Video and Sound by students of Joudour Sahara Music Program with videographer and co-Founder Thomas Duncan,Cultural, Environmental Ambassador and co- Founder Halim Sbai, and composer and sound artist Susie Ibarra, and Joudour Sahara Staff.
What can we learn listening with our youth and children? In this instance, we’re listening to the earth, to the desert climate, to the home of these wonderful students of Joudour Sahara Music Program INGO, to our life source, water, and to cultural and environmental issues and sustainable practices in a climate of extreme heat in the South Sahara , Morocco.
So excited to share with you all this beautiful project and collaboration which begin last year and continues through 2023 , Stories of the Desert in a Changing Climate, featuring the research, interviews, recordings audio and visual by the amazing students of Joudour Sahara Music School and INGO, Joudour Sahara staff, and Co-Founders Halim Sbai and Thomas Duncan.
This year Joudour Sahara and my studio join TheWitness.Earth, Prohelvetia Zurich for the 2023 Edition of the The Witness.Earth with Sub-Sahara, North Africa, Europe and East Asia as transdisciplinary research groups sharing work on sustainable practices through sound based research.
Understanding the urgency with which climate action is needed, INGO and Music School Joudour Sahara, Sound Artist and Composer Susie Ibarra, and Openlab The Witness.Earth are providing platforms for underrepresented young women in M’hamid El Ghizlane to define their own climate narratives, hearing and seeing how they experience climate issues. We are working with 15 young girls aged 9 - 15 to record and video natural and domestic environments affected by climate change, along with 3 female community leaders to coordinate the project locally.
On their first field week together for Joudour Sahara and Susie Ibarra, the sounds that students felt were most pressing to record were water sources and as well as lack of and the dry rivers, extreme heat and wind in the constant effort to hold off desertification. These sounds were recorded on site, farm, desert, in its use in homes, the school and at various hours of the day .We conducted interviews about the climate stories with conservationist and cultural ambassador for the region and Co-Founder of Joudour Sahara , Halim Sbai, and their lead farmer Habib of Joudour Sahara Cultural and Environmental Center as well as family members of several generations in the community.
I will be creating in collaboration with the field recordings and video of the students and staff of Joudour Sahara , a sound installation of Stories of the Desert in a Changing Climate for exhibition.
I am honored and excited that our project is invited and commissioned for the first installation exhibition to be featured with Akademie der Kunste , Berlin in the end of August 2023 and as part of the program of year long work with The Witness.Earth and Prohelvetia Zurich, in Zurich Switzerland in the fall 2023. Stories of the Desert will also be heard and shown in installation in tour in Morocco and in the US.
More to come as we continue on field for recordings this early year of 2023!
So excited to share with you all thful project and collaboration which begin last year and continues through 2023 , Stories of the Desert in a Changing Climate, featuring the amazing founders, staff, and especially students of Joudour Sahara Music School and INGO
Field Excursion with Joudour Sahara Founder and Cultural and Environmental Ambassador Halim Sbai, school staff and students and field recordists Susie Ibarra and Jake Landau, next to protective Tamarisk trees in the South Sahara desert, Morocco.
Joudour Sahara student Arwah Radouani, singing into a nomad well in the South Sahara desert, Morocco, south of M’Hamid El Ghizlane, field trip led by co-founders of Joudour Sahara Halim Sbai and Thomas Duncan with field recordists and artists Susie Ibarra and Jake Landau with cultural studio Sound Health Habitat.
