Sweet, sad memories of a beautiful place

"The field recording is sampled from a public performance of a band playing traditional Latin music found in countries such as Cuba and Brazil. This music captures the feeling of sweet melancholy - of longing for the beauty of home, while also sharing this cultural expression with an audience in London. 

"As I listened to this sample over and over, I began to really feel the humanness of the music - the embodied sounds of the instruments, the work of fingers and hands - pouring out the emotion for the audience to take in and be touched by. The techniques for creating my piece included stretching and extending the sample to create a wash of sound, which might be like one's memory of attending this concert. 

"Fragments of melodies and harmonies surface above the waves, drawing us back not only to another country - thinking of traveling, uprooting, relocating, settling down to make another home in a strange and new place - but to a perhaps simpler and more humane time."

Migrant musicians in London reimagined by Wayne DeFehr.

Part of the Migration Sounds project, the world’s first collection of the sounds of human migration. 

For more information and to explore the project, see https://www.citiesandmemory.com/migration