Nothing changes (a begging I will go)

This piece is built around a field recording from the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum of Berber beggars singing for charity.

Listening to this recording, across time, what struck me was not difference but familiarity. Themes of begging, homelessness and poverty recur in traditional songs from all cultures, spanning the centuries. Despite differences in place, language and technology, poverty, hunger, social injustice, and the vulnerability that comes with these things, remains constant.

Through my organisation in Whitby, Flash Company Arts, I frequently work with people experiencing homelessness and fragile economic circumstances. Hearing this recording, made more than 60 years ago, felt uncomfortably relevant to my daily work. These voices could belong to anyone, anywhere, right now.

The lyric “A Begging I Will Go” is borrowed from an ancient English folk song, first printed on a black-letter broadside in 1684. And still today, all over the world, people wake each morning to the same words: A begging I will go.

Nothing changes.

Beggars singing for charity reimagined by Rebecca Denniff (Subphotic).

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Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds