Loong Kwailei

"Listening to the audio recorded in Shanghai, China, at the Spring festival, I identified interesting melodic fragments from a puppet show, as well as discernible rhythmic and melodic elements from unintelligible background voices and other noises from the audience. 

"I was drawn to these sounds both as being culturally significant and as being representative of aspects of World Heritage connected with tourism. 

"Extracting my musical starting points I then abstracted and developed them, expanding upon the inherent motifs - following my emotional responses both to the source material and the implications of World Heritage Day (such as unity, cultural appreciation and learning, the historical importance of a place and its population etc., etc.) and its influence by and on ‘global culture’."

Performance of traditional puppetry reimagined by Dead Kousin.

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This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage