Sounds of Origin | Felipe Duarte & bbymix.

The idea of Sounds of Origin was born from a conversation with Felipe, where he shared the story of how the radio as a medium was brought to his indigenous tribe in Colombia.

In Colombian indigenous traditions of the North, in the Sierra Nevada, music is originally not entertainment but rather sung as a devotion to what is trying to be communicated—sound, as an active practice to transmit centuries of ancestral knowledge and tradition. Introduction to the radio meant that people were forced to accept the information from it; it was like a magic device that once introduced could not be forgotten. The reception of sound in Western culture began to influence how sound is practised indigenously. Rather than singing, people could now listen to the radio, which played Western soundscapes and carried a western worldview.

Silence holds power because it is objective. This show is a reflection into the story of radio transmission—how Western ideologies, stemming from mediums like radio, make their imprint on non-Western cultures. We will explore how to remain objective outside of silence and how music holds memory, sharing knowledge across the globe by way of reciprocity rather than dominance.

Why is it dangerous when we forget ancestral songs? How does understanding where music comes from help us realise how we live life in the present Western world, stemmin from colonisation of the mind? Through asking these questions, we explore the power within each one of us to conceive and create.

In these two hours we will present some traditional songs and the stories behind them, holding memory about a magical invisible dimension of life. As part of an ongoing project, Felipe has gathered sonic stories through music from cultures all over the world, gifting the tape back to the people of Sierra Nevada as a safekeeping of traditions amidst newfound technologies like the radio.