From Sound to Screen: The World of Nick Dwyer

Nick Dwyer has spent much of his life chasing sound.

For more than 30 years, the New Zealand-born writer, director and music historian has followed music across countries, communities and cultures. What began in radio at the age of 14 grew into directing and hosting his own television series, exploring global culture and social history through the lens of music. From Kingston and Rio to Ghana and Argentina, his passion eventually took him to more than 70 countries before settling in Japan in 2014.

At the heart of it all is his curiosity. “I was chasing the thrill of hearing new music. That’s been at the core of what I do my whole life,” Nick says. For Nick, music is rarely just something to listen to. It can be an entry point into a place, a moment in history or a community. He wants to understand what surrounds it, who made it, where it came from and what it can reveal about the people and cultures behind it. That instinct has kept him traveling, researching and following sounds into unexpected places.

Sometimes, curiosity becomes obsession. An idea takes hold and Nick follows it wherever it leads, often through years of research and relationships with the people whose stories he hopes to tell. It is this persistence, and the need to understand and share what he discovers, that eventually brings many of these ideas to the screen.

His approach to cinema grows from that immersion. By the time a camera enters the picture, Nick already has a strong sense of the story he wants to tell, leaving space to focus on the details and unexpected moments that bring it to life. Sound is considered from the beginning, informing the rhythm and pacing as much as the images themselves. Working closely with cinematographer Tim Flower, Nick approaches documentary with the same attention he would give a cinematic narrative, creating work intended to be “sonically immersive” while still feeling cinematic.

Since settling in Japan, this way of working has drawn him into very different worlds: a centuries-old tradition of listening to insects as music, intimate spaces devoted to the art of listening to records, and a collective exploring sound through ritual, tradition and communal music-making.

This December, those fascinations come together in The Fields through three films across three nights. Each opens onto a different culture of listening, before live music carries its spirit beyond the screen.

Wonderfruit’s collaboration with Nick began through a shared curiosity around music, culture and the ways sound can bring people together. After discovering his work through Yussef Dayes: Live in Tokyo and later A Century in Sound, conversations quickly opened the possibility of bringing Nick’s approach to cinema into The Fields.

Wonderfruit came on board while The Insect Musicians was already in production, supporting Nick as he explored Japan’s centuries-old culture of listening to insects as music. The collaboration grew from there with the commissioning of a documentary based on the legendary Geinoh Yamashirogumi, which will be a new film directed by Nick Dwyer and produced by Wonderfruit. Completing the three is A Century in Sound: Episode 4 “Nightingale,” part of Nick’s decade-long exploration of Japan’s ongaku kissa, which will be screening for the first time in Southeast Asia at Wonderfruit.

But bringing these films to Wonderfruit is about more than screening them. For Nick, the collaboration offers another way for cinema to be experienced. Rather than watching alone or through a laptop, these films are made to be encountered together, in a real environment and through sound systems capable of giving sound the same presence as the image.

“I want people to experience these films in a real environment, together, and over incredible speakers,” he says. “I want people to get moved.”

Each screening therefore becomes the beginning of an evening rather than its conclusion. Live musicians and sound artists respond to the ideas within the film, carrying its narrative beyond the screen and take on new life among Wonderers.

The Insect Musicians l Thursday, 3 December | Forest Stage

The Insect Musicians began with a window opening.

While traveling through northern Japan in search of jazz kissa and listening bars, Nick was staying at a small inn in Hiraizumi during the rainy season. When the rain stopped, he opened his window. Frogs began calling, followed by birds and insects, until what he heard became “this orchestra of
small creatures.” It moved him to tears. After a lifetime spent chasing music around the world, he realized that some of the most beautiful music was already being made by nature.

That encounter led Nick into the world of mushi-kiki, or insect listening, a Japanese tradition stretching back around 1,000 years. His research eventually brought him to a community where the practice continues and to the insect breeders, listeners and poets who still gather to hear these tiny musicians. Wonderfruit joined the project while the film was in production, helping support its journey to the screen.

For Nick, the landscape is more than a backdrop. “The environment is the character,” he explains. The film moves into the insects’ world, revealing humans and other living things as inhabitants of the same landscape.

At Wonderfruit, that relationship extends beyond the screen. The Insect Musicians plays outdoors at Forest Stage, where the film’s chorus of insects meets those already living among the trees of The Fields.

The night continues with Masayoshi Fujita, Manami Kakudo, Yuka Mizuhara and Akaihirume, extending its exploration of listening and the natural world through live sound.

A Century in Sound: Episode 4 “Nightingale” l Friday, 4 December | Enfold

The following evening moves from the sounds of nature into the intimacy of a listening room.

Set against Japan’s economic recession and the upheaval of the 1990s, A Century in Sound: Episode 4 “Nightingale” follows Masaru Hatanaka and Bar Nightingale. Through Masaru’s story, the film traces both a changing moment in Japanese history and one man’s deeply personal search for a place where he
belongs.

Nick first told Masaru he wanted to make a film about his life in 2014. The episode was shot and edited in 2017, but his promise to share Masaru’s story has stayed with him ever since. “More than anybody, I want to do good on my promise to him that we’ll get it out in the world,” Nick says. 

That journey finally reaches Enfold, where the Nightingale episode premieres its first screening in Southeast Asia. Around it, Carl Stone, Eli Keszler, Jim O’Rourke & Eiko Ishibashi extend the musical world of Nightingale beyond the listening room and into The Fields.

A special preview of Geinoh Yamashirogumi l Sunday, 6 December | Baan Bardo

The final night expands from individual listening into a collective experience.

Directed by Nick and produced by Wonderfruit, the Geinoh Yamashirogumi film enters the world of the Japanese collective best known internationally for creating the soundtrack to Akira. Yet Geinoh Yamashirogumi reaches far beyond the conventional idea of a musical group. Its members include musicians alongside neuroscientists, researchers, ethnomusicologists and people from many different walks of life, brought together through a shared interest in folk traditions and the possibilities of collective music-making.

At Baan Bardo, the film becomes the starting point for this special preview of the WF x Nick Dwyer Geinoh Yamashirogumi project, an evening shaped around spiritual, devotional and trance-inducing sounds. Mong Tong and Howie Lee carry the conversation
beyond the screen through live musical performance.

Across the three nights, the act of listening keeps shifting. We begin among insects and the sounds of the natural world, move inside a listening room where music becomes a place of belonging, then enter the world of a collective exploring sound through ritual, tradition and shared expression.

Running through them is the same curiosity that has driven Nick for more than three decades. Listen closely enough to a sound and another story begins to emerge, about a person, a place, a community or an entire way of experiencing the world.

At Wonderfruit, those stories do not end when the screen goes dark. The films spill into their surroundings, artists respond and audiences gather to hear where they might lead next.

For Nick, the idea behind it is simple: “to bring people together through the power of cinema and sound.”