Field Recording of Chicago's 106th street bridge over the Calumet River: a vestige of Carl Sandburg's industrial city.
The music of Joshua Manchester, Chicago percussionist.
I was taken on an excursion with Field Museum employee Jonathan Vanderbrug to explore the nature of the Calumet area of Chicago. This corridor has for centuries been a locus of transportation and a meeting place. When you hear of Chicago's success as a city as being due to it's location at the elbow of the Great Lakes, the junction of rivers, and a spot of natural abundance, this is Calumet's contribution to the shining skyscrapers that you see today. When humans found similar advantages to Calumet, the area quickly became an industrial zone, drawing a large percentage of all rail and car traffic, and also became drastically reshaped to assist naval transportation as well.
The industries that once reigned supreme in South Chicago have left some monumental scars on the area, from a swamp filled in with slag, crossed by power and rail lines, and called a park to massive, quarter-mile walls that used to contain coal.
Standing on the 106th Street bridge, you gain a glimmer of that old Chicago. The link below is about 9 minutes long, and at first all you hear are the sounds of cars crossing the bridge. A siren wails in the background, and semi trucks rattle the metal bridge excessively. However on one bank are massive piles of coal being moved back and forth by a giant crane, and on the other are dump trucks and loaders sorting gravel and depositing it into loud machines. In the background, bare-iron railroad bridges, skyways, and the rest of the city loom. Suddenly an alarm sounds and we realize the bridge is about to raise. You hear my friend say, "Uh, let's roll," Traffic stops, we run for shore, sound quality diminishes, and the huge arms of the bridge open wide to accept a coal barge moving upriver. The scene becomes so loud that all you can really hear of the barge as it passes by are the seagulls relentlessly swarming its cargo. For a moment, nothing seems to exist except the physical presence of the bell, and I turn away to minimize their sound. After the great grinding of metal has passed, the traffic is again allowed to move, the barge docks in front of the crane, and the sounds of industry fall over themselves to begin again.