Altered Zones

Since 2003, the beloved Sublime Frequencies label has been traveling to remote and exotic locations to document and archive field recordings of indigenous international music. Now founding member/co-owner Hisham Mayet and contributor Olivia Wyatt are headed to Sudan, with the goal of producing "a film, a book, and several audio CDs" for release on the label in 2011.  They have started a Kickstarter to fund the project.  In their own words:

Sudan is to western eyes and ears an unexplored cultural giant in terms of music, ceremony and art. This coming year in January, there will be a historic referendum to split the country into 3 different republics. The Sublime Frequencies label is hoping to document many facets of this amazing cultural juggernaut in the horn of Africa as a unified country. This will be possibly the last time that the political boundaries will hold this much diversity in culture, religion, and language.

The aim and scope of the expedition will involve gathering of information historical and contemporary. There will be interviews conducted with musicians and historians about the rich musical past of Sudan. There will be recordings made with various contemporary musicians and recordings that have spanned the last 40 years of popular and classical Sudanese music. We hope to gather cassettes, radio recordings and other cultural ephemera for research purposes. We aim to film and record as much diversity as possible, from the Nubian Islamic north to the Christian and Animist south.

Click here to find out more about the Sudan project and contribute to the cause.