Interview with Cities and Memory founder Stuart Fowkes on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme on 18 April 2025, introducing the Sonic Heritage project. Features sound clips from the Tower of London, the Sistine Chapel and Valparaiso, Chile. 

Interview with Cities and Memory founder Stuart Fowkes on BBC World Service's Newshour programme on 18 April 2025, introducing the Sonic Heritage project. Features sound clips from the Sistine Chapel, Coimbra in Portugal and Okarito in New Zealand. 

Recorded sounds are synthesised with electronic sounds, creating new timbres and syntheses.

Novosibirsk metro, Russia reimagined by Pavel Lopatin. 

"I have never experienced Día de los Muertos in Oaxaca firsthand, but I have always been inspired by the spirit of this ritualistic celebration. A day of gathering—of families, friends, and ancestors—where the entire community comes together to share food, music, memories, and stories, surrounded by vibrant colors of flowers and costumes. This holiday seems to me a beautiful and consoling way to engage with death, to mourn the departed, and to reflect on the transience of life.

"The field recording captures voices, likely of people gathered in a cemetery. These are joyful sounds. Their density suggests a large crowd of all ages coming together. By applying filtering techniques, I extracted pitches and harmonies from these recordings. As a symbol of ephemerality, I chose the conch shell: an instrument with sacred and ancient associations—with the sea, with the call to prayer, with the underworld, the moon, fertility, and the wind god Ehécatl, who had the power to breathe life into a void. Its haunting sound echoes what Patrick Johansson describes as the primordial blast of the world produced in the underworld by Quetzalcóatl, heralding the creation of humankind.

"The extracted pitches and harmonies led me to my existing piece for six conch shells and bass drum, Songs from Rhiannon. [Listen here: https://on.soundcloud.com/JUQX4EzhPDYctXKE6]

"An excerpt of this piece appears after the full field recording. The conch shells continue, transpose, extend, and amplify the voices we hear. They sing a song that transports us to an unearthly space—dark, yet embracing.

"Efímero begins with a female voice reading calaveras, a poetic form written specifically for Día de los Muertos. These verses humorously critique the living while reminding them of their mortality. The recitation transitions to the voice of a young girl expressing wonder and joy, calling the names of the seven archangels as she marvels at the colors, sounds, and scents surrounding the gathered crowd. Her perspective is not from our world. She speaks of the beauty of life but also of her struggle with its fleeting nature—her life was so short.

"The calaveras are read in Spanish by Ainoa Padrón Ortiz. The short text that follows, in Spanish and German, is read by her daughter, Sofía Fuhrmann Padrón.
The conch shells are played by Christine Chapman, Bruce Collings, Bob Koertshuis, Melvyn Poore, Markus Schwind, and the composer Marco Blaauw. The bass drum is played by Dirk Rothbrust.

"It was a great pleasure to work on this project. Listening to the sounds of Oaxaca, to the voices of people gathered for this beautiful tradition, made me feel as if I were there. My ears traveled all the way to Mexico, allowing me to reflect on my own annual traditions, cultural celebrations, and ways of connecting with the dead." 

Day of the dead at Oaxaca cemetery reimagined by Marco Blaauw.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

Interior of Hospicio Cabañas, tourist voices with long acoustic reverb. Stereo 48kHz 24bit.

UNESCO listing: Hospicio Cabañas, Guadalajara

Recorded by Erick Ruiz Arellano.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

Cathedral bells at Morelia. Stereo 48kHz 24bit.

UNESCO listing: Historic Centre of Morelia

Recorded by Erick Ruiz Arellano.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

Day of the death at Panteón General cemetery at Oaxaca. Stereo 48kHz 24bit.

UNESCO listing: Historic Centre of Oaxaca and Archaeological Site of Monte Albán

Recorded by Erick Ruiz Arellano.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

"The creation of this piece began with a binaural recording from Petra, Jordan—a place steeped in history, where the whispers of the past still resonate in the present. As soon as I listened back to the recording, I was struck by its depth and atmosphere. The natural reverberations of the ancient rock-cut city, the distant murmur of voices, the footsteps on stone—all these elements felt alive, carrying an almost cinematic quality. It immediately sparked an idea: to craft a sound collage that blends these organic textures with spoken word, downtempo beats, and ambient layers.

"What stood out most in the field recording was its immersive quality. The binaural technique captured not just the sounds themselves but the space around them. The way sound interacts with Petra’s towering sandstone walls—bouncing, fading, and morphing—created a natural sonic landscape that felt rich and evocative. There’s something profoundly intimate about listening to a place in this way, as if you’re standing right there, experiencing it firsthand. I wanted to highlight these spatial nuances in my composition, allowing the listener to be transported into the heart of Petra.

"Petra is one of the world’s most famous archaeological sites, visited by thousands of tourists every day. Yet, beyond its visual grandeur, there’s an acoustic identity that is often overlooked. My composition seeks to explore this sonic heritage—the way sound shapes our perception of place and history. By blending the raw field recordings with music, I aimed to create a bridge between the real and the imagined, drawing attention to the sounds that make Petra unique.

"This piece also reflects on the role of sound preservation in the context of tourism. As modern life encroaches upon historical sites, their soundscapes change. What does Petra sound like today, and how might that evolve in the future? By capturing these moments and integrating them into a new form of expression, I hope to contribute to a deeper appreciation of sound as a cultural artefact.

"I approached the composition as a dialogue between the past and present, the natural and the electronic. The field recording serves as the foundation, woven throughout the piece in layers—sometimes as an unaltered soundscape, other times manipulated to create rhythmic or textural elements. I used granular synthesis to stretch and transform certain ambient sounds, bringing out hidden harmonics and details. Downtempo beats were introduced to give the piece a sense of movement, while spoken word elements emerged organically, inspired by the echoes of voices captured in the recording.

"Reverb and spatial processing played a key role in maintaining the three-dimensionality of the original sound. Rather than simply layering sounds, I wanted to preserve the recording’s depth, allowing elements to drift in and out as if they were part of a living, breathing environment.

"For me, this composition is more than just an artistic experiment—it’s a way of engaging with place, memory, and time. Petra is a site of wonder, but it’s also a space of transience, where footsteps fade, conversations dissolve, and the desert winds slowly reshape the land. Through this piece, I wanted to capture that ephemeral quality, offering a sonic reflection on the impermanence of experience.

"By blending the rawness of the field recording with musical elements, I hope to invite listeners to hear Petra in a new way—to step into its sonic world, to imagine its stories, and to reflect on the significance of sound in shaping our connection to history and culture."

Petra soundscape reimagined by Nies.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

"The source field recording is combined with found sounds and field recordings made at a 1965 Hiroshima anti-nuclear protest, a 1968 Tokyo student protest, as well as street performances and 'happenings' presented between 1960 and 1970.

"Tobata, an industrial port in southern Japan, was often the site of such demonstrations and protests, many of which were related to the Anpo struggle (安保闘争, Anpo tōsō).

"One of the most infamous moments of the Anpo struggle was the 'Hagerty Incident', in which U.S. Ambassador to Japan Douglas MacArthur II (the nephew of the famous general) deliberately provoked an international incident by ordering his car to be driven into a large crowd of protesters. The provocation backfired and chaos ensued.

"The right of people to gather and protest, celebrate, or commemorate is a fundamental right with cultural, political, and social significance. The sounds we create in doing so are an essential part of our sonic heritage."

Tobata lantern festival reimagined by Simon Kennedy.

IMAGE: JKT-c, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

"The butterfly effect: weeping and flying; llorando y volando: mariposas monarcas

"What is the sound of butterflies?
What is the sound of butterflies? What is the sound of millions and millions of monarch butterflies as they open wings and ascend into the air? What is the sound of zero monarch butterflies? 

"Monarch butterflies have been part of my life for over 30 years in two places in North America that I have called home (both places of migration from my childhood home of Britain). I have experienced eastern monarcas in their tens of millions in the high forested mountains of the state of Michoacán, Mexico, where the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve is located. I have experienced a few western monarchs in the eucalyptus trees on the cliffs above the Pacific Ocean, in Goleta, California, where the Ellwood Monarch Butterfly Reserve is located. Both the State of Michoacán and the City of Goleta use the gorgeous orange and black form of the monarca butterfly as their logo. 

"In Michoacán, Mexico, these multitudes of eastern monarcas follow a migratory pattern across many generations, encompassing the three countries of North America: Mexico, United States and Canada. In Goleta, United States, these tiny numbers of western monarcas follow a short migratory pattern from the coast to the Rockies. In December 2024, the official count was zero. As pollinators, monarch butterflies contribute to healthy ecosystems across North America. 

"In the 1990s, as a researcher, creative artist and violinist, I had the privilege of learning from the wisdom and lifeways of Indigenous P’urhépecha peoples in Michoacán, whose presence spans many centuries. I learned from my experience of being a visitor to El Rosario, in the high forested mountains, where millions and millions of monarca butterflies blanket every trunk and branch. This is the World Heritage Site of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve. Known only to local villagers and landowners until 1975, now a global tourist attraction and UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

"Before sunrise, with closed wings, their motionlessness and quietness radiate a profound tranquility. In their fragility and robustness, they are breathtaking. As earth turns, moment by moment, a transformation unfolds as the sun’s rays bath each tree, causing warming, waking, stirring, and movement. Bark and trees seemingly come alive, as millions and millions of wings open, rise and cascading upwards, forming ascending and fluttering clouds of orange and black. 

"Why do you cry, little human baby? 
¿Porque estás llorando, pequeño bebe humano? 
Are you crying for your soul? ¿Estás llorando por tu alma? Por tu futura? For your future? 
What have we humans done to this planet? ?Que hemos hecho a esta planeta - 

"Listen, Escucha, listen, escucha, 
to infinite sounds of millions and millions of monarch butterflies in Mexico 
a los sonidos infinitos de millones y millones de mariposas monarca en México 

"Listen, Escucha, listen, escucha, 
To the sound of zero monarch butterflies in Goleta, California
al Sonido de zero mariposas monarca en Goleta, California 
Silencio, silence, silencio, silence, silenco, silence – 

"In Michoacán, Mexico, the Indigenous Purhépecha grandmothers tell how their ancestors walked from the cold lands to the centre of the country. When the children and old people could go no further, they covered their bodies with the orange resin of the trees and the yellow pollen of the flowers to keep themselves warm. The pollen and resin transformed them into monarch butterflies, and they flew together to the lands of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve.

"En Michoacán, Mexico, las abuelas Indigena P’urhépecha dicen como sus ancestros caminaban desde la tierra fria al centro del pais. Cuando los niños y la genta vieja no pudieran caminar mas, cubrieron sus cuerpos con resina anaranjada de los arboles y el polen Amarillo de los flores para mantenerse calientes. Y el polen y la resina los transformaron a mariposas monarcas y volaron juntos a la tierra de la reserva biosfera de la mariposa monarca. 

"weeping and flying; llorando y volando/ monarch mariposas–butterflies monarcas

"But what is the sound of monarch butterflies? The field recording by renowned Mexican sound recordist Erick Ruiz Arrellano intrigued me. What did Erick record in this most extraordinary of locations, El Rosario Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Michoacán? I was overwhelmed by the sound of a human baby crying. I decided to use the human baby crying as the core sound, in all the repetition, alarm, which seems to come at once from the depths of the ocean and crosses through all of human time. 

"In this most extraordinary of ecosystems, biospheres and heritage places, where millions and millions of fragile beings, here a human baby cries. 
Why are they crying? 
Are they crying for their future? 
Are they crying for the disappearance of earth’s heritage, the heritage of monarcas who have inhabited this planet for so much longer than humans?
Are they crying because we tourists and visitors, in our quest to hear and see earth’s transitions and journeys, disrupt and impose our own desires before our ancestor-beings?
Are they crying because we humans cause devasting loss of habit, through so-called development, through massive farming complexes, herbicides, insecticides, shopping malls…

"And do they hear us ? Yes – they hear us through veins in their wings
¿Y las mariposas nos escuchen? Sí – nos escuchan através de las venas en sus alas."

El Rosario butterfly sanctuary reimagined by Ruth Helliert.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

On a warm summer evening crowds line the streets to watch the opening ceremony of the Tobata Gion lantern festival. Several floats can be heard passing as they march through the town. 

UNESCO listing: Yama, Hoko, Yatai, float festivals in Japan

Recorded by Thomas Martin Nutt.

IMAGE: JKT-c, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

Petra Anamnetic presents a stratophonic acoustic mapping of the Petra world heritage archaeological site, located in southern Jordan. This locale has traditionally belonged to the Bedouin B’doul tribe, a clan that continues to play an eminent role within the tourist industry, which is of central importance to the area’s economy. The piece has been recorded ambisonically and rendered binaurally – it is intended to be disseminated via headphones, replicating the immersive and interactive experience of audition in a ‘real’ space.

Petra Anamnetic juxtaposes two main elements: (1) a conversation between two B’doul shepherd children tending their goats in one of the many caves that are characteristic of the area and (2) the sound of the evening call to prayer recorded from a hotel rooftop patio in nearby Wadi Musa, the main access point for most of the many tourists visiting Petra. Via the juxtaposition and creative manipulation of these two recordings, Petra Anamnetic aims to foreground the complex strata embedded within a geographically contiguous yet socially, politically and historically heterogeneous territory, sonically delineating sublimated tensions manifested between those who are native to the area and the transient foreigners who come to marvel at their legacy.

UNESCO listing: Petra

Recorded by Michael Trommer.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

Monarch butterfly sanctuary, El Rosario. Stereo 48kHz 24bit.

UNESCO listing: Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve

Recorded by Erick Ruiz Arellano.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

"Protests embody unrest, tension, and hope. They are activities that display these contrasts while effectively utilizing sound. In this interpretation, I sampled a protest recording from Tirana and approached it in four distinct ways. The first is in its original form. The second features a louder megaphone effect. The third presents a distorted, unclear, and incomprehensible sound enhanced with a phased bite effect. The fourth highlights noise alongside speech. These four interpretations simultaneously convey feelings of tension, uncertainty, and hope, complemented by pads and chord accompaniments."

Tirana protest reimagined by Uğur Aslan.

Hike a little beyond the main section of Nara Park in Japan, and you enter the Kasugayama Primeval Forest – also part of the Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara UNESCO site. If you are there during the off season and early enough in the morning, it is possible to hear the forest itself, as the monks and pilgrims of old must have done.

This recording was made on 13 December, 2024 on the popular hiking trail that winds up to the summit of Wakakusayama Hill. Although there is a background hum from the city, it primarily captures the sounds of the forest – bird song, trees rustling and wind – but at the start of the recording you can also hear the footsteps of a single hiker on the gravel path as they pass me.

UNESCO listing: Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara

Recorded by Lisa Germany.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

This soundwalk was recorded in and around the streets of Siena in Tuscany. We begin in the narrow streets and end at the famous Piazza del Campo, the town's central square and home to the biannual horse race the "palio".

UNESCO listing: Historic City of Siena

Recorded by Colin Hunter.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

"The field recording reminds me to listen to the world around in nature and juxtaposed with the sounds of diaspora and migration, it captures the spirit behind the audio - of birds communicating with the audience and with each other, of light footsteps through a forest preserved in present day. Why are other forests not given the same status and how can we preserve the forests and rivers that make up our land?

"I imagine walking through a forest that is preserved and capturing its sounds the same way as we walk through an urban setting , with people, calls to prayer, grackles, frog sounds, etc. Each recording shared in this piece is captured during my travels and visiting home in Lahore, Pakistan and living between Houston, Texas.

"I've used various recordings and I use a simple phone recorder to record my sounds as I travel and I overlaid these pieces to capture the concept of migration and diaspora through sound and to layer the original track in the backdrop as a loop. The sounds of the birds play with the verses of Persian poetry and the bamboo flute and all the sounds in between that inspire me in my day to day."

Kasugayama Primeval Forest reimagined by Mashal Awais.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

"The sound in my piece is made by striking the inside of an empty prosecco tank in an Italian winery. I created this piece using Ableton and wanted to make something that only used the original sample and no other additional sounds. I used the sampler and granulator to manipulate and edit the sound and then worked to create a short ambient piece that retained some of the character of the original sound whilst taking it somewhere new.

"I was very inspired by the vastness and grandeur of the original sound and was curious to explore it in a more intimate setting, imagining the 'inner life' of the empty wine tanks. Some of the sounds did not behave as I wanted to or expected, but I went with the glitchiness and imagined that the barrels were gently telling me their story rather than me trying to uncover it for them, what resulted was a new kind of intimate and nostalgic fragility emerging from what was originally a quite bold and brash sound."

Prosecco wine tanks reimagined by Katie Chatburn.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

"The field recording was interesting to me as it revealed more after several listens. It was a combination of louder, more dynamic voices/human/environmental sounds, and some much more subtle parts. It made me feel like I was visiting another place which I found compelling, and I appreciated the inconsistent sounds and spaces captured. In the composition I wanted to marry abstractions with more concrete, yet simple melodic phrases, so that the listener can move along with the story of the moments captured in the original recording, but at the same time they can also tune into something musical if they want to. 

"I wanted the music to ebb and flow like the field recording itself, encouraging reflection on this one unique position in space and time when these sounds came together, to stop and be drawn into something and consider the geography, history, and presence of what can be heard in the final work. Who do we hear and what is their story? and what does what we hear tell us about the place, this historic walk in Tuscany? Approaching the project I took small samples of the recording for percussive elements. I combined these with the full original recording, and drew out a few small sections for specific treatment, as well as introducing this simple melodic motif as an anchor for the work."

Siena soundwalk reimagined by Suzi Lamb.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

The "seggiovia" chairlift up to a rifugio in Pescul, in the Dolomites on a hot summer afternoon. The sound of the clicking, whirring chairlift interrupts the sounds of buzzing insects and light breeze, and symbolises the intrusion of human construction and entertainment into the natural environments of the mountains. 

UNESCO listing: The Dolomites

Recorded by Cities and Memory.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

In the heart of Isfahan, Iran, the beauty of Naqsh-e Jahan Square comes alive at sunset, where the fountain glimmers under the fading light, accompanied by the chant of the muezzin in the background.

UNESCO listing: Meidan Emam, Esfahan

Recorded by Azadeh Nilchiani.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

Green parrots at Khajuraho. Stereo 44kHz 24bit.

UNESCO listing: Khajuraho Group of Monuments

Recorded by Erick Ruiz Arellano.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

Tourists in the Taj Mahal interior. Stereo 48kHz 24bit.

UNESCO listing: Taj Mahal

Recorded by Erick Ruiz Arellano.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

"I was born in Bolzano, Alto Adige, by the Dolomites, and lived there for the first 11 years of my life. The first breath I took was from the air corralled by the lines these mountains made in the sky; here was my first light, colours, sounds, language. 

"Hearing the seggiovia reminds me of picnics in valleys with pines and snowy tops. And hearing people joyfully gasping on the moving chairs. 

"Hearing the recording, I weave that inescapable and inextricable emotional labour that is remembering, mending memories, mending oneself through memory - sound being like an ancient trace in one’s psyche."

Ski lift in Pescul reimagined by Clelia Ciardulli.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

Peter and Paul Fortress Carillon (i believe it was a rehearsal). I randomly walked into the sound of the bells and made a recording directly under the cathedral on the empty night square. 

UNESCO listing: Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments

Recorded by Masha Sha.

IMAGE: Alex 'Florstein' Fedorov, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

"If you have never been in/around/under a large flock of singing, squawking, vocalising and flying birds you have missed an incredible immersive experience. It leaves your breathless, amazed, scared and humbled. You can lose all touch with your world as the sounds of bird calls and beating wings drowns out everything else. 

"As I read about the Khajuiraho temple complex, I began to think of the ancient history of this complex and it's life and how it was reabsorbed by the jungle and the human lives and memories that were here as well as the ancestral memories of the green parrots. The human sounds in and around this complex have changed with the flow of time but the sounds of the large flocks or parrots has remained unchanged and hopefully will remain unchanged as time passes. 

"I wasn't sure how to use this recording at first and then I was able to experience a "large flock of birds" moment around my house and it brought back the immersive experience and linked it to the parrots I had been listening to. From there, I wanted to build up sounds relating to the sounds around the temple complex - the dripping of water deep in the temples through cracks in the ancient stone; the music from the modern day festivals captured in a shruti box and musician practicing some ancient stringed instrument, plucking out a contemplative tune as a lament to the parrots and the past."

Parrots in Khajuraho reimagined by Mindrobots.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

"I have long been inspired by Iranian culture and particularly its music and poetry. 
Much to my surprise, my response to the field recording of the city of Isfahan eventually took the form of a kind of oblique word-picture, prompted by the images and themes which the original field recording sounds brought to mind, which I then set to the sound of a Daf percussion arrangement. One of the main jumping off points was also the idea of the festival of the spring equinox, ‘nowruz’ - which literally means’ ‘new day’ in Persian, and which is a central celebration in Iranian culture. 

"The Daf is a traditional Iranian percussion instrument associated with nowruz celebrations amongst many other things, whose unique sound I adore and which I felt tied in with the themes of sonic heritage in this context. My dear friend Mobin Hosseini from Sanandaj, Iran, kindly provided the accompanying Daf track. The field recording appears in its entirety, since this seemed the most fitting soundtrack to the rich imagery it inspired for me. I hope it might prove similarly evocative for anyone who listens to my contribution to the project." 

Nowruz in Isfahan reimagined by Fiona Conn @outsidetheoutlines.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

"The field recording begins with a chant that sounds like the ones the Taj Mahal’s mausoleum guards sing to demonstrate the Taj Mahal’s acoustics. Its dome has been said to create up to 28 second of reverb. I’d heard this before because of Paul Horn’s well known album Inside, which featured a singer — a friend of one of the mausoleum guards — singing in a similar style, along with Horn’s flute sometimes accompanying him or in call and response. 

"For my version, I couldn’t work with natural reverb in that way, so instead I let the untreated field recording play off different types of treated and artificial sounds. I looped the chant and played along on guitar until I found some phrases that could form the core of the piece. Then I filled it out with synths and with pads made from resampled voice and guitar."

Taj Mahal reimagined by John Savarese.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

This is our friend Vasilis, the last shepherd in Mikro Papingo, and Iannis, his Albanan helper shearing goats. Mikro Papingo is one of the numerous stone villages found in the Zagorochoria in the mountains of north west Greece. 

After wintering his flock of 350 goats in the Vikos Gorge, living in a cave for weeks on end Vasilis brings the goats and their young back to the village in the spring. The adult goats' hair need trimming and Vasilis still does this with hand shears rather than an electric razor. This clip is where a younger goat which has not been sheared before is brought in and is very nervous. You can hear it trying to escape past the corrugated iron gate at one point and the very calm and measured reaction from Vasilis and Iannis who sooth it into the mesmeric clipping sounds. 

In the past the goat hair was highly prized for making the incredibly warm and waterproof coats (samaroskouti) worn by the shepherds. When I asked Vasilis where his clippings would go he said "only the birds want it now for their nests". 
In the past there were many flocks of sheep and goats in the mountains numbering in their thousands. Over the last 50 years hospitality and tourism have become major activities and the younger generations of the shepherding families are turning to this as a preferred way of life. 

Vasilis is the last shepherd in the village. These sounds are close to dying out and to have documented these and many other sounds over the years has been a huge privilege. 

UNESCO listing: Zagori Cultural Landscape

Recorded by Peter Annear.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

On some unused areas of tarmac close to Les Invalides and the grand boulevards that surround it, by the banks of the Seine, there are frequent games of street hockey. On an earlier visit to Paris I'd assumed this was a one-off, but every time we visited again and went back to Les Invalides, the street hockey guys were there, playing what is surely one of the world's most picturesque games of street sport. 

In this recording you can hear rollerskates, sticks, ball thwacks and shouting among the players, all with the backdrop of busy roads in this touristy - but majestic - area of the city. A great example of public space being used for the public good.

UNESCO listing: Paris, Banks of the Seine

Recorded by Cities and Memory. 

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

"I firstly loved the sound of the piece and the atmosphere of the Cathedral - the original sound is included fully, but buried in amongst the sounds of the remix. The way into the remix was the text about the seven second reverb and some research about the building's history. I knew that whatever I did, long reverbs and delays combined with multiples of seven in some sequences would feature. Bach's Mass in D was performed in the Cathedral and so I used some MIDI files for the musical elements alongside a 14 step sequence. The sounds used were intended to reference retro computer games in a nod to the amazing stained glass window by Gerhard Richter and the acid rain erosion of the building. 

"I thought about what was happening on the outside of the building and tried to think of it as a person - I found it incredible that it has been built over hundreds of years and survived tank fights and bombing during WW2. It was hit 14 times but remained standing and that is why the mass is interrupted at regular intervals with distorted acid kicks and quick arpeggio flourishes. 

"The piece finishes with the building finding a calm centre with focused and drawn out harmonics of the bell, which I heavily Eq'd with a narrow band to create a pure tone that is pitched down twice. I think it's incredibly important to record and preserve the sounds of spaces such as this as they provide a way of understanding collective and individual heritage. I tried to draw on the cultural significance of this amazing space whilst composing the piece and tell a story about part of its life."

Cologne cathedral reimagined by David Henckel.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

"On first listening to the sound recording, the sound of the hockey puck being hit placed me inside a life size pinball machine. I felt drawn to creating the piece from the perspective of the players being inside a giant pinball machine. From there I began to build a set of pinball inspired sounds to entwine with the recording. 

"The soundscape was created using hardware modular synths to layer up the bouncing of the pinball buffers in response to the players hitting the puck. A further layer of distant arcade sounds and floating background music heard from outside the machine was added using software modular synths. Throughout I endeavoured to ensure the original recording and the story it told could still clearly be heard despite placing it in my own sonic world."

Paris street hockey reimagined by Andrew D. Sage.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

"This track is inspired by both the sheep shearing clipper sounds and the season in which shearing usually occurs. During my first listen of the field recording, I imagined the ecosystem of handcrafting and repairing and was inspired to combine this recording with field recordings of my own craft, including whittling and sanding, use of a sewing machine to repair pants, journaling, and crocheting.

"Bell sounds (created with FM synthesis and with field recordings, inspired by faint bell sounds on the original recording) and created “bird” sound serve as the underlying threads that weaves the pieces together. This track was created using VCV Rack 2."

Greek goat shearing reimagined by Stephanie Vasko.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

A binaural recording made at 10pm in Raekoja Square at the heart of Tallinn's Old Town - we hear passers-by on all sides, restaurants and bars closing early at the end of a quiet night, and the church bells tolling 10pm.

UNESCO listing: Historic Centre (Old Town) of Tallinn

Recorded by Cities and Memory. 

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

Inside the popular medieval Olde Hansa restaurant, which specialises in serving original medieval recipes, a group of three musicians performs with replica medieval string and percussion instruments. Together with the wall paintings and candlelight, the ambience is as close to an authentic medieval banquet as you can get, while at the same time forming a very modern tourist attraction in the heritage site of the Old Town.

UNESCO listing: Historic Centre (Old Town) of Tallinn

Recorded by Cities and Memory.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

Temple Sticks at Ayutthaya. Stereo 44kHz 16bit.

UNESCO listing: Historic City of Ayutthaya

Recorded by Erick Ruiz Arellano.

IMAGE: H191, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

This soundscape explores the quiet stillness of Westminster Cathedral - the sound of slight whispers and occasional footsteps echo amongst the airy spaciousness of the church.

UNESCO listing: Westminster Abbey

Recorded by Paul Virostek.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

"The otherworldly voices and the haunting church bells drew me in…. I wished to be there, standing in the square on a cold Baltic night like a scene in a movie. Relying only on my imagination, as I have never visited the Baltic region, I was fascinated by these slightly atonal Estonian bells. How many times have they rung out across this square? How many folks have lived amongst them over the centuries? They clearly called out to me as they have done to many folks throughout the centuries. 

"They became the initial inspiration for the piece. I matched the tone of the bells with a response on an old and very out-of-tune Persian Santoor. The recording seemed out of time and place and multitheistic, so i then added an organ drone to it. It felt like the history of the city came to life. 

"As I also have ancestors who came from the region I am naturally quite curious about its culture and history. I hope that the sound of these bells and the resulting composition accessed some of the energy of the region and that it can in turn inspire others to explore Tallinn, Estonia and the Baltic region at large."

Raekoja Square, Tallinn reimagined by Penelope Trappes

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

"The music heard mingling with voices suggests music for dancing, but there is nothing here to see. If this recording is found in an archive many years in the future, we’ll have to rely on context and assumptions that could have changed in the intervening period. 

"The reworking of this music creates “impossible” instrumental sounds, while imagining a different kind of dance. In the pauses built into the tune, I find a connection with some more modern structures of dance music in which sounds are taken away and brought back."

Olde Hansa, Tallinn reimagined by Isabel de Berrie.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

"The information age has produced huge leaps in the gathering and documentation of data. Someone who has never been to Westminster Abbey no longer relies on descriptions filtered through a commentator, whose powers of observation, agenda or eloquence are beyond their control. They can see maps, photographs, plans, reviews, recordings; access a level of detail unprecedented in human history. Precise representation is incredibly valuable because from this we can draw inference, deepening our understanding.

"'Echoic Object 40' is a work of sonic archaeology. It subjects our artefact to various processes and deciphers details of resonance, tone, and time so that we might better understand its attributes. Spectral granulation allows the nave to sing to us; footsteps create rhythms as they move through the arcades; an impulse response becomes a reverb. 

"From the one recording we assemble a stratigraphy, context, and interpretation. Westminster Abbey is an Anglican church, so there should be bells. It is a centre of faith and a repository of history, so it is probably tranquil. Kings are buried there, regents of an empire that once held a quarter of the world in a stranglehold, so there must be ghosts. The final piece on display is the recording, lightly weathered and almost complete, returning us blinking into the daylight.

"My huge thanks to Paul Virostek for the original recording."

Westminster Abbey tones reimagined by Emmy Lambert.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

This audio recording, captured in front of the church in Christiansfeld, Southern Denmark on the morning of Christmas Eve 2024, documents congregants arriving for the 7:30 AM church service. The ambient sounds of gathering worshippers culminate in the tolling of church bells, before concluding with the closing of the heavy church doors

UNESCO listing: Moravian Church Settlements

Recorded by Robert Cole Rizzi.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

I. Ocean furrows
II. The liquid skin of story 
III. Island protecting waves

"What are the living sonic expressions inherited from our ancestors? This question came to me when I read the definition of ‘intangible cultural heritage’ on the UNESCO website. The field recording I chose from the Fisherman’s Wharf in Santa Cruz in the Galapagos Islands, is, in the words of Josué Jaramillo, ‘a unique polyphony, where work, culture and wildlife converge in an imperfect but very human harmony’. Listening to the recording, I was mesmerised by the sound of the ‘knives sliding on whetstones’, as well as the daily conversations and the flowing of sounds into each other. Watching videos of the wharf online, I was transfixed by the seabirds, iguanas and sea lions that waited patiently for -or simply took- their fair share of the fish meat. 

"Researching Ecuadorian folk music, I came across ‘Taita Quishpe’, a song about the love felt by an indigenous agriculturalist towards their ‘chakrita’, the small plot of land which provides for them and soothes them like the sound of the ‘rondador’, the national instrument of Ecuador. I thought of the ocean around the Galapagos Islands as one giant chakrita, and the very particular relationship islanders have with the sea, its deep and shifting waters. 

"This provoked me to explore my own heritage as a British-Greek person. The first thing that came to my mind was the Odyssey, the epic rhapsody of the eponymous hero’s perilous journey of return. Thinking about the waters of heritage and story, I was reminded of the evasive figure of Proteus, the shapeshifting old man of the sea, transforming himself into ‘a lion, a serpent, a leopard, a boar, rushing water, a mighty tree’. I felt that across the ages this is also what stories do. 

"The next thing that came to mind was the Met Office’s shipping forecast, that spell-like, reliable, life-saving transmission. This spell led to thinking about other spells, about the fate of ancient traditions that were lost, only to be remade in modern form, such as the animistic traditions of Druidry and its flowing spirit of inspiration, or Awen. 

"The soundscape hopefully evokes something of this imaginative journey, taking the original field recording itself as a point of departure. My idea has been to dissolve boundaries, to express the movement of waves and to allow for the invisible radiophonic liquidity that we are all part of to emerge; it seems to me that both through tangible and intangible waters, all our different islands might be connected, and perhaps that sonic currents of our heritage are always travelling to shores much further than we think."

Sounds: 
Ocean furrows: 
• Extracts from the original field recording (unedited and edited) 
• Sample from ‘Taita Quishpe’, Gloria Haro y conjunto folklorico, from ‘El Canto dela Raza’, 1969 
The liquid skin of story: 
• Extract from ‘The Odyssey’, Rhapsody 4, Homer, read in Modern Greek by Veroniki Krikoni and in Spanish by Christos Siorikis 
• Field recording at Parkland Walk, London. Voice: Chris Sakellaridis; harmonium: Öztan Aydin-Corbett; birds, passers-by 
Island protecting waves:
• Met Office, Shipping forecast (archive, January 2021), read by Chris Sakellaridis
• Field recording, Spring Equinox Ceremony, Tamesis Order of Bards and Druids Group, Primrose Hill 
• Field recording, the River Thames, Rotherhithe Beach

Santa Cruz, Islas Galápagos soundscape reimagined by Chris Sakellaridis.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

Imagine a sound canvas where tradition, life and nature are intertwined in a vibrant auditory tapestry. The Fisherman's Wharf in Santa Cruz, Galapagos, is an everyday symphony. The air is filled with the metallic echo of knives sliding on whetstones, a prelude to the dance that follows. The precise sound of the knife cutting the fish meat is mixed with the soft splash of the water that cleans the pieces, creating a rhythmic percussion. The voices, warm and resonant, weave conversations that talk about work, family, and island life. They are spontaneous songs, laughter that escapes, the constant murmur of the community. And in this concert, nature also has its part: the guttural call of the sea lions, eager for their share of the loot, is contrasted with the strident squawking of the pelicans, fighting for a bite. It is a unique polyphony, where work, culture and wildlife converge in an imperfect but deeply human harmony. 

This soundscape is a time capsule, an invaluable record of daily life in the Galapagos Islands. It invites reflection on the relationship between humans and nature, the importance of traditions and the richness of local culture.

UNESCO listing: Galápagos Islands

Recorded by Josué Jaramillo Romero.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

The ravens are one of the most famous features of the Tower of London. Their presence is traditionally believed to protect the Crown and the Tower; a belief holds that "if the Tower of London ravens are lost or fly away, the Crown will fall and Britain with it." The earliest known reference to captive ravens at the Tower is an illustration from 1883. 

Having spent the afternoon around the Tower trying to capture the calls of the ravens among the thousands of tourists, we finally get lucky. Two of the ravens are perched on a quiet section of wall away from the crowds, and we're able to get up close with the microphone to hear them clucking and cooing, communicating with us and each other for a few special moments. 

UNESCO listing: Tower of London

Recorded by Cities and Memory.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

"The original filed recording by Robert Cole Rizzi is for the most part a rather minimalist recording. We hear a faint breeze, the small rustles of people indistinctly chatting and walking along, all organic sounds lulling us into a peaceful scene. But then we get the eruption of the church bells! Enormous and arrhythmic, they seem to gather the parishioners into the church through sheer volume. There is shuffling and scuffling, the coming together of people, the opening and closing of doors, and then near-silence again.

"I wanted to capture this sense of church-going in my composition: the call to sanctuary, the peacefulness sound within, the summoning by bells. Alongside remixing and manipulating the original recording, and inspired by the metallic rapture of the church bells, I worked exclusively with metal percussion: a small bell of my own, singing bowl cymbal, steel tongue drum and wire brushes. I found symmetry in the call of the bell, and the single note chimed from a singing bowl signalling the start of a meditation, and how church-going is a form of meditation in itself.

"At the same time of recording this, I found out that our friends in a local charitable organisation, Open Arts, were being evicted by their landlord. The property there are in had gone into receivership, and was being sold off. Part of Open Arts outreach is in running a gamelan group for adults with disabilities, who come together and create wonderful metallic soundscapes on the vast range of gamelan equipment Open Arts us. I couldn't help but see a sad reversal of the scene from Denmark: instead of people joining together peacefully under the sound of bells, they were being uprooted and disrupted."

Morning worship, Christiansfeld reimagined by DARDIS.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

"I came across a legend about the ravens in the Tower of London, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The story says that if the ravens leave, the tower falls along with the kingdom. My composition, Conspiracy of Ravens, simply asks: what if those mischievous ravens are up to no good? What if they were able to pack their bags leading to the destruction of the historic site?

"I loved the sound of the vocalizations of the ravens in the tower and so I lightly manipulated their soft coos and clicks in the original recording by Stuart Fowkes. I've added long, ominous strings, dark synth layers, sound effects, and some screeching bells to the uneasy landscape that ends in disaster."

Ravens in the Tower of London reimagined by Bill McKenna.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

"I was attracted to working with a recording from Thailand for personal reasons. I travelled there some years ago, and lived in a border town, where I volunteered helping a local NGO working with refugees from Burma I had never visited Ayutthaya and the temples, so this work is a chance to visit it in some way. I had visited some other Buddhist temples, and the places and the moods of those experiences are present to me.

"In this field recording, I was initially attracted to the stick/brushing sounds, and I thought of working on a percussive composition using strokes. As it turned out I had less time than I would have needed to compose music, and I ended up working only with field recordings. I was also inspired by the voices in the recording. I cannot understand their meaning. I am guessing the setting is a ritual of some sort. But it might be a profane activity. I did a small amount of research, but not enough to enlighten me on this. I considered finding a translator to help. Finally, I chose to follow my intuition, and leave it open and uncertain for the time being.

"The temples I visited in Thailand were open and welcoming places. The sound in this recording expresses this to me. It suggests the availability of the space to sacred and profane presences at once. I imagine this as an open setting which represents a welcoming and non-judgemental space.

"The file I have submitted contains a blend of four field recordings.
1. The source recording.
2. A motorway joining the edge of the city (Luxembourg)
3. Inside the Cathedral Notre Dame in Luxembourg city
4. The Petruss valley: morning birdsong, Cathedral bells

"Recording 3: The geographical distance I inhabit from the source location in Thailand, and the temporal distance from own experience of visiting Thailand, inspired me to make a connection from there to place where I live. I chose to visit a local sacred building; not a temple, but a religious edifice in my city: the Cathedral Notre Dame. I had hoped to stumble upon a similar kind of sound, perhaps an incidental event. I wanted to avoid any overly religious scenarios, as both soundwise and in meaning I didn’t feel an interest for them in this context. As it happened, I sat in the Cathedral in the morning, and the scenario unfolded just as I had hoped. Just after I was seated and began recording, I heard footsteps approaching the prayer alcove not far from me: someone had come to light a votive candle. There was no other activity in the Cathedral at the time, so this action is well audible in detail, recorded from a distance of about five metres.

"Recording 2: Before making that recording, I had been standing near a highway entrance/exit, at the edge of my city. The cars were coming evenly from both directions. Sonically rich, and apt in meaning, representing a journey in both directions, and journey makers from both orientations crossing paths, and this repeating over and over.

"Recording 4: On the way to the Cathedral for recording 2, I passed through the stunning valley of the Petruss in the city centre. The birdsong in this natural setting seemed the perfect contrast to the highway I had recorded previously. The juxtaposition of these recordings isn’t a sharp contrast. Both are made outdoors, and have tons of natural background ambiance. To my ear the cars and the birds are one vibration resonating in the sky, and the recordings sit with each other nicely.

"These four recordings are blended together to make the following propositions:

"There is a connection between distant places with shared practices (ritual), and common principles in the use of space (temple/church as place of welcome).

"As a metaphor for openness and welcome of both sacred and profane modes of being in a single space, contrasting settings are juxtaposed (cars on a motorway, birds in a wooded valley). The journey between one place and another may go in both directions (cars moving in opposite directions). All the above are held in a totality, represented by nature (valley and resonance of sound, birdsong).

"The single continuous recording throughout the piece is a single take inside a cathedral. It is the last track to fade out at the end. The space in this sound is the space of the observer, holding together the connections suggested in the piece.

"The only audio processing used was a EQ low cut filters on the outdoor recordings. The mixing of the levels for the various fades in and out of the tracks was done with volume automation control in Logic Pro."

Temple sticks at Ayutthaya reimagined by Alan Kavanagh.

IMAGE: H191, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

"The first thing that stood out to me about this field recording is that there is no real melodic information. It’s all street noise, most of it not of clearly recognisable origin. 

"Even though Dubrovnik is 4,700 miles away from where I live, in another country on another continent across an ocean, the soundscape is very familiar to me. Garbage trucks and ventilation units all speak the same language. 

"In her notes on the recording, Ristić describes the noisy Dubrovnik morning with richly evocative phrases like: “textural and multiphonic”; “grinding machinery”; “the town’s growling bowels”; and “a constant percussive development.” 

"She writes: “I could not help but be fascinated by how a landscape of such beaming beauty can exist in this hideous soundscape.” 

"I kicked around a few ideas but eventually decided to have the work be entirely rhythmic. I wanted to capture that unfocused, only-half-listening state when you become aware of rhythms emerging from the background and soon you begin adding your own. 

"Early on I was listening to the recording on headphones while walking home from the train and imagining different rhythmic elements over it. I was walking at a good pace and that set the tempo. It’s a long walk and I got so used to that beat that thereafter I couldn’t imagine it differently. 

"I wanted to use the field recording as the sole sound source but at some point found a royalty-free recording of pealing church bells in Old Town Dubrovnik that was too wonderful to not use*. Aside from that, everything is derived from the field recording. 

*[Royalty Free Sound Library: “Croatia Church Bells” recorded by Free to Use Sounds and purchased on Bandcamp]

"I created and assembled this piece using Koala Sampler, AUM and AudioShare, splitting tasks between my iPhone and my iPad. Ultimately I didn’t use any audio effects or digital manipulation. 

"I find inspiration everywhere, but this composition was particularly inspired by Dance of the Knights from Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet, Tom Waits’ junkyard jug band sound, and Manja Ristić’s previous work with field recordings. When I saw she had contributed a recording for the project, I chose it immediately."

Dubrovnik streets reimagined by daddy fall down.

IMAGE: LBM1948, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

"I tuned into the soundmarks of place, the culturally significant sounds that if heard elsewhere might trigger memories of Obispo Market Havana for those who know it. Drawn to the rhythm of a shaker entering the conversation I wonder if it’s adding flavour to street food being sampled by the passers by. 

"While I can’t taste the delights myself I sample this part of the field recording instead and looped it, which also unexpectedly caught a ‘na na na na’ from the background noise. I found myself singing these vocables and imagining street artists performing in a place I have never been, the atmospheric hustle and bustle between the locals and the visitors. Other snippets of voices are heard in passing, I grabbed these and tried to create conversations between people and place, echoing between past and present, a journey between the Old World and the New World."

Obispo market, Havana reimagined by Aileen Ogilvie .

IMAGE: Paul Mannix, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

"The silence and absence was what inspired me deeply, like the resonance of air in space. It led me to some points where I was feeling the empty space as a non-temporal era, so I tried to add and compose some small scenes within the sound.

"I was practising a bit of what's called a kind of archaeoacoustics, a way of imagining spaces from a historical perspective and with a bit of imagination. We can listen to a soundscape, a sound recreation of collective work, developed in collaboration with the Cães do Mar theatre company, with seven actors on stage, thinking of sound as a strange physics in which we can inhabit spaces, from different periods of time. We can also listen to some field recordings from different locations, such as birds and crickets from the island of Flores.

"I used sound collage, field recording, my voice and a home made instrument that I called escuadra.

"The approach of this work is that it opens from a night of time in which the cricket indicates the time of day, crossing the threshing floors, we hear calls from beyond, accompanied by a historic wind, then we arrive at a small work scene, with old tools, and we pass through the voices of a market in which Arabic is the language, until we arrive at the coast where we say goodbye to our ethereal body."

Nea Papho, Cyprus reimagined by Laboratório Experimental do Som.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage