Cities and Memory - remixing the world

Part of our Prison Songs project - see www.citiesandmemory.com/prisonsongs for full details.

Reimagined by Karhide.

Part of our Prison Songs project - see www.citiesandmemory.com/prisonsongs for full details.

Reimagined version of Rock Me Mama by Manuel Guerrero.

"'I imagine the prisoner’s life as a loop of hard work and a perpetual loneliness feeling. I have a very close familiar living there, and everything i can think about him it’s that there’s not a real difference between living on a prison and living on the ‘’free world’’: we are allowed just to do the things that other people permit us, pay bills on a deadline, and the control it’s almost the same. We are enclosed on cars, subway, on the school, office, in a impersonal communication with other ones, till the point that ‘’freedom’’ doesn’t really means something. We are close, at the way of life, with the people on jails even if we’ll be constantly drawing lines to separate the ‘’bad guys’’ from the ‘’good ones’’. "

Part of our Prison Songs project - see www.citiesandmemory.com/prisonsongs for full details.

Recorded at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in 1947 by Dr. Harry Oster. Courtesy Archive.org.

Part of our Prison Songs project - see www.citiesandmemory.com/prisonsongs for full details.

Reimagined by Haris Sahacic.

"It is a collective spirit that makes this sound event truth. I decided to distinguish all the sound sources and to „clean“ them out without changing the length of the recording or touching any bit of the tempo and the perfect rhythm. I believe that any change on this recording would just damage the impression of the truth. It is a document. So I just created one small difference between the leading voice and the chorus. In order to headline the rhythm I also isolated the sound of shovels. Of course train is symbol of movement and freedom, in Bosnia we use sometimes the term “train” as a metaphor for a chance or a woman: „either you catch that train boy or you stay alone“. The original recording was made in the field, but what I am missing are all those sounds of the field. That is how I found the space to play decently with the silence between the lines. I imagined the band of field insects that are improvising uninvited on the prison jam session in the field. In order to make the symbolic connection to the train, I organized the contributions of the „band“ sounding like an old train from 1940. I played a little with surround sound so that „band“ is all around. In one appropriate moment, I added the sound of the Mississippi Dove that is characteristic for the area where original recording was made and the bird sounds – when the male is inviting the female – like old train whistling, I found one short recording of this sound in the www and arranged it a little."

Part of our Prison Songs project - see www.citiesandmemory.com/prisonsongs for full details.

Reimagined by Barney Spigel.

Part of our Prison Songs project - see www.citiesandmemory.com/prisonsongs for full details.

Recorded at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in 1947 by Dr. Harry Oster. Courtesy Archive.org.

Part of our Prison Songs project - see www.citiesandmemory.com/prisonsongs for full details.

Reimagined by Andy Lyon.

""It might come as a surprise to some that I'm a massive blues fan so I wanted to create a song that wasn't contrived or gimmicky and was also sympathetic to the original.

My approach was to try and add a modern edge and some glitch to the blues sound. The fluidity of the processed recording weaves around a steady drum beat creating a tension at times.

I've used a cut-up approach to make elements of the song non-linear which I've interspersed with the original and I've also used Hollyhock's grain micro loop tool with random movement on a ring modulator effect fairly low in the mix to add some contrast and movement."

Part of our Prison Songs project - see www.citiesandmemory.com/prisonsongs for full details.

Recorded at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in 1947 by Dr. Harry Oster. Courtesy Archive.org.

Part of our Prison Songs project - see www.citiesandmemory.com/prisonsongs for full details.

Reimagined version of Old Dollar Mamie by Fernando Ramalho.

"There’s a sense of ambiguity in these chain gang songs. On the one hand, the brutal oppression; on the other hand the joy of singing together. I tried to capture that duality with two droning guitars that, at some point, melt with the original recording. The title –‘You better stay off ol' Parchman Farm’ – is a line by Bukka White, from his song ‘Parchman Farm’, the Mississippi State Penitentiary where White was a prisoner and Alan Lomax recorded several prison songs."

Part of our Prison Songs project - see www.citiesandmemory.com/prisonsongs for full details.

Reimagined version of Old Dollar Mamie by Leon von Bokhorst.

"I'm inspired by the way prisoners move time slowly forward by singing.

Every time metal hits the rock a single second of their jail time has past. One step closer to freedom.

The piece is about the struggle with time without freedom..."