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The Sounds of Colic

By Harry S. Daley-Young

As a sound designer, if I'm working on new work, one of the first things I do for a show is to ask the playwright what they listened to while writing the play. From this, I often try to come up with a general genre of music that I'll use throughout the play. S-P's playlist was composed of songs about children and motherhood. This playlist is unusual for plays I've designed, I've taken inspiration from his playlist and added many of my own choices. Rather than organizing music by era or genre, this playlist is organized more by the themes of motherhood, the relationships of sons and daughters with their mothers, and of childhood itself. As a result, it's very musically varied. It includes music from artists who usually wouldn't show up in the same playlist. I'm not sure how many playlists include songs by Tupac and Kanye right next to songs by Merle Haggard and the Dixie Chicks. It's a varied playlist, and had this show been fully produced, I would have used many of these songs during the actual production.

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