The Project

The question of “What sounds define Rostock?” came up when we heard some Latin American musicians improvising in a restaurant in Rostock. We realized that this Hanseatic city in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, which belonged to the German Democratic Republic (GDR) until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, could not be reduced to maritime singing traditions such as sea shanties nor to its environmental sound at the Baltic coast or the Warnow river. Inspired by the project “Polyphonie der Kulturen” which documents musical traditions of Rostock migrant communities, we wanted to learn more about this city’s identity through its different types of sound – and this is how the
SOUNDSCAPES ROSTOCK – AN ETHNOMUSICOLOGICAL VIEW OF CITY SOUND began.
The links on the right tell you about the institutions and people involved in this project, methodology and theoretical inspirations and outputs, as well as about the largest city of the federal state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania: Rostock.

notes:
1) Best access to the full database (short and long audio, video and photo) is by clicking on the recording person's name in the database. Sounds can be downloaded for research, educational and artistic purposes, but if any new products emerge with these sounds, please let us know. We want to link these products to this website. Thanks for your comprehension.
2) The texts on the website refer to all recordings made between October 2010 and March 2011. However, after March 2011 the data base (but not the soundscapes points on the map) has been being enlarged up to today.  
3) Errata: of course the sampling rate of the audio in the database is kHz/bit - and not, as often indicated, Hz/bit.