Cities and Memory - remixing the world

This is a process-based piece, exploiting the conceptual connection with water. I applied a series of transformations to the original cassette recording, beginning with chopping and looping fragments of the sample, which I "played" back on a MIDI keyboard. I then collage the results, recording them on a multitrack cassette tape, next playing back and manipulating those recordings via a variable speed tape deck. Finally, those recordings were played back via a transducer affixed to a jug of water, and recorded with a hydrophone. 

The final composition slowly brings in various iterations towards the end of my composition, ending with a small unprocessed fragment of the original.

Bayaka group water drumming reimagined by Joseph Sannicandro.

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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 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.

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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

Musical boxes and cylinders: recording of European musical boxes and cylinders in the Pitt Rivers Museum's collections being played, including English, German and Swiss examples.

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.

Unknown recordist.

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 wax cylinder recordings of songs and spoken language made by anthropologist Northcote Thomas in Nigeria and Sierra Leone between 1909 and 1915.

Recorded by Northcote Whitridge Thomas.

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

This sonic work is an attempt to communicate my profound childhood relationship with Kano, as well as to hint at the complex layers of Northern Nigeria. It is a piece of strange juxtapositions, and cross-cultural interferences and vibrations. The sounds of ancient rock gongs in Birnin Kudu reverberating across the plains, beating out Hausa and Fulani rhythms and songs; the colonial British voice, a history of violence; and the beauty of the Hausa language. Sounds of my child self from 1970s, recorded 47 years ago, captured a bird call, and myself mimicking that bird, called Ragon Maza in the Hausa language. Beyond the hiss, which seems like a sonic version of the mists of time, you can hear the sounds at dusk, one evening of my childhood, the distant prayer call from Kano mosque, and the sounds of evening crickets. My flame tree seed pod, from our Kano garden, that has travelled the world with me in my suitcase, shimmies in the background. Kano beads, which you can hear, are glass beads that were made in Palestine, from Dead Sea salt, and sand, made in the glassmaking city of Al Khalil (current day Hebron), supplying glass beads that were traded in Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia and finally arrived in Kano city. Mine are green.

I have taken multiple fragments from a 5-inch reel tape recording, held in the Pitt Rivers Museum sound archive, recorded by Bernard Evelyn Buller Fagg, between June and September 1955, when he was working for the British Colonial administration. He was an archaeologist interested in rock gongs, and he came across several ancient caves, with rock gongs, and important cave paintings, in the area of Birnin Kudu, an old city with ancient history, in Northern Nigeria, that was once part of Kano state. He invited local drummers to see if the rock gongs could match their traditional drums and rhythms. 

The various sections included sounds of the ‘string drum’ or Kalangu drum, a Hausa talking drum, the rhythm of the Tambari, used to greet chiefs and emirs. And many other local songs, and numerous types of drumming. I picked the ones that I loved most. Where possible I have tried to pair the rhythm on rock gongs with the rhythm on the drum itself. I interweave the glitches from the 1955 recording, as sonic interference - colonial interference, or my own presence, or maybe its the sound of tuning into the past.

Umar Shamsi Muhammad, a university student, helped me gather additional sounds, from the Birnin Kudu caves. He captured sounds of students and curators beating the rock gongs in the main caves, of Mesa and Habude, and interviewed an historian, Umar Farouk Abubakar. You can hear two fragments of this interview, as well as a Hausa / Fulani flute player and drummer, playing the Koroso dance in the caves. In the centre of this piece are the sounds of the actual Tambari drum, and the exhilarating sound of the double reed wind instrument called the Algaita, played recently in Kano, for the greeting of the Emir of Kano.

You can understand all about how Nigeria was created, by reading the excellent book by Max Siollun, called What Britain Did To Nigeria. I have included a quote from a British soldier who was part of the battle for the Sokoto Caliphate in March 1903, who describes the battle as "some slaughter, much fun". A British officer explains: "we chase and kill until the area is clear of living men - and we tire of blood and bullets".

Rock gong music from Nigeria reimagined by Salma Ahmad Caller.

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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 was made onto wax cylinder between 1928 and 1930. Sudan has a very turbulent past - a history of trading in slaves and ivory, a number of different administrations, a policy of separate development compared to North Sudan leading to a period of neglect. It's a forgotten history that really needs more prominence.

This inspired my approach in a number of ways. I tried to achieve a respectful balance between preserving and retaining the original recording in its original context as much as possible whilst using modern software and techniques. I decided to use the recording as the sole sound source for my composition. 

I used a number of samplers, granulators, loopers, delays and send effects. This was to present parts of the recording like echoes of the past or forgotten memories, including a kind of lost radio broadcast returning from the past; finding new rhythms and harmonies within the recording; exploring melodies and dissonances within the recording whilst highlighting and retaining parts of the original recording. 

Zande songs to accompany grinding of crops reimagined by Andy Lyon.

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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

Bayaka group water drumming, with rhythm changes.

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

"A Subject in a World Full of Objects" is a brief liaison (around St. Valentine’s Day 1977) between a collection of European musical boxes and a slightly jaded gentleman archivist. The devices he is tasked with recording served as elegant salon entertainment for social occasions, aided musical democratisation and were vessels for cherished memories, and carry a huge weight of human stories within them.

Wrangling a reel-to-reel tape deck and microphone, our archivist removes the collection from stasis one by one, noting their type, condition and the artisan or company that constructed them. His day is crowded by a rich litany of sounds - pieces of music punched on metal discs and cylinders, the creaking of wooden cases, reed combs, organ bellows, latches, hand-cranks, whistles, mechanical birds, traffic. He documents them phlegmatically in all their tinkling, jangling, hooting, chiming, clattering glory.

The piece uses no sound sources other than the original recording - the instruments in joyous, discordant reanimation and wistful sentimentality juxtaposed by the reserved tones of a man impervious to their charms. I hope it is a whimsical tribute to the museum's collection, to the people who preserve it, and to our collective cultural fascination with nostalgia, music and mechanics.

Musical boxes and cylinders reimagined by Emmy Lambert.

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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

For this track, I worked on a ten-minute recording of a conversation between two Inuit women. My usual approach is to research the context to inform the mood, then manipulate the original recording until it tells me its secrets.

Greenland has always fascinated me since I saw that large white island on my school atlas. Interested in the dark history and the resilience of its people, I wanted to convey a dark, yet hopeful atmosphere. While researching, I discovered the Katajjaq, a unique throat-singing game, to which I paid tribute here.

More details on the production: https://thefigurehead.substack.com 

Haldora Davidsen in conversation reimagined by the figurehead.

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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 wax cylinder recordings of songs and spoken language made by anthropologist Northcote Thomas in Nigeria and Sierra Leone between 1909 and 1915.

Recorded by Northcote Whitridge Thomas.

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