YAZ is a vocal and electroacoustic composition built from a field recording of an Aït Haddidou market in Rabat, captured in 1961. What struck me immediately was the presence of a young boy’s voice, cutting through the density of the market: a call. Not directed at anyone in particular, yet lingering. That voice became the starting point of the piece, an echo moving through time and memory.Research into Aït Haddidou and Amazigh musical culture revealed a relationship to voice that is inseparable from daily life. Singing is not performance. It belongs to work, ritual, gathering, and transmission. In Amazigh group singing, voices move in unison. A song exists because a community carries it, through repetition and collective presence, as an acknowledgement of life itself.The piece opens with my voice recorded as a soft lullaby, an intimate humming inspired by the singing women carry inside the home. I chose a wordless melody to allow the voice to transcend language, time, and place, reflecting how memory often survives beyond words - the peculiar way a melody, or even a scent, can instantly transport us through time.As the piece unfolds, the voice thickens and multiplies, gradually transforming into a collective chant. Intimacy expands into togetherness. Repetition becomes more insistent. The singing grows intense, almost like a march — not as a gesture of power, but as an act of persistence and the strength that lies within a community. As a nomadic people, I like to imagine these songs carrying a sense of home and belonging.The market recording functions as a living archive. Through spatialisation, spectral processing, and subtle glitch-like distortions, voices and noises stretch, fragment, and drift. The market shifts between reality and dream, familiar and haunted.My practice combines voice, field recording, and spatial sonic exploration. Coming from a multicultural background, partly Arabic, this piece resonates deeply with my ongoing exploration of memory, identity, exile, and the way we carry the voices of our ancestors across time.The title YAZ refers to the Amazigh symbol ⵣ, a sign of freedom, dignity, and resistance. The piece is conceived as a call across ages. A reminder that voices do not vanish. When we listen, they return.Market sounds, Morocco reimagined by Ilhem.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

Transcript

Related