When the mountains sing

The recording I chose is over 50 minutes of cassette tape recordings from the 1970s, capturing interviews and recordings of live music performed by communities living in the Andes in Peru. 

For the Indigenous communities of Peru, the Andes are living, sacred beings that sustain and protect life and they call the Mountain Spirits Apus. These powerful spirits of the Andes watch over communities and are revered as life-givers as well as ancestors. They are also seen as a spiritual bridge connecting through the veil between the heavens and our world and also the inner world to their ancestors. Music is a language of prayer and deep communication with the sacred Andes.

The piece is called ‘When The Mountains Sing’; this is how I hear in my mind's ear the mountains singing back to the people in the Andes. The piece is composed of samples from the recording, processed using the Torso S-4 sampler and some live playing of a tenor recorder woven into the piece. 

Andean music including flute and drum reimagined by Helen Copnall.

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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