Hallo Listeners!

We are Priscilla Sithole, a filmmaker from Bulawayo and Claudia Wegener, a German sound- and radio artist. We met last year in Bulawayo and found that we are both equally dedicated to our work as artists as to sharing our skills by training women and young people. In October, “Ibhayisikopo Film Project” and “radio continental drift” will join forces for a women-driven film- and media project. We want to train young women in Bulawayo as trainers in film-production and creative media.

Together, we welcome you to THE WOMEN SING AT BOTH SIDES OF THE ZAMBEZI, an audio-library established by African women to share their stories, local sounds and knowledge. This sound-archive forms the foundation for our initiative. Its weekly on-line release of new recordings celebrates the art of listening, the power of storytelling, and the creativity of African women, their achievements in arts, culture and media. More about us, the project and our stories, here: http://both-sides-of-the-zambesi.tumblr.com/

We are inviting all listeners, and especially our sista artists and storytellers in Africa and across the globe to build with us on this sound-library of storytelling by contributing your local recordings to the All Africa Sound Map and place African arts and culture on the global map.

HOW YOU CAN CONTRIBUTE

Explore our archived recordings on our blog, or featured excerpts on the All Africa Sound Map

Send us your audio responses, local interviews and storytelling,soundscapes of “African Culture” in your neighborhood, or narrative
remixes of your own and our recordings

By 30th October 2013 for our forthcoming publications in 2014.

CONTRIBUTIONS VIA THE ALL-AFRICA-SOUND-MAP

The All Africa Sound Map hosted by radio aporee features storytelling and soundscapes from our collection “in situ” on the global map. Go on a journey of listening! http://aporee.org/maps/projects/all-africa-sound-map On this sounding World-map, you can add your own recordings of local sounds and stories by uploading sound-files directly to the site where you have recorded them. It’s straightforward, easy to use and a lot of fun! You only need an e-mail address to upload and activate your recording on the map; and to share your recordings with us and listeners around the world. Read how it works here: http://aporee.org/maps/info/

A big salute goes here from all the Zambezi Women to the “father” of radio aporee maps, the Berlin artist Udo Noll!

CONTRIBUTIONS OF REMIXES

If you want to contribute a remix, please upload your audio-work online, for example on www.archive.org, and send us the URL via the response box on our blog, via a post to our facebook group, or the “review” facility on the pages of the Internet Archive. http://www.facebook.com/groups/506668076047173/
Our complete archived playlists of women’s life-storytelling are shared on the Internet Archive as mp3-footage files and excerpt-clips under creative commons share-alike license for free download and re-mixing. http://archive.org/details/radiocontinentaldrift

PUBLICATIONS

Your contributions will be featured on our blog, in on-line streams and on-air programmes by radio stations in Europe and Africa, and on forthcoming CD and DVD publications to present this sound-library of storytelling and its global resonances for off-line listening with a launch-event in Bulawayo in May 2014. We want to produce an album of audio responses and re-mixes by global listeners; and secondly, an audio-visual album which will feature selected global contributions remixed in the sound-tracks of short movie-productions by women participants of the forthcoming workshops in Bulawayo. These CD and DVD publications will be distributed among our contributors, local listeners and organisations in Zimbabwe. The names of all contributors will be mentioned on our on-line sites, CD and DVD publications.

Your contributions will inspire our training workshops in Bulawayo. Your audio- responses can make the publication and distribution of women’s storytelling to a journey of listening for all of us, which will begin to link local to local in a community of listeners. We look forward “hereing” you on the All Africa Sound Map...

Thank you for listening!