SheTrades - Tea. Bags.

Being a female entrepreneur in a place where it is a new concept can be difficult. Timpanis transmit purpose, they mean business.

A dusty electric piano brings a sense of the past but as a memory. There is a fragility to it. Juxtaposed with the timpanis it gives a sense of the breadth our characters from gentle to tough. A gentleness is also brought out with glockenpiel memories, vibraphone echoes and wooden flute notes.

At one point Helen sings a fragment of a traditional song. Picking tea and making bags are very tactile endeavours, so I chose a hangdrum for the piece that expands the song that she sings, with strings - body of which is made of a plant - both plucked like the tea leaves or played tremolo as the tea bushes move while being picked of their leaves.

Rain and water feature quite prominently in this film too so the percussion instruments allude to this: gamelan puddles, hand drum rain on a window pane, timpani roll thunder.

Like the Mexico film, a female choir binds the sound together - again, Helen's company is all female. But these are modern stories, so it's a contemprary sound and there's a soul singer, a more powerful solo voice, as well as the more formal choir to carry the narritive forward and bind the series together.