Cities And Memory

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.———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.———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 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.———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

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 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 Pal

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 t

"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 re

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.———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 wondered if I could combine something foreign with the fully formed musical space of African polyrhythms, so I tried creating parallel sounds using a Chinese qin, a Western double bass, and a violin. When I combined the rough sounds from field recordings with the sounds created in the studio, it worked surprisingly well. Listening closely, I also noticed that the rhythms of African drums resemble those of the taiko drums played at Japanese village festivals.Festival at Rich reimagined by Keisuke Oki.———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 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

Rock gong music from Nigeria, some rhythms accompanied by singing, with spoken introduction.From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being one of a number of miscellaneous or individual ethnographic field recordings (rediscovered during a recent research project).Recorded by Bernard Evelyn Buller Fagg.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 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

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.———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

Ceremonial (wedding) music from the Eastern Himalayas in Nepal.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

Phonophany, or the All-Revealing Medium dramatises the manifestation of occult and hidden mediation processes present in both audio technologies and Zande magic practices. As a composition, it works from a field recording of a Zande revelation song used to detect witches, employing audio mediation to allow the listener to experience a progressive unfolding of the recorded voice from initially unintelligible, noisy signals. In doing so, the work reflects on how to move beyond preconceptions of audio as a purely documentarian medium that simply “captures” reality. Rather than treating sound recording as transparent representation, the composition foregrounds mediation itself — specifically in the form of electromagnetic noise — as a way of listening oriented toward gradual aural revelation. This approach seeks to expand the capacity of audio media and recording technologies to articulate concepts and probe the audio field, thereby reframing our perception of media and their sensory environments.Phonophany, a t

Zande "witch doctor" song performed by Badobo.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.———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

"Then we heard the grass blades bending under the laziest hoovesbut they know how slow they should be grazing at noon Then we heard the pine twigs snapping under bare feet and fresh blisters forming from the here and now because they know how fast good pain turns to fluidThen I heard the tallest reeds breaking under boots of rubber and I couldn’t help but think of the 87 months it took those barks to become adult because they know when they’re ready to bleedIt’s when the man’s hands form the cup for the milk to rest and sit and wait and stop moving because they both know how long fluid turns solid so it can stretch and bend and stretch and bend again between hardened hands of fewer grooves than blistersBut the blisters didn’t know when that large cylinder would come to move things along and the man became two and they learnt each others’ names as they rolled and compressed and rolled and compressed again until the rubber was already rubber and the blisters were gone because the hands became idle while the cy

Instruments in the forest at dawn (flute and harp).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

This project was a bit of a step out of my comfort zone, since, not having any cultural connection to or knowing anything much about Bulgarian traditional music, I felt extremely out of place working on this project. As someone who works with ethnomusic on a regular basis, the questions of cultural appropration and sensitivity to such things all too often come up. But, it is a tradition that inspires me and that I would like to learn more about, so I wanted to approach this with as much care and knowledge as I could, and hopefully learn something in the process. My first step was to research the songs sung in the long recording, and hopefully find more about their traditional contexts, i.e. what they mean, what seasons and context they were sung in, etc. since from my own knowledge traditional music often has a certain (often seasonal) context it is sung in. And not knowing the language made it more difficult, especially when one is dealing with archive recordings, which are often extremely unclear. However,