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Ecological composer Nyokabi Kariũki
Each week, I’ll highlight a composer or sound artist who works closely with ecological sounds. Today, I’d like to highlight Nyokabi Kariũki. Kariũki is a Kenyan composer and sound artist whose work frequently features East African ecological sounds and stories, in gorgeous combination with the sound worlds of East African instruments and speech (including Maa and Kiswahili). I especially recommend her “Equator Song” (2024), which I’ve linked below.
Kariũki has also done important scholarly work, writing thoughtful and personal essays on overlooked African composers such as Halim El-Dabh, the Egyptian founder of electroacoustic music whose “Wire Recorder Piece” (1944) predated similar innovations in Paris and Cologne that are much more frequently taught in music history classrooms. For all of us ecologically inclined thinkers, El Dabh is also interesting because he initially studied agricultural engineering in Cairo: in the 1930s, he developed methods for “creating noise” using agricultural technologies — those “sound sculptures” then made their way into his electronic music.
You can listen to Kariũki’s “Equator Song” here: youtube.com/watch?v=vi0_pGZfYqw
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