The Wadey Centre, Blackfalds, AB

This kind of excursion requires a tremendous amount of trust. A practice of allowing, of renouncing control to the powers that be, and yes, just going to see what happens.

I knew we would likely perform. I brought my instruments, other gear, including a camera, spirit-box ghost communication device, tripod, audio recorder, etc.

Unceremoniously, and running a few minutes behind, we met in the parking lot a town over at an older house. It had been converted into a visitor centre/museum of sorts. The kind of thing I have driven by or visited one hundred times in my life—living in Calgary with family in Saskatchewan and in Manitoba—on road trips, camping, sometimes just needing a place to use a bathroom, sometimes staying a little longer. This kind of building was not foreign to me. The exterior spruced up, some modern accessibility accommodations stitched with an older-style settler building. We said our good mornings and then went inside, four of us and a little dog named Vinnie.

I walked into a heavy, stagnant fog. It was hard to concentrate on our brief tour, on our hosts, and on the light conversation. I felt detached, desperately trying to appear attentive and unfazed. I felt the pull from the pit of my stomach, from behind my eyes. HELLO!? Pressure for acknowledgement; whomever or whatever was in there had not been seen or heard for a long time. Not neglected, maybe just ignored. The glass cases held pseudo-memories, community knowledge, while the air held personal memories of this place. I felt it—the need to be acknowledged as a person, as a place that was a home. As a pre-institution this place had held joy and pain, laughter, tears, calm Sunday mornings in the winter, and tended gardens in the summer.

As a sound artist (partially), as a musician and an interdisciplinary artist, I deeply consider how the vibrations of voice, a song, of the train passing, thunder rolling—how all these physical vibrations affect the spaces around us.

Raised with Saulteaux ceremony and Métis culture, my late grandfather, Lawrence “Teddy Boy” Houle, always said: Music is Healing.
He was a World-Renowned Old Time Métis Fiddle Player, a ceremonialist, a medicine person, a cultural preservationalist. He passed away June 2020.
Our songs carry stories.

If anything, the way sound travels and bounces and makes its way to our ears is a physical intervention on space—on place. Ideally, when these intentions are positive, we can impact our surroundings in positive ways.

The energy was stagnant in the Wadey House. I could only cry when I received transmissions so strongly from spirits of this place. It felt like I had a responsibility to a spiritual ecology to bring life back into the museum, where the institutionalization of this home had to be bridged back to an energy of movement, of care, and of appreciation.

The institution does not have a soul, but can house those with spirit within it. I was raised to always acknowledge the entities of the land, the people, the community. And all living things—stones and water included. This is done through acts of offering and reciprocity. If you plan to take, you must ask permission. You must make an offering and give thanks. You must be prepared to take no as an answer.

When making art or gathering media—recording sound, taking photos or video—I always think of it as gathering. Remember to honour a reciprocity as though you would gather anything else from the land.

Today at the Wadey House, the answer was yes.

Artist Zoë Grace-Anne Laycock at the Wadey Centre, Blackfalds, AB.

Through hand drumming, dueling theremins, banjo picks, guitar strums, and accordion we performed for the house loudly as a part of ceremony, filling each corner, nook, glass case, and piece of furniture with sound and energy. Cosmic whirling through the space, spirit dancing, we gave and received.
Cyclical transference.
Heaviness left and light filled this place.
This was an acknowledgement.
This was for them.

During our setup, I had placed a spirit box—a small radio-sweeping device commonly used in paranormal investigations—near my performance spot I had chosen on the floor. Between the first of two almost one-hour sets we performed, I heard a voice—a man’s voice—come through the device, clear and bright as a sunny, cloudless summer prairie day. He said: 

“They’re making music here. Yes, they’re making music here.”

The Wadey Centre in Blackfalds, AB, is a historic house constructed from a kit sold through the T. Eaton Co. catalogue in the early twentieth century.