normanlong · WLD2 2020 Mixed live on World Listening Day 2020, July 18, 2020. You can read my thoughts on this year’s theme: “The Collective Field”, here. This mix collects the Black spaces and Green spaces of Black neighborhoods on the south side of Chicago, from hydrophone recordings of marsh land at Marian R. Byrnes Park and Big Marsh to picnics at Washington Park and neighborhood parties. When we say Black Lives Matter then Black space matters, Black Sound matters, then sounds we make, hear, live with and create matter and must not be dismissed or denigrated before they are heard. This is what I tell myself. We need our creativity and sensitivity. I haven’t led soundwalks since the lockdown. However, I have been recording our prairie and have many recordings of an urban community with a wildlife reserve. The prairie is located between Jeffery Manor, a residential neighborhood in Chicago, IL and a large rail yard. This area is also called the calumet region and was onc...
“Invisibility, let me explain, gives one a slightly different sense of time, you’re never quite on the beat. Sometimes you’re ahead and sometimes behind. Instead of the swift and imperceptible flowing of time, you are aware of its nodes, those points where time stands still or from which it leaps ahead. And you slip into the breaks and look around.” — Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison