A richly textured exploration of the role of sound – and listening – in the past 100,000 years of human history for BBC Radio 4. This thirty-part series begins broadcast on Monday 18 March, 2013 and is written and presented by Professor David Hendy. Read about its making here…
Last time I was here was 25 years ago and nothing has changed. The Cyclone roller coaster still looms. This time though, after years of making radio, I notice all the tiny sounds of a resort in the off season. The clanking of the fences, the distant ‘D’ train squealing against a rail, even a …
It makes perfect sense, when travelling around the world for a radio series about sound to keep your ears open – to listen closely to the spaces in which you find yourself in the hope that their sound now will somehow evoke the sounds of the past. Yet we need to keep our eyes open … Continue reading
The series starts on Monday 18 March at 13.45 on BBC Radio 4. Episode two on Tuesday 19 March features a great sound from the Pitt Rivers Sound Archive – Bayaka pygmies preparing for a ‘net hunt’. A chorus of women sing to entice the bobé forest spirits out to bless the hunters. The bobé … Continue reading
When I was small I was often accosted by lavender-sellers in Romford on a Saturday morning. I remember feeling singled out when an old lady with a touch of the Mystic Megs about her gave me a sprig wrapped up in tin foil. I thought it was a present until she started shouting at me … Continue reading
It’s true what they say about the ancient theatre at Epidaurus in Greece – you can hear someone talking in an ordinary voice on the stage from the highest row, ‘The Gods’. David and I arrived very early as we knew that any tourists would not be able to resist testing the acoustics with banal … Continue reading
We are rattling down the Ghana coast at about 70 mph passing signs saying ‘Slow Down – 72 Deaths Here!’ overtaking the gigantic dumper trucks on flatbeds bound for gold mines in the interior. We cross a vast sleepy river and finally Elmina Castle comes into view, grasping the rocky horizon, framed picturesquely by palm trees … Continue reading
It’s my favourite discovery in David’s notes for the series… an African instrument made from tree-trunks and hit with sticks. The drummer creates a series of high and low tones that form a message. It’s just a rhythm to the uninitiated, but to those who speak drum it’s as conversational, jokey and complex as any other language. … Continue reading
Accra, Ghana’s capital, is a city that thrives on amplification. On our first drive through the suburb of Abeka we passed a young boy, no older than seven or eight – dressed in a suit, clutching a microphone, and standing right next to a loudspeaker that went up to his shoulders. He was regaling all … Continue reading
I envy astronomers who can use powerful telescopes to peer back into the past and view galaxies as they were millions, billions of years ago. We cannot use a microphone to pick up past noises because as sounds pass through the air their energy dissipates quickly. Aliens looking back at earth could see dinosaurs but … Continue reading
It was disturbing to discover that the slave cabins at the McLeod Plantation in Charleston now look so picturesque. Painted white, nestled amongst the shade of South Carolina’s moss-laden Live Oak trees and the odd magnolia bush, they’re little havens of quiet – or, at least they would be, were it not for the nearby … Continue reading
We’ve come to Harvard University where experimenters in the 1930s found that when listeners hear a disembodied voice over loudspeakers they can’t but help jump to conclusions about the person doing the talking. They infuse these strangers with personality, making judgements about their politics, their mood, even their appearance. A second experiment got one group … Continue reading
Noise 