Branches (Out of the Blue)

“Branches” is the second work in a series of collaborative singles with artists from other disciplines. It is Olicía’s result of collaborating with woodworker Dshamila Annina who is based in Verscio (CH) and in La Mandria (IT). The song “Branches” sets out as a tender, jazzy folk ballad incorporating wood percussion like falling drops of water. Playfully exploring different sounds and tunings of the percussion instruments created by Dshamila Annina and gently decreasing the level of abstraction over the course of the song, shaping the different sounds into a more concise rhythm by mixing them with claps and ratchet sounds.

The song’s lyrics reach deep into an inner, emotional core. According to Anna-Lucia Rupp, they observe a loved one fading away slowly: “A kind glimpse into their past and the memories you share. Like the image of an oak tree that contains so much history, sunlight and tension within all those annual rings. It is about the awareness of things evolving, of people fading, of time coloring the leaves until they can't hold onto the branches no longer. That bitter-sweet evanescence…” Co-writing the lyrics, as they often do, Fama M’Boup adds a perspective that transcends the immediate grief and perceives lost ones in your family as the roots enabling yourself to grow and build upon.

Dshamila Annina created the percussion instruments from the chestnut wood native to the places where she lives in Switzerland and Italy. Together, they tested the material for its sound qualities but also designed the objects to serve as an LP display for the living room. Dshamila shares her thoughts about the process: “Sound needs bodies to vibrate. The structure, size and space of and within a body create and influence its sound possibilities. The body of the tree is wood. The beauty of wood is that even when the tree is dead, the wood as a material lives on and moves and resonates. This inspired us to investigate the sound of wooden shapes and dimensions to create small percussion instruments. The result is a small, funny truth of nature: each of these instruments (even if some of them have the same dimensions and are grown from the same tree) vibrates differently from the others and has its own sound.”

Dshamila Annina

Dshamila Annina is a woodworker and stage technician based both in Switzerland and in Italy. After her apprenticeship as a woodworker she completed a certificate for natural building and developed great interest for the traditional, natural and technical possibilities of building and creating. Since 2017, she has been organizing, in collaboration with many others, craft and artistic workshops and projects in a wild, biodiverse place in the middle of the Tuscan forest, called La Mandria. Dshamila is involved in raising awareness about sexism and patriarchal structures in the craft- and the building industry. With the association “gemeinsam bauen wir neu” she organizes projects, workshops and residencies on this topic.

Website, La Mandria

Out of the Blue

Out of the Blue is a cycle of songs and corresponding works of art that are born from dialogue – from conversation and exchange between the two musicians in Olicía and artists in other genres, such as painting, fashion, dance, literature, film making, design, or arts and crafts. The works are gradually developed, ping-ponged back and forth, playfully shaped into their final form. Learning and borrowing from one another in the process - adapting strategies, materials, structures, or approaches. From an exchange of ideas and sentiments and their - at times - vague and fuzzy articulations into dots and notes, shapes and chords, textures, patterns, configurations, and designs. In the end, the result will be two separate works of art, existing on equal footing, sharing the same seed, still conversing with one another, complementing one another, or simply exploring the same ideas while venturing out into opposite directions. 

Supported by