Panama - Emberá traditional music, flute and drums

Over the years I've recorded many sounds in different locations around the world. This collection of recordings aims to highlight the unique 'voices of a place'.

The Emberá people of Panama, the ‘Golden People,’ live principally in the Archipelago of San Blas and the mouth of the Bayano and Chucunaque rivers in Panama. They are an extraordinary group of people who we have worked closely with for many years now. They are good friends and it was a blessing for me to be able to go finally on a shoot and stay with them in their communities. It felt like a long time since I had last strung my trusty old hammock to the secure roof support of an indigenous house in the rainforest. This is from a series of recordings, the first with a small group of musicians, flute, drums and percussion, they reminded me of a bunch of characters from Chaucer; the second which I will get round to publishing soon was of children singing old folk songs. The sounds of Panama.

Although technically ‘Panamanian’ citizens, they have achieved one of the most positive arrangements of any indigenous people in the world today by having almost complete sovereignty over their own lands and affairs. Although the pressures from the outside world are growing more challenging for these communities.

Over the years I've recorded many sounds in different locations around the world. This collection of recordings aims to highlight the unique 'voices of a place'. The Emberá people of Panama, the ‘Golden People,’ live principally in the Archipelago of San Blas and the mouth of the Bayano and Chucunaque rivers in Panama. They are an extraordinary group of people who we have worked closely with for many years now alongside If Not Us Then Who and Guardians of the Forest. They are good friends and it was a blessing for me to be able to go on a shoot and stay with them in their communities. It felt like a long time since I had last strung my trusty old hammock to a secure roof support of an indigenous house in the rainforest. Although technically ‘Panamanian’ citizens, they have achieved one of the most positive arrangements of any indigenous people in the world today by having almost complete sovereignty over their own lands and affairs. Although the pressures from the outside world are growing more challenging for these communities.

https://soundcloud.com/…/panama-embera-traditional-music-fl…

https://ifnotusthenwho.me

United Kingdom - Morning chorus, River Lea

Over the years I've recorded many sounds in different locations around the world. This collection of recordings aims to highlight the unique 'voices of a place'.

Well its been a strange, challenging and on occasions difficult few weeks as the world has come to a stop around us, people have been pulled into their homes, businesses have closed and the shutters drawn. Replaced now by a surreal quietness. Human kind with all the noise and hurry and motion, with all the endless building and travelling and business, its conversations and transactions, its hum of daily activities, its very normality, has suddenly and for a period still to be determined, stopped. Involuntarily we have been silenced. A quiet has fallen across the streets of emptied cities. Everyone is inside. The coronavirus has travelled across the globe and overtaken everyones lives. We here in the UK exist in a strange lockdown, where there is sunshine and early spring, blossom and fresh leaves, but behind that is the sound of distant sirens, face-masks and hand washing and uncertainty, an awareness of our health service facing unprecedented pressure. We hold on.

For the past couple of mornings, way before sunrise, I have slipped away in the darkness from the nearby flat where my little family sleep, my microphones and field-mixer slung from one shoulder and a coffee pressed into the other hand, I rush along and into the narrow pathway I have used a thousand times over the years. At this time in the morning it is wet and sweet in aroma. On one side it has a long stretch of old allotments and on the other a steep bank to a brook and then across to the river and canal. The path is dotted with hawthorn, hazel, dogwood, cherry plum, elder berry and ash and all manner of beautiful plants grow in abundance from tiny blue petalled speedwell, purple anemone, blue bells, dandelion, bull thistle, yarrow, cow parsley and comfrey. It is a haven of songbirds and foxes, and hopefully for a long to come, my family and me.

Put on your headphones and enjoy.

https://soundcloud.com/timlewis77/united-kingdom-morning-chorus-river-lea-greater-london

Malta - Gnejna bay early morning seascape

Over the years I've recorded many sounds in different locations around the world. This collection of recordings aims to highlight the unique 'voices of a place'.

Recorded early morning as the sun rose. Not many people around, the small squat fishermen huts still boarded, a few fishing boats bobbed lightly at their moorings. There was simply the sound of the breeze playing through the rushes behind me, the chirruping of sparrows among the fields and eucalyptus, and the sea, gloriously flat calm and crystal clear as it lapped lightly against the sand. I sat there seemingly with the world to myself and as the light strengthened, promising another tremendously hot summers day, the Isle of Gozo began to shimmer on the horizon in an indistinct blur of colours, creamy pink cliffs, grey smudges of olive trees and yellow church steeples. Eventually an elderly man came and sat by the shore and working delicately with reeds and twine, he shaped an oval basket for octopus.