Since the late 19th Century, public vocalizations in urban spaces have been on the wane, brought about in part through a combination of direct legislation and changes in commerce, most markedly the emergence of digital technology. Moreover, economic inequalities and the privatization of urban space loom large as contributing factors to the expulsion of diverse communities. Although not immune to the above, licensed street markets offer a territory in which diverse and marginalized communities can be present and coalesce. Markets can also act as a voice of resistance be it directly, against urban renewal such as Berwick Street Market, that after much public local outcry survived threat of closure in 2005, as well as wider domestic issues. An example of the latter occurring in 2015, where a crowd of over one-hundred market traders and general public protested and attempted to halt an immigration raid on East Street Market.

The Cries of London is an ongoing series of electroacoustic compositions and sound works that draw upon the acoustic ecology of London utilising contemporary ambient recordings of the city’s streets. The project takes inspiration from the 16th-century works of the same title by Thomas Weelkes and Orlando Gibbons that utilise the cries and calls of hawkers and street traders, which provide a glimmer of the urban sound world of Elizabethan London. Like the works of Weelkes and Gibbons, this series centers on the human voice within the city, capturing vocalisations drawn from a variety of contexts, starting with markets, recorded on the streets of London. At its core, The Cries of London is an ode and response to the presence of the human voice within the city where changes in commerce alongside deurbanizing forces of inequality and privatization of public spaces threaten to ‘silence the speech of the city’.

Sassen, S. “Does the City Have Speech?”, Public Culture, 25, 2 70, (2013), pp.209–221.