouraging young people to safeguard and perpetuate the endangered musical traditions of their region.
Robyn Loau is the lead vocalist and vocal arranger on several tracks, singing in the diverse range of Southern Pacific languages which she had to learn before and during recording. Virgin France made Loau the `face’ of the album Siva Pacifica and she featured heavily in a country-wide marketing campaign on the public national TV channel France 2.
Siva Pacifica: Les Chants du Pacific
| Track | Performers | Background and story |
|---|---|---|
| Mana, Part I | Robyn Loau, Ngaroanao Poa, the people of the Pacific | The Mana, or calling, is found in some form amongst all Pacific people. It is a spiritual call for humans, ancestors and all animals on earth to bond in friendship, a call to our ancestral spirits for guidance and protection. To underline its spiritual importance, the track features singers from every location Copping visited throughout the project. |
| Hote | Pascal Oritaimae, the people of `Are’are | |
| Manu | Robyn Loau, the children of the Solomon Islands | |
| Sole | Melynda Pierre Tutangata | |
| Mana, Part II | Robyn Loau, the people of the Cook Islands | This second part of the Mana piece starts and ends with a conch calling the ancestors of the sea. It features chants from the people of Guadalcanal, Rarotonga and Aitutaki in the Cook Islands arranged by the legendary singer Tepaove Raiti. |
| Hote | A traditional Tahitian song about romance and the power of love. The track features a recording made in Tahiti by the composer and explorer David Fanshawe augmented with ambience, drums, percussion and a counter melody. | |
| Aaloha | Cy Bridges, the Polynesian Cultural Centre Choir in Hawaii, Robyn Loau, Kelvin Vaega | A Hawaiian farewell song from the 19th century written by Lili`uokalani, the last sovereign monarch of the Hawaiian Islands. Added to it is a traditional Samoan song, performed by Kelvin Vaega and Robyn Loau. |
| Jungle | Hayes Loau, Ngaroanao Poa | A sound collage - polyrhythmic log drums recorded on multiple Pacific islands combined with the Haere Mai, a Maori expression of welcome. The powerful track involved the complex piecing together of live log drum performances recorded by numerous drummers across many different countries. |
| Faikava | Traditional singers, Tonga | A traditional love song which uses a 1978 recording made by David Fanshawe in Tonga, embellished with a countermelody and ambience. As the performers sing about a lost sweetheart, the sound of kava preparation can be heard in the background. |
| Amatanga | Black Brothers, West Papua & Cook Island Choir | The migration of the Pacific people across the ocean to populate each island in turn. Black Brothers perform the travellers’ canoe chants, the choir are those left behind, while the sorcerer calls for support and guidance from the gods. The rowers of Aitutaki were recorded for ambience and the sound of movement through water. |
| `Are `are | Pascal Oritaimae, the villagers of Tanna | `Respect for ancestors is paramount. If asked, the chosen one may have to sacrifice their life'. At the top of his tribe's hill, their spiritual home, Pascal sings to his ancestors. |
| Eh Hanua | Robyn Loau, Kelvin Vaega, Isabel Singers | The song is built upon rhythm and chant from Santa Isabel Island. The chant, recorded with singers stamping their feet adorned with nuts, inspired the rest of the song. It is about balance, nature and respect for the land. |
| Ananho | The Marquesan ‘Dance of the Pig’ is renowned throughout the Pacific, a ceremonial dance for the pig demi-god Makaiaanui who is said to have sacrificed himself for the people during a time of famine. The track was recorded on the islands of Santa Isabel and Malaita. | |
| Aleki | Pascal Oritaimae | This lament to the devil, a liaison with the spiritual world, was captured inside a Banyan tree. It tells of the devil’s obsession with a young native girl in traditional dress, and the spirit’s grief for its dislocation from the physical world. |
Last Voices from Heaven
| Track | Performers | Background and story |
|---|---|---|
| Mana, Part I | Robyn Loau, Ngaroanao Poa, the people of the Pacific | A dialogue with the spirits describing how we, our ancestors, all animals and the spirit world are all part of a universal world. Mana is the foundation of Pacific culture. To represent its importance, the track features more than 200 singers from Pacific islands. |
| Shadow of Life | Lisin Ro'uvon, Sandrina | In a sacred ceremony, a baby's head is bound to resemble the island god Ambat. The song is based on the soothing sounds made to the baby to ease the pain of binding. |
| Ma'a Mera | Pascal Oritaimae | Uncertain of his place in the world, a young boy seeks answers from his spirit guide, the snake. The spirit speaks through him, teaching the boy how to sense its presence and recognise that he is not alone. |
| Spirit | Seini `SistaNative' Taumoepeau, the villagers of Neuha, Ambrym Island | A sacred ritual, recorded in the dense jungle village of Neuha from behind a wall of dried palm leaves. The male villagers' chant captures the moment of communication with the spirits. Woven in with this moment, Seini sings a traditional Tongan song of love, loss and trust in a higher guidance. |
| Mo're | Pascal Oritaimae | `Respect for ancestors is paramount. If asked, the chosen one may have to sacrifice their life'. At the top of his tribe's hill, their spiritual home, Pascal sings to his ancestors. |
| Wuroman | Pascal Oritaimae, Marie Via | A boy is initiated into the world of the elders through the most sacred of rituals, the sinking of the Wuroman (his soul ship). The sacrifice guarantees safety on water - vital protection for island people. |
| Mamberamo | Sandrine, Nious, West Papuan nomads | |
| Lullaby of the Dead | Chief Tofor (the last sorcerer), Toata (the old `saltwater man'), Pascal Oritaimae | For Pacific people, birth must start with death. This is a lullaby to a child of the future, and the cycle is completed as the spirits are reincarnated in the body of the new born. It was recorded in a hut on a salt water island during Cyclone Zoe. |
| Lament | Pascal Oritaimae | Laments are a healing tool for the islanders. Through grief, we discover the harmony between the spirits and the living. The track begins with a West Papuan grieving ceremony and in verse 2, the Drums of the Dead are played by Mahaiana, one of the last remaining medicine men in West Papua. |
| Taria Waraku | Wasiataro and Arisi, Robyn Loau, Seini `SistaNative' Taumoepeau, Sandrine | `Learn the skills and the spirits will talk for you. But the skills that takes the longest to master is silence'. A song inspired by telepathy. Copping and Oritaimae discovered that in the deep jungle, there were times when words were not necessary. |
| Possessed | Urunakua, the John Frum Movement, the villagers of Neuha | A possession ceremony. In 1993 an elderly woman, Urunakua, allowed Copping to record her lament for her dead husband. As the song progresses she begins singing in an unknown language and her voice becomes that of a man - the voice of her husband. It is an extraordinary moment, a deeply personal experience symbolising the survival of an ancient way of life against overwhelming odds. |
Last Voices from Heaven documentary series
In 2002, National Geographic Channels International commissioned the television documentary series Last Voices from Heaven. The series is about Copping himself, following his journey to trace the roots of music backwards through time. Filming started in Vanuatu, moved on to the Solomon Islands, and finally reached the untouched jungle regions of West Papua.
In some places, Copping found that he’d arrived too late. The missionaries had got there before him, banning `ungodly’ sacred music and replacing it with hymn tunes. Missionaries had begun arriving in the South Pacific islands during the 19th century, but are active in the region to this day. Given this, the documentary set out to discover which ancient music, if any, still survived.
Both the Solomon Islands and West Papua were experiencing civil unrest at the time of filming. The most dangerous part of the mission was the final leg in West Papua. The Papua conflict was, and still is, ongoing, with the Free Papua Movement carrying out a low-intensity guerrilla war against Indonesia by targeting its military police and civilians. There are also numerous violent disputes over gold and mineral mining.
Despite its anthropological importance, and Copping’s vociferous insistence, National Geographic were reluctant to allow travel to West Papua. The production company Beyond International was unable to get insurance and in the event, it was granted only because the insurance company mistook the filming location for Papua New Guinea. The film crews frequently pulled out of expeditions because of the danger - and in West Papua, Copping travelled undercover with just one cameraman, working in a locked down country with no permits to travel or film.
Throughout the project, they managed to capture rare footage of musical performances which had never previously been heard or witnessed by outsiders. Some of this music was performed by tribal elders - the last people on earth to remember sacred songs which could be thousands of years old.
Reviews for the documentary include:
"The most dangerous journey ever undertaken in the search for indigenous music" - National Geographic
"Intoxicating and atmospheric" - BBC
"A remarkable film" - The Telegraph
"Full of incident and excitement" - The Times
"A captivating film" - The Guardian
"Beautifully shot and poignant" - The Sunday Times
Binumi Video Platform
Binumi is a creative tech company, founded by Copping in 2014. It is a video creation platform which allows anyone, including non-experts, to create and share videos. It provides access to video templates, drag-and-drop editing tools and a substantial library of rights-cleared multimedia content. The company owns a content library of 3-4 million multimedia clips, and licenses stock footage clips from third party vendors such as Storyblocks and Getty Images.
The idea for Binumi was born when Copping lived in New York between 2007 and 2012. In New York, Copping was working with Mark Rockefeller and his team on a multimedia concept called Last Voices, inspired by the television series. The documentaries had caught Rockefeller’s attention because his older brother, the American journalist Michael Rockefeller disappeared and is presumed to have died during an expedition to Netherlands New Guinea, now part of West Papua.
Last Voices was to be a wide-ranging mix of cultural programmes broadcast on branded TV, radio and online. Following the financial crisis of 2007-2008, the project was pared down. They focused instead on creating an easily accessible content repository.
Over the next few years, Copping set about building the content database - a fully-owned library comprising video footage, images and music. Some content was acquired from third parties, the rest was filmed in multiple locations around the world, either by Copping himself or by commissioned videographers. The content was compiled and edited in Bangkok.
Copping’s initial vision for Binumi was as a vehicle for young people to make their own documentary shorts. Historically, the company focused on education, forming partnerships with Encyclopaedia Britannica, Twig Education and Knotion, among others. Its ease of use has since led to significant growth within commercial organisations as well as educational establishments.
Totem Hybrid Events Platform
Totem Hybrid is an events and communications company, co-founded by Chris Shields, Alex Hughes and Anthony Copping. The company is part of six linked technology-based platforms - Totem, Binumi, Amigo, Onair, Sci+Med and Gravity - run under the umbrella company Bridge Event Technologies.
Totem, the hybrid event platform, was established in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Its clients include KPMG, Deutsche Bank, Ernst & Young the NHS and, most recently, Informa PLC. Sci+Med is a complementary branch of the events platform, serving clients in the scientific, medical and pharmaceutical industries.
References
- ↑ Metropolitan Museum of Art: Sounding the Pacific: Musical Instruments of Oceania
This article "Anthony Copping" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Anthony Copping. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
