Sound Lines

Music broadcaster Verity Sharp listens to the world in a different way. We eavesdrop with her along latitudinal lines, hearing local stories that are having a direct impact on music and musicians. Could there be echoes along these sound lines? Might different music that's created thousands of miles apart, but on the same latitude, share common ground? And could listening in this way allow us to glimpse the effect of the vast and often immeasurable forces that are sweeping change across our planet?

This third episode circumnavigates the globe along the 33rd parallel. Halfway between the Equator and the Arctic Circle, this latitude falls within a narrow, densely populated band in which a quarter of the world's humans live. It's here that the Fertile Crescent, a region between the Nile, Euphrates and Tigris rivers, gave rise to some of the earth's earliest civilisations - and the latitude runs close to several of the planet's major cities, including Atlanta, Casablanca, Beirut, Baghdad and Shanghai.

Around the circle, we hear three stories.

Journalist and sometime musician Zeina Shahla shares her experiences living through the Syrian conflict in Damascus, and its effect on music-making there. We also meet Bernar who, amid the shelling, has resolutely continued to put on live music in his cafe in the old part of the city.

Sound artist Kate Carr listens to the sounds of the US-Mexican border fence in Tijuana. And she meets electronic musician Hayd退e Jim退nez, aka Hidhawk, who aims to use sound as a way of healing the effects of the "cut or bruise" that is the division between the two nations.

Even in the relatively remote Ladakh region of northern India, which singer and song collector Morup Namgyal describes as "a broken moon, rooftop of the world", an explosion of tourist numbers in recent years is having an impact on the health of traditional culture.

Producer: Chris Elcombe
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4.

Verity Sharp connects musical stories along latitudinal lines around the globe.

Music broadcaster Verity Sharp listens to the world in a different way. We eavesdrop with her along latitudinal lines, hearing local stories that are having a direct impact on music and musicians. Could there be echoes along these sound lines? Might different music that's created thousands of miles apart, but on the same latitude, share common ground? And could listening in this way allow us to glimpse the effect of the vast and often immeasurable forces that are sweeping change across our planet?

This third episode circumnavigates the globe along the 33rd parallel. Halfway between the Equator and the Arctic Circle, this latitude falls within a narrow, densely populated band in which a quarter of the world's humans live. It's here that the Fertile Crescent, a region between the Nile, Euphrates and Tigris rivers, gave rise to some of the earth's earliest civilisations - and the latitude runs close to several of the planet's major cities, including Atlanta, Casablanca, Beirut, Baghdad and Shanghai.

Around the circle, we hear three stories.

Journalist and sometime musician Zeina Shahla shares her experiences living through the Syrian conflict in Damascus, and its effect on music-making there. We also meet Bernar who, amid the shelling, has resolutely continued to put on live music in his cafe in the old part of the city.

Sound artist Kate Carr listens to the sounds of the US-Mexican border fence in Tijuana. And she meets electronic musician Hayd退e Jim退nez, aka Hidhawk, who aims to use sound as a way of healing the effects of the "cut or bruise" that is the division between the two nations.

Even in the relatively remote Ladakh region of northern India, which singer and song collector Morup Namgyal describes as "a broken moon, rooftop of the world", an explosion of tourist numbers in recent years is having an impact on the health of traditional culture.

Producer: Chris Elcombe
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4.

Verity Sharp connects musical stories along latitudinal lines around the globe.

The final episode of a series in which broadcaster Verity Sharp listens to the music of the world in a different way. We eavesdrop with her along latitudinal lines, hearing local stories that are having a direct impact on music and musicians. Could there be echoes along these sound lines? Might different music that's created thousands of miles apart, but on the same latitude, share common ground? And could listening in this way allow us to glimpse the effect of the vast and often immeasurable forces that are sweeping change across our planet?

Verity ends with the Arctic Circle. This far north, both the strengths and limits of human influence over the planet are starkly visible - the melting ice here has come to symbolise the pace of climate change while, for much of the year, the harshness of the environment is a continual reminder of our vulnerability.

Around the circle, we hear three stories.

Electronic musician Roman Kravchenko brings us into his life in one of the planet's coldest, most remote and polluted cities - Norilsk, some 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle in Siberia, where life expectancy is ten years less than for the rest of Russia.

Christine Tootoo lives in Rankin Inlet, in the Nunavut Territory of northern Canada. Caribou-hunting and throat-singing are an important part of the Inuit culture she seeks to promote in the face of rapid social and environmental change.

And Lasse Marhaug, a Norwegian noise musician, has returned to the far north of the country where he grew up. He's in search of the reasons he makes his music, recalling the womb-like experience of an Arctic winter storm.

Producer: Chris Elcombe
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4

Verity Sharp connects musical stories along latitudinal lines around the globe.

The final episode of a series in which broadcaster Verity Sharp listens to the music of the world in a different way. We eavesdrop with her along latitudinal lines, hearing local stories that are having a direct impact on music and musicians. Could there be echoes along these sound lines? Might different music that's created thousands of miles apart, but on the same latitude, share common ground? And could listening in this way allow us to glimpse the effect of the vast and often immeasurable forces that are sweeping change across our planet?

Verity ends with the Arctic Circle. This far north, both the strengths and limits of human influence over the planet are starkly visible - the melting ice here has come to symbolise the pace of climate change while, for much of the year, the harshness of the environment is a continual reminder of our vulnerability.

Around the circle, we hear three stories.

Electronic musician Roman Kravchenko brings us into his life in one of the planet's coldest, most remote and polluted cities - Norilsk, some 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle in Siberia, where life expectancy is ten years less than for the rest of Russia.

Christine Tootoo lives in Rankin Inlet, in the Nunavut Territory of northern Canada. Caribou-hunting and throat-singing are an important part of the Inuit culture she seeks to promote in the face of rapid social and environmental change.

And Lasse Marhaug, a Norwegian noise musician, has returned to the far north of the country where he grew up. He's in search of the reasons he makes his music, recalling the womb-like experience of an Arctic winter storm.

Producer: Chris Elcombe
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4

Verity Sharp connects musical stories along latitudinal lines around the globe.

This second episode circumnavigates the globe along the Equator, described by Aristotle as "the torrid zone", a place where the planet's centrifugal forces are at their most powerful, dictating the direction of weather systems and ocean currents.

Around the circle, we hear three stories.

Writer and musician Daniel Lofredo Rota takes us 2,500 metres up into the Andes in Ecuador, home to harp and flute player Jesús Bonilla and his fellow Kichwa community, who are struggling against visible effects of climate change and the erosion of their way of life.

Rully Shabara is immersed in an intense sonic world - not only in the experimental vocal music he creates, but the relentless noise of street-life in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

And Gregg Mwendwa visits the Kenyan city of Kisumu. Musician Olith Ratego is a member of the Luo people whose lives there are entwined with Lake Victoria, an ecosystem in which one arrival has had a drastic effect.

Producer: Chris Elcombe

A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4.

Verity Sharp connects musical stories along latitudinal lines around the globe.

We experience and understand music through genre - it's organised through playlists, the live gigs we go to, the records we buy. But what if we listened to the world in a different way?

In a four-part series, music broadcaster Verity Sharp listens along latitudinal lines, hearing local stories that are having a direct impact on music and musicians. Could there be echoes along these "sound lines"? Might music that's created thousands of miles apart, but on the same latitude, share common ground? And can listening in this way allow us to understand the impact of the vast and often immeasurable forces that are changing our planet?

In the first episode, we circumnavigate the globe along the Tropic of Capricorn, hearing three stories.

Teila Watson, aka Ancestress, is a Birri Gubba Wiri and Kungalu Murri woman from Queensland, Australia. She sings and raps about the colonisation and industrialisation of land that her people have lived on for tens of thousands of years, surviving ice ages and fluctuating sea levels.

Alfredinho runs a samba caf退 in Rio de Janeiro, a city struggling under the weight of severe austerity measures and economic hardship. Local journalist Sofia Perp退tua pays him a visit.

And Pearl is a young professional and mother, living on the outskirts of Gaborone, Botswana. But she's leading a double life, and lets us into the musical subculture she adores, but which is seen as controversial by many in Botswanan society.

Producer: Chris Elcombe
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4.

Verity Sharp connects musical stories along latitudinal lines.

Verity Sharp connects musical stories along latitudinal lines around the globe.