Cities And Memory

 Imagine tuning a radio time-machine dial between the past and present of the Zambezi River valley; birds weave a tapestry in and out of the soundscape as static, magnetic drift, crosstalk and interference rise and fall with the signals in the atmosphere. The foundation of this mix, an original recording in the Pitt Rivers Museum collection, is a radio broadcast of singing and drumming by an unidentified group circa 1965, in the first years of Zambia's independence and the period of transition from colonial broadcasting structures to a national network. The available information is minimal; a single scrap of paper tells us the recording is "starring Stephen & Pio". During the copying process one of the reels of tape was accidentally overprinted, so that one track runs backwards while another simultaneously runs forward. In my reimagined mix this glitch leads us through history and memory, the reversed rhythms of backwards magnetic tape conducting an aural transition back into the past.  In the 1970s the