Forty Voices

There are no instruments. That’s the thing the picture cannot tell you. Forty men in a ring, arranged around a candelabra of oil lamps — and what you do not hear, because you are looking at a photograph, is that all forty of them are singing. The chant is the orchestra. Chak-chak-chak, in five interlocking parts, none of them resting at the same moment.

The picture during one of the rare held breaths — a beat between cycles.