Before the Lebanese civil war began, my grandfather had gathered up some savings to buy a 4-track reel to reel recorder onto which he went on to record the sounds of different birds. By the time the war started, he had already recorded the sounds of almost 600 birds, and in his attic he stored reels and reels of hours of bird song recordings. One of his favorite birds to record was called المذبوح (the cut-throat finch) which literally translates to “the slaughtered”. Once the war started, the birds started dying, mostly because of the loud noises. ‘The cut-throat finch preludes’ is a slowly decomposing tape loop installation of bird songs recorded in the Black Forest, which are then transcribed into sheet music as accurately as possible in order to be adapted for music box.
