NEW RURAL LISTENINGS (2009-2024)
By Luís Costa
Sound album

Throughout this year 2024, Binaural Nodar is celebrating twenty years of creative activity in a rural context, with various initiatives spread throughout the year.

This time we’re announcing the publication of the digital sound album “Novas Escutas Rurais” (“New rural listenings”) by Binaural Nodar’s coordinator Luís Costa, which was originally published in 2014 in CD format as part of a book of essays on the sound dimension in rural contexts.

The four compositions included in this publication are the result of sounds recorded exclusively as part of the first edition of the Aldeias Sonoras (2Sound villages”) educational project that Binaural Nodar developed in 2009 in the Portuguese municipality of São Pedro do Sul. Aldeias Sonoras consisted of children and young people recording, editing and mapping the acoustic heritage of rural villages, in parallel with their geographical, historical and socio-cultural survey.

During this first edition of Aldeias Sonoras, seven trips were made to village centres in S. Pedro do Sul, in order to cover a significant part of the more rural civil parishes and their respective villages (10th civil parishes, around 30 villages or places) and 3 hours of sound material were recorded, corresponding to around 75 individual sounds representative of the anthropological and landscape setting of each area.

The four sound compositions are the result of a territorial aggregation into four geographical sub-areas with the aim of capturing affinities between villages and civil parishes, in some way seeking to reinforce the sense of narrative coherence of each composition:

Terras da Arada: villages located to the north-west, around the Serra da Arada and corresponding to two civil parishes: Manhouce and Candal.

Terras do Baroso: villages located to the south-west and comprising the civil parishes of Santa Cruz da Trapa, Carvalhais and São Cristóvão de Lafões.

Terras de São Macário: villages located to the north-east, around Monte de São Macário and corresponding to three civil parishes: São Martinho das Moitas, Covas do Rio and Sul.

Terras do Vouga: villages located to the south-east, south and south-west, all bathed by the River Vouga and corresponding to the civil parishes of Pinho and Valadares.

The compositions were created in 2014 on the basis of a choice of sound excerpts based on a narrative-poetic methodology (in other words, the choice of sounds did not follow criteria of geographical representativeness, but rather narrative necessity) and, in parallel, the creation of expressive interludes using electroacoustic techniques, namely loops composed using granular synthesis tools.

Binaural Nodar is a cultural organization supported by the Portuguese Republic – Culture | Directorate-General for the Arts.