A centroid with Chocó

The development of this piece was particularly complicated for reasons I can’t fully explain. I tried various jumping off points, taking sections of the initial harmonica melody, and working on that with counter-melodies, call and response, writing on melodica and piano, working with voice, manipulating the original melodic phrasing, and nothing stuck for quite a while. 

Then I left the ideas alone for some time and began working on a parallel piece for the Cities and Memory Autumn Project and this helped free something up….

I continued by retuning, and taking individual notes from the original recording out - keeping some of the melodic phrasing intact, but slowing it down and spacing it out. This forced a more mellow approach overall, and at this point I took a lot of elements back out again to give more space. At the same time, I worked with Nicky, my collaborator, on developing piano parts and this really helped to ground the work. 

From then onwards it was a much smoother process, and I could intuit a direction and a way forward. 

The original field recording and my relationship to it is one of curiosity, and a sense of reaching out across time and space back to Columbia in the 1960’s, via Newcastle (where Nicky lives) and Berlin (where I am currently) in 2025... I like this idea of a connection in this way, which is how I arrived at the title. 

Chocó mouth organ music reimagined by Suzi Lamb with Nicky Rushton.

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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