Cities and Memory - remixing the world

This piece is built around a field recording from the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum of Berber beggars singing for charity.

Listening to this recording, across time, what struck me was not difference but familiarity. Themes of begging, homelessness and poverty recur in traditional songs from all cultures, spanning the centuries. Despite differences in place, language and technology, poverty, hunger, social injustice, and the vulnerability that comes with these things, remains constant.

Through my organisation in Whitby, Flash Company Arts, I frequently work with people experiencing homelessness and fragile economic circumstances. Hearing this recording, made more than 60 years ago, felt uncomfortably relevant to my daily work. These voices could belong to anyone, anywhere, right now.

The lyric “A Begging I Will Go” is borrowed from an ancient English folk song, first printed on a black-letter broadside in 1684. And still today, all over the world, people wake each morning to the same words: A begging I will go.

Nothing changes.

Beggars singing for charity reimagined by Rebecca Denniff (Subphotic).

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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

"Sapeh (type of three-stringed boat lute) being played": the instrument was recorded in Sarawak by collector Leslie Bennett.

From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being one of a small number of recordings of the musical instruments in the institution's collections being played or discussed.

Recorded by W. Leslie Bennett.

Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.

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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 collection of reel-to-reel tape recordings of Berber (Ait Haddidu) music and soundscapes made by members of the Oxford University Expedition to the Atlas Mountains of Southern Morocco in 1961.

Recorded by Audrey Butt, Michael R. Emerson or Ralph Hudson Johnson.

Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.

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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.

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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 listened to the piece and researched any historical links between Plymouth, my home town and Sarawak, were the original recording by Leslie Bennet was made.

It turns out there were three white "Rajahs" of Sarawak and they were members of the Brooke dynasty: James Brooke, who founded the rule in 1841; his nephew Charles Brooke, who succeeded him; and Charles' son, Charles Vyner Brooke. Although not from Plymouth, all three of the “Rajahs of Sarawak” are buried in the small churchyard of St Leonard's at Sheepstor on Dartmoor, just outside of Plymouth. James Brooke did at one time set sail from Plymouth in 1838, arriving at Sarawak the following year.

The name for Sarawak means the land of the hornbill. This piece is an ode to this journey.

I listened to the recording of the Sapeh and learnt the rough pentatonic scale used. I isolated a few segments and tried them on guitar to get the ideas flowing. The recording of the Sapeh is sampled and utilise throughout the piece. At times I have used it to double the bass line or to give a new melody line or rhythm.

The main “nautical” melody is built upon a four bar segment of the original recording. The clicks and resonance of the instrument are also used to give some ambience and texture. I have used acoustic guitars, hand drums, mandolin, electric guitars, sequenced midi instruments and drums using GarageBand. I also used open source recordings of seagulls in Plymouth and Hornbills in Sarawak.

Sapeh (three-stringed boat lute) reimagined by Daniel Chudley - Le Corre.

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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 field recording that inspired this composition features a Bayaka musician playing the geedal, an instrument whose sound is deeply connected to the forest, communal memory, and oral transmission. When I first listened to the recording, what struck me was not only the melody, but the space around it: the breath, the rhythm, and the sense of conversation between the player, the instrument, and the environment. The geedal, whose timbre closely resembles the adeudeu from Western Kenya, where I come from, felt less like a solo instrument and more like a voice embedded within a living ecosystem. This immediately shaped my approach to the composition, not as a reinterpretation that dominates the original or places it in the background, but as a dialogue with it, allowing the geedal to remain the bed of the music.

As a Kenyan artist working across traditional African instruments and contemporary production, I was drawn to reimagine the recording in a way that honours its origins while allowing it to travel across geographies and time. I approached the piece asking how I could respond musically without erasing the cultural specificity of the Bayaka sound world, while also connecting it to my own cultural lineage as a Luhya artist from Western Kenya. The similarities between the geedal and the adeudeu created a natural bridge, making it possible to situate the composition within a shared African sonic language.

Technically, the field recording became the anchor of the piece. Rather than heavily manipulating it, I preserved the geedal’s texture and rhythmic integrity. In collaboration with my friend and producer, Ambrose Akwabi of Mandugu Digital, we conducted additional research on the Bayaka people to better understand their world, sounds, and musical techniques. Through this research, we chose to reimagine the work through an East African lens, reflecting my Kenyan background and Ambrose’s experience as a Kenyan based in Tanzania. We noticed strong sonic and rhythmic similarities between the Bayaka, the Luhya community, and the Wagogo of Tanzania.

We began by stripping the original recording of its vocal elements, leaving only the geedal, which we looped and layered with bass, hi-hats and muffled snare, and a restrained kick. I recorded shakers and udu to introduce a watery, grounding texture, and added my voice in response to the phrasing and emotional tone of the original performance. Chants were used intentionally, with lyrics written in Luhya to echo the ancestral roots of the piece. The words narrate the story of the Bayaka people as custodians who have resisted disconnection from the forest and from nature. Ultimately, this composition is an offering: a bridge between regions, traditions, and listening practices, inviting the listener to experience the geedal not as an artifact, but as a living, resonant voice.

Balonyona playing the geedal (bow harp) reimagined by Liboi.

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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 recording I worked with was pure beauty. A simple, pure sound of a conch shell being played - according to my further research, these conches can be hand-stopped to produce different notes and tones, and when played on the reefs in Vanuatu, can “make the whole reef resonate in sympathy”.

Conch shells are also used ceremonially, for instance, to celebrate and denote the quality of boars that are killed for meals as part of a ceremony called Maki. A sound of beauty, then, but also of ceremonial significance - a treasure.

At the same time, the sound reminded me irrevocably of a piece called “Conch Calling” from one of the ambient albums that’s had the greatest influence on how I think about music, Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel by Stuart Dempster. On this album, trombonist Dempster takes a troupe of musicians into a two-million gallon underground cistern, with a naturally cavernous reverb that turns the simplest melodic patterns into some of the deepest, most beautiful drones you’ve ever heard.

I wanted to respect - and highlight - the naked beauty of the pure sound from the original recording, and at the same time to imagine a duet across time and space, between conch shells from Vanuatu, and 21st-century synthesisers. Ancestral drone music, paired with today’s ambient music. This piece is built, respectfully, around a repeated 12-second loop of the conch shell, which remains throughout, while synthesisers and arpeggios paint the air around it. This is a duet for conch shell and two synthesisers. Writing it, I was held in a moment forever, and I hope it brings a moment of stillness and contemplation for the listener too.

Natar (song) on conch and musket reimagined by Cities and Memory.

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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 project is inspired by a 1958 field recording of a Bamum girl singing a religious song in Fumban, West Region, Cameroon, recorded by Lois Mitchson on a ¾-inch reel tape. The archival voice forms the emotional and conceptual core of the project. The recording of the young girl singing praises about the Sultan Njoya who was part of the monarchy which dates back to the fourteenth century, is sampled and fused with layered percussion, reflecting the rhythmic richness of traditional African music, where percussion functions as both structure and communal expression. 

The title “Mwana Wevhu”, meaning “Child of the Soil” in Shona, draws from my Zimbabwean heritage and speaks to ancestry, land, and spirituality. Musically rooted in 3-step house, a South African subgenre of electronic music, the project blends Central African archival sound and culture, Southern African rhythm, and Zimbabwean language and identity. This intentional cross-regional fusion symbolises the idea that Africa is one, diverse in culture yet deeply interconnected. “Mwana Wevhu” bridges past and present, tradition and innovation, using music as a unifying force.

Bamum girl singing religious song reimagined by NdiniBeatz.

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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.

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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

Natar (song) with Markany Lei on conch and Wani on musket.

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.

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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