VOA常速英语:Website of the Week — Open Sound New Orleans

Time again for our Website of the Week, when we showcase interesting and innovative online destinations.

New Orleans is one of America's most distinctive cities. White, black, and French cultures meet in the port near the mouth of the Mississippi River, seasoned by great food and enlivened by fabulous music. 

New Orleans was battered by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, bringing new attention to the city's rich cultural heritage.

The creators of our Website of the Week are collecting the sounds of New Orleans, which you hear by clicking on a map that shows where they were recorded.

"Open Sound New Orleans is a community media project that invites and enables New Orlineans to document their lives in sound," says co-director Jacob Brancasi. 

"New Orlineans participate by recording or making recording requests for the important sounds and voices in their lives and adding them to the sound map."

Jacob Brancasi is co-director of OpenSoundNewOrleans.com, which launched just last year and features the city's people, music, and ambient sounds — the soundtrack of New Orleans.

The sounds include cicadas recorded by Jeffrey and Ruby Haupt. They're professional audio people, but Open Sound New Orleans' other co-director, Heather Booth, says part of the project also includes training people in recording skills and lending them the equipment to document their city.

"The contributors really range from individuals we've never laid eyes on, who just upload recordings of work and family and really personal things, to more cohesive groups that we work intensively with, like the new immigrants to New Orleans, who really wanted an opportunity to open a dialogue with New Orlineans about who they are and why they're here in New Orleans."

The rich soundscape of New Orleans at OpenSoundNewOrleans.com, or visit our site, VOANews.com, for the link to this and more than 250 other Websites of the Week.