Riftweg — The Ridgeway is a Boersk travelling song: a piece for people setting out along the roads and high routes that connect one community with another.

The song grew from the Boersk world itself — its landscape, its movement between settlements, and the importance of journeys in carrying people, news, stories and knowledge across the country. But Riftweg is also particularly important as an example of Boersk in use. Rather than presenting the language as isolated vocabulary or grammar, it allows its sounds, rhythms and sentence patterns to unfold through a complete piece of connected text.

This recording also marks an important stage in the development of the language’s spoken form. The Boersk vocal performance is based upon a human recording made specifically to preserve the intended pronunciation and phrasing of the language, allowing the musical arrangement to grow around the spoken sound rather than asking an artificial voice to determine it.

In that sense, Riftweg sits at the meeting point between language and culture: a constructed language being used for the purpose for which languages ultimately exist — to carry human expression.