corporate manslaughter

Aberfan Disaster / “…the greed of man”

144 people — including 116 children — were killed when 150,000 tons of coal waste catastrophically collapsed on a school and houses in the small mining village of Aberfan, Wales on October 21, 1966.

A Tribunal investigating the 1966 events found that the National Coal Board was entirely responsible for failing to act to prevent the disaster, though they were never prosecuted.

Sophie-Ann Williams of North Wales provided the photo below of her Grandfather, the late Reverend Colin Peter Bessant. He was helping to dig out after the Aberfan Disaster. Paula Bessant Williams, Sophie’s mother, said, “My Dad never spoke about it without getting really upset. Just said it was the greed of man…”

“…and yet…the innocent are those who get punished most zealously of all. And what would one then have to say about our so evident torturers: Why does not fate punish them? Why do they prosper?

And the only solution to this would be that the meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but …in the development of the soul. From that point of view our torturers have been punished most horribly of all: they are turning into swine, they are departing downward from humanity…”

“The Ascent” from The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Laura Siersema is composer of Aberfan (7 pianos, voice and tools of rescue), a sponsored project of New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), a 501(c)(3), tax-exempt organization. All donations are tax deductible. Your contribution ensures we can return to the studio to complete its recording.

Aberfan Disaster & Engels & One Composition

(Original illustration by Mr. Fish)

On October 21, 1966, in the small mining village of Aberfan, Wales, a man-made mountain of coal waste collapsed on a primary school and nearby houses, killing 116 children and 28 adults. A Tribunal investigating the 1966 events found that the National Coal Board was entirely responsible for failing to act to prevent the disaster, though they were never prosecuted.

“When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live — forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence — knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.^”

— Friedrich Engels, “The Condition of the Working-Class in England”, 1845

(quote excerpted from “The Age of Social Murder” by Chris Hedges, posted today on Scheerpost)

Laura Siersema is composer of Aberfan (7 pianos, voice and tools of rescue), a sponsored project of New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), a 501(c)(3), tax-exempt organization. All donations are tax deductible. Your contribution ensures we can return to the studio to complete its recording.

WIDE VIEW OF ABERFAN DISASTER

Aberfan (7 pianos, voice and tools of rescue) is an elegy not only for the people of a village who suffered the loss of a generation and the wounded soul of the Welsh who saw their beautiful country destroyed when the coal mines came to the valleys, but for our world, besieged by unbridled industry pillaging the land and its people, exploiting riches for a few. Aberfan is our entire structure under collapse — the condemnation of a corrupted capitalism and the truth of our entrapment in a world that reduces to rubble all that is sacred.

Photo courtesy of Alan George

(Originally posted October 2016)

Recording “Aberfan” — Please Support!

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to support Aberfan! During our first studio sessions in late September we recorded about a 1/3 of the piano parts in 11 hours!

If you have not done so already, please consider making a donation now!

This year end fundraising campaign ensures we are able to continue recording! Here is what your donation will do:

$25-$99 Pays for up to to two hours in the studio — Receive download of completed recording and be listed on my website donor page.
$100-$499 Pays for studio time with one additional musician — All of the above plus a CD copy of completed recording.
$500-$999 Payment towards the percussionist and studio producer — All of the above plus 2 free CDs of your choice.
$1,000 and above Payment towards mixing and mastering engineers — All of the above plus an invitation to visit the studio as we work.

In this time of uncertain governmental support, YOU are helping to bring art into the world!

Aberfan is a sponsored project of New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), a 501(c)(3), tax-exempt organization. All donations are tax-deductible.

DONATE NOW.

Aberfan is funded in part by Puffin West Foundation, Thendara Foundation, Puffin Foundation and Deupree Family Foundation.

Photo Aberfan Memorial Garden.

Wide view of Aberfan Disaster

Aberfan (7 pianos, voice and tools of rescue) is an elegy not only for the people of a village who suffered the loss of a generation and the wounded soul of the Welsh who saw their beautiful country destroyed when the coal mines came to the valleys, but for our world, besieged by unbridled industry pillaging the land and its people, exploiting riches for a few. Aberfan is our entire structure under collapse, the condemnation of a corrupted capitalism imposed upon the world, the catastrophe, the truth of our entrapment in a world run on power, violence and commodity, reducing to rubble all that is sacred.

Aberfan, a Parable

Aberfan, Wales, 1966, Coal Refuse Collapse Kills 144, 116 Children

What was the salvation and economic lifeblood of this small village, with its promise to the miners of being able to provide for their families, became the death of a generation and ongoing trauma for those who survived. Were it not for short sighted environmental, governmental and economic practices that served only to protect the system and those who gained by it, this tragedy would never have happened.

What will be the legacy of fracking? What will we be mourning the loss of in 50 years? What unintended consequences befall us or our children? What will be destroyed forever? Our groundwater? Who will be held responsible? The miners of Aberfan did not pile coal waste high above the village so their children would be buried one day. Our systems have not changed, only the people and machinery have — corporate dominance assures ‘progress and safety’ while exploiting humankind and the earth as commodities. The visceral, powerful message in the music of Aberfan is the felt knowledge of this human condition, resonating over time.

Unless we reclaim our history we are doomed. It is precisely this loss of memory that enables these systems to dupe each coming generation into believing that prosperity is possible.

West Virginia, Coal Refuse Collapse, 2012

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/many-coal-sludge-impoundments-have-weak-walls-federal-study-says/2013/04/24/76c5be2a-acf9-11e2-a8b9-2a63d75b5459_story.html

“Aberfan” One woman’s elegy for a Welsh village’s young disaster victims

Over one year ago, Richie Davis wrote this powerful story for the Greenfield Recorder, our local paper. Our interview together was the first I had spoken publicly about the composition that had been underway for years.

Aberfan – One Woman’s elegy for a Welsh village’s young disaster victims

Aberfan – One Woman’s elegy for a Welsh village’s young disaster victims (page 2)

Laura Siersema is composer of Aberfan (7 pianos, voice and tools of rescue), a sponsored project of New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), a 501(c)(3), tax-exempt organization. All donations are tax deductible. Your contribution ensures we can return to the studio to complete its recording.

Photo from Getty Images by Jim Gray

Dr. Dave Petley, American Geophysical Union

Back in May 2013, as I worked on the order of musical sequences for Aberfan, I came across Dave Petley’s article Remembering the Aberfan disaster — 45 years ago today.

An independent scientist – writer for the AGU Landslide Blog, living in the UK, Dave’s post was an overview of this tragedy and its enduring legacy in physical, social and psychological terms. In this fuller context, I could picture and understand how the landslide occurred, what led up to it and what followed — crucial to the integrity of my music, Aberfan.

I wrote to him immediately. Thus our communications began.

In June 2015, Dave posted Aberfan in his series “Landslides in Art”.

I want to thank him again, for all the factual information, alongside the moral support his interest in my project has garnered over the years.

DONATE to help make the recording and presentation of Aberfan possible.

Wider view of Aberfan / Rain – Rubble

Aberfan is an elegy not only for the people of Aberfan who suffered the loss of a generation and the “wounded soul of the Welsh” who saw “their beautiful country being destroyed when the coal mines came to the valleys”, but for our world, besieged by unbridled industry pillaging the land and exploiting its riches for the few. The tragedy of Aberfan and the music it informed manifest the abject sorrow and rage resulting from the devastating human and environmental impacts of the fossil fuel industry, more recently embodied by mountaintop-removal coal mining and fracking to extract natural gas. This project confronts our blindness and aims to disrupt our complacency.

Aberfan will be participatory. In choosing the entrances of pianos #2-7, individuals will be deciding the composition and experiencing their own involvement in its unfolding. Merging the music of Aberfan and photos of this particular disaster’s psychic aftermath lays bare the great cost of ignoring the habituated, presumptive violence in our human systems.

The penetrating quality of musical vibrations in synergy with photographic art, resonating where words cannot, evokes a greater world where all are connected as living beings on a living earth. In bearing witness to the single atrocity of Aberfan, one can begin to question the arrogance of “progress” built on destruction, absent the soul.

For the performance or installation of Aberfan, money is needed to create a studio recording and develop a design for the visual element. My hope is for presentation across the United States within the next several years. Donations can be made online.

Here is an example, in musical language, of the consequence of our offensive display of superiority over nature. Rain and Rubble Sequences have been spliced and put back together in alternating measures. Excerpt: Aberfan, “Rain – Rubble”

Thank your for considering the enduring social and artistic significance of Aberfan and its challenge to halt our drive towards extinction.

Aberfan is a sponsored project of New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), a 501 (c)(3), tax-exempt organization. Contributions are tax deductible.

Photo upper right courtesy Alan George. Overview of collapsed rooves and throng of people behind school. Aberfan, 1966.

Photo Youtube IC Rapoport, Aberfan, 1966

Appreciation

Many thanks to Hillary Hoffman, Jay Lord and George for advising me on this latest grant application for Aberfan. For their clear minds and guidance as I dug my way from the poetic to the precise. Here’s a little bit:

‘Aberfan is an elegy not only for the people of Aberfan who suffered the loss of a generation and the “wounded soul of the Welsh” who saw “their beautiful country being destroyed when the coal mines came to the valleys”, (BBC Radio 4) but for our world, besieged by an unbridled industry pillaging the land and capitalizing on its riches for individual gain. The tragedy of Aberfan and the music it informed manifest the abject sorrow and rage resulting from the devastating human and environmental impacts of the fossil fuel industry, more recently embodied by mountaintop-removal coal mining and fracking to extract natural gas. This project confronts and aims to disrupt our complacency.

For the performance or installation of Aberfan, we need money to create a studio recording and develop a design for the visual element.

To participate in helping make this project happen, contribute here: www.tinyurl.com/FundAberfan

BBC Radio 4 program produced by Maggie Ayre.