Promises of home
This recording was taken with an iPhone-mounted mic in a late spring afternoon, just before the supper time as I was walking along a beautiful narrow pedestrian-only passage along the mountain and the river carving through the mountains in norther Tehran. Along this road many restaurants line-up one after the other on the edge of the mountain and the river. Popular amongst the citizens to escap...
2m Jul 15, 2024
2m
The balcony to the world
Between 1997-2000, me aged 7-10, my mother and I used to live at my grandparents house. For a few years now, this house had been abandoned, with no one living there and the house falling into disrepair. More recently, this house has been sold and slated to be demolished for a new property to be developed there. Before the handing over of the house to the new owners, I got to visit the place a f...
3m Jul 15, 2024
3m
Armenian Quarter, Old Jerusalem
Here, you can listen to an old man playing his accordion in the Armenian quarter of Jerusalem. The Armenian presence in Jerusalem dates back to the 4th century AD, coinciding with Armenia's adoption of Christianity as its national religion, leading to the settlement of Armenian monks in the city. Consequently, this community is recognized as the oldest continuously existing diaspora outside the...
2m Jul 15, 2024
2m
The radiance is everywhere
I. Breathing Steps II. Lightwell III. To fight? No, to sing! "In the field recording I chose, a street musician plays and hums the tune of the Kozachok on the accordion, while people are heard passing by in Jerusalem’s Armenian Quarter. I was immediately captivated by the sound of the accordion, but also by the unforced openness with which the musician hummed the tune. Reading about the record...
18m Jul 15, 2024
18m
Amed sunrise
David, my diving instructor at Amed in Bali told me that he had moved to Indonesia more than 20 years ago after growing up in West London. David is a lovely guy and clearly adores where he lives - he suggested that his life in Bali had been made possible, alt least in part, by selling his one-bedroomed flat in West London. His small business employs local staff as scuba instructors, and Ketut,...
2m Jul 15, 2024
2m
The ocean's guests
"Rob tells us about David, a British diving instructor, and Ketut, his Indonesian colleague and friend. While the two men share the sunrise in Amad, Rob notices the stark difference of perspectives between them. One emigrated easily to Indonesia, while the other does not have the resources to make this choice of moving abroad. "The field recording oozes a peaceful atmosphere : the rooster sign...
5m Jul 15, 2024
5m
Moria detention centre riots, 27 April 2016
A riot breaking out in the old refugee detention centre in Moria on the island of Levos, in Greece. Detainees broke out of the camp after a child was allegedly beaten, setting part of the camp on fire and breaking down the fences. Police eventually intervened, firing tear gas and forcing detainees back into the camp. The riot took place in April 2016, just after a deal between the EU and Turke...
2m Jul 15, 2024
2m
Stamping razor wire for border fences in Marianosztra prison
This recording was made in early 2016, while gathering material for a BBC radio documentary about Hungary's hardline migration policy. Inmates in the prison behind the Marianosztra Monastery were feeding metal tape through stamping machines to make razor wire to fortify Hungary's border fences against migrants and refugees. The razor wire was also being exported to other countries. The inmates...
1m Jul 15, 2024
1m
Preparing the sled dogs
In this recording you have a typical soundscape of Sisimiut’s “dogtown” during winter. Amidst the sound of recreational snowmobilers and dogs howling and pulling at their chains, two Greenlanders are preparing traces and getting their pack of dogs ready to go dogsledding in the backcountry. 4,500 years ago, the Inuit migrated from Canada to Greenland across the sea ice by dog sledge. Modern Gr...
5m Jul 15, 2024
5m
We have been burning a long time
This is a poem in Dari about the fire that devastated the Moria refugee camp in September 2020, leaving many thousands without shelter. It's by a young Afghan called Zabi who recorded it on his phone and sent it to me for a radio documentary I was making about the fire's survivors a year later. I never met Zabi, but he kept in touch as he smuggled himself to Athens in the back of a truck and t...
9m Jul 15, 2024
9m
The ferry
This is the sound of a ferry for the island of Chios loading at the port of Piraeus in the spring of 2016. I recorded it standing on the deck looking out at the densely packed tents of refugees and asylum seekers in empty warehouses on the harbour side. Many of them had arrived from the islands on similar ferries, often hidden in the backs of trucks, to escape being returned to Turkey or held i...
2m Jul 15, 2024
2m
Raven calls
I moved from Australia to Sisimiut, Greenland in 2021. I’d visited several times before as a tourist and had fallen in love with the place so much that I spent a couple of years positioning myself professionally so that someone would give me a job so I could get a work visa. When most people imagine the animals of Greenland, they immediately think of polar bears. But it is not common to see th...
3m Jul 15, 2024
3m
Displaced every year
I returned to Empantchá, a neighborhood in Bissau, in 2021 hoping to find the families of the abandoned houses I encountered during the rainy season of 2020. The neighbours told me they would be back for the dry season. In this recording, you can listen to a conversation between the head of the household, my interpreter, and myself. Our discussion takes place in three different languages: Biss...
10m Jul 15, 2024
10m
Razor heart wire
"I am first generation born in Australia. All my ancestors were Hungarian, which also was my first language. I grew up in Australia with migration stories of escape from Soviet Hungary in the 1950s as well as horror stories from WW2. "The only migration sounds from Hungary was ironically the sound of a razor wire machine pressing out bales of lethal wire to keep unwanted immigrants out. Prior ...
3m Jul 15, 2024
3m
Atash/fuego/fire
 "Fire is a very powerful element, and despite the fact that it can devastate everything it touches, it can also provide the warmth and sustenance necessary to survive. We live in times of war, and I believe that Zabi's poem invites us to reflect and be empathetic about the situation experienced not only by him and his family but by thousands of people who have been displaced from their homes a...
2m Jul 15, 2024
2m
Mória (in journey)
"In my work, I have extensively explored themes of migration; it is a topic that moves me deeply. The field recording, I must admit, is challenging and intense, given its source: a riot at a refugee detention centre in Greece. I wanted to construct a piece that transmitted the build-up and reasons for the riot and gave way to other viable possibilities as well. "My approach to each piece is un...
7m Jul 15, 2024
7m
Aegean buds
"The field recording of the ferry for the island of Chios loading at the port of Piraeus in the spring of 2016 moves and inspires me because of its background story and the picture that comes to my mind while listening and reading about it, followed by a taste of anger and injustice. The vivid dichotomy between the densely packed tents in empty warehouses along the harborside, and the everyday-...
3m Jul 15, 2024
3m
Katabatic dogs
"Scientists think that humans migrated north of the Arctic Circle with their dogs about 25,000 years ago and began using them to pull sleds roughly 3,000 years ago. So, the Greenland dog is a very old breed of man’s best friend. For thousands of years, they have been used by Innuits and Greenlanders for travel and survival in the Arctic. It was also the Greenland dog who successfully pulled the...
3m Jul 15, 2024
3m
The trickster
"I gravitated towards this raven recording from Greenland for a few reasons. Personally, I love birds, have two pet parrots, and find ravens quite captivating. As someone who grew up and spent most of his time in the Pacific Northwest, I regularly see and hear ravens. I love hearing the strange repertoire of sounds they produce, and they can even mimic human speech. They're a remarkably intelli...
8m Jul 15, 2024
8m
Everything is everything
"I like the rhythm of the conversation in the original field recording so I have written a soundtrack piece to go with it. As it's based in Africa so I have used African drum sounds to create a sense of place. I have then overlayed various melody rhythms using instrument sounds that I felt matched the drums. "I have also used processed samples from the original recording to add some emphasis i...
4m Jul 15, 2024
4m
Like monsters
"The field recording that I worked with is from 2016 and was captured by Maria Margaronis. It contains the voice of Mohammed, one of the many refugees who were stuck in a makeshift camp in Greece, as they were trying to make their way up north into central Europe. I wasn't aware of this incident back then so I did a little digging and read a few news articles about the situation of the refugees...
3m Jul 15, 2024
3m
Numbers (a sea of fear and laughter)
"The sea - a thing of beauty, calm, enjoyment, holidays and fun for children. It is also an immense power, rage, frightening, uncontrollable, and a place of fear and death. "I decided to use only the original sound file of the children laughing and playing in the sea but I also wanted to highlight the two sides of the water - a place of enjoyment and short respite from the difficulties of the ...
6m Jul 15, 2024
6m
Dandelion three times parallel
"I wanted to take the concept of migrating and explore it through the three languages I deal with on a daily basis, its meaning, the act and art / way of immigrating and how it opens you up and connects you with often parallel adversities, yet resisting every external impulse and becoming aware of the internal impulses. "How one seeks to unite with others for different reasons, as the social b...
8m Jul 15, 2024
8m
Conversations
"The field recording resonated with me as the theme is about families who have moved around the world and come together to meet and talk about food, farms and gardens. I was born in the US and grew up near Chicago where my father’s family settled from Germany in 1911. "I have cousins in Germany and I now live in Wales, with a Welsh husband. My older daughter, Ellen, was born in Scotland, but n...
7m Jul 15, 2024
7m
Altın bir kafes (A golden cage)
"When I was a kid, we used to visit an open-air animal market in Kadıköy, İstanbul. It was a part of our daily routine before taking a shared taxi back home. An opportunity to see different species of animals was an excitement for a little one. I am familiar with various birds from there. However, all were caged and imported from another part of our world to my hometown. "Maria Margaronis capt...
7m Jul 15, 2024
7m
Um Europa keine Mauern
Protest against racism and strict EU/Germany migration laws in Bremen, Germany. Protesters are chanting "Um Europa keine Mauern – Bleiberecht für alle und auf Dauer!" (No walls around Europe – Permanent right to stay for everyone!) Recorded by Pedro Oliveira. Part of the Migration Sounds project, the world’s first collection of the sounds of human migration. For more information and to explo...
3m Jul 15, 2024
3m
Grandma meeting boyfriend
This recording is of my Grandma meeting my boyfriend. My Grandma is an ethnic German who was born in Russia in 1932 who speaks Mennonite Low German, Russian and German. She is a bit deaf so we have to repeat some things and say them louder. She resettled to Germany in 1991. My boyfriend is American and speaks English and broken German. He lives with me in Vienna, Austria. I was born in Siberia...
19m Jul 15, 2024
19m
A sea of fear and laughter
In the summer of 2016 I got to know an Afghan family who living in the Vial migrant camp in Chios. They had fled Afghanistan because of direct threats to the father's life from the Taliban, but conditions in the camp were so dire that they were thinking of going back. I took the parents and four young children down to the beach for a day; they had not seen the sea since crossing from Turkey a m...
2m Jul 15, 2024
2m
Caged birds singing
In the summer of 2016, the Greek island of Chios was home to hundreds of Syrians, Afghans, Palestinians and others, searching for safety in Europe. Many were camped in grim conditions in the town's medieval castle. Just round the corner from that camp was a shop selling caged songbirds--canaries, lovebirds, parakeets. I made this recording as refugee children and adults wandered by. The photo ...
1m Jul 15, 2024
1m
When the tents fly
In the early spring of 2016, when the Western Balkan migration route to Europe was closed, more than 14,000 people on the move from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere were living in a muddy, makeshift camp site at Eidomeni on the Greek-North Macedonian border hoping to make their way north. This is the voice of Mohammed, from Syria. Recorded by Maria Margaronis. Part of the Migration Soun...
1m Jul 15, 2024
1m
Mahsa's energy
"This blues song is dedicated to Mahsa Amini (1999-2022). Mahsa was a young Kurdish women who was visiting her brother in Iran, when she was severely beaten for not conforming to the strict Islamic dress code. She died several days later in a hospital in Tehran, Iran. "I took the protest chants (that occurred later in Paris) and divided them into two tracks. The first chant occurs at the begin...
5m Jul 15, 2024
5m
The (displaced) forest's spirit
"After spending a week listening to the Bosque seco - dry forest - in Piura in the north of Perú and learning so much more about it, I felt like that beautiful and resilient forest - that thrives in the harshest conditions and still finds a way to save water and energy to go through the driest weather - and people who are being forced in many ways to migrate from their lands because of colonisa...
11m Jul 15, 2024
11m
Femme-vie-liberté
On Sunday, October 2, 2022, thousands of individuals took to the streets of Paris in a massive display of solidarity, denouncing Iran's Islamic leadership and supporting the Iranian demonstrators and the Femme Vie Liberté uprising. The protest was prompted by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died in custody allegedly for not wearing the mandatory Muslim veil according to authorities. ...
2m Jul 15, 2024
2m
Voices - a protest
Voices. On 19 December 2023 France approved a new immigration law. It is a law that makes it harder for families of immigrants to join them, limits the support for migrants from outside the EU, establishes staying illegally in the country as a crime, suppresses the automatic right to citizenship for those who are born in France from foreign parents and demands a fee from foreign students in the...
10m Jul 15, 2024
10m
Partie de pétanque
This is a recording of a part of a traditional south french metal ball game. On the background there are many typical cicada that immediately give an ambience. I am from the Netherlands and I moved to France years ago. But every time I moved, French people immediately hear I'm not from France. In the present recording from last year I remember very well how very local people, those who might b...
4m Jul 15, 2024
4m
Love thy neighbour
I live on a very ordinary suburban street - the sort of place you really wouldn't take any notice of as you drive past - with pebbledash houses, a storage centre and a supermarket at one end of the road, and a recreation ground at the other. On first look, it might seem rather sleepy - even a bit bland. But it is a place defined by migration. The people who live here come from an extraordinary...
8m Jul 15, 2024
8m
Ukrainian and English family having dinner
The recording is of a Ukrainian mother and her daughter having dinner with the daughter's English boyfriend. The mother is a Ukrainian refugee living in Oxford. Having dinner together each evening is important for us. In this recording, we are eating a Ukrainian borsch prepared by the mother. Recorded by Peter Walsh. Part of the Migration Sounds project, the world’s first collection of the so...
1m Jul 15, 2024
1m
Baby's heartbeat
“Bear with me” – says the midwife – “while I try to locate his heart”. “Isn’t this the sound of his heart?”, I ask. “No, this is your heart pulsing through the placenta”. My baby’s heart beats in a place that is far from where I call home, and its rhythm is interpreted in a language that is foreign to my ears. As I wait, my thoughts drift. Where will his heart find its belonging when it starts...
1m Jul 15, 2024
1m
Dinner snippet
I (Canadian) am having dinner with my partner (Spanish) and our friend (Turkish). This recording relates to the theme of migration in that we are all of different nationalities and countries of birth. We also discuss living elsewhere, learning new languages and naturalisation over the course of the meal. Generally a jovial, open atmosphere. Recorded by Denis Kierans. Part of the Migration Sou...
20m Jul 15, 2024
20m
Heartmoor
"Heartmoor is a word coined by John Koenig in his Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows that means the place to which the heart is anchored, whether that place exists now or ever existed. And that is what this piece is about: the longing we feel to belong somewhere. Whether we’ve had that place and lost it or have never found it, we still seek it. "Using melodies that travel through layers of sound wo...
2m Jul 15, 2024
2m
The gathering
"This field recording of several people of various nationalities, ages, and life experiences now living as neighbors, gathering in the host's home simply to enjoy one another's company was the inspiration for my composition. "I chose to use the recording as the ambient background theme from start to finish with little editing of the voices. I composed primarily on piano and synthesizer while l...
5m Jul 15, 2024
5m
щаслива п'ятниця
"I wanted to emphasise the confused nature of the communication that arose from the language barrier, so I fractured, treated and layered the recording to mirror the confusion. Once I was happy with the vocals, I added the lamenting string motifs." Dinner in Oxford reimagined by Michael Lilley. Part of the Migration Sounds project, the world’s first collection of the sounds of human migration...
3m Jul 15, 2024
3m
A heart can break in many places
"I chose a heartbeat recording from Oxford; because my ancestry is Indian and the nature of this project, it got me thinking about the impacts of colonization and how that leads to both forced and unforced migration. Panjab was cut in two during partition and so much blood was spilled in this former kingdom of five rivers. "I was thinking about this history and the heartbreak that so many carr...
3m Jul 15, 2024
3m
Ephemerists
"I have moved countries twice, and ended in the UK. This it was what drew me to the recording I chose. I wondered what someone else might have chosen to record, and how it would compare to what I record. "When I listened to the conversation around the dinner table, I recognised it as a conversation in which I have been present many, many times, with people from several different countries arou...
5m Jul 15, 2024
5m
My journey, my Ardas
"The field recording (Ardas prayer) performed at the end of the Sikh worship, holds significant meaning for Sikhs worldwide. I have personally visited the Sikh temple in the UK where this field recording was made. "In my composition, I’ve integrated the Ardas as a core element whilst additionally sampling my elderly father’s recollections of his personal migration experience at either end of t...
5m Jul 15, 2024
5m
Underground with a Bangladeshi tailor
The sound of traditional garment manufacture and repair at Dressmode Tailoring, which is run by Bangladeshi Mohammed Shajahan, originally from Sylhet, Bangladesh. This shop has been operating for around 17 years, but Mohammed has been working on Bethnal Green Road since 1996. There are lots of alterations and repairs undertaken here, mainly for the local Asian community. Times have been tough ...
4m Jul 15, 2024
4m
Weaving chant, tracing home
"The history of the Tabernacle's transformation from a church into a multicultural hub has inspired my creation. In Taiwan, temples also hold significant importance as gathering places, serving as focal points for communal and spiritual activities. As a multicultural island country with a long historical tradition of immigration since the 17th century, Taiwan has witnessed waves of people arriv...
10m Jul 15, 2024
10m
The Tabernacle
The Tabernacle is a Grade II-listed building in Powis Square, Notting Hill, west London, England, built in 1887 as a church. It is no longer a place of worship, but continues to serve the secular needs of the local community. It's a key part of the multicultural hub of Notting Hill, with people from many different countries, backgrounds and cultures sharing the space. In this recording, a steel...
2m Jul 15, 2024
2m
Getting a haircut in Peckham
The sound of a traditional west African barber’s shop in Peckham, serving mostly customers from all over the continent who now live in London. Barber's shops like these often operate as a centre for the local African community to come together and socialise, just as much as to get their next haircut - they’re an essential part of the fabric of local African diaspora communities in the city. Re...
7m Jul 15, 2024
7m
Migraciones breves
"The field recording I worked with is from a community kitchen. Music is also a community kitchen. One hears the conversations, the rattles, the shouting of instructions. "I searched my audio archives for these same experiences, my jotting down of music thoughts, a boat ride to a recording session, working on an improvisational recording, amongst other findings to piece together a collage of m...
6m Jul 15, 2024
6m