Cities And Memory

From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a collection of reel-to-reel recordings of music and spoken language (principally Thulung Rai) made by anthropologist Nicholas Allen in Nepal and India between 1970 and 1981.Recorded by Nicholas Justin Allen.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

From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a collection of reel-to-reel tape recordings of Chocó music and soundscapes made by students Jonathan Ambache and Richard Saumarez Smith in Colombia in 1965.Recorded by Jonathan Ambache and Richard Saumarez Smith.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

"Piano being played": recording of the second movement ('Sarabande') of solo piano suite 'Pour le piano' (L.95) by French composer Claude Debussy, performed by an unnamed pianist.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 in Vanuatu (and South Africa) between 1960 and 1979.Recorded by Raymond Ernst Clausen.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

Women singing and using grinding stones for musical accompaniment.From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a collection of cassette tape recordings of music and spoken language (principally Laarim) made by anthropologist Patti Langton in South Sudan during 1979 and 1980.Recorded by Patti Langton.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

Weaving song from the Gower Peninsula of South Wales, recited by Thomas Penniman, former Curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum, who was preparing a manuscript on 'Work and Song in the North-west Gower' in his retirement ("Mrs. Tanner had six sons, and they all sang like thrushes while they worked at the loom").From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being one of a number of miscellaneous individual recordings (rediscovered during a recent research project).Recorded by Robert P. Rivers and Kenneth Henry Walters.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

Silenced Soil begins with a fragile artefact: a recording of Claude Debussy’s Sarabande, composed in 1894 and revised in 1901, then recorded on 11 April 1963 in Gillitts, KwaZulu-Natal, by ethnomusicologist Raymond Clausen. Its only documentation is a handwritten note on a reel-to-reel tape box: “at Gillitt’s, copy of Debussy, Sarabande.” No pianist, no studio, no context. The archive offers little clarity. Sometimes it keeps its silence.Listening to this recording in 2025, I was confronted not only by sound, but by history. Why was Western art music recorded here, under whose authority, and for what purpose, during a period still shaped by colonial power? Before reshaping the music, I had to confront my own position as a descendant of European colonisers. This inherited legacy uncomfortable but necessary became central to the work, sharpening my awareness of cultural imposition, culture colonialism and ongoing calls for restitution.From this reckoning, Silenced Soil emerged. I treated Debussy’s melody as a

From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a collection of reel-to-reel tape recordings of songs and musical instruments made by journalist Lois Mitchison in Cameroon during 1958.Recorded by Sonja Lois Mitchison.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

The inspiration for this piece was the current climate and attitudes from a section of the population towards immigration. It is unsettling to see the resurgence en masse of sentiments I thought were well behind us. I used a fragment of a field recording from the Bamam tribe of Cameroon, and used it as an intro for my piece, which I divided into three movements.a) Mar GermanicusIt uses an Arabic mode (maqam) called Kurd. It represents longing, mirroring the thoughts of the dinghy's occupants, shunted in the unknown (like the ancient Romans might have viewed the North Sea) with only their fears for company.b) DoverIt employs an Arabic maqam called Rast. It represents vigour, strength, courage, all qualities the dinghy's occupants need to summon in view of approaching the English coast.c) Dark DuendeIt appropriates a flamenco idiom, a form (Palo) called Tientos. A coda that stresses arrival, the end of the journey, a new uncertain beginning, and my homage to an ethnic group that saw and sees its fair share of

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

This piece is built around a short fragment of an Igbo wind instrument recording taken from the Pitt Rivers Museum sound collections. The original recording was made on wax cylinder by anthropologist Northcote Thomas in Nigeria between 1909 and 1915. Knowing the material fragility of the recording, and the historical distance it represents, strongly shaped how I approached the composition.Rather than treating the field recording as documentary material, I focused on its breath, tone, and repetition. I isolated a small loop from the wind instrument and gently pitch-shifted it, allowing the sound to move away from its original temporal context and into something more meditative and suspended. The looping process emphasises continuity and endurance, while also acknowledging the artificiality of repetition imposed by modern technology.The looped wind instrument is paired with a simple, evoking kalimba part, chosen for its percussive softness and cyclical nature. Together, the sounds create a quiet dialogue betwe

"Bolivian radio programme on folk music": a recording of folk music from southern Bolivia issued by Radio Universidad de Tarija, with commentary (in Spanish).From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being one of a small number of recordings issued or released by foreign broadcasting corporations or radio associations.Recorded by Radio Universidad de Tarija.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

Airwaves Unfolded is a piece based on a radio recording produced in the 1960s in Tarija, southern Bolivia, by Radio Universidad de Tarija. The program introduces Indigenous instruments and discusses how they have been intertwined with labour, daily life, and ritual, as well as how new instruments and musical forms developed after Spanish influence.What drew me to this recording were the instruments’ unstable yet resonant tones alongside the narrator’s voice. The voice carries a sense of responsibility, warmth, and quiet pride, reflecting an intention to preserve cultural knowledge and pass it on to future generations. Although the broadcast was created for its own present moment, it now reaches us as a fragment of cultural memory. I approached the recording not as a fixed historical document, but as material whose meaning can continue to shift over time.In the process of making the piece, I extracted short fragments of narration and placed them alongside the instrumental sounds to explore new relationships b

From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a collection of cassette tape recordings of songs and instruments made by playwright David Mowat across several different states in India during 1987.Recorded by David Mowat.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

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.———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

YAZ is a vocal and electroacoustic composition built from a field recording of an Aït Haddidou market in Rabat, captured in 1961. What struck me immediately was the presence of a young boy’s voice, cutting through the density of the market: a call. Not directed at anyone in particular, yet lingering. That voice became the starting point of the piece, an echo moving through time and memory.Research into Aït Haddidou and Amazigh musical culture revealed a relationship to voice that is inseparable from daily life. Singing is not performance. It belongs to work, ritual, gathering, and transmission. In Amazigh group singing, voices move in unison. A song exists because a community carries it, through repetition and collective presence, as an acknowledgement of life itself.The piece opens with my voice recorded as a soft lullaby, an intimate humming inspired by the singing women carry inside the home. I chose a wordless melody to allow the voice to transcend language, time, and place, reflecting how memory often s

The source material that I worked with was a field recording from the 60s in which someone in Morocco is singing a song, begging for bread. When I first listened to the recording, it immediately brought back a very specific memory from an old workplace of mine – an energy company had made a typographical error on their website, and when their customers struggling with energy debts called the phone number for the company's hardship scheme, it reached the completely unrelated company where I worked. For about a week, I was answering the phone explaining to stressed people struggling to pay their energy bills that they had to hang up and call a very slightly different phone number to get the service they needed. When I tried to contact the energy company about their mistake, it was nigh-on impossible because they were largely using automated chatbots for their customer service. All of that influenced the atmosphere of this short track, and my decision to take the original recording and bury it amidst liminal-so

 I was delighted to work with the recording of Aka masters Momboli and Gongé, playing flutes in the forest at night, recorded by Louis Sarno in the 1990s. I decided to retain the essence of the sounds of the forest camp at night, including the community of women, men, and children, as well as the wild shouts that are often parts of these moments. For many years, I have wished to visit the Congo, including the Dzanga-Sangha, and immerse myself among the Bayaka people. With this opportunity presented by the Century of Sounds project, I envisioned a composition that reflects this long-held dream. I decided to create a dreamscape. Perhaps I am dreaming while sleeping in one of the shelters within the forest camp? Or am I dreaming from a faraway country, caught between two worlds?The concept of a dreamscape was reinforced after listening to an interview with Louis Sarno on the Pitt Rivers Museum Vimeo channel. Sarno describes how Bayaka mbyo flute music can be experienced in dreams, and that the songs are often r

The field recording from India immediately revealed itself to me as a form of male ritual music, rooted in repetition, gesture, and collective memory. From that first encounter, the piece began to take shape as an inner journey: a passage through listening, silence, and transformation.The opening unfolds in a dreamlike, immersive space, imagined as a temple. Here, sound becomes a threshold. Together with Spanish sound artist Sara Broto, I shaped — through my flute — a dialogue around one of her poems, almost a prayer, where voice and breath trace a return to origins, to something ancient and essential. This meditative atmosphere gradually evolves into an evocative Indian mantra by Alessia Ronge, acting as a bridge between contemplation and embodiment.The mantra is then carried forward by the fluid, almost aquatic textures of Antonio Aiello’s double bass, alongside the synthesizer work and mixing by Giuseppe Lacinskij Schillaci. Through a slow and carefully sculpted crescendo, these elements open the way to t

Momboli and Gongé playing flutes in the forest at night.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.———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

Durei-na-mbwe (song) by the Broken Consort, with Samuel on bu-wahr-wahr (panpipes), accompanied by Dominique, Erine, Ferdinand and Marineau.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.———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