Dried Up River

Conductor Notes:

SSAA arrangement commissioned in 2025 by Elektra with the generous support of the Diane Loomer Commissioning Fund.

Involves body percussion. Also available for SATB.

Composer / Arranger Notes:

Dried Up River was inspired by reading Alice Dunt’s Poem for a Dried Up River, which resonated deeply with my own experiences of witnessing alarmingly low water levels at the confluence of the Nechako and Fraser Rivers near Prince George, where I am from.

As a young person, I canoed these rivers regularly. Seeing them diminished over several consecutive years was both shocking and deeply saddening.

This recurring condition—now experienced worldwide—has profound consequences for rural and Indigenous communities, wildlife, and especially salmon runs that depend on healthy, flowing waterways.

The image of a cracked, barren riverbed became a powerful metaphor for loss: ecological, cultural, and communal. The music reflects this desolation through sparse textures, murmuring fragments, and wordless vocalizations—na, na, na, ni-ah, ni-ah—suggesting what remains when language fails. Once-living waters are remembered only in echoes – a desolate bed of forsaken hopes.

At the beginning of Dried Up River, the claps and stamps sound strong and bold—fighting back—as if the river is trying to hold on and stay alive. As the piece goes on, the sounds become quieter. By the end, the singers speak and whisper, using pats and brushing sounds instead of claps to suggest bare earth, exposed stone, and a river worn down because it has not been cared for.

Text:

A nearly dried up river,
Cracked and barren,
Once overflowing waters,
Reduced to a feeble trickle
Under the relentless sun.

Murmuring…

No fish to the sea…
Na, na, na, ni-ah, ni-ah.
Dried up river,
A desolate bed of forsaken hopes.

Text Source

Gerda Blok-Wilson