Into the call

Cities and Memory - remixing the world

"I thought about the sample and how musical it is, yet so different from Western musical traditions of tuning and rhythm, and it's also part-spoken, rich in spiritual and cultural heritage. The sample is full of background noise, which can be annoying in music, but I find it gives a sense of place and enhances memories, including my own, of being in Arabic countries. I was interested also in playing with the vocal sounds as pure musical sound, de-contextualised from the rich meaning and intention of the words.
"The whole piece is framed in longer samples where the original sample is clearly articulated. So this is a piece of musique concréte, where my sound sources come entirely from the one call-to-prayer sample which I have manipulated electronically, cut, spliced, reversed, filtered, pitch-changed, equalised, resonated, passed through a Moog synthesiser to create an abstract soundscape that evokes new experiences of new places.
"I arranged these processed sounds to create the sense of a migration journey, through hope, despair, joy, loneliness, anger, fear, friendship, constantly moving forwards. An ethereal walking or marching pulse links different moods and experiences, anchored by contrasting memories of home that are unsettling or reassuring."
Tirana prayer sounds reimagined by Jo Hutton.
Part of the Migration Sounds project, the world’s first collection of the sounds of human migration.
For more information and to explore the project, see https://www.citiesandmemory.com/migration