What does it mean to be human and have a voice? If our ancestors made music of the moment to make sense of themselves and the world around them - why don’t we?
Anthropos: Songs of Humanity sings from the common well of our ancestors near and far in place and time, from the seeds of anonymous collective song around the Earth. From our shared passion for spontaneous song and the many voices inside and around us that come alive when we travel together into the unknown, breathe, listen, feel and follow.
We began in 2019, exploring and reimagining the roots of singing, before and beyond language, aiming to express many shades of humanity through our voices and sound. Asking ourselves: why did our ancestors sing? can our music, here and now, be fresh and yet ancient, woven with landscapes and stories, with the cycles of Nature?
We acknowledge that the origins of what we now call ‘vocal improvisation’ are in the cellular memory of humanity, in the many musical practices that have been part of the fabric of human life on Earth for thousands of years.
Our pieces are instant collaborative compositions. Our music has resonance, texture, archetypes, play, shifting forms in motion, vignettes of human life. Often when we sing live and everyone’s joining, our songs seem to envelop the space, bridging any separation between audience and performer.
We believe in making music as a process of sharing, rather than a product. We feel enlivened by the beauty and richness of ‘singing with’ rather than ‘performing for’. A reminder of our innate musicality, of the intelligence of the body and of sound’s potential to create community.
Our workshops, The Singing Village, are an invitation to explore the many possibilities of voices coming together in spontaneous music-making. Connecting everyone in movement and song, making fresh, collaborative music, helping to rewild the roots of folklore.
Anthropos: Songs of Humanity are Guillermo Rozenthuler, Sylvia Schmidt, Kate Smith and Jaka Škapin. You can discover more about their musical lives below.
Guillermo Rozenthuler
Sylvia Schmidt
Guillermo is a vocal artist, facilitator, and trainer from Argentina, based in the UK. For the past two decades, he has researched, taught, and practised diverse forms of vocal improvisation, with a focus on the relationship between singing, deep listening, human connection, and individual and collective wellbeing. His music is shaped by his birthplace, Buenos Aires; 35 years of singing and studying jazz, tango, and other Latin American music; and his Eastern European roots. As an ethnomusicologist, and through extensive travel, he has immersed himself in diverse musical traditions around the world, with a particular interest in vocables, spontaneous song, and the wide range of voices that everyone can embody.
Sylvia is an experimental vocalist and composer who has carefully crafted her voice into a precise instrument, a tool which she effortlessly wields to tell beautiful and emotive stories in song. As a music facilitator, Sylvia draws from a rich well of experiences through her postgraduate studies in Performance Teaching and her own ongoing explorations with extended vocal techniques. A trained jazz singer, yet with roots dug deeply into both Slavic as well as European soil, Sylvia’s vocal palette spans a unique spectrum, from crystalline classical resonances, to nasal projections of Bulgarian voices and echoes of ancient Nordic “Kulning“ calls.
Kate Smith
Kate is a vocal acrobat, composer, and facilitator known for her seamless blend of musical precision, free improvisation and physical exploration. Her musical journey began in classical voice, which continues to be the backbone of her sound, but as a voracious vocal explorer, she has also delved into the worlds of American folk, voice theatre, and cabaret. As the creator of The Embodied Voice, a research, performance and teaching practice, Kate’s many-faceted creative endeavors address themes of presence and the body-mind relationship through the expressive shaping of voice, movement and improvisation.
Jaka Škapin
Jaka is a Slovenian performer, composer and vocal improviser. His music is marked by his choral background, jazz training and Slavic heritage, exploring the intersection of ancestry, embodiment, nature connection and musicianship - with influences including Meredith Monk, Svetlana Spajić and Bobby McFerrin. As a collaborative vocal improvisation and circlesinging facilitator he teaches internationally and is one of the co-founders of the UK Vocal Improv Collective. As a researcher he focusses on applied voice and movement improvisation practice within health and care settings and is the current producer of The Well: Global Vocal Improvisation Network.