Tremble Staves is a performative score created by Navajo composer Raven Chacon. Guitar player, percussionists, narrator, and viewers all congregate on a ruin site, near a large body of water. In its 2019 iteration, the score was played at the abandoned Sutro Baths bordered by the Gulf of the Farallones; setting the stage for a dialogue between still and moving waters, viewers and performers, indigenous knowledge and artistic experience. Chacon defines the piece as a radical “proposition for imagining when we are already gone”. Drawing from Navajo creation stories, the piece sets to tackle complicated relationships between ruins, temporalities, memories, and waters. “All belongs to water; water belongs to all,” proclaims narrator Ashley Smiley, signaling the shared quality of water.
“Tremble Staves: Listening to the Voices of Water,” Espace: Voices n°130, Spring 2022.