Deep Underground, Workers Make The Ring

Deep Underground, Workers Make The Ring is a 30 Second Spot, a short opera featuring the sound of a ratchet, one of the most lyrical and melodic instruments of the orchestra.   I wrote this piece to test a new software sampler which I just installed. An electric bass and a glockenspiel have supporting musical roles.

Once I finished Deep Underground, Workers Make The Ring, it seemed to suggest images of factory machines.  Here's the story behind this piece.

Illegal foreign workers, short and sickly from years of malnourishment, have been tricked by Bain, the God of Capital, into producing cheap knockoffs of the Ring of Power which are then sold by the American Nibelung Party.   Wearers of a ring are impervious to logic or knowledge. 

The workers cannot escape from the secret, smelly, fetid factory deep in the earth.  They are forced to run old unsafe machines which will not be replaced because Bain has been foiled in his attempt to create Tax Credits.  If production falls behind, the workers are whipped by guards, men called Job Creators who wear steel-toed wingtips and power suits with flag pins on their lapels.  In precise unison they sing about the evils of Socialist Liberalism.

The assembly line machines were designed to be relentlessly, oppressively noisy; this to demoralize the workers.  You can hear smelters, lathes and grinders hammering on their spirits.  Each time a ring is finished a bell sounds.  To survive their ordeal the workers have invented a religion which commands them to sing 50's pop tunes over the din.  They believe every bell means that another angel has died in heaven.

Click here to hear Deep Underground, Workers Make The Ring    © 2012 by David Ocker  - 81 seconds

Ratchet Tags: 30 second spot. . . ratchet. . . silly opera librettos