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Waywords and Meansigns


Waywords and Meansigns: Recreating Finnegans Wake [in its whole wholume] is an international project setting James Joyce's novel Finnegans Wake to music. Waywords and Meansigns has released two editions of audio, each offering an unabridged musical adaptation of Joyce's book. A third edition, featuring over 100 artists and performing much shorter passages of the book, debuted May 4, 2017.

The project brought together a diverse array of musicians. A artist or group performed each chapter in the first two editions; artists performed shorter, page-length passages in the third edition. The musicians only requirements were that "the words be audible, unabridged and more or less in their original order". With a goal of making Joyce's famously obscure novel more accessible, all audio from the project is distributed freely online.

The Waywords and Meansigns project began in 2014 with a goal of setting James Joyce's Finnegans Wake to music unabridged. The first edition, which premiered in 2015, featured a different artist or musical group performing each of the book's seventeen chapters. The second edition, which premiered in 2016, also offered an unabridged version of the book, performed by a different set of artists and musicians.

A third edition, dubbed the Waywords and Meansigns Opendoor Edition, premiered in 2017 with a focus on performing shorter passages rather than complete chapters. In an open edition, with contributors invited to create new recordings on an ongoing basis, the Opendoor Edition features over 100 contributors from 15 countries. Over 300 people have been involved in Wayords and Meansigns since 2014.

While some passages in Waywords and Meansigns adhere to traditional song structures, much of the music is experimental. The musicians' only requirements were that "the words be audible, unabridged and more or less in their original order." All audio from the project is distributed freely online under Creative Commons licensing. Finn Fordham, a James Joyce scholar at Royal Holloway, University of London has called the project "wonderfully innovative" and The Guardian has highlighted the project for making Joyce's famously difficult novel more accessible.

Contributors to Waywords and Meansigns are a self-described collection of "musicians, artists, poets, scholars, weirdos, passionate Wake-heads, those totally ignorant of the Wake, and anyone generally adventurous."


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