Music can tell stories in a variety of ways: operas and musicals have characters and plots, a song can tell a short story, and even music without words can take listeners on a journey. But Randall Eng is interested in using unexpected texts like photocopier manuals and legal pamphlets to produce musical compositions that tell new stories. By cutting up and rearranging these existing texts – also known as “found texts” – he wants to repurpose the original words to transform their meanings and convey new messages.
Bonus clips
Works mentioned
– Xerox manual (you can see a similar manual here)
– Randall Eng (music) and Donna Di Novelli (libretto), “I resemble my mother” from Before the Night Sky
– Randall Eng, Remain
– “Know Your Rights” pamphlet from the Museum of Chinese in America (see this similar pamphlet from the ACLU)
– Anthony Davis (music) and Thulani Davis (libretto), X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X