Cities And Memory

 I developed my composition from the gentle hubbub of people inside the echoey library of one of the world’s great universities: the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)— the National Autonomous University of Mexico. In July 2007, UNESCO proclaimed the UNAM Central Library, along with the UNAM Campus as World Heritage sites. The recording was created by Mexican sound recordist par excellence Erick Ruiz Arrellano.  This simple spatial human reverberance at UNAM generated multiple sound memories for me, with intersecting  connections. The key connection is between my research on 1920s nationalism and the high energy Dance of the Old Men, from the P’urhépecha peoples of Michoacán; and Mexico’s current presidenta, Dr. Claudia Scheinbaum Pardo, who studied at, and was then a professor at UNAM, working on energy and climate change. For her undergraduate thesis she spent time in the P’urhépecha region working on energy and stoves.  My composition juxtaposes and interweaves various sonic fragments and thr