Ayọ̀ Akínwándé: Mumu LP Vol.3: The Listening Room

‘Mumu LP Vol.3: The Listening Room’ is a sculptural sound installation that foregrounds the ‘voice of the people’ in an ongoing artistic interrogation of political engagements in the public realm. This art work is part of a long-term project called ‘Archiving the Future’ which began in 2016, collecting social media screenshots and audio recordings of conversations at bus stops around Lagos. These conversations often took place at pivotal points in the political calendar and the archive organically responds to citizens in the city, rather than prescriptive to a pre-conceived timeline.

This exhibition takes the The Jazzhole, Nigeria’s infamous book and record store, recognised as one of the world’s best record stores in the book, Around the World in 80 Record Stores, to present this audio-visual archival panorama – 19 sculptural sound pieces and 19 drawings.

The Listening Room is the third iteration of the Mumu LP series. This exhibition brings together a hybrid of sound collages from Mumu LP Vol.1 (2018) and Mumu LP Vol.2: The Orchestra (2019). The first volume collated over one hour of audio recordings in a 19- track album recorded at newspaper stands in the city of Lagos, collecting voices that reflect on Nigeria’s political landscape. This album was presented to the public as part of the artist’s solo exhibition at the Revolving Art Incubator (RAI), on Nigeria’s independence day in 2018. The second volume, is a performance piece that was developed during an international residency at the Fonderie Darling in Montréal, transforming the original recordings from the first volume into graphic scores on newspapers, which were then scored into 19 new tracks in collaboration with five local musicians playing trumpet, bass clarinet, saxophone, guitar, and tuba.

Mumu LP Vol.3: The Listening Room uses The Jazzhole to look collectively into the archive, to listen to these contemporary voices, and the commentaries shaping our political reality. The pieces will be installed in existing objects within the rooms of the venue. In this way, the sound sculptures, and the graphic drawings, will be in dialogue with The Jazzhole’s own archives – collections of books and records – that have come to define this venue as the house of the “Nigerian sound.”

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