Cities And Memory

My chosen sound was a sample of a geedal (bow harp) being played in the forest with accompanying male voices, recorded in Dzanga-Sangha Special Reserve. by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno in 1987. I was drawn to the sample on account of its musicality, not just in terms of the music and vocals, but the lilting patter of conversation and laughter that resonates in these conversational intervals, conveying a joyfulness and inferred novelty and humour at being recorded. At its base level it is so distinctly human and as such I wanted to use as much of the original recording as the instrumental basis for my reimagined soundscape. I began this process by splitting out the voices from the instrumental elements and selected a section of the instrumentation which I stretched and slowed to see what kinds of sounds and rhythms I could split out further and loop. This first iteration resembled the roar and might of the sea, which is ironic as the Dzanga-Sangha Special Reserve is located in the land locked country of the