Five points
Folk Songs for the Five Points
Change is at the heart of this.
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The Five Points (historic focal point of Scorsese’s film Gangs of New York) no longer exist. Instead, this area in lower Manhattan has become known by other names: Loisaida, Chinatown, Kleindeutschland, Little Italy, the Lower East Side. It’s this history, one of a city shaped by immigrant memory and musical culture, that Victor Gama and David Gunn raise, as if spirits from the past, to create their Folk Songs for the Five Points. Folk songs for these experimental artists are truly the malleable material of the people.
The Folk Songs project, of which this album is the record, began life at New York’s Tenement Museum where Gunn was digital artist in residence. He got together with Gama – an Angolan-Portuguese composer whose approach to music involves creating his own instruments to contextualize sound as part of an interactive universe. The duo recorded sounds such as steam escaping from a manhole, a squeaky 2nd Avenue train, neighbourhood music, and coupled these with fragments of instrumentals from Gama himself. Subtly mixed and manipulated, this gentle and thoughtful music adds up to a contemporary immigrant occurrence.
Change is at the heart of this. Turning into something else is a continual process of becoming. Those who wish to encounter the project in all its glorious flux are directed to the superb website where, via a sound map of the Lower East Side, visitors can interact with the raw material of the folk songs themselves.
- Product information
- by David Gunn and Victor Gama
- Star rating
- Product link
- www.folksongsproject.com
- Product number
- TM1 CD
- Publisher
- Lower East Side Tenement Museum
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Voices from the margins:
Multimedia: video, podcasts, and more.
- Poetry Slam in Zimbabwe
- The House of Hunger poetry slam held in Zimbabwe in 2006, and organised by the Pamberi Trust, showcased young artists performing inspirational work on issues from corporate power to child soldiers. The video features four of the poets.
Published by Pambazuka News.
- Iranian women speak out
- 3 March 2007, London. Women's rights activists marched through the English capital last week to celebrate International Women's Day with a protest against the misogyny of the Islamic regime in Iran and the threat of invasion by the US. Hear the voices of Iranian feminists Azar and Leila Parnian and the sounds of the demonstration as it passed through the heart of the city. Click here to learn more about the campaign.
Produced by Heidi Bachram.
- Raised Voices audio:
- Benny from West Papua on Corporate Power
- Vinayan from India on agriculture
