NOISY MEMORY MEDIA COMPANION
Noisy Memory: Recording Sound, Performing Archives (forthcoming, fall 2025, University of North Carolina Press) is a book that explores the remarkable everyday stories of sound recordings and shows us a new way to listen to the past. It shares recordings from several archives, including murder ballads and oral histories from Appalachia, the Afrofuturistic music of Sun Ra in Chicago, and the inner thoughts of monk and writer Thomas Merton in Kentucky. Each chapter reveals rich historical contexts of the recordings, and introduces us to people and places connected to them.
Drawing upon my two-decade career as an artist and researcher, Noisy Memory builds upon and expands the tradition of composers and artists writing about their work. A unique combination of ethnography, memoir, philosophical text, and creative process book, it presents creative approaches to ethically working with sound archives.
In this media companion to the book, click on a chapter below to find photos, recordings, videos, and playlists for each chapter, as well as short descriptions, lyrics, and score excerpts. This companion is useful for classroom teaching and for any curious readers wanting to connect the written words with the sounds that inspired them. I hope you find moments of beauty and surprise, in both the book and the recordings, and then again in your own listening to the world around you. You can listen to or purchase the albums here:
