Cities And Memory

Jimadores cutting agave at Tequila. Stereo 48kHz 24bit. UNESCO listing: Agave Landscape and Ancient Industrial Facilities of Tequila Recorded by Erick Ruiz Arellano. ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights. Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

"When I first listened to the field recording, I was drawn to its spatial rendering, which made me curious to learn more about the place and its surroundings. Historically, it functioned both as an orphanage and a hospital, with certainly thousands traces of stories. This history, along with the architecture, inspired me to explore the relational characteristics of frequencies, materials, and memories. Also, I’ve always been fascinated by how a cathedral's dome is designed to shape frequencies, creating what could be described as "the song of the angels.". So I started to engage with the volume and height of the space, imagining how sound might behave within it—how frequencies would rapidly reflect across various distances, spreading in all directions within the massive structure of the Hospicio Cabañas in Guadalajara. "I think I engaged with Sonic Heritage by focusing on the relational and spatial aspects of sound within historically and culturally significant environments. By interpreting and exploring the

"The bells of Morelia Cathedral ring out from a beautiful baroque building of pink stone. The deep, rich sounds of these bells was the first inspiration for the piece. But, when I think of the Mexican Baroque, I immediately think of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, so this piece also takes inspiration from her poem Primero Sueño. The whispered text is excerpted from the poem itself, while the sung text is a dreamlike response – a last dream, rather than a first.  I’m drawn to bells because of their rich waves of overtones. To make the sonic bed for the piece, I took the original field recording of the bell and manipulated it to bring out the small details these overtones. The original bell is accompanied by my own recordings of smaller bells, the strings of a piano, and a low cello drone. I am singing my poetic response to Sor Juana in a style inspired by early chant. The piece concludes with the original field recording. Cathedral bells at Morelia reimagined by Kamala Sankaram. ——————— This sound is part of th

"I have never experienced Día de los Muertos in Oaxaca firsthand, but I have always been inspired by the spirit of this ritualistic celebration. A day of gathering—of families, friends, and ancestors—where the entire community comes together to share food, music, memories, and stories, surrounded by vibrant colors of flowers and costumes. This holiday seems to me a beautiful and consoling way to engage with death, to mourn the departed, and to reflect on the transience of life. "The field recording captures voices, likely of people gathered in a cemetery. These are joyful sounds. Their density suggests a large crowd of all ages coming together. By applying filtering techniques, I extracted pitches and harmonies from these recordings. As a symbol of ephemerality, I chose the conch shell: an instrument with sacred and ancient associations—with the sea, with the call to prayer, with the underworld, the moon, fertility, and the wind god Ehécatl, who had the power to breathe life into a void. Its haunting sound e

Interior of Hospicio Cabañas, tourist voices with long acoustic reverb. Stereo 48kHz 24bit. UNESCO listing: Hospicio Cabañas, Guadalajara Recorded by Erick Ruiz Arellano. ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights. Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

Cathedral bells at Morelia. Stereo 48kHz 24bit. UNESCO listing: Historic Centre of Morelia Recorded by Erick Ruiz Arellano. ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights. Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

Day of the death at Panteón General cemetery at Oaxaca. Stereo 48kHz 24bit. UNESCO listing: Historic Centre of Oaxaca and Archaeological Site of Monte Albán Recorded by Erick Ruiz Arellano. ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights. Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

"The creation of this piece began with a binaural recording from Petra, Jordan—a place steeped in history, where the whispers of the past still resonate in the present. As soon as I listened back to the recording, I was struck by its depth and atmosphere. The natural reverberations of the ancient rock-cut city, the distant murmur of voices, the footsteps on stone—all these elements felt alive, carrying an almost cinematic quality. It immediately sparked an idea: to craft a sound collage that blends these organic textures with spoken word, downtempo beats, and ambient layers. "What stood out most in the field recording was its immersive quality. The binaural technique captured not just the sounds themselves but the space around them. The way sound interacts with Petra’s towering sandstone walls—bouncing, fading, and morphing—created a natural sonic landscape that felt rich and evocative. There’s something profoundly intimate about listening to a place in this way, as if you’re standing right there, experienci

"The source field recording is combined with found sounds and field recordings made at a 1965 Hiroshima anti-nuclear protest, a 1968 Tokyo student protest, as well as street performances and 'happenings' presented between 1960 and 1970. "Tobata, an industrial port in southern Japan, was often the site of such demonstrations and protests, many of which were related to the Anpo struggle (安保闘争, Anpo tōsō). "One of the most infamous moments of the Anpo struggle was the 'Hagerty Incident', in which U.S. Ambassador to Japan Douglas MacArthur II (the nephew of the famous general) deliberately provoked an international incident by ordering his car to be driven into a large crowd of protesters. The provocation backfired and chaos ensued. "The right of people to gather and protest, celebrate, or commemorate is a fundamental right with cultural, political, and social significance. The sounds we create in doing so are an essential part of our sonic heritage." Tobata lantern festival reimagined by Simon Kennedy. IMAG

"The butterfly effect: weeping and flying; llorando y volando: mariposas monarcas "What is the sound of butterflies? What is the sound of butterflies? What is the sound of millions and millions of monarch butterflies as they open wings and ascend into the air? What is the sound of zero monarch butterflies?  "Monarch butterflies have been part of my life for over 30 years in two places in North America that I have called home (both places of migration from my childhood home of Britain). I have experienced eastern monarcas in their tens of millions in the high forested mountains of the state of Michoacán, Mexico, where the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve is located. I have experienced a few western monarchs in the eucalyptus trees on the cliffs above the Pacific Ocean, in Goleta, California, where the Ellwood Monarch Butterfly Reserve is located. Both the State of Michoacán and the City of Goleta use the gorgeous orange and black form of the monarca butterfly as their logo.  "In Michoacán, Mexico, these

On a warm summer evening crowds line the streets to watch the opening ceremony of the Tobata Gion lantern festival. Several floats can be heard passing as they march through the town.  UNESCO listing: Yama, Hoko, Yatai, float festivals in Japan Recorded by Thomas Martin Nutt. IMAGE: JKT-c, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights. Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

Petra Anamnetic presents a stratophonic acoustic mapping of the Petra world heritage archaeological site, located in southern Jordan. This locale has traditionally belonged to the Bedouin B’doul tribe, a clan that continues to play an eminent role within the tourist industry, which is of central importance to the area’s economy. The piece has been recorded ambisonically and rendered binaurally – it is intended to be disseminated via headphones, replicating the immersive and interactive experience of audition in a ‘real’ space. Petra Anamnetic juxtaposes two main elements: (1) a conversation between two B’doul shepherd children tending their goats in one of the many caves that are characteristic of the area and (2) the sound of the evening call to prayer recorded from a hotel rooftop patio in nearby Wadi Musa, the main access point for most of the many tourists visiting Petra. Via the juxtaposition and creative manipulation of these two recordings, Petra Anamnetic aims to foreground the complex strata embedde

Monarch butterfly sanctuary, El Rosario. Stereo 48kHz 24bit. UNESCO listing: Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve Recorded by Erick Ruiz Arellano. ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights. Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

Hike a little beyond the main section of Nara Park in Japan, and you enter the Kasugayama Primeval Forest – also part of the Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara UNESCO site. If you are there during the off season and early enough in the morning, it is possible to hear the forest itself, as the monks and pilgrims of old must have done. This recording was made on 13 December, 2024 on the popular hiking trail that winds up to the summit of Wakakusayama Hill. Although there is a background hum from the city, it primarily captures the sounds of the forest – bird song, trees rustling and wind – but at the start of the recording you can also hear the footsteps of a single hiker on the gravel path as they pass me. UNESCO listing: Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara Recorded by Lisa Germany. ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights. Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

This soundwalk was recorded in and around the streets of Siena in Tuscany. We begin in the narrow streets and end at the famous Piazza del Campo, the town's central square and home to the biannual horse race the "palio". UNESCO listing: Historic City of Siena Recorded by Colin Hunter. ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights. Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

"The field recording reminds me to listen to the world around in nature and juxtaposed with the sounds of diaspora and migration, it captures the spirit behind the audio - of birds communicating with the audience and with each other, of light footsteps through a forest preserved in present day. Why are other forests not given the same status and how can we preserve the forests and rivers that make up our land? "I imagine walking through a forest that is preserved and capturing its sounds the same way as we walk through an urban setting , with people, calls to prayer, grackles, frog sounds, etc. Each recording shared in this piece is captured during my travels and visiting home in Lahore, Pakistan and living between Houston, Texas. "I've used various recordings and I use a simple phone recorder to record my sounds as I travel and I overlaid these pieces to capture the concept of migration and diaspora through sound and to layer the original track in the backdrop as a loop. The sounds of the birds play with t

"The sound in my piece is made by striking the inside of an empty prosecco tank in an Italian winery. I created this piece using Ableton and wanted to make something that only used the original sample and no other additional sounds. I used the sampler and granulator to manipulate and edit the sound and then worked to create a short ambient piece that retained some of the character of the original sound whilst taking it somewhere new. "I was very inspired by the vastness and grandeur of the original sound and was curious to explore it in a more intimate setting, imagining the 'inner life' of the empty wine tanks. Some of the sounds did not behave as I wanted to or expected, but I went with the glitchiness and imagined that the barrels were gently telling me their story rather than me trying to uncover it for them, what resulted was a new kind of intimate and nostalgic fragility emerging from what was originally a quite bold and brash sound." Prosecco wine tanks reimagined by Katie Chatburn. ——————— This so

"The field recording was interesting to me as it revealed more after several listens. It was a combination of louder, more dynamic voices/human/environmental sounds, and some much more subtle parts. It made me feel like I was visiting another place which I found compelling, and I appreciated the inconsistent sounds and spaces captured. In the composition I wanted to marry abstractions with more concrete, yet simple melodic phrases, so that the listener can move along with the story of the moments captured in the original recording, but at the same time they can also tune into something musical if they want to.  "I wanted the music to ebb and flow like the field recording itself, encouraging reflection on this one unique position in space and time when these sounds came together, to stop and be drawn into something and consider the geography, history, and presence of what can be heard in the final work. Who do we hear and what is their story? and what does what we hear tell us about the place, this historic w

The "seggiovia" chairlift up to a rifugio in Pescul, in the Dolomites on a hot summer afternoon. The sound of the clicking, whirring chairlift interrupts the sounds of buzzing insects and light breeze, and symbolises the intrusion of human construction and entertainment into the natural environments of the mountains.  UNESCO listing: The Dolomites Recorded by Cities and Memory. ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights. Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

In the heart of Isfahan, Iran, the beauty of Naqsh-e Jahan Square comes alive at sunset, where the fountain glimmers under the fading light, accompanied by the chant of the muezzin in the background. UNESCO listing: Meidan Emam, Esfahan Recorded by Azadeh Nilchiani. ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights. Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage