Cities And Memory

Durei-na-mbwe song (late evening performance).From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a large collection of reel-to-reel tape recordings of music and soundscapes made by ethnomusicologist Raymond Clausen mainly on the island of Malekula (Malampa Province) in Vanuatu between 1960 and 1979.Recorded by Raymond Ernst Clausen.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

The work is inspired by the island’s natural beauty and by the evening songs, chants, and slit drum ceremonies of the Indigenous People of Vanuatu. The slit drums were carved from extraordinarily large, hollowed-out trees, often standing two or three times the height of the performers. The original recording was made over half a century ago, before the islands felt the first signs of rising seas. This piece offers a brief reflection on that earlier time. It opens with pitch-shifted slit-drum rhythms — deep and resonant like distant tympani — and ends with the eruption of a volcano on the nearby island of Tanna. Technical notes: The drums were pitch isolated and some were pitch shifted down. The entire performance was slightly put through resonant filters and reverb that corresponded closely to the pitch and key of the singers. The drum rhythms that occur through the piece helped integrate the singing with my additional melody.Durei-na-mbwe song reimagined by David Leith.———Part of the project A Century of So

Working on this project was very exciting for me for a number of reasons. Firstly, Oxford is my birthplace and my favourite museum is the Pitt Rivers Museum, so this was a particularly enticing opportunity. The thought of my music being archived there? Amazing!I was also excited to use my new knowledge of modular synthesis. A little risky, maybe, as I am quite new to it, but modular synthesis lends itself beautifully to the dreamy, hypnotic qualities the recording evokes. The track I chose felt very compelling, drawing the listener into a dreamlike world with its distant, echoey water drums. Although the boominess made it slightly challenging to work with, I decided not to EQ the original track, as I loved the distant, muffled quality. It felt like a heartbeat deep in the jungle.I used granular synthesis to fade sounds in and out, and to randomise some of the textures and frequencies enhancing this dreamlike atmosphere, while the melody represents a dragonfly flitting gently around as we relax.The glitchy so

Forest sounds with touraco (bird) and distant thunder.From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a large collection of cassette tape and digital audio tape recordings of Bayaka music and soundscapes made by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno mainly in the Central African Republic (and the Republic of Congo) between 1986 and 2009.Recorded by Louis Sarno.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

Jungle Rumble is my musical interpretation of the awesome force and fragile stillness found within a storm passing over the tropical forests of the Republic of Congo. I was inspired by the immense power of the thunder as it rolls through dense canopies echoing against the towering trees and the living sounds of the jungle.In contrast to this raw energy, I was also moved by the moments of quiet that settle between thunderclaps: the subtle stirrings of wildlife pausing, then reawakening. Through shifting energetic textures and beats, dynamic surges, accompanied by soothing harmony this composition seeks to capture that duality.It is an attempt to feature both the storm’s untamed intensity and an appreciation for the varying rhythms of nature.Touraco (bird) and distant thunder reimagined by Tom Thompson.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/c

This piece begins with a single recording: a forest soundscape captured by Louis Sarno in what is now the Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo, with birds, shifting air, and the distant rumble of a storm. The tape is not just a neutral document. It shows how sound can be taken, stored and studied. It is both a memory of a living environment and a product of the colonial era that collected and classified other people’s worlds.Bernard Stiegler writes about tertiary retention, the way human experience is stored in technical objects such as recordings. These objects extend our ability to remember and listen, but they also change and sometimes remove what they hold. Stiegler calls such technology a pharmakon, something that can be both harmful and helpful. The recording is a trace of a forest displaced, but it is also a way that forest continues to be heard.This composition works with that tension. It does not sample the sounds or remake them as material for a new track. Instead it tries to “stay wi

This was a haunting recording that warps and it sort of compliments the song that was being recorded at the time. I caught a psychedelic feel from the whole recording and first I chopped up the first few seconds and turned them into an amazing pad sample instrument which I've used in the second half, then continued to use the whole recording as a bed for the jazz instrumentation with the help of fellow composer Cristina Marras, who gave a wonderful spoken word piece to the track.Zande war song and chorus reimagined by Wahinya.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a large collection of cassette tape and digital audio tape recordings of Bayaka music and soundscapes made by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno mainly in the Central African Republic (and the Republic of Congo) between 1986 and 2009.Recorded by Louis Sarno.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

This piece was created in response to an archival field recording made by Louis Sarno among the Bayaka people of the Central African Republic. Instead of using the recording as musical material to be featured in the piece, I chose to use it as a generative constraint. I intended to have a single piece of audio from which the entire composition could be created. The original recording and its history also prompted me to think about listening as a form of attention. How sounds emerge from the environment, and how attention shifts as focus drifts. In this way, I imagine the piece resembling a strange forest which the listener passes through, encountering different sounds as they move on their way and attention drifts. All the sounds in the piece originate from the original field recording. I processed the recording through my modular synth, producing a new set of sounds that were then recorded into a DAW. My usual practice is to perform with the modular synth, recording the output as the finished work. However,

When I originally tried to work with this song, a dance of the U’wa people of the cloud forests of north-east Colombia, I kept hitting walls. It was the hardest track I have ever tried to create. I had a niggling feeling that this dance may be a sacred song to the U’wa, who are still singing and dancing their songs. I was aware I had no permission from the U’wa people to use or alter it. Sacred songs, after all, are seen to be alive.  So I stepped back and found a new way into the track. I researched the many, incredibly beautiful names of some of the hummingbirds of Columbia, and voila! my song fell into place. In the tradition of many original intact cultures it is the humans who, through their singing and ceremony, sing the Earth back to life. So in this vein I like to think that saying the names of these exquisite birds is, in some small way, honouring them and reminding us of their existence. To create the track I recite these poetic names of these birds and accompany this simply with humming. The track

From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a collection of wax cylinder recordings of Zande songs, dances and spoken language made by social anthropologist Edward Evans-Pritchard in South Sudan between 1928 and 1930.Recorded by Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

 Imagine tuning a radio time-machine dial between the past and present of the Zambezi River valley; birds weave a tapestry in and out of the soundscape as static, magnetic drift, crosstalk and interference rise and fall with the signals in the atmosphere. The foundation of this mix, an original recording in the Pitt Rivers Museum collection, is a radio broadcast of singing and drumming by an unidentified group circa 1965, in the first years of Zambia's independence and the period of transition from colonial broadcasting structures to a national network. The available information is minimal; a single scrap of paper tells us the recording is "starring Stephen & Pio". During the copying process one of the reels of tape was accidentally overprinted, so that one track runs backwards while another simultaneously runs forward. In my reimagined mix this glitch leads us through history and memory, the reversed rhythms of backwards magnetic tape conducting an aural transition back into the past.  In the 1970s the

From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a large collection of cassette tape and digital audio tape recordings of Bayaka music and soundscapes made by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno mainly in the Central African Republic (and the Republic of Congo) between 1986 and 2009.Recorded by Louis Sarno.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

U'wa Cobaria dance from the Andes in north-east Colombia.From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a collection of reel-to-reel recordings of U'wa songs and stories made by anthropologist Ann Osborn in the Northern Andes (Sierra Nevada del Cocuy region) in Colombia between 1969 and 1977.Recorded by Ann Osborn.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

While artist-in-residence at the Alice Boner Institute in Varanasi, India, I was lucky to hear chanting every day - nearly all day. The chanting is sacred - but it is also joyous. I wanted to capture that.Women singing reimagined by Paul Beaudoin.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

Bantu songs from Zambia: recording of a selection of Bantu songs and music, including drumming, issued by the Zambia Broadcasting Corporation.From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being one of a small number of recordings issued or released by foreign broadcasting corporations or radio associations.Recorded by Zambia Broadcasting Corporation.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

I came to this field recording by chance, yet I still remember the first time I listened to it, standing in my kitchen with headphones on, looking out the window. The second I pressed play, the singing moved me; it was abstract to me, yet full of movement, texture, and power. As I listened multiple times, different sounds and tones in the singing became noticeable. The sound felt alive and overpowering in a positive way. Later, the question for me was how to respond to this recording.The process of creating the piece was slow at first; it took several deep listening sessions of the original recording, along with jotting down any ideas on how to proceed. Then, in a brainstorming session, I paired listening with drawing. I started with no preconceived notion of an outcome, just unrestricted flow. It was then that the piece's overall concept and structure became clear to me. Drawing helped visualise the number of elements the piece would have and their interactions and relationships with one another.In this pie

From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a collection of reel-to-reel recordings of music and spoken language (principally Thulung Rai) made by anthropologist Nicholas Allen in Nepal and India between 1970 and 1981.Recorded by Nicholas Justin Allen.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

Mamadu playing the geedal (bow harp) in the forest with the sound of rain dripping. From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a large collection of cassette tape and digital audio tape recordings of Bayaka music and soundscapes made by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno mainly in the Central African Republic (and the Republic of Congo) between 1986 and 2009.Recorded by Louis Sarno.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

The development of this piece was particularly complicated for reasons I can’t fully explain. I tried various jumping off points, taking sections of the initial harmonica melody, and working on that with counter-melodies, call and response, writing on melodica and piano, working with voice, manipulating the original melodic phrasing, and nothing stuck for quite a while. Then I left the ideas alone for some time and began working on a parallel piece for the Cities and Memory Autumn Project and this helped free something up….I continued by retuning, and taking individual notes from the original recording out - keeping some of the melodic phrasing intact, but slowing it down and spacing it out. This forced a more mellow approach overall, and at this point I took a lot of elements back out again to give more space. At the same time, I worked with Nicky, my collaborator, on developing piano parts and this really helped to ground the work. From then onwards it was a much smoother process, and I could intuit a dire