Floating waves on the Zambezi

 Imagine tuning a radio time-machine dial between the past and present of the Zambezi River valley; birds weave a tapestry in and out of the soundscape as static, magnetic drift, crosstalk and interference rise and fall with the signals in the atmosphere. The foundation of this mix, an original recording in the Pitt Rivers Museum collection, is a radio broadcast of singing and drumming by an unidentified group circa 1965, in the first years of Zambia's independence and the period of transition from colonial broadcasting structures to a national network. The available information is minimal; a single scrap of paper tells us the recording is "starring Stephen & Pio". During the copying process one of the reels of tape was accidentally overprinted, so that one track runs backwards while another simultaneously runs forward. In my reimagined mix this glitch leads us through history and memory, the reversed rhythms of backwards magnetic tape conducting an aural transition back into the past. 

 In the 1970s the government and the people supported the Black majorities in neighbouring countries who were engaged in armed struggles against oppressive white settler regimes. Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, acted as the headquarters for clandestine shortwave radio broadcasts supporting these wars of African liberation. In transmissions of solidarity and strategy sent across borders, the sound of gunfire was a form of station identification, heard here among victory celebrations and swarming mosquitoes. 

Collectivities float across the airwaves: clouds of insects, armies and colonies and communities of people, soloist and chorus in call and response, the undercurrent of winds and rivers, flocks of birds. For the Tonga of Southern Province, birds are associated with spirits and the women who perform rainmaking rituals with them. Tuning into the Zambezi Valley in the 2020s, we catch voices of women's empowerment amidst fragments of an ongoing community radio revitalization movement. New volunteer-run stations are broadcasting on FM in areas where Internet and cell phone service are sketchy or nonexistent, but most households own at least one radio. Questions asked by Brooklyn College anthropology students are answered by students and radio producers in the Zambezi Valley in an exchange of audio letters, part of a co-production with Claudia Wegener (a.k.a. radio continental drift). In the coda we return to the early years of Zambian freedom and independence, as the tape plays backwards again and the individual voices of the original recording multiply to form a nation.

Birds: Macaulay Library, Cornell University Ornithology Lab
Clandestine shortwave recordings: Interval Signals Online
Clips: Radio Zambia, Radio Chikuni, Sinazongwe Community Radio 
Voices:
Maseline Mureles (Narrator), Chisa Mwiinde, ManJun Luo, Anna Kowalski, Miriam Salama, Arilda Hyka, Galit Mamrout, Lucia Munenge, Megi Murati, Meggie Cheng, Mrs. Banda Ndeti, 
Nosiku Mundia, Margaret Munkuli, Monica Siabunkululu, Patience Kabuku
Thanks: 
Claudia Wegener, Zongwe FM, Zubo Trust for Women, Brooklyn College, Stuart Fowkes, Anna Stereopolou, Wave Farm, Library of Congress Radio Preservation Task Force, National Endowment for the Humanities Radio & Decolonization workshop.

Bantu songs from Zambia reimagined by Tom Miller.

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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