Nottingham Contemporary

Artist Emma Smith and Marek Korczynski (Professor of Sociology of Work, University of Nottingham), discuss histories of whistling and work songs.

From the factories of Radford to the country fields they have explored whistles and ditties as a democratic form of music making and act of solidarity. Looking at how music is used at work and by whom these events have unravelled the psychologies at play when we are made to listen to music while we work and the forms of protest and defiance that are enacted when we produce it for ourselves. Looking at both historical and contemporary practices these discussions explore the subtle manipulations and enactments of power, identity and agency through whistle and song.

Emma Smith developed the Whistling Orchestra as part of her Intersections commission at Primary. The Intersections programme is kindly supported by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and Garfield Weston Foundation. The Whistling Orchestra is an orchestral score and performance for human whistlers based on the history of music at work. Looking specifically at the history of work songs, whistles and hums from the city of Nottingham from pre-industrialisation to the present day, the score traces a history of labour, agency and expression.