An amazing start to the year with a month long trip to south India.
My Recordings:
#1 Early morning life in Hampi.
Sounds: sweeping, clanking dishes, spitting, murmurs, engine rumbles and roars, children's voices, a rare calm and stillness for me in India.
#2 Chanting in a Hindu temple.
Sounds: Voice, hands, feet, bells, doors, musical rhythms, belief & devotion.
#3 On a mountain top.
Sounds: tinny distant motorbike engines, flapping flags, chanting, birds, beeps, voices, claps, the ear-view of a sacred mountain top.
#4 Musical columns being played.
Sounds: varying tones, skin, resonance, stone, slapping, tapping, popping, an old rain like music.
#5 A busy road.
Sounds: Beeps, horns, blasts, engines, voices, squeals and shrieks of brakes, alarms, a classic India road side soundscape.
#6 Night train.
Sounds: voices, voices, voices repeating, coffee, chai walla, metal rumbles, chugs and rattles of engines, carriages, wheels on tracks, distant long horns, muffled voices, a good nights sleep on a top bunk.
#7 Crows, early morning.
Sounds: Crows cawing, kraaing, cawing, cawing and cawing, a terrifying but daily spectacle of a large Hitchcock style gathering of crows.
#8 Mumbai from high up.
Sounds: clatering of pots and pans, engines roaring, murmuring, speech, pigeons cooing, passing beeps and paps, air con whirring, the gentle sounds of a backstreet in a city.
Recordings I missed:
#1 Women's jewellery
Sounds: A delicate but strong sound
cloud of high pitched jingling and rattling of silver anklets and clattering of glass bracelets worn by big groups of women and girls walking past me in Hampi.
#2 An Elephant passing
Sounds: a rhythmic jingle of chains, matching each short step of this elephant that passed me. It was sadly reminiscent of the sound of anklets worn by Indian women, but this ankle jewellery was worn to stop the animal escaping at speed from its labour camp, which it was doing for a few seconds as it tromped past us in Wayanad.
