La Colombiana

Cities and Memory - remixing the world

"Having grown up outside my country of origin, and subsequently returned as to a familiar-but-unfamiliar place, I have some insight into how it feels to have an outside perspective on the place where you live.
"I found it interesting that the recording was made by someone able to view the sights & sounds of a place from an outsider’s perspective, noticing sounds, colours and characters that others might not, but with a depth of familiarity and knowledge layered on.
"I was charmed by the song being sung and whistled, and loved that the recording features animal, machine and human sound. The birds, machines & humans may well migrate, but subject to different constraints. I like the fact that the man singing is collecting recycling which may migrate to another location prior to processing (possibly to another country entirely). He is a part of a much larger system, but clearly asserts his humanity - far from a cog in a wheel.
"It seemed inappropriate to impose a rigid tempo grid on such a freeform snatch of song, so the tempo adapts to the recording; it varies as time goes along. I enjoy listening to the machine adjusting to human cadence, hurrying to catch up and struggling to stay in sync. It seems a better that way round than the opposite, and we might be in a better world if more (including the way we think about migration) things worked that way.
"Often field recordings (& just listening to the world!), provide enjoyable juxtapositions, fortuitous call & response patterns, whether intended or not, and I hope this piece succeeds in tapping into and replicating some of that energy.
"All synth and drum sounds courtesy of a range of software and analog synths & drum machines. Sequenced in Logic Pro."
Cartagena soundscape reimagined by Andrew Tulloch.
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
IMAGE: Bybbisch94, Christian Gebhardt, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons