Hiroshima, the last sound

Each year, at the Hiroshima Peace Park, a pagoda peace bell is rung on August 6th at 8:15 a.m. I witnessed that ringing last in 2005. Some forty thousand people gathered at the park early that morning for the yearly ritual. And when the assembly was hushed for the ringing of the bell, I was overwhelmed not by our collective silence, but rather by the density of sound surrounding us. Cicadas. I experienced an instant ear flash, to say: that sixty years earlier, at the detonation 1900 feet above the city, cicadas were the last sound heard by the forty-five thousand people who perished instantly into the hottest heat, the brightest light, and the loudest sound in world history. That’s what was on my mind when I recorded the bell, and later the sounds of cicadas, to mix together. To create a historical patina, I played the sound back through two 1940s radio sets, from Hiroshima and Nagasaki and re-recorded it the way it might have sounded if broadcast on that day. This composition was commissioned by the International Community Foundation and is dedicated to all who suffered from the nuclear atrocity.

The recording is available on CD: 

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