Kano bird, Kano beads, Kano seeds

This sonic work is an attempt to communicate my profound childhood relationship with Kano, as well as to hint at the complex layers of Northern Nigeria. It is a piece of strange juxtapositions, and cross-cultural interferences and vibrations. The sounds of ancient rock gongs in Birnin Kudu reverberating across the plains, beating out Hausa and Fulani rhythms and songs; the colonial British voice, a history of violence; and the beauty of the Hausa language. Sounds of my child self from 1970s, recorded 47 years ago, captured a bird call, and myself mimicking that bird, called Ragon Maza in the Hausa language. Beyond the hiss, which seems like a sonic version of the mists of time, you can hear the sounds at dusk, one evening of my childhood, the distant prayer call from Kano mosque, and the sounds of evening crickets. My flame tree seed pod, from our Kano garden, that has travelled the world with me in my suitcase, shimmies in the background. Kano beads, which you can hear, are glass beads that were made in Palestine, from Dead Sea salt, and sand, made in the glassmaking city of Al Khalil (current day Hebron), supplying glass beads that were traded in Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia and finally arrived in Kano city. Mine are green.

I have taken multiple fragments from a 5-inch reel tape recording, held in the Pitt Rivers Museum sound archive, recorded by Bernard Evelyn Buller Fagg, between June and September 1955, when he was working for the British Colonial administration. He was an archaeologist interested in rock gongs, and he came across several ancient caves, with rock gongs, and important cave paintings, in the area of Birnin Kudu, an old city with ancient history, in Northern Nigeria, that was once part of Kano state. He invited local drummers to see if the rock gongs could match their traditional drums and rhythms. 

The various sections included sounds of the ‘string drum’ or Kalangu drum, a Hausa talking drum, the rhythm of the Tambari, used to greet chiefs and emirs. And many other local songs, and numerous types of drumming. I picked the ones that I loved most. Where possible I have tried to pair the rhythm on rock gongs with the rhythm on the drum itself. I interweave the glitches from the 1955 recording, as sonic interference - colonial interference, or my own presence, or maybe its the sound of tuning into the past.

Umar Shamsi Muhammad, a university student, helped me gather additional sounds, from the Birnin Kudu caves. He captured sounds of students and curators beating the rock gongs in the main caves, of Mesa and Habude, and interviewed an historian, Umar Farouk Abubakar. You can hear two fragments of this interview, as well as a Hausa / Fulani flute player and drummer, playing the Koroso dance in the caves. In the centre of this piece are the sounds of the actual Tambari drum, and the exhilarating sound of the double reed wind instrument called the Algaita, played recently in Kano, for the greeting of the Emir of Kano.

You can understand all about how Nigeria was created, by reading the excellent book by Max Siollun, called What Britain Did To Nigeria. I have included a quote from a British soldier who was part of the battle for the Sokoto Caliphate in March 1903, who describes the battle as "some slaughter, much fun". A British officer explains: "we chase and kill until the area is clear of living men - and we tire of blood and bullets".

Rock gong music from Nigeria reimagined by Salma Ahmad Caller.

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Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds