The world's first collection of the sounds of human migration - remixed and reimagined
Migration Sounds is the result of a year-long partnership between Cities and Memory and the University of Oxford’s Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), to produce the world’s first collection of the sounds of human migration.
The project contains 120 sounds of human migration and settlement from 51 countries – and the amazing stories behind them – using sound to help reframe the conversation around migration.
The sounds come from all over the world, from Argentina to Australia, featuring personal stories from diaspora communities all over the world as well as migration camps and dramatic sea rescues.
All of these sounds have been recomposed and reimagined by artists from a huge range of backgrounds to give us a whole new perspective on the migration conversation.
The project is packed with remarkable sound recordings, and – crucially – each is accompanied by the story behind the sound and what it means to the person who recorded it and the artist who worked with it. The collection includes:
Dramatic sounds of the rescue of migrants in the Mediterranean
Traditional ways of life, including nomadic Kazakh herdsmen in China, Bedouin tribes in Egypt or Inuit dog sleds in Greenland
Migration-related protests – against police brutality in France, against anti-migration laws in Germany and the USA
The sounds of diaspora communities including the Filipino community in Dubai, the Chinese community in New York, or Sikh, Polish, Jamaican and Bangladeshi communities in London
The production of razor wire to create fortifications for Hungary’s border fences
The aftermath of riots in a migration centre in Greece
The sounds of people crossing borders and making the journeys of migration, both forced and unforced
The essential role played by activities like traditional cookery and the playing of music for immigrants all over the world
Dozens of moving stories of ordinary daily life as an immigrant in countries all over the world and how sound helps to tell those stories.
You can explore the Migration Sounds collection on the sound map below – just click on a point to listen to its sounds. Each point features two sounds – the original sound recording, and the reimagined version of that sound.
Why sound and migration?
Migration is one of the most polarising topics in the world today, with many conversations retreading the same ground. Because sound transports us directly and vividly into the lived experiences of human migration, it allows us to reframe those conversations and throw a new light on its complex and multifaceted nature.
Sound also grounds our experience and shows that migration is about the everyday, settled lives of countless millions of people – not just about arduous journeys across borders.
The reimagined compositions add a whole new layer of emotion and complexity, revealing even greater depth to what is already an extraordinary collection of sounds telling so many rich human stories.
Migration Sounds - the album
There is also an accompanying highlights album collecting a diverse range of artists, locations and creative styles from the project. You can download the album for free/pay-what-you-like:
My submission to Migration Sounds
I’m delighted to have been shortlisted to take part in the project, I used the sound ‘Brunnenmarkt – a piece of home’.
Vienna has a lively tradition of streetmarkets. The Brunnenmarkt is a daily opened food market in the working class quarter Ottakring. Years ago it was a quite small market in the Brunnenstrasse, nowadays it is expanding every year, because it‘s a great opportunity to get your first job when you are new in Vienna, without the necessarity to speak German, because your customers are mostly from your country and customers are happy to find products from their countries and find a little piece of home.
There are for example syrian barbecues opened by refugees, west African butchers, Turkish fruit shops, croatian bakeries, but also original Austrian wurstel stands etc. Some of them just a few days in the country, some of them for generations.
The recording is a sound walk with in ear microphones and you can listen to a nice jumble of languages, for example an Austrian student dealing with a Croatian cheese marketer about the price in German. The student said, that the marketer is always so good to him.
The story of the market highlights the positives of migration, the blending of cultures, sharing and evolution of traditions.
I’ve used a glitch aesthetic to represent this fusion, it’s those fragments of conversations that you don’t quite hear in a busy place and also considers how the market has changed over time; fragments of forgotten memories from the past.
