Waywords and Meansigns

Waywords and Meansigns: Recreating Finnegans Wake (In Its Whole Wholume) is a musical adaption of James Joyce's highly experimental novel Finnegans Wake. Based in eastern Canada and produced by Derek Pyle, Waywords and Meansigns is a collaborative project: 17 different musicians from around the world have each taken on a chapter of Finnegans Wake to set to music, unabridged.^{[1] [2]} James Joyce was very interested in music, and incorporated musical references in much of his work (see James Joyce#Joyce and music).

Finnegans Wake is an unusual and notoriously difficult text. By setting Joyce's book to music, Waywords and Meansigns hoped to make the Wake more accessible to newcomers.^[3] As described by Mark Traynor, Managing Director of the James Joyce Centre in Dublin, “the aural textures and rhythms of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake are intrinsic to its structure, so much so that early supporters of the work like Eugéne Jolas stressed the vitality of its ‘musical flow’. Waywords and Meansigns have embraced that principle and will no doubt help to spread the weird wordy world of the Wake to new audiences.”^[4] As such, Waywords and Meansigns is an example of how the digital humanities have embraced James Joyce and Finnegans Wake^[5]

The project currently includes two separate editions, to be distributed freely under creative commons licensing via the project's website. The first edition features contributions from microtonal saxophonist Hayden Chisholm, Canadian painter Robert Amos, and fiddler Tim Carbone of the band Railroad Earth.^{[6] [7] [8] [9]} The first edition also features a number of persons associated with Hampshire College's experimental music program.^[10]

The second edition, premiering sometime in the winter of 2015, will feature contributions from punk bassists Mike Watt^{[11] [12]} and Simon Underwood, as well as esteemed producer David Kahne, and singer Mary Lorson.^[13]

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