Quest)ion) by Dolly Rae Star

This album / collection of tracks goes with a book of the same name, out on 23 September 2022 on Veer2 Press.

These soundscapes are free for anyone who has bought the book! If you've found your way here that way, welcome, please download the tracks!

If you have not bought the book, you can do so to do so (see https://dollyraestar.bandcamp.com/merch/quest-ion) or download the tracks on a pay as you feel basis. Thanks!

Quest)ion)

What is it to love places? Quest)ion) has been a shifting poetry meets soundscape ritual about this: real and imaginary, spirits, stories, encounters and nothingness.

I wrote and performed Quest)ion) with the intention to open an expansive, personal exploration of dis/connection — to the lands of our ancestors and of our own development — criss-crossing movement, the colonial project and land grabs, hearing stories of setting out across the ocean for a better life already held in the depths of muscles and bones.

Sensations of home, love, heartbreak, connection, disconnection, longing and interruption via migration, colonisation, ancestral impacts, knots, releases, journeys. The unexpected seeds and mycelial strands of these processes. Grounded in experience in physical, cultural and otherworldly space. Adventure, yearning, work / play. Stories, spirits and nothingness.

It’s a story of being ‘British’ whilst not being so, with deep dives of discovery into the beauty and complexity inherent in these circumstances, and in life itself. Via poetic and sonic explorations of dis/connection to an array of places, including South Africa, where my mother was born and my parents first lived together.

Quest)ion) features poems, sound works, and in its live form ritual and movement elements. Each live performance explores and expands as another full iteration. This is another such complete iteration.

"Charged particles flit between networks, islands, interdimensional realms. The sound of these flights softens and amplifies from poem to poem, sometimes we hear a faint buzz, at other times the battlefield overwhelms, the ongoing struggle against violence, oppression, and rigidity. What never ceases is the inquiry itself, the questioning of self and other, home and movement, or rather, of self’s others and other selves, the tumults of home (especially in the UK and SA) and the transformations that create belonging (especially when magicked collectively).

This poetry never stops asking, never stops moving, never stops holding on dearly with love. Dolly Rae Star lights sparklers in the desert to reveal our connectedness, the ancestral trials and queer futures of our connectedness. The revelation is treated with care – as what snares some releases others – and Dolly tumbles close to the precipice, always. What music rises from the edge! Rattling, gonging, and keening, Quest)ion) seeks again and again to perceive patterns in the chaos, to throw spores into structural cracks, to blast open the world for our restlessly spanning dreams." Nisha Ramayya

“Quest)ion) speaks about so many things: all our interwoven stories, specific secret memories, the possibilities of both belonging and transcending. The solemnity is punctuated by moments of laughter and giddy joy. This is a true journey, a reaching for, and of, the heart.” Ben Graham

Dolly Rae Star plays in sound, poetry, and magic. Movement, play and transcendence. Let’s dance!