Sound Routes

Sound Routes: Maghreb / Morocco – Marrakesh (Day #1)

We’re utterly excited to finally share this beautiful project in collaboration with Dudu Bongo, which will take us around the world captured through his ears. Musician, instrument craftsman, ethnologist, sound recorder and curious mind are one of the few faces of his polifacetic personality. His boundless sensitivity and strive for knowledge about the history of cultures through sounds and music, will make this journey worth reading, seeing, listening and feeling.

We invite you to take 15 minutes of your time to be able to fully experience this first stop on our first travel together, to the lands of Morocco. This first post will take us through their first day in Marrakesh. Stay tuned for Day 2 in Marrakesh, and also the cities of Ouarzazate, Agadir & Tagazout and finally arriving to Essaouira to conclude this beautiful trip.

We also invite you to visit our Bandcamp Page to listen and download all field recordings from this journey. They’re free to use on your personal or commercial projects for any sound design related to music, film or any other artform. If you do that, please credit this source, we would greatly appreciate that!

Dudu has been lucky enough to be accompanied by Ana Larruy, a young and hugely talented photographer who will document this trip through her lenses. Make sure you check her work after reading this at her website: http://www.analarruy.com/.

Thanks for reading, and safe travel!

Ana and I arrived to Marrakesh very early on a Friday, after a seemingly eternal and exhausting flight from the terrific London Luton. The welcoming and warm sunshine of Marrakesh gave us vitamins and energy, just the boost that we needed to start our journey through the Souks of the Medina. We took a taxi to Bab Doukkala and tried to find our way to our riad which was not far away and, apparently, easy to find.  While Ana tried to figure out which was the best route to take I recorded the first environment of the trip, in between traffic lights…

Finding out which was the best way to the riad was not an easy job at all as we got lost, for the first time, in the crazy labyrinth of the medina… I took advantage of this situation and recorded an interesting construction site by one of the streets next to Bab Doukkala.

After walking around the same corners for about 15 minutes we finally found it, with the intention of dropping off our bags and leaving straight away. And so we did, we followed our instinct and orientation in order to arrive to Jemaa El-Fna. On our way I switched on the handy recorder to capture some street sounds but, surprisingly it took us less time than we expected to get there, leaving us with this amazing recording of the moment that we arrived at the centric square.

After walking around Jemaa El-Fna and seeing all kind of characters, animals and tourists, and after having eaten something in the cozy Café des Èpices, we headed to the astonishing Palais Bahia, where I had the opportunity to record the first Adhan or “calling to pray” of the trip. It always feels nice to hear it for the first time, and second, and third, and…

We also had a great view of Jemaa El-Fna from the legendary Argana Café, where I had the chance to record the liveness and madness of the place”.

It was already evening when we realised we had been walking around the souks for a while. Some of them eclectic and colourful hallways of hanging babouches, silk scarves, leathers, african masks and delightful necklaces, among other eye-catching stuff. Others are narrow and dark corridors full of little and deep metalwork shops on each side illuminated by the hundreds of manually-worked metal chandeliers. Here I walked around with my recorder capturing a moment of calm that, suddenly came over the environment.

The last recording of the day leaves us a few hundred meters from Jemaa El-Fna, the light was slightly diminishing, and the calling to pray for the evening warned us that it was already 8pm, leaving me with the feeling of having had a really short day…


Continue reading Sound Routes: Maghreb / Morocco – Marrakesh (Day #2).

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