A meditation on two archival recordings, 'Zulu's Ball' by King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in 1923, and a 1948 interview with Helen Keller and her assistant Polly Thompson by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Peter McGregor on the occasion of Keller's 1948 tour of Australia.  Also features a recording from around 1976 of Clara Rockmore playing Tchaikovsky's 'Valse Sentimentale' on the theremin, an instrument played without touch. Tony Baldwin as narrator.

From Scratch (Fidelity)

Sherre DeLys and Hal Cannon took a road trip across Texas seeking to understand the relationship between the cultural and natural landscape through sound. They went to record people who live close to the land, working cowboys and ranch women who are also singers, poets, and storytellers. Then DeLys and Cannon turned their microphones to the ecology surrounding this life—daily silences, bird songs, wind and windmills and the gait of a horses. Over an 1800 mile journey they began to discover an awareness to the senses that is lost to most of us who live in a noisy world.

What emerges is a symphony of Texas soundscape—a harmony of the natural world with the authentic voice from the land.

What A Cowboy Hears 10 Min Extract

Recorded in 1967, George Ewart Evans interviews Mrs Susan Mullenger (born in 1898) who recalls some old remedies for children's illnesses – including fried rodent!

The full-length recording from the George Ewart Evens oral history Collection is on British Library sounds: 
http://sounds.bl.uk/Oral-history/George%20Ewart%20Evans%20collection/021M-T1436RXXXXXX-0300V0

From Scratch (Fidelity)

SherreDeLys

Related tracks