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The Current Transcript for June 9, 2022

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

MALE SPEAKER: More reports from Danube River. It might be an obvious solution, but even though if everything will work well. Road, rail road and Danube River ports, we will be able to export like two, maybe 3 million tons.

MATT GALLOWAY: Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe. It's the world's fifth largest supplier of wheat and a massive exporter of sunflower and corn oil. And now those goods are stranded by war. Crops for next season aren't being planted, and the risk of a food crisis looms large around the globe. In 30 minutes, the desperate struggle to get Ukraine's wheat out of the country, past Russian mines, and to the people who need it the most. And how that need has complicated feelings on the African continent about the war itself. Also this morning, when you think of cultural heritage, buildings, statues and artefacts might come to mind. But what about sound?

[SOUNDCLIP: large amounts of people talking and moving in a marketplace]

MG: As Cairo changes, two artists are working to capture the rapidly disappearing sounds of their city. In an hour, how preserving what our world sounds like is just as important as protecting what it looks like. We start, though, in Nova Scotia and anger about a warning that never came. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

How the N.S. RCMP failed to adequately warn the public about a gunman

Guests: Elizabeth McMillan and Michael Hallowes

[SOUNDCLIP: phone call between two RCMP officers, discussing a cell phone alert]

MG: That recording is a phone call between two RCMP employees the morning of Canada's worst mass shooting in April of 2020. The cell phone alert, they agreed, should be issued. Never was. This week, the Mass Casualty Commission in Nova Scotia is examining why. The RCMP has been widely criticised for failing to adequately warn the public that a man dressed as a police officer in a mock cruiser was on a killing rampage that stretched 200 kilometres through Nova Scotia and instead of an emergency alert. The RCMP used Twitter to warn the public.

NICK BEATON: Who uses Twitter? It's a joke like nobody uses Twitter. Celebrities. It's not how you notify the general public of danger is from Twitter. I don't even know anyone that uses Twitter.

MG: That's Nick Beaton, he says. If the RCMP had issued an emergency alert, his pregnant wife, Kristen would not have been out on the road where she was shot in her car by the gunman.

NICK BEATON: I think with an alert, with the description of the car, what he was wearing and that he was armed and dangerous, that coward wouldn't have made it near as far as he made it if they had put out that alert. My wife and baby would still be here if that alert went out, I guarantee it.

MG: Elizabeth McMillan is a CBC reporter in Halifax. She's been covering the Mass Casualty Commission. Elizabeth, good morning.

ELIZABETH MCMILLAN: Good morning, Matt.

MG: The big question for a lot of people is why the RCMP wasn't able to get urgent and effective warnings out to the public earlier. What have we learnt about that over the course of the last couple of days at the Mass Casualty Commission?

ELIZABETH MCMILLAN: Well, it all seemed to start with the officers in charge not realising the gunman had escaped and still posed a risk to the wider public. Their focus on the first night was very much on this chaotic scene in this tiny community of Portapique where the violence started. Later, there were problems with internal communications and bureaucracy because after the RCMP saw a picture of the fake cruiser, it was the following morning and they realized that the gunman's car was not burnt at the scene. The officers in charge relied on the RCMP communications team to handle warnings to the public, and there were delays within that unit and there was some confusion about what information could go out and who was authorizing it.

MG: We heard at the beginning that RCMP call in the members there contemplating sending out an emergency alert, but that didn't happen. Yesterday, RCMP superintendent Dustine Rodier offered this insight as to why.

DUSTINE RODIER: If you had said to me on April 19th, what's Alert Ready? I wouldn't have been able to answer you. We had no... I had no knowledge of it. I knew Amber Alert because that was part of my job, my role was to oversee Amber Alert. I didn't know that an Amber Alert could be sent out on the Alert Ready platform. I had no idea.

MG: This is a senior police officer who had no idea that this emergency alert system existed.

ELIZABETH MCMILLAN: Yes.

MG: What were police doing instead to try to warn the public on the night of April 18th, when the gunman was at large?

ELIZABETH MCMILLAN: Matt, the first constable on the ground who was trying to track down the gunman on foot, actually asked by police radio in the first hour of the response if there was a type of emergency broadcast to share with residents. At the time, he was one of three Mounties inside this rural subdivision and they were relaying back. There was buildings on fire. They'd been hearing what sounded like gunshots or explosions. And in response to his question, there were internal discussions at the RCMP dispatch centre about how to get in touch with people in the area. So dispatchers started looking up addresses to try to find people's phone numbers, but they didn't have a system specifically designed for this or one that was that effective. Portapique is a mix of cottages and year round homes, so the dispatchers tried calling numbers they did find that were associated with addresses, but some were long out of date. Meanwhile, senior officers reached out to the Corporal, who was a public affairs officer who was on call to update her on the situation and asked her to send out something to the public. That officer, Corporal Lisa Croteau. She sent out a tweet and she went back to bed afterward because they didn't ask her to come to the command post until earlier the following morning. And yeah, that tweet was the only public communications that the RCMP sent out overnight and for about 8 hours. And in terms of that emergency alert and the conversation we just heard, the phone call discussing the option that happened just 5 minutes before the gunman was killed, about 13 hours into the response. So even though as we heard an okay was given, it never went out.

MG: One of the people that the commission heard from yesterday is Lia Scanlan, the RCMP director of strategic communications in Nova Scotia. Let's listen to some of her explanation as to why social media was used to communicate with the public.

LIA SCANLAN: The goal with having Twitter or any platform for that matter, you fully understand and anticipate. You're never going to get 100% of your population, your target population on that. We reached people by the news networks what used to be newsrooms. But now individual reporters have you know, again, the newsrooms have changed. So that whole landscape of change, they follow us and they have the ability to if they choose to broadcast it on radio, print, television, or on their own social media networks. Again, that won't guarantee that you're ever going to see that.

MG: What more do we know about how they landed on Twitter as the main channel for public information in the midst of this crisis?

ELIZABETH MCMILLAN: Yes. So, Lia Scanlan testified, you know, that it's a way to amplify a message and get it out to people quickly. And for her, one of the key experiences that informed this was that she was working in Moncton in 2014. She was called to help respond when there was an active shooter incident where we know three Mounties were killed, others were injured. And for her, that really solidified Twitter as a tool. Scanlan was part of the independent review into that incident. And one of the findings was that Twitter was a valuable way to get information to people quickly during a crisis and that it provided some comfort to them during that emergency.

MG: The first tweet from the RCMP went out at 11:32 p.m. That's just over 90 minutes after the initial 911 call. And the tweet described what was happening as a firearms complaint. What did police know about what was actually going on when that tweet went out?

ELIZABETH MCMILLAN: For one thing Matt, they knew that people had died. They had found two bodies. They knew another woman had reported her husband was shot. And then her children also called 911 and said both their parents had been killed. So they knew there was multiple people who'd been killed. And the first officers on scene had encountered a couple who survived this harrowing encounter with a gunman. He had shot at them in their car. They managed to get away. So they knew that they had some information even early on that he was in what was described as a police car. And on top of that, they knew that multiple buildings were on fire because of the risk. Fire departments were told to stand down. And actually, when a CBC producer called the public affairs officer in the early morning hours on the 19th. She had no information about the fire. She would not confirm anything about casualties. She was... Corporal Croteau, who sent that initial tweet. And even after the RCMP started tweeting the following morning, they did not explain that anyone had been injured or killed.

MG: And it wasn't just the, you know, the method of communication, using Twitter. There's also this delay in warning the public that the gunman was driving around in a replica RCMP cruiser, which, as we know, has had a number of implications as this tragedy continued to unfold. What have we learnt about why that delay happened?

ELIZABETH MCMILLAN: Well, part of it was, is that initially they couldn't fully conceptualise of this replica cruiser and it wasn't until the following morning when they saw a picture of the car that they had received from the gunmans, spouses, family, and they also had interviewed the spouse after she came out of hiding that they realized that he... The car was not burnt at the scene and that he could be anywhere in Nova Scotia. So at that point, officers in charge tasked the public communications team with communicating. And at that point, there was some confusion about who exactly was responsible for sending out that information. Lia Scanlan, who is the boss of that unit, she testified initially she didn't think she was authorized to release the information about the replica cruiser. Then she tasked one of the people that worked with her, Corporal Jennifer Clark. She asked her to craft a tweet about the car that was 90 minutes after the commanding officers first saw a picture of it. And about an hour after Scanlan first learnt about it... So Scanlan testified there was concerns and she had heard about these concerns that releasing a photo could make actual Mounties a target. Now, when Corporal Jennifer Clark was first tasked to send out the tweet, she spent about 40 minutes confirming information, preparing the photo, and then she sought approval from one of the senior officers at the command post. But Matt, she felt she still needed final approval from her boss, given how sensitive the information was and she waited almost half an hour, she testified she was pacing the floor during that time. And what we heard yesterday was that Scanlan testified she missed Clark's emails asking for approval to post this tweet because she was on the phone. She didn't realize she was going to be signing off on the tweet. So that time period is just such a crucial half an hour or two, because it was during that time period that Kristen Beaton was killed and she'd been active on social media that morning. She was warning her co-workers to be careful. And prior to her death, Nick, her husband, had shared with her the latest information that the gunman... about the gunman that the RCMP had released up until that point. But, of course, the tweet with the photo of the mock cruiser didn't come out until after the gunman had drove up to her.

MG: Just two final questions. One is what's changed since April of 2020 when it comes to how the RCMP communicates with the public?

ELIZABETH MCMILLAN: Well, and within a week of the mass shooting, the RCMP had issued an emergency alert. And since then, various police forces have use the alert system in response to situations such as, you know, a dangerous suspect on the loose. The RCMP can now put out an alert without going through the provincial government. So that's a change, having direct access to the system. It's something that provincial officers, provincial officials, excuse me, said they had. Pose prior to 2020 and the RCMP had turned them down. But Dustine Rodier, who we heard, she says alerts are now a key tool. Staff are trained to use them. And that is has prompted change for national RCMP policies. Here in Nova Scotia during a major incident members of the communications team will be working out of the dispatch centre alongside senior officers to help craft any message that goes out. And Rodier also testified she'd still like to see improvements. She'd like to see the federal government take over software and that it, you know, perhaps be a silent alert. But it does seem that the force does still rely on Twitter to communicate information that they hope will be amplified.

MG: Just briefly, we're just about out of time, but has the force expressed any regret about the mistakes they made? I mean, again, I've spoken with Nick Beaton. Yes. He's heartbroken and angry because he believes and we heard that at the beginning that lives could have been saved, including the life of his wife, his pregnant wife, Kristen had that information been made available in a timely fashion?

ELIZABETH MCMILLAN: Many officers we've heard from have acknowledged they missed information. They wish things had gone differently. But they've also defended the decisions they made, given the information they had at the time, saying they did their best and that they did not have the benefit of hindsight, and that there was a lot of information flying at them at once. And, you know, we certainly heard some questions in the past week at the inquiry about, well, going forward, what could be done differently. And that's of course, the purpose to come up with recommendations to prevent similar situations.

MG: Elizabeth, thank you.

ELIZABETH MCMILLAN: You're welcome.

MG: Elizabeth McMillen, CBC reporter in Halifax. Michael Hallowes has had a long career as a police officer, served as the national director of Australia's National Emergency Alert Programme. He's now a consultant who has provided advice on the development of similar systems, including here in Canada. Michael, good morning to you.

MICHAEL HALLOWES: Well, good morning to you, Matt. Thank you for the invitation to participate.

MG: Glad to have you here. The director of strategic communications for the RCMP defended the use of Twitter to communicate with the public, saying it was best practice in policing. Is it?

MICHAEL HALLOWES: No. And if you want me to expand on that, if you take the very comments that Elizabeth McMillan had picked up in her conversations, that it does not have the reach. If I take where I am here in London, the Metropolitan Police Service has a Twitter feed. It only has 1.2 million followers in a city population with tourists of 19 million. It's hardly accessible to and reaching the vast majority.

MG: The tweets that was sent out talked of a firearms complaint. And as Elizabeth has said, I mean, there were casualties already by the time that tweet came out. What should the tweet have actually said? If you're going to use Twitter in the first place, what should the tweet actually have said?

MICHAEL HALLOWES: The tweet should follow the work that Canada led on in what's called internationally, the common alerting protocol, which breaks down the structure of a message. So it's very clear the principal purpose of the message, of course, is how the recipient is going to receive the information in order for them to make a decision to take action. So it must say who is sending it? What is the threat? Which should be very clear, it's an active shooter and there are people now dead. That really reinforces the importance to pay attention to this and then the nature of the threats. Who is it? Where is it coming from? The time to impact it's right now. And fundamentally, what is the action you want the public to take? As in stay indoors, only dial 911 if you can see the suspect and you want to report it. Where you can get more information to keep updated such as TV and radio and when to expect the next update. Now, that is the common alerting protocol, which Canada developed and was not then used as the structure for the tweet. And we have this ambiguous language of a firearms complaint that might mean an awful lot to a police officer, but it means nothing to me as a member of the public.

MG: How quickly can you get a warning out? The RCMP received its first call on 911 at 10:01 p.m. the first tweet went out 91 minutes later.

MICHAEL HALLOWES: Well, it's interesting about the whole bureaucracy there, because in Australia we work through the same processes and identified we were taking on average about 40 minutes. And narrowed down the bureaucracy to where the system now gets from end to end from first 911 call, officer arriving, recognizing the seriousness of the situation, to the alert being structured because it's drawn from a pre-written set of templates and sent. That whole process including authorisation is 8 minutes.

MG: 8 minutes.

MICHAEL HALLOWES: 8 minutes.

MG: Canada does have its own public warning system called Alert Ready. But at the time of this attack in Nova Scotia, the RCMP didn't have direct access to the system. You said that no other country in the world operates in that way.

MICHAEL HALLOWES: Not necessarily. No other country in the world operates that way. It's a difficult situation where the genesis of Alert Ready was around natural disasters and the mindset moving into the world of actually, the public expectations. The system will be used for any type of hazard threat that is immediate to their lives, including active shooter. So it is a challenge that where the genesis of a technology begins in one arena, the mindset leaping through to where it actually should be used. The public do it very quickly. Governments and emergency services tend to be playing catch up.

MG: If you don't have that direct access, what does that mean in terms of... In terms of finding out answers as to why things aren't done and finding accountability?

MICHAEL HALLOWES: Well, it extends the communication channels. And in that all the bureaucracy and the point that Elizabeth had picked up from the RCMP is who's going to approve this? And that is the big issue. So having direct access speeds up the whole process and the tool should be in the hands of the people who are responsible for making the decisions and are accountable for public safety on the ground.

MG: What about the technology of the system itself? We reached out to Palmorex, which is the private company that owns and operates the backbone of the Alert Ready system. They said to get an alert you have to be connected to a newer LTE network, but said that 97% of Canadians have access to that. Does that alleviate any concerns you might have about who would get the alert in the first place?

MICHAEL HALLOWES: Well, it's funny you say that, because the choice of technology is known as cell broadcast. We in Australia, when we looked at how to set up an emergency alert capability, we did not start with the technology. We looked at the requirements of all the organizations that had a public accountability for safety and look at what their requirements were. And we defined those in a series of principles that we then went to the market to see which technology delivers against these. And some of those requirements were absolutely indisputable in terms of it must do this. For example, it must reach the vast majority of the public who must have immediate access to it via their cell phone without any change of the technology. And in Australia we chose SMS. So text messages, Canada chose cell broadcast, which when that decision was made, was only going to be available to the more modern handsets in 2018, only when connected to the 4G networks. Whereas The Australian, the French, the Belgians have gone for a system that is immediately accessible to everyone with a cell phone because text messages are universal worldwide.

MG: And so we're just about at a time. But is this the opportunity to switch to a different system that is fully accessible?

MICHAEL HALLOWES: It's an opportunity for all the stakeholders in public safety to get round the table and re-discuss the actual requirements going forward so they can go to market for the best technology that serves the community's safety.

MG: Michael, good to speak with you. Thank you very much.

MICHAEL HALLOWES: Thank you.

MG: Michael Hallowes, former national director of Australia's National Emergency Alert Programme. Your CBC News is next. And then Ukraine is one of the world's most fertile bread baskets. Wheat and other grains are abundant, but Russia has blocked much of that country's exports during the war, and Ukrainian farmers are hoping to feed the world once more. But negotiations to open export corridors have been rocky. We'll talk about why this matters and how to get the grain out. Coming up in 6 minutes. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

The Ukraine-Russia war’s effect on a potential global food crisis

Guests: Margaret Evans, Hassan Khannenje and Harry Nedclu

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, we take a journey through Cairo using only our ears. How a group of artists are preserving the sounds of city life in just under 30 minutes. But first, to Ukraine, where farmers are desperate to get their valuable grain back on the market.

[Music: Theme]

MG: The World Food Programme says more than 750,000 people around this world are at risk of dying from starvation. And for many, that could be prevented if only the wheat, corn and barley that stuck in Ukraine could reach them. In February, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, blocked all of Ukraine's Black Sea ports and with that brought most grain exports to a halt.

NIKOLAY GORBACHOV: This is why only one solution is unblock Ukrainian ports. They're inside Ukraine, about 30 million tonnes of grain. In one month it will start to harvest barley in wheat, according to our expectation will have quite good crop 65, 70 million tonnes, grain and oilseeds our farmers will harvest.

MG: That's the president of the Ukrainian Grain Association, Nikolay Gorbachov, speaking to the BBC yesterday. Before the war, Ukraine exported 5 million tonnes of grain each month through its ports. Now only a fraction can be moved by land.

NIKOLAY GORBACHOV: How it's possible to export through the western border. If there is just one, one and a half million per month, it's five times less than we need. Our domestic consumption, human consumption was about three, three and a half million per year. All the rest we can export, especially now when about 7 million people, Ukrainians, just move abroad because of the war.

MG: With months worth of grain stockpiling in Ukraine and a looming global food crisis, the United Nations wants Russia and Turkey to create a safe sea corridor for Ukrainian exports. Gorbachov, though, is sceptical that Russia will uphold any deal that it makes.

NIKOLAY GORBACHOV: We cannot trust Russia and for example, they say they will meet the Turkish government and they will try to find a solution one week ago. But three days ago, one of the terminal in the Black Sea Port had missiles attacked and it's absolutely broken.

MG: We'll speak about the mounting pressure for an international agreement to rescue Ukraine's grain in just a moment. But first, the CBC's Margaret Evans is in Slovyansk, Ukraine. Margaret, hello.

MARGARET EVANS: Hi, Matt.

MG: We've seen these incredible images of farmers fields pockmarked, just riddled by bombs. What is it like where you have been visiting?

ME: Well, I'm in Donetsk, as you said, in the city of Slovyansk. And getting here this morning, we drove through beautiful countryside. Farm fields, but very few tractors out on those fields. Very little work being done on the land because of the risk of shelling. This is, of course, a part of the country that seeing some of the most intense fighting. But really since the start of the invasion, we've seen this problem in April down in [inaudible], which is southwest of where I am now. We saw... We went out to speak to the farmers who didn't even want to speak to us. They said they were afraid to go out in their fields because of the risk of shelling. Last week we spoke with a doctor in Mykolaiv, which is the port city that was just mentioned. I spoke with a doctor who said he had just done surgery on a farmer who drove over a shell in his field and lost his arm. So it is an extremely difficult profession, but there are parts of the country where they are harvesting. West of Odessa, we saw some beautiful wheat fields coming up. I'm a girl from Alberta. They expect a very good crop, but they have no expectation that they will be able to either store it or get it to market.

MG: So how are the farmers coping with not being able to move their grain? I mean, there's the harvest that's coming up, but there's also all of that grain that's just sitting waiting to be moved.

ME: That's right. I mean, I visited one farm where they said, you know, on one level, we're lucky because we have 700 head of cattle as well. And we can make cattle feed, but it's very hard for them to plan. One farmer told me that part of the problem in southern Odessa, in the province of Odessa, is that they usually rely on machine operators to send down combines to harvest their crop and nobody in the north wants to send them that close to the sea because you do have the Russian fleet sitting in the Black Sea lobbing missiles at the rest of the country, but occasionally also at targets around port city of Odessa and those fields. So he doesn't even know if he can get it cut. They can store some of it. But the port sitting so close to the ships waiting there, they are full of grain and they're stuck. The silos are full, so they're looking at other options, like trucking. But there are huge traffic jams on the borders to countries like Romania, 12 to 50 kilometres long. It's a nightmare for people who run freight industry. There's red tape with European Union countries. Then if you're trying to get it out by rail, the gauge systems of width between the tracks doesn't match between Ukraine and European Union countries. And then they were also talking about some of these tiny ports along the Danube as a possible solution. But again, it's just a fraction. They'd be able to move just a fraction of what they need to move in order to make way for this next harvest that's expected in a month or so.

MG: And so just finally, I mean, we know that Russia and Turkey have been meeting to figure out some way to ship Ukrainian grain. And there's no agreement reached as of yet. But what is Ukraine saying that it needs to see to guarantee the safety of its ships in the ports? There's mines in the water that there are, as you said, what, 80 ships that are filled and waiting to go?

ME: Yeah, I mean, there's very little trust, obviously, from the Ukrainian side about Russian guarantees. And they feel, you know, some people have said they feel puzzled because the West seems to be willing to accept Russia's word that it might, you know, come up with an agreement that it would stick to, given that Russia said for such a long time that it wasn't going to invade Ukraine in the first place. But, I mean, this is a huge job. There are apparently something like 500 mines in the Black Sea around Odessa. The Ukrainians and the Russians accuse each other of laying those mines. But the Ukrainians will say, I mean, this is the last strip of land when you think of how much territory the Russians have actually taken in southern Ukraine, the last strip along the Black Sea that they have, that's an economic lifeline to them for them to kind of remove defences. So that, you know, after having built them up so much and fortified the ports that it can, it would take extreme guarantees from third party countries, I would say. I mean, I think they would prefer NATO's to get involved, but I think that that would be very difficult for NATO to do. They would risk escalating the conflict. There isn't very much expectation that this is a way forward. And if you talk to the farmers themselves, they say they need to do this. But we don't think Russia will ever agree they want to keep us down and this is how they'll do it.

MG: Margaret, thank you for this.

ME: Thanks for having me.

MG: The CBC's Margaret Evans in Slovyansk in Donetsk, Ukraine. African countries rely heavily on grain from Ukraine. More than 40% of the continent's wheat is imported from there. And with that supply not coming in, prices have doubled, even tripled in some areas. On top of this are the economic effects of COVID and ongoing drought in the Horn of Africa. Millions of people have been left on the brink of starvation. Hassan Khannenje is director of the HORN International Institute for Strategic Studies. It's a think tank in Kenya. Hassan, hello to you.

HASSAN KHANNENJE: How are you?

MG: I'm well, thanks. Given that there are many countries, as I mentioned, in the continent that rely on Ukrainian grain, that your grain is not arriving right now. Describe how dire the situation is in those countries.

HK: I think it's extremely unfortunate because as you did indicate there, this country's already facing a period, a long period of famine and drought, not to mention the perpetual conflicts that have engulfed the region in much of the last two or three years. And so as a region that relies about half of its supplies coming from the conflict area of Russia and Ukraine, the situation is, at best, you know, desperate. And I think that explains the leadership of African Union's visit to Moscow, which was not so much an endorsement of Putin or his policies, but so much out of a sense of desperation and the practical reality on the ground that requires them to take action.

MG: That visit by the African Union President, Macky Sall of Senegal was seen by some people as giving Putin kind of cover in some ways. Sall referred to his dear friend Vladimir. You say that it's not meant or it shouldn't be seen as an endorsement of Russia.

HK: No, it shouldn't be seen as an endorsement. You know, the Africans have to choose between the moral requirement of expressing solidarity with the plight of the Ukrainian people, as well as the practical dimensions of facing imminent starvation for their own populations. And I think when it comes to that, Africans are more inclined to be able to seek ways in which they can address the imminent danger of starvation and death on the continent.

MG: How is the invasion of Ukraine seen where you are right now and the sanctions on Russia that have followed that invasion?

HK: Africa's position has been based on ambivalent and in part is also informed by the recent history in which generally Africa has not exactly seen itself as having agency in the international system, nor has it viewed generally the West as reliable as it has always been. And that, of course, has allowed influence not just to Moscow, but, of course, increasingly of China now being caught between, of course, these two competing geopolitical powerful regions. Africa has been a lot more cautious. And if you see their reactions with regard to the sanctions regime. They've been reluctant outside expressing sentiments of solidarity. To jump on the sanctions regime. And of course, then that not only does it complicate the international diplomacy, it also puts Africa in a rather than comfortable place to be. But the choice between being able to feed their own populations as well as explaining, expressing moral solidarity with opinion people, they're going to choose their own people.

MG: This is important in part because of these claims that Russia has stolen tons of Ukrainian grain and is trying to sell it. What do you make of that?

HK: Yeah, of course. It's unfortunate. I don't think there is any policy that would exactly support that on the African continent. But I think it's also helpful that the world, especially the you know, the Western Hemisphere, the Western countries in Europe and the United States, understand that Africa did not exactly see the conflict in Ukraine the same way the West sees it. And Africa generally sees it from the geopolitical lens, even though a lot of them expressed sympathy with Ukraine, in part because of its own international law and respect of sovereignty that could protect countries such as Africa. But at the same time, I think the recent history of literalism generally in the world in much of the last 30 years has removed the kind of faith that Africa has had in the international system. And they see, or at least the sentiment is these underpinnings of double standards and that that is totally contributing to Africa's ambivalence, but also Africa's attitudes that sometimes may be jarring, especially to western viewers.

MG: And so when the United States warns African countries not to buy that grain that those authorities say has been stolen by Russian forces from Ukraine, you've said Africans don't care where they get their food from. And if someone is going to moralize, they are mistaken. How are those warnings being taken?

HK: Those warnings are being taken as blackmail and I think...

MG: As blackmail?

HK: Yes. As blackmail. Because in the absence of an alternative to plug in the shortfall, that's simply going to be seen as blackmail by a big power, which runs the risk of actually pushing African countries quietly farther into the arms of this Sino-Russian alliance.

MG: So if you go back to what I said in the introduction, we've talked on this programme before about the drought in the Horn of Africa, the fact that COVID and the economic effects of COVID have driven the price of essential goods further and further out of reach for many people. Where does that leave those in those countries when the United States is telling them not to buy this grain that they believe has been stolen from Ukraine?

HK: And that is what the problem is, because as I mentioned, you do not moralize a starving man or a starving person. And so why they are being asked not to engage Moscow. At the same time, there's no alternative that's being provided to them. Remember the current situation, the current food crisis is also fuelling a very dangerous trend of the continent, is fuelling extremism, is fuelling conflict, and creating an increasingly volatile and unstable region, which, of course, may threaten ultimately international peace and security. And therefore, I think Africans are not exactly taking those warnings very kindly. And it runs the danger of actually destabilizing the initial goodwill and the initial collective kind of expression of solidarity that was there at the beginning of the conflict. And so it is not exactly a good place to be. And I think Washington and the Western alliance should be careful, especially in so far as dealing with the Global South is concerned. If this sentiment of resentment is real.

MG: What are the alternatives, just finally, that the world might provide if the world is going to say, don't take this grain that Russia may have stolen, what could the world do instead?

HK: The world could provide alternatives. Perhaps they may not have sufficient supplies, but they could be having corn or other staples that this country's going to be able to consume, at least give it to the populations. And because that was never offered and has not been part of the mainstream policy thinking, especially in the global North, Africans are desperate to be able to find something. And so I think countries like the United States that still have a huge stockpiles of corn for instance and they can be able to offer us an alternative. But lecturing African countries without providing an alternative, I think is going to fall on deaf ears and it's likely to backfire.

MG: How worried are you about the possibility of starvation again? We've talked about the real concerns around famine on the continent.

HK: The possibility of starvation. But let's talk about the Horn of Africa, it's real in Somalia, in Sudan, in Ethiopia, it's real. And so for Africans it's not a theoretical concept or a prospect that should be feared, is an actual experience they're living and they're going through.

MG: Hassan, good to speak with you. Thank you very much.

HK: Thanks for having me.

MG: Hassan Khannenje is director of the HORN International Institute for Strategic Studies. It is a research body in Kenya, and he was in Nairobi.

TRANSLATOR: [From Russian to English] For the delivery of grains from Ukraine. Russia did its best. Every day we are opening up grains corridors and we ensure the safety and security of the ships and vessels that go out of the port.

MG: That's Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov speaking yesterday in Ankara, Turkey. The reality, however, is, as we've heard, that some Western and European nations are trying to figure out how to circumvent the blockade and get Ukraine's produce to the world. Harry Nedclu is the global policy director of the political consulting firm Rasmussen Global. He is in Copenhagen, Denmark. Harry, hello to you.

HARRY NEDCLU: Thanks for having me.

MG: The Russian foreign minister says that Russia has done its best to try to get Ukrainian grain out to the rest of the world. What do you make of that?

HN: Well, the Russian foreign minister, since the beginning of this conflict and even before, is turning reality on his head and is shifting responsibility to Ukraine, blaming Ukraine for a conflict that they have started. So this is just one comment in a long stream of comments. You know, since the beginning of February this year and before that.

MG: One of the obvious hurdles in getting that grain out is that the waters around those ports have been littered with mines, as many as 500 mines. The Russians have also accused the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, of not being interested in demining the waters around the ports. Is there any truth to that?

HN: No. So the issue is actually much more complicated than that. The issue is that Russia has put a blockade of around 20 or so ships in the Black Sea, including four submarines around the Port of Odessa and Mykolaiv. So therefore, to defend themselves so that those ports do not get attacked like Mariupol was attacked in the Azov sea. The Ukrainians need some type of security guarantees. They cannot just open the ports and then hope that, you know, the Russians will not attack.

MG: That by opening the ports the Russians would just have free passage into that strategic area.

HN: They would have a free corridor to attack that area or launch an amphibious attack.

MG: The suggestions are that there could be as much as $100 million worth of Ukrainian grain that has been looted by Russia and is being sold as its own. Does that seem reasonable? Is that within the realm of possibility?

HN: Within the realm of possibility, maybe even more. It's very difficult to say. I mean, one thing I will tell you is that the traffic in the Black Sea has stayed more or less the same to pre-war levels, which means ships are going through there is some grain going through, but that grain most likely is grain from areas occupied by Russia, from Ukraine that Russia has stolen, and now they're using it to export themselves.

MG: So we started by hearing about the farmers in Ukraine who are unable to harvest the crops. You know, that farmers aren't able to be involved in the planting season for the next harvest. What is this doing to the economy of that country?

HN: It is obliterating that economy. Just to give you a sense of how much... how important this is. Ukraine could be making in the range of billions from its grains exports. You know, there are countries that depend heavily on Ukrainian exports. Lebanon in the range of 80%. You know, India, Egypt. At the same time, Ukraine needs about $5 billion or $6 billion every month in order to stay afloat because of the conflict. So it is destroying... You know, it's putting a huge stress on Ukraine's economy. And then there's the other component that is, you know, farmers, if they cannot sell their food, they cannot afford to plant for the fall. So it's not only a problem of this year. It could lead to a problem next year and grain shortages in the years to come.

MG: And so there have been these negotiations between the Turkish foreign minister and the Russian foreign minister trying to figure out some sort of way forward. The negotiations haven't come to any real success yet, but one of the things that was suggested is a U.N. proposal for a corridor to restart grain shipments from Ukraine. The Turkish foreign minister has called the U.N. proposal reasonable. Does that give you some hope?

HN: We have to see exactly what this initiative really is, because the devil is in the details. I mean, there are elements to this initiative that are just a no go. For instance, Russia wants to inspect the ships which would imply it would have to inspect, you know, Ukrainian ships or third party ships. So that is just something that Ukraine would never accept or even probably other third countries would not want Russian ships to inspect their own ships. And the last part is, which is the most important part, is how we will ensure that these corridors will not be abused by the Russian navy that is surrounding the sports.

MG: There's this idea that came out of the Lithuanian government that there could be a coalition of countries that would offer naval escorts of ships carrying Ukrainian crops through the Black Sea. Does that answer some of the questions?

HN: So that was one proposal. And allegedly under this initiative, it would be Turkey because Turkey is sort of the gatekeeper at the Black Sea, and it would be Turkish ships that would escort those ships back and forth. But, you know, that only solves so much. The other challenge is how to guarantee that Russia cannot use those corridors to attack Ukrainian ports. And one way to do that is, you know, giving Ukraine the long range advanced anti-ship missiles that it needs to defend itself.

MG: Tell me more about that and why that's key to you.

HN: It is key because right now, you know, we are supplying Ukraine with various weapons which have been actually critical for the war effort. But if you remember, a few months ago, Ukraine attacked and successfully sunk Russia's flagship Moskva. And this has pushed this entire blockade of 20 or so ships as I mentioned before a little bit further out, because the Moskva was the ship that was sort of, you know, protecting the rest of the fleet. Because they're further out the current weapons Ukraine has cannot reached them. So to ensure Ukraine's safety and to ensure that Russia cannot take advantage of these corridors, Ukraine would need longer range missiles in order to defend itself in case they do try and attack.

MG: Is there any other way to get this grain out?

HN: Unfortunately there isn't. Because before the war, just to give you a sense, 90% of that grain went by sea, went out, was exported by sean.

MG: So the idea of moving it by rail or by trucking it, that's not practical?

HN: You know, it solves part of the problem. You'll get maybe 20, 25% of the grain out, but it doesn't solve the problem. The European Union has tried to put in place these solidarity corridors through Poland and Romania. But the fact is, you know, there are so many barriers, including, you know, the paperwork they have to do to export this grain. You know, sometimes, you know, these trains have to wait 15, up to 30 days at the border. And it does not solve the problem.

MG: How does this end, do you think?

HN: It ends in one of two ways. You know, either Russia, you know, accepts a U.N. sort of proposal. And, you know, then the international community ensures that pressure is actually put on Russia to make sure that it doesn't abuse these corridors or it doesn't. And then we're going to have, you know, potentially 400 million people worldwide suffering because of Russia's attack and aggression.

MG: Harry Nedclu, thank you for this.

HN: Thank you.

MG: Harry Nedclu is the policy director of Rasmussen Global. He was in Copenhagen, Denmark. Well, coming up after your regional update.

[SOUNDCLIP: Crowd talking loudly]

MG: You can just feel the energy of a bustling neighbourhood there. When we return in 90 seconds, we're hitting the streets of Cairo. A group of artists is working to preserve the sounds of their city. This is a fascinating project. We'll tell you all about it coming up. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current. Stay with us.

HN: [SOUNDCLIP: Crowd talking loudly]

Why some audiophiles are recording cultural sounds

Guests: Youssef Sherif, Nehal Ezz and Stuart Fowkes

MG: Hi. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. When I say Egypt, maybe you picture the pyramids, the Sphinx, the beauty of the Nile.

[SOUNDCLIP: busy street sounds]

MG: But what do you hear?

[SOUNDCLIP: busy street sounds]

MG: This is Cairo. Youssef Sherif and Nehal Ezz are artists who recorded these sounds and they're hoping to capture and preserve the sounds of their ancient city. Youssef and Nehal, hello.

BOTH: Hi Matt, how are you?

MG: I'm great, thanks. Nehal, what are we hearing right now?

[SOUNDCLIP: Call to prayer]

NEHAL EZZ: So we're hearing this sound of a call to prayer. We're at [inaudible] street in downtown Cairo, which is a very lively area. As you know, Cairo is a city of a thousand minarets. It's not just for the stunning Islamic architecture, but for the symphony you would hear from different mosques calling to prayer at the same time.

MG: That phrase, a city of a thousand minarets. I mean, it gets thrown around a lot, but what does that mean on the ground in the city? Can you describe what I would see if I was there?

NEHAL EZZ: At the time of the call to prayer along with the symphony, you would like see people walking up to the mosques from different areas.

[SOUNDCLIP: People moving through the street]

NEHAL EZZ: You would naturally see like a couple of mosques every couple of metres there, not very far off from each other. An interesting thing for the uniqueness of the sounds in Cairo. One time I was in Saudi and there was a call to prayer and I recognized that the sheik that was calling out was Egyptian just by the way he was going to prayer and like the melody and the harmony he was using. So it's like the way the sheiks use in Cairo is unique and you would recognize that you're in Cairo like from hearing it. I never realized that I would recognize that until I actually was in the situation that I would.

[SOUNDCLIP: Call to prayer]

MG: Youssef your turn to be the guide. Where are we now?

YOUSSEF SHERIF: We're right near 26th of July Street. We're at an intersection between where the food vendors would be and the clothes vendors would be.

[SOUNDCLIP: Loud crowds of people talking].

YOUSSEF SHERIF: So we'd hear an overlapping between the different types of street vendors, and you'd actually hear sort of the old school kind of vendors who use the voice, their natural voice calling out bread or ice. And they usually use... depend more on the melodic tone, one of their voice, as opposed to the newer generation or the tech savvy people who sort of have incorporated speakers into their calling out culture.

[SOUNDCLIP: person talking over a loudspeaker]

YOUSSEF SHERIF: So do you do that to save up time and effort. And they sacrifice the melody, though they don't sing it, they don't make it out into a melody anymore. It's more systematic and right to the approach. They lay out the offer: buy slippers for this much, buy a T-shirt for this much.

[SOUNDCLIP: cobbler machine]

MG: Nehal, what is that? It's such a strange sound. What is that?

NEHAL EZZ: Okay. This is the sound of a machinery used by the cobbler. A cobbler is someone who repairs shoes or footwear of any kind. We found this shop actually in downtown Cairo. It's an older shop. The cobbler was using very, very old machinery. And we kind of classified that as a culturally significant sound. Just because the machinery was outdated and the cobbler's method is dying currently. So when we can usually find that kind of shop or that machinery making that sound in more modernized urban areas in Cairo.

[SOUNDCLIP: Cobbler machine]

MG: And so as you say, it's a culturally significant sound because it's one that could disappear at any time.

NEHAL EZZ: Exactly. Even like in the areas that we live now, we wouldn't find that kind of machinery.

MG: Youssef, paint me a picture of what we would be seeing if we were standing beside you hearing that sound.

[SOUNDCLIP: spices in a shaker]

YOUSSEF SHERIF: So what you're actually hearing is a herbalist. And this herbalist is what the trading of spices have evolved to. So essentially you're standing right now, you'd be standing in a small shop with a really high ceiling and a quaint alley. You'd see the herbalist scoop up like hundreds of black pepper grains shaking off the excess.

[SOUNDCLIP: Spices being shaken]

YOUSSEF SHERIF: And placing them on the scale where they are finally weighed. In addition to having cooking spices, the herbalist has access to knowledge and ingredients required for assembling hundreds of alternative medicine recipes.

MG: Now tell me what you wanted to do with this project. What was your aim? I'd said in the introduction that you're hoping to preserve the sounds of your city, but tell me more about what you wanted to do.

NEHAL EZZ: Initially, like, we obviously wanted to preserve the sounds of Cairo, and we wanted to create a database of the aural culture of go at this moment so it would serve as a guide to future generations of what Egypt or what Cairo sounded like for instance, if they're hearing it 50 or 60 years from now, they would have a reference of what Cairo sounded like now, because we in this moment, we don't have that privilege. I can't for instance access a database and hear what my parents used to hear when they were kids. So this is our aim is to create an online database with the recorded sounds that we have and gather recordings from other contributors in Cairo who are interested in the project.

MG: Youssef, this started as a graduation project?

YOUSSEF SHERIF: This started as a graduation project. Then it quickly evolved into what it is now because we kind of fell in love with it. We fell in love with rediscovering this distant part of our cultures. It was right there and it was just like waiting to be found.

[SOUNDCLIP: something shaking and squeaking, people talking]

MG: When you approach your city like this, this is your city. But do you rediscover your city as well in doing something like this, Youssef?

YOUSSEF SHERIF: For me, it is because I kind of grew up... I grew up in the heart of Cairo where everything is lively. And then as I grew up... As I grew up, we moved away sort of to the suburban area and I sort of lost touch with everything. And then when we started that project, I was sort of reintroduced into where I was born... The area where I was born, my place. These sorts of sounds were kind of alien to me. I had to be reintroduced to them. And in that, I rediscovered the things I've lost.

MG: How many sounds have you recorded, Youssef?

YOUSSEF SHERIF: Well, it's quite difficult to quantify, but we do have hundreds of sounds.

MG: And how are you deciding what to record?

NEHAL EZZ: So at first, before we even started recording, we conducted a survey to ask people what the sounds they associated with Chiro and where would it be most condensed? Like, where would you find these sounds? We got answers like traffic sounds, street sellers, call to prayer and most agreed that it was condensed in downtown Cairo. So this is where we started recording. And something interesting that we found is that different age groups had different perceptions of the [inaudible] oral culture, depending, I'm assuming, depending on their childhood and what they most related to the cultural sound of Cairo. And so we imagined that probably future generations would have different perceptions of what signifies Cairo sound wise.

MG: I mean, we're speaking on radio and I love sound and you're working in sound, so we have an appreciation for sound. But often people will take photos or they'll take videos of a city. Do you think that sound is an aspect of culture that we often overlook?

NEHAL EZZ: Definitely. We're very consumed by how things look. I guess I'm not sure if it's has something to do with like social media and how it's progressed today. But we have so many like books of visual culture of Egypt and how it looked like and the architecture of how it looks like thousands of years ago. But nothing actually tells us what it sounded like. Our reference to how, like Cairo sounded like years ago is from movies and old radio shows, but nothing records it for posterity or for its true sound, I guess.

MG: Youssef, cities change all the time and Cairo is no different. What are you afraid of losing as the city changes when it comes to the sounds that you hear?

YOUSSEF SHERIF: The first thing that has already faded is the street strollers. You wouldn't really find any vendors anymore or any markets in the newer areas of Egypt. You'd only find malls and compounds, complexes of food courts, but you never really find a person selling something on the street calling out for it in a traditional sense. So what I'm afraid of losing is for people to lose touch with where they came from as much as I did when I moved away from the heart of the city and into the more suburban area.

MG: What about for you, Nehal? What are you afraid of losing?

NEHAL EZZ: I guess because we're also moving from Cairo soon, because we were travelling a lot lately. I'm afraid of perhaps losing... like for instance... like I told you, I would recognize an Egyptian sheik calling to prayer. Maybe being away from that culture I wouldn't recognize how it sounds like or if I leave Egypt for like ten years and come back and find it sounding a little bit different, I would feel like it's taking away part of my childhood, I guess, and part of what my culture represents. I feel like I would have missed out on experiences and sounds I would have heard if it was preserved somehow. So like, yeah, because as Youssef mentioned with the street sellers, they're very diverse, they're very versatile. And the variations of the sounds that you'd hear are endless. So you would have to live here to actually listen to all of these variations. So being away from that might be like something I would never hear again, I guess.

MG: We've heard some of the sounds that you love. When you close your eyes... I will ask you both this question. Nehal, first, when you close your eyes and you think of the city, what is the sound of Cairo that's incredibly meaningful to you?

NEHAL EZZ: Weirdly, I thought of a smell. I don't know why, but there's a court in the street for the grilled corn. There's a seller, he grills corn on coal. And there's a very, very, like, slight sound of puffing of and coal burning. There's like the aroma of the smell. And that sound is very, very unique to my childhood. Like, I loved getting fresh. It's not corn on the cob because it's like on the... It's sort of corn on the cob, but grilled. I loved getting one of those when I was little.

MG: What about for you Youssef what is the sound when you close your eyes that takes you to your city?

YOUSSEF SHERIF: Well, it's a little weird, but we have kiosks. We used to have kiosks all around Cairo. Me and my friends would sort of like go there and we'd like a spot a little bit next to the kiosk, and we'd like have all sorts of conversations.

[SOUNDCLIP: loud, people talking]

YOUSSEF SHERIF: Some are fun, some are deep, but mainly the sounds of like chatter and laughter, maybe popping open a soda, you know. And we wouldn't be the only ones doing that there. You'd find, like other groups of other friends, 3 to 4, maybe five guys standing there doing also the same thing. And I feel like this is the thing that when I go back to downtown, visit my old house. And I instantly recognize the sounds of chatter and laughing and, you know, soda popping and eating. Yeah.

MG: This is a labour of love. I mean, it's a love letter in some ways to your city, but it's also a labour of love because the two of you are getting married. Is this correct Nehal?

NEHAL EZZ: Yes, it is correct.

MG: Can you imagine what your wedding is going to sound like? I mean, when you're thinking about sound and that will be a joyous sound as well of people celebrating.

BOTH: Hopefully.

YOUSSEF SHERIF: Yeah, but we're not really making a traditional Egyptian wedding. I don't know if you've heard of or seen on TV one of these. They're a very public affair. And we're...

NEHAL EZZ: We're not very public people like we're...

YOUSSEF SHERIF: When it comes to our personal lives.

NEHAL EZZ: It's quite quaint. But I imagine, like weddings, maybe I don't know how many years from now would be quite different. Like traditionally even.

YOUSSEF SHERIF: Yeah. I feel like they'd invent new things.

NEHAL EZZ: Yeah, exactly.

MG: How will people be able to hear this archive of sound in future?

NEHAL EZZ: This is an interesting question because currently we're developing a website. It's called Sounds Of and we initially want to upload all the songs that we've recorded into that database so people can access it, they can download it, they can use it for... We got approached by people who like for art projects and artists who want to use parts of our recordings in their projects. So we told them that once the website is up, they can download and use that like however they would like.

YOUSSEF SHERIF: To share sounds with us or download sounds.

NEHAL EZZ: Yeah. We wanted people to actually like create accounts on the website and they can record and upload the sounds so the database could grow and the database itself would be community driven. Like from people who are in the community. They don't necessarily have to be Egyptian or from Cairo. They're just like, if they live here and they hear an interesting sound, they could record it and upload it under the correct categories so other people will find it easily.

MG: That is such an interesting project. It's a pleasure to talk to you both. Thank you.

NEHAL EZZ: Thank you.

YOUSSEF SHERIF: My pleasure.

NEHAL EZZ: The pleasure is all ours.

MG: Youssef Sherif and Nehal Ezz are sound artists in Cairo. On the other side of the planet, from a home base in England, Stuart Fowkes has been running his own sound project.

[MUSIC: Music from a club in Spain]

MG: For more than seven years, he's been gathering and remixing sounds of the cities all over the world. It's one of the biggest sound projects, if not the biggest, covering more than 100 countries. Stuart is the creator of Cities and Memory. Stuart, hello to you.

STUART FOWKES: Hi there.

MG: Tell me about that recording. Where were we?

STUART FOWKES: So that was in a little club called La Carbonaria, which is in Seville, Spain. And that is the sound of flamenco dancing, which is an item of UNESCO's intangible heritage. So a classic sound of the city. And also one of the rare occasions on which a sound has kind of been recogniZed as being culturally significant and protected to some extent.

[SOUNDCLIP: Flamenco dancing]

MG: Cities and a Memory. Tell me about this project. Where did it come from? In some ways that title speaks to it all. But where did it come from?

STUART FOWKES: Yeah. So that the tagline of the project is remixing the world one sound at a time. So Cities and a Memory is in fact, a global sound map. And it covers more than 100 countries with more than 5000 sounds on there. And about a thousand artists have taken part from around the world. And what you hear on every location on that map are two sounds. So first, you hear the sort of documentary real field recording of what that place actually sounds like. And second, you'll hear a composition, a remix, a piece of music or a composition that an artist has made based on original field recordings. So, in fact, we're trying to remix the world one sound at a time.

MG: And where did the idea for it come from?

STUART FOWKES: As someone who's been working with sound for, I guess, 15 or 20 years, I've always approached sounds from the perspective of being more material, of being something that can be manipulated, something that can be played as an instrument, something that has inherent musical and artistic value, as opposed to looking at field recording from the sort of documentary standpoint of purely recording, you know, a time and a place. So looking at, how do you use sound creatively and then how do you represent that back to the world? And I think it's like an interesting way of looking at sound and then by extension looking at place and the way that we experience place as well.

[SOUNDCLIP: street sounds mixed with music]

MG: What was the first sound that you recorded as part of this project?

STUART FOWKES: I think when I first started the project, it was effectively just me with my recording device on my own in my home city in Oxford. So I just kind of wanted out of my house one morning and went and stood under a bridge nearby on a river.

[SOUNDCLIP: Sounds of Oxford, England]

STUART FOWKES: I recorded the sound of pigeons nesting, boats going past and passing joggers. I didn't really know what to do with that sound. Put it onto a map. And then opened the project up to any collaborators from anywhere around the world. And, you know, seven years later, here we are with a thousand artists contributing 5000 sounds and managing to cover 100 countries. So it's a project that's really, really taken off over the last five or six years in terms of just being open to anyone who wants to take part all over the world.

[SOUNDCLIP: loud chanting or singing]

MG: How do you go about getting sounds from 100 plus countries?

STUART FOWKES: One of the great things about digital technology and social media is... and this project would not have been possible ten years ago. So through networks like, you know, Twitter and Facebook and others in social media, you can put the word out. And if the project is interesting enough, then, you know, it's really great that people kind of come towards it. And some of the media coverage that some of the bigger projects that we've done, for example, around the sounds of protests, around the sounds of the COVID-19 soundscapes changing the ways that the sounds of nature were becoming more and more prominent as traffic noise died down, people were discovering new species of animals that were coming into cities and becoming emboldened. So you'd hear, you know, owl calls the centre of Thessaloniki that you would never have been able to hear two years previous to that and various things like that. So I think the way the world changed sonically during COVID was just fascinating, and that was a really interesting project.

MG: What about outside of COVID? Give me one more.

STUART FOWKES: I think also the sounds of... The sounds of protest was a big one. So around 2017 we did a project called Protest in Politics, which was collected together the sounds of protest and social unrest around the world. And, you know, that was really fascinating to see how every individual protest has its own individual personality, it's own individual mood, whether it's sadness or anger, whatever it might be.

[SOUNDCLIP: upbeat music]

MG: Are there any places that you have gotten sound from that surprised you? Any far flung places that you would have never expected somebody who learnt about this project to reach out from?

STUART FOWKES: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, well, for example, one morning I woke up to find a recorder from North Korea sitting in my inbox, which I would never have expected.

MG: Youssef and Nehal talked about preserving the culture of their city of Cairo as the city changes and some of those sounds disappear. What do you hope we learn from hearing the sounds of the world that we live in?

STUART FOWKES: There are various schemes in place to make sure the prominent buildings and sites of historic importance are protected and preserved. But there's nothing really globally that protects important, culturally significant sounds. And sound is something you only really notice... I mean, it sounds obvious, but you only really notice it once it's gone. You know, a particular sound, mark, in your town, whether it's a church bell or, you know, the sound of a horse and carriage or whatever it might be, you won't tend to notice that that's disappeared until it's gone. And so I think projects like this Cairo project are so important because they can help us to identify which sound's significant now. And which ones are, you know, worth protecting, worth preserving as soundscapes change. Because just as the technology of the world and just as the world is changing at a faster rate than it ever has in the past, so obviously that translates to sound as well in the way that particularly our city sound has never changed more quickly than it's doing at the moment. And I think that's something we need to take stock of.

MG: Well, and it's really interesting because it's not as though there are fewer sounds. I mean, it seems as though the world is noisier now than ever before, whether it's, you know, people talking on their phones, the alerts that chime in, people walking around playing music out of a boom box or, you know, that might be strapped to their bicycle handlebars or just, you know, noise in a city, whether it's jackhammers and cars. Do you worry that that sound obscures some of the sounds that are more indigenous, if I can put it that way, to the cities themselves?

STUART FOWKES: I think the issue from an urban perspective is that the cities are starting to sound more and more homogenous, you know, so traffic noise, as traffic noise takes over more and more, the world you'll find that as buildings starts to look the same. And as you know, global chains expand around the world. It's one of the downsides, I guess, of a globalized world is that a lot of the world is starting to sound the same. You get this big, heavy wash of low frequency traffic, you know, pretty much taking over everything. And that's really problematic in terms of, you know, how different cities and different places sound individual and have their own sonic personalities. And we don't want to lose those personalities of cities and spaces. And I think that's really, really important.

MG: It's like there's a difference between sound and noise in some ways.

STUART FOWKES: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's so many controversial definitions of noise now. One of the most popular definitions of noise is unwanted sound. And even that doesn't work because, you know what's an unwanted sound to me might not be the same as an unwanted sound to you. So it's very, very hard to define noise. And one of the interesting things is the although noise is one of the most frequently complained about things and, you know, in the developed world. So I think noise is the most complained about thing in New York City, for example. But it's still not really a vote winning issue. It's not something that's going to get a local councillor or local government elected or, you know, or losing. And so until people start to really care about noise and make... in fact making noise about it, you know, things aren't really going to change in that respect.

MG: If people want to contribute the sounds of their city or community to this project, how do they get in touch?

STUART FOWKES: You can just go to citiesandmemory.com And you can submit sounds on there. You can submit just a field recording, you can submit a composition, you can submit both. But the project is completely open to anyone around the world. So we'd absolutely love to hear from anyone who just wants to share a little bit of what their world sounds like.

MG: Are there Holy Grail sounds that you're still looking for? An elusive sound that you have yet to capture?

STUART FOWKES: Oh, yeah, there's so many. I mean, one of my... I think one of my broader goals, I think, is particularly to gather more sounds from across the continent of Africa as a whole.

[SOUNDCLIP: music from Africa]

STUART FOWKES: You know, it's underrepresented in the field. Recording community it's sadly underrepresented on the Cities and Memory map at the moment. I think we've got maybe ten countries from Africa out of 50 or so. And I think, you know, just trying to find those connections into people who either have recordings from Africa or a recordist based in Africa would be great. I would just love to hear more sounds from whether it's, you know, [inaudible] or Namibia, Botswana, Mali, wherever it might be. That's one of my goals for the near future of the project.

[SOUNDCLIP: music from Africa]

MG: This is a really interesting project. I'm glad to talk to you about it. Stuart, thank you very much.

STUART FOWKES: Thanks so much.

MG: Take care. Bye bye.

STUART FOWKES: Bye bye.

[SOUNDCLIP: music continued].

MG: Stuart Fowkes is the founder of Cities and Memory. This is some music that was playing on the radio in Senegal. If you're listening online in Africa, I know that a number of people do because I hear from you. You heard him say he wants more sounds from the continent. Go to citiesandmemory.com to get in touch. We would love to hear some sounds from Canada. We'll send them to him as well, but record something distinctive where you live. What does it sound like where you are? What are the sounds that are around you that you think are worth preserving? Record it on your phone. Share it with him and share it with us. Send us your audio as an email attachment to thecurrent@cbc.ca. Again, thecurrent@cbc.ca. Just use the Voice Memo app on your phone for that. I think of the knife sharpening van that still drives around in my neighbourhood, the sounds of my neighbours speaking Portuguese across the fence in the backyard. Some of those are sounds that I would love to hear. Let us know your sounds and what it sounds like, where you are and what you'd like to preserve. Again email us, thecurrent@cbc.ca. That's The Current for this Thursday. Q's up next. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you tomorrow.

[SOUNDCLIP: Music continued].

Thursday June 9, 2022 Full Text Transcript

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