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It’s been a minute for the SO! podcast but we are glad to be back–however intermittently–with a podcast episode that shares a discussion between women sound studies artists and scholars. The panel “Living Sounds: Rhythms of Belonging,” was held on September 19 at 6-7pm EDT at The Soil Factory arts space in Ithaca, New York. Moderator Jennifer Lynn Stoever, sound studies scholar and our Ed. in Chief, talks with four women sound artists about their praxis: Marlo de Lara, Bonnie Han Jones, Sarah Nance and Paulina Velazquez Solis.

BiosMarlo De Lara (they/siya) obtained a PhD in Cultural Studies (University of Leeds) and an MA in Psychosocial Studies from the Centre of Psychoanalytic Studies at Essex. Their creative practice works within the realms of sound performance, visual distraction, and film. Using found objects, installation, and various forms of amplification, environments/structures use sound to impart meaning and affect for the participant. As the child of Philippine migrants, De Lara’s unabashed feminist sociopolitical practice/research editorializes on contemporary global conditions. As an arts facilitator, using their critiques of the nonprofit industrial complex and institutional learning, De Lara aims to transgress and subvert traditional hierarchical ways of managing contemporary art spaces. In the role of community care, Marlo uses mutual aid and emergent strategies in combination with decolonial ways of nourishing equity, diversity, and inclusion practices to ensure safety and access for all. Marlo is a Certified Deep Listening Facilitator and shaping a career as Counsellor/Coach/Guide in therapeutic healing methods informed by Western psychotherapeutic/psychological, healing arts, expressive therapies, and various indigenous practices, most specifically sikolohiyang pilipino.

Bonnie Han Jones is a Korean-American improvising musician, poet, and performer working with electronic sound and text. She performs solo and in numerous collaborative music, film, and visual art projects. Bonnie was a founding member of the Transmodern Festival and CHELA Gallery and is currently a member of the High Zero Festival collective. In 2010, along with Suzanne Thorpe she co-founded TECHNE, an organization that develops anti-racist, feminist workshops that center on technology-focused art making, improvisation, and community collaboration. She has received commissions from the London ICA and Walters Art Museum and has presented her work extensively at institutions in the US, Mexico, Europe and Asia. Bonnie was a 2018 recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. Born in South Korea, she was raised on a dairy farm in New Jersey, spent her formative years in Baltimore, Maryland and Providence RI and currently resides in Chicago, IL.

Sarah Nance is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the intersections of geologic processes and human experience in archived, constructed, and speculative landscapes. Her work has been performed and exhibited widely, at venues in China, France, Canada, Iceland, South Korea, Germany, and Italy, as well as across the U.S.

Paulina Velázquez Solís is a multimedia artist and curator from Mexico and Costa Rica. She works with installation, sound, sculpture, drawing, animation/video, and media performance. She is interested in the body and the biological and natural world in interaction with the cultural and social notions of normalcy and experiences as a multinational individual. Her work has been shown in places like Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo and TEOR/éTica in Costa Rica; Taipei Fine Arts Museum; Ex Teresa Arte Actual in México City; Casa de las Americas in La Havana, Cuba; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Panamá City; Museum of the Americas, Washington, DC; and Root Division and The Lab in San Francisco.

Jennifer Lynn Stoever is Associate Professor of English at Binghamton University, founding Editor-in-Chief of Sounding Out!, and author of The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening (NYU Press, 2016). Her research has been supported by the Whiting Foundation, the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Thank you to Travis Johns for the recording and mixing.

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Voice and sound theorist Zeynep Bulut’s Building a Voice: Sound, Surface, Skin (Goldsmiths Press, 2025) is a remarkable work that reconfigures the ways we define “voice.” The text is organized into three sections—Part 1: Plastic (Emergence of Voice as Skin), Part 2: Electric (Embodiment of Voice as Skin), and Part 3: Haptic (Mediation of Voice as Skin)—each articulating Bulut’s exploration of the simultaneously personal and collaborative ways voice evolves among various sonic entities and environments. Through analyses of several artistic works that experiment with sound, Bulut successfully highlights the social effects of these pieces and how they alter our expectations of what it means to communicate and be understood.

It’s easy to reduce one’s understanding of voice to the purely spoken, the dialogic, the linguistically communicative, but Bulut’s conception of voice reaches beyond these forms. In her introduction, she states that she represents voice as something that “…evolves, through varied sounds, senses, bodies and technologies. In other words… distributed forms and instances of voice, which underlie the making of a voice, instead of giving a voice to something or someone, or being given a voice” (1). Whereas it may be easy to consider voice as something insular and complete, Bulut argues that it is in fact highly contestable, and shifts based on various environmental/social circumstances—this she aptly labels the “plasticity of voice.” Since Bulut envisions voice as something malleable, this unearths its responsive potentials, and eventually leads us to the image that Bulut will repeatedly return to over the course of the text—”voice as skin.”

Initially, “voice as skin” may seem perplexing, as these two elements appear in direct contrast to each other. However, I believe that the blending of these assumedly divergent facets is what makes Bulut’s work and scholarship so strong. None of her arguments complacently subsiston the known, the expected, and so when she presents voice as skin, it makes sense that she has formed this concept in order to continue extending her readers’ understandings of how we embody and experience sound.

Voice as skin is meant to illuminate the responses and sonic productions that often go unnoticed. It is a dynamic presence that defies static restrictions desperate to make it only one thing. It is “…imagining voice as a multisensory interface, a tactile and haptic affect across bodies of all kinds, without being limited to the human body, to human audition or the labels of verbal language” (234). As you proceed with Bulut’s argument, voice as skin repeatedly arises in different, somewhat surprising iterations throughout the chapters, continuously reframing the ways one may consider the experiential potentials and qualities of sound. “Voice is already a plural phenomenon” (218) Bulut states, “Each one of us carries another’s voice” (218). Everyone is in possession of their own sonic productions, but because we exist within a shared sonic landscape—Bulut regards this through Bruce Odland’s concept of the “sonic commons”—we have to become more sensitive resonant sources for the sounds that are directed at and emerge from this voice as skin.

Bulut makes it clear that there is a consequence to sound. Even when an individual is not engaged in dialogue or aurally responding to some other sonic stimuli, there is a voicing—a reaction, a sensing, a renegotiation of the body within the shifting soundscape—that occurs. Bulut analyzes a myriad of experimental sound artworks throughout Building a Voice, but her analysis of Pauline Oliveros’s Environmental Dialogue is where she really drives home the various ways in which one may “respond” to sound: “You listen to the sound attentively, and may respond to it or not… Regardless of a vocal or instrumental articulation of a pitch, therewould be a mental reinforcement in the process” (68). In later chapters, specifically those in Part 3 that discuss gesture as voice and biosensing musical interfaces, Bulut states that “Bodies constantly talk” (173)—that is, they inherently articulate something that either represents themselves or a reaction to another sonic production.

What Bulut’s readers receive throughout Building a Voice is a work of scholarship that strives against the possibility of sonic apathy. Even while attempting to not respond to a sound or pitch, one still notes—pun intended—the impact of these sonic productions on themselves and the space around them. Not saying anything is still a statement, Bulut reveals. It still “voices.”

Bulut’s diversification of voicing is astounding to read, but what I admire most about Building a Voice is that it underscores the importance of hearing. When Bulut discusses the ways we do or do not listen, I believe her scholarship becomes especially timely. In Part 2, Chapter 6: “Sharing a Skin,” Bulut describes the limits of empathy when it comes to fully hearing another individual: “We hear one another through our own wounds and then only partially” (134). She doesn’t make this claim to invalidate others’ efforts to show empathy. In fact, I think there is significant care contained in this specific argument. Rather than believe one is innately endowed with the skills to hear someone, or assume someone has the ability to fully hear us, Bulut encourages her readers to approach these experiences with humility:

We may be frustrated with the fact that no one truly understands or hears us, or that someone imagines that they understand us when they don’t. There is no full translation or hearing of anything. We can only connect in parts. We can only be a sounding board that both echoes and diffracts (134).

“Skin: Close Up” by Magic Foundry, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0We are living in a time where several historically vulnerable communities face daily antagonization at home and abroad. Simply opening social media will present you with multiple posts pleading for allies to speak out for those facing ridicule, abuse, and even annihilation. For individuals who elect to answer those calls—who feel compelled to take on the profound commitment of assuming a “voice” for these communities—Bulut’s book provides some necessary food for thought. If we cannot fully hear nor understand those we wish to advocate for or protect, how might we renegotiate our current styles of activism away from the idea of “giving voice” (or, for that matter, considering anyone to be “voiceless”)? How might we honor the differences between individuals without viewing this as a move toward disconnection, an acceptance of inaction?

Building a Voice is an exciting text because it presents one with so many beautiful examples of experimental sound art, but I believe it becomes asocially integral work when Bulut indicates why revolutionizing the way we execute our methods of hearing and voicing is so important. By this, she doesn’t just illustrate the ways in which one builds a voice, she also reveals how one builds a kind of sonic and social consciousness. To read Building a Voice is to have one’s understanding of their own and the world’s resonant capabilities irreversibly transformed. This is writing about sound on another frequency—it’s time to tune in.

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Featured Image: “Plantar Aspect,” by Pekka Nikrus, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0**

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Enikő Deptuch Vághy is a poet, artist, and editor. She is currently a PhD candidate in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Additionally, she is the Founding EIC of the literary and arts journal Lover’s Eye Press.

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In March 2025, shortly after returning to the United States from Romania, where he and his brother Tristan had been held under house arrest for two years after being charged with human trafficking, rape, and forming a criminal group to sexually exploit women, the social media influencer and self-described misogynist Andrew Tate’s podcast, Pimping Hs Degree was removed from Spotify for violating that platform’s policies.

According to the technology media outlet 404 Media, which first reported the news, some Spotify employees had complained in an internal Slack channel about the availability of Tate’s shows on their platform. “Pretty vile that we’re hosting Andrew Tate’s content,” wrote one. “Happy Women’s History Month, everybody!” wrote another. A change.org petition to call on Spotify to remove harmful Andrew Tate content, meanwhile, received over 150,000 signatures.

When asked for comment by the U.K. Independent, a Spotify spokesperson clarified that they removed the content in question because it violated the company’s policies, not because of any internal employee discussion. These policies state, in part, that content hosted on the platform should not “promote violence, incite hatred, harass, bully, or engage in any other behavior that may place people at risk of serious physical harm or death.”

Still, there is a veritable fire hose of Tate content available on Spotify. A search for the name “Andrew Tate” on the platform yields upwards of 15 feeds (and a music account) associated with the pro kickboxer-turned-self-help guru, many of which seem to be updated on a sporadic basis or not at all. Apple Podcasts, meanwhile, features an equally wide spectrum of shows with titles like Tatecast, Tate Speech, Andrew Tate Motivation, and Tate Talk [Ed. Note: Normally there’d be links to this media–and the author has provided all of his sources, but we at SO! does not want to drive idle traffic to these sites or pingbacks to/from them. If you want to follow Andrew Salvati’s path, all these titles are readily findable with a quick cut-and-paste Google search.–JS]

With so many different feeds out there, wading into the Andrew Tate audio ecosystem can be a bewildering experience. There isn’t just one podcast; there’s a continuous unfolding of feeds populated by short clips of content pulled from other sources.

But this may be the point exactly.

Andrew Tate on Anything Goes With James English, CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia CommonsAs I learned from this article in the Guardian and these interviews with YouTuber and entrepreneur MrBeast (“MrBeast On Andrew Tate’s MARKETING” and “MrBeast Reveals Andrew Tate’s Strategy”), Tate achieved TikTok virality, in part, by encouraging fans to share clips of video podcast interviews – rather than the whole interview itself – on the platform.

“Now is the best time to do podcasts than ever before,” MrBeast said in one interview. “Now it’s like the clips are re-uploaded for months on months. It gets so many views outside of the actual podcast … I would call it the ‘Tate Model’ … Like I think if you’re an influencer, you should go on like a couple dozen podcasts. You should clip all the best parts and just put it on a folder and just give it to your fans. Like literally promote you for free.” Though it can be hard to tell exactly who uploaded a podcast to Spotify, it seems that something like this is happening on the platform – that fans of Tate are sharing their favorite clips of his interviews and monologues pulled from other sources.

In its “About” section, for instance, a Spotify feed called Andrew Tate Motivational Speech declares that “this is a mix of the most powerful motivational speeches I’ve found from Andrew Tate. He’s a 4 time [sic] kickboxing world champion and he’s been having a big impact on social media.” In another Spotify feed called Tate Therapy, posters are careful to note that they “do not represent Mr. Tate in any way. We simply love his message. So we put together some of his best speeches.”

Given that Spotify is increasingly a social media platform, rather than simply an audio streaming service–users can collaborate on playlists and see what their friends are listening to–it follows that this practice of clipping and sharing Tate content may potentially expand the influencer’s online footprint. It may also serve as insurance against the company’s attempts to remove content or completely deplatform Tate: surely Spotify can’t police all the feeds that it hosts

So, what is it that Andrew Tate is saying – and how is he saying it?

To get a sense of why he has been called the “King of Toxic Masculinity,” and a “divisive social media star,” I had a listen to several of the interviews and monologues posted to Andrew Tate Speech Daily on Apple Podcasts, which, of all of the Andrew Tate audio feeds, is the most consistently updated.

The first thing to take note of is his voice. It’s brisk and aggressive and carefully enunciated – it’s like he’s daring you to take issue with what he, an accomplished and eloquent man, is saying. Above all, listening to Tate feels like being spoken to like an inferior, because that is precisely what he preys on. His accent, moreover – now British, now American – is unique, lending itself to some unusual pronunciations that can be considered as a part of his system of authority and charm.

One of Tate’s main arguments about what ails men today – and it is clear from his mode of address that he assumes he is talking to men exclusively – is that they are trapped in a system of social and economic “slavery” that he unimaginatively calls “The Matrix” after the film series of the same name. Though he is somewhat vague in his descriptions, in the podcast episode “Andrew Tate on The Matrix,” he explains that power, as it actually exists in the world, is held by elites who rely on systems of representation (language, texts) to effect their will. These systems of representation, however, are prone to abuse because they are ultimately subject to human fallibility. Tangible assets, like wealth, he reasons, are susceptible to control by “The Matrix,” as they can be taken away arbitrarily by the redefinition of decisions and the printing/signing of documents. His example, though it is a little hard to follow, is that if someone says something that the government doesn’t like, a judge can simply order that their house be taken away. Instead, Tate argues that individuals can escape “The Matrix” by building intangible assets (here, he gives no examples), which cannot be taken away by elites and their bureaucracy. It is a difficult path, he cautions (and here, he sounds sympathetic), and one that not everyone has the discipline to endure.

Tate gets a little more specific in the episode “Andrew Tate on The Global Awakening. The Modern Slave System,” in which he asserts that elites are using the system of fiat currency – a term that cryptocurrency supporters like to use to disparage government-issued currencies – to keep individuals “enslaved.” In this modern version of enslavement, he explains, individuals are forced to work for currency, but, since fiat currency is subject to inflation and other forms of manipulation, only end up making the bare amount they need to survive. The result, he argues, is a system in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer (of course this ignores the real possibility of shitcoin and other crypto manipulation schemes). It’s quite a populist message for a guy who is famous for his luxurious lifestyle. Still, his message here is consistent: with the proper amount of discipline, a willingness to speak truth to power, and faith in God (he converted to Islam in October 2023) will result in an awakening of consciousness that will finally end the stranglehold that elites have on power – will finally break “The Matrix.”

On the other hand, Tate deems women incapable of the discipline required to break out of “The Matrix” – he seems to think that they are too materialistic, too distractible, too enamored of the chains that elites use to bind individuals to the system to see beyond them (see “Andrew Tate on ‘Fun’”). In his view, women are better off at home bearing children or fulfilling male sexual desires. (In an apparent demonstration of male dominance, Tate’s “girlfriends” often appear in the background of his videos cleaning house).

For his part, Tate claims that his own legal troubles, and his own vilification in the press, are part of a coordinated campaign of persecution against him for exposing the way that the world really works (see, for example, “Andrew Tate: Survival, Power, and the System Exposed”). From this vantage, Tate seems to be acting as what the ancient Greeks called a parrhesiastes, someone who, as Michel Foucault writes, not only sees it as his duty to speak the truth, but takes a risk in doing so, since what he says is opposed by the majority. Indeed, often congratulating himself on his bravery in the face of “The Matrix,” Tate has suggested that his role as a truth teller might get him sent to jail (“Andrew Tate on the Common Man”), or worse (“Survival, Power, and the System Exposed.”) In such moments, he plays the martyr, adopting a quiet, yet defiant voice.

Aside from the aspirational lifestyle he purveys – the fast cars, the money, the women, the flashy clothes, the jets, the mansions, the cigars, and the six pack – it seems to me that this parrhesia is a key part of what makes Tate popular among men and boys (as of February 2025, he had over 10 million followers on X [formerly Twitter]). What he reveals to them, though it is often muddled, is the way in which elites maintain social control under advanced capitalism. It’s all rather Gramscian in the sense that it is concerned with the hegemony of a dominant class, though, ironically, Tate seems too much of a capitalist himself to engage in Marxian social critique. Instead of offering a politics of class solidarity, Tate merely rehearses familiar neoliberal scripts about pulling oneself up by the bootstraps (see “You Must Constantly Build Yourself”), getting disciplined, going to the gym, developing skills, and starting a business. For Tate, life is a competition, a war, though most men don’t realize it.

And I think this is the key to understanding Tate’s parrhesia – it’s not only that he is speaking truth to power in his criticism of “The Matrix”; he also sees himself as speaking an uncomfortable truth to his listeners, truths that they might not be ready to hear. As in the movie, The Matrix, he says in “Andrew Tate on the Global Awakening,” some minds are not ready to have the true nature of reality revealed to them. In his perorations, therefore, Tate often takes a sharp and combative tone, accusing his listeners of being guilty of complacency and complicity in the face of “The Matrix.”

“If I were to explain to you right here, right now, in a compendious and concise way, most of you wouldn’t understand,” he says in “Andrew Tate on The Matrix.” “And those of you who do understand will not be prepared to do the work it takes to then actually genuinely escape. But those of you who are truly unhappy inside of your hearts, those of you who understand there’s something more to life, there’s a different level of reality you’ve yet to experience … But if your mind is ready to be free, if you’re ready to truly understand how the world operates and become a person who is difficult to kill, hard to damage, and escape The Matrix truly, once and for all, then I am willing to teach you.”

Tate on Anything Goes With James English, CC BY 3.0 , via Wikimedia CommonsFor those persuaded by this line of thinking, or who are otherwise made to feel guilty about their complicity in “The Matrix,” Tate offers a special “Real World” course at $49 per month, which teaches students how they can leverage AI and e-commerce tools to earn their own money and finally be free.

And that’s really what it’s all about – all the social media influencing, all the clip sharing, all the obnoxious antics, and deliberately controversial statements – they are all calculated to raise his public profile (good or bad) so that he can sell the online courses that have made him and his brother Tristan fabulously wealthy.

It is for this reason that I don’t think that Spotify’s deplatforming of one of Tate’s shows will ultimately do anything meaningful to stem his popularity. If anything, the added controversy will likely confirm to his fans that he has been right all along – that the elites who are in control of “The Matrix” are so threatened by the truth that he tells about the world and about women that they will first deplatform him and then send him to jail.

No, we will only rid ourselves of Tate when he becomes irrelevant. This may happen if he ends up going to prison in Romania or in the UK (where he also faces charges of rape and human trafficking). But even then, there are many vying to take his place.

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Featured Image: Close-up and remixed image of Andrew Tate’s mouth and arm, Image by Heute, CC BY 4.0**

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Andrew J. Salvati is an adjunct professor in the Media and Communications program at Drew University, where he teaches courses on podcasting and television studies. His research interests include media and cultural memory, television history, and mediated masculinity. He is the co-founder and occasional co-host of Inside the Box: The TV History Podcast, and Drew Archives in 10.

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This post also benefitted from the review of Spring 2025 Sounding Out! interns Sean Broder and Alex Calovi. Thank you!

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IAs a ’90s kid, I remember too well us school kids singing and dancing to the songs at the top of the charts on music shows such as Ingigayo (인기가요) and Music Bank (뮤직뱅크). It was what one might call the “pre-K-pop” era: there were a lot of solo artists performing in various genres, and the notion of idol culture as we know it now was only fledgling. Without the mass production system or the global distribution that has come to be the norm in today’s K-pop, first generation idol groups around the new millennium—H.O.T., Fin.K.L, god, Sechs Kies, S.E.S.—not only set up these business models and standards, but also inspired the music and aesthetics of later generations. The group aespa’s cover of “Dreams Come True” by S.E.S. is an exemplar case, and NewJeans, with their unflinching Y2K aesthetics and sound, take us back to the millennial through and through.

What are we to make of this return? I wonder if the return of the millennial across South Korea’s cultural sectors has to do with the old, daunting problem of capitalism. The kids born in the ‘90s are now adults with buying power, and nostalgia always sells. It’s by no means new to ask this, but still: are we at a cultural impasse where we cannot tell—and sell, for that matter—genuinely brand-new stories? What “genuinely brand-new” means is also another question.

Interestingly, though, it is also about aesthetics. The millennial aesthetic is not just a trope that is old, marketable, and familiar to a consumer base; it was always something inherently futuristic. The K-pop scene around the millennial was abundant with references to cyberworld and AI, keeping pace with the emerging and developing presence of the Internet. The group CLON immediately comes to mind: named after the term clone, the group was performing futurist visuals and electronic techno sound and dance throughout the early 2000s. If our contemporary culture and music scene is bringing back this specific aesthetic of the past, this is then already always a look toward the future—that is, by reviving the old that was all about the future yet to come, we also, in the now, desire a new future. It is the very mode of thinking or imagination that also travels with the return of the millennial as a product.

K-pop today has been witnessing new generations of bands that showcase futurist visuals and sound such as EXO and aespa. Now, despite these well-produced and -invested bands–and the whole industry wired toward mass production and profit-making–I want to direct us to another scenario where this neo-millennial touch is much more than simply the most up-to-date upgrade for the old and familiar financial success plot. By way of what I might call comparative listening, I ask that we attune ourselves to how sound not only travels across time and space but propels us to look toward the future that has not yet come. To this end, I begin with a story of a cultural phenomenon in the early K-pop scene: long before K-pop became a global sensation, a young former-actress Lee Jung Hyun was offering her listeners a flight through sounds that deterritorialize and relocate them onto a different spatiotemporal plane.

IILee Jung-Hyun album “wa – come on” via flickr
Amidst the early idol wars of the millennial that came to define K-pop as we now know it, we also saw and heard something unprecedented. We were certainly not ready when a 19-year-old female singer made her debut on a major ground wave television music show on the last day of October 1999. On this day, Ingigayo, a now defunct weekly Sunday live music program, aired Lee’s first performance of “Wa” (와) which was an instant sensation across the country. It starts with a camera zooming in on an extraterrestrial planet with a ring around it that says, “LEE JUNG HYUN Let’s Go To My Star.” Accompanying this visual cue is the likewise out-of-this-planet sound effect that instantly transports the audience to her “Star,” wherever that might exactly be.

After setting up the otherworldly soundscape, Lee begins to introduce herself, except that, aside from occasional decodable words—“zero,” “Korea,” “Jung Hyun,” etc.—the introduction falls short: we cannot really hear what she is saying or, more to the point, meaning. It is here, at the point of “zero,” ungrounded on our planet Earth and distant from any system of meaning at hand, that Lee sends out the invitation to her own planet and embarks on her almost ritual-like performance with such full force, showing the audience that this sound and these dance moves of hers are the very power source of the not-yet visible spaceship. (Cue the windy stage effect!)

Lee’s memorable entrance to the scene was almost instantly followed by both financial success and cultural impact. Right after her performance aired, Lee began to win every competition on every major music show; she showcased her repertoire with variations, although keeping with her futuristic, spacey visuals and sound. Everyone from elementary school kids to celebrities on TV imitated Lee’s pinky mic and her gargantuan, “big eyed” fan, not to mention her unique techno dance moves. It was as if Lee’s debut statement—“Let’s Go To My Star,” also the title of her first album—came to realize itself by, quite literally, transporting the people of earth to her star, where different aesthetics and politics apply. The visual and aural shock of Lee’s strong experimentalism shifted and transformed the cultural terrain of the Korean pop music scene, taking the viewers and listeners to possibilities and futures that had no name yet.

Can this be a starting point where we can imagine futures yet to be charted? It is no secret that this futurist aesthetic introduced at the turn of the century is even more widely visible and audible in K-pop today. EXO, for instance, owes its group name to exoplanet, and as their story goes, members are extraterrestrial beings that came to planet Earth, without any memory or the superpowers they once had off-planet. Or, we could look to aespa: like EXO, their narrative takes us deep into a future where members in the “real” world encounter and connect with their avatars (called “ae”) in the “virtual” world.

Throughout these cases, the futurism of the millennial that Lee pioneered seems to be calling to us once again, only to be reinforced in and through the new market that has been expanding larger than ever. Again, capitalism and the laws of the market seem to be victorious. But how did Lee do it in the first place—where did she find her inspiration? When there was hardly any precedent of the systemized or mass-produced storytelling that has now come to be the norm of the K-pop industry, Lee was single handedly telling a story that no one in the K-pop history would have easily come up with, and sound was the very centerpiece.

As many of Lee’s contemporary commentators pointed out, her music combines then-emerging techno rhythm and sound with Korean traditional music; her mixes feature thumping beats accompanied by traditional instruments like ajaeng (in “Wa”) and kkwaenggwari (in “GX 339-4,” often performed live as an intro to “Wa”) that delivered historically and culturally readily available sounds to the South Korean audience. This surprising, genre-bending mix of musical and sonic repertoires left many listeners unsure whether her music was of the past or future. Lee further added to this hybridity by overdubbing the fast-paced techno rhythm with slow dance moves inspired by tai chi, as she revealed in her interview with Section TV. In another interview with the national evening paper Munhwa Ilbo (문화일보), Lee said that she found techno in Europe four years ago and that it was now widely spread across Europe and the United States. She added that, when she was recording the album, techno was just being introduced to South Korea, and that she wanted to popularize the genre further by making the title song more accessible.

Early K-pop group, ‘Fin.K.L’ inspired by Jung-Hyun’s innovation of the ‘Wa’ genre. via Generasia This was the origin story of “Wa”: as one of the earliest exponents of techno in the K-pop scene in the 90s, Lee needed more familiar components—lyrics about love and betrayal, traditional instruments, etc.—to ease the audience into the new technological sound. And it is sound that connects all these nodes of Lee’s story. It was the fusion of Korean traditional music and European techno that allowed Lee to open up a whole new terrain of music that no one had heard of. In other words, it is as if sound allowed Lee to travel time and space, crossing and crisscrossing different genres of different periods and places through music. It is useful to go back to the latter interview, where we can glimpse her exposure to a wide-ranging repertoire of international music traditions:

I enjoy listening to various kinds of music like Indian, Cuban rock, Eastern European, and African, but these genres remain inaccessible to many domestic listeners. Dedicated music fans might be able to access them by downloading files from the internet or something, but the ninety percent of people cannot. That’s the reality of our country.

It was these sonic crossings between different eras and parts of the world that inspired Lee not only to produce and introduce new sounds to the domestic scene, but, in and through those sounds, to herald the very future of K-pop. When there was barely any systemic approach to music production or any music streaming service in existence like Spotify or even YouTube—MTV was the closest thing we had—Lee was embodying the force of sound itself to cross times and spaces and present something totally new, taking all of us to her star.

IIILee’s story of sound as an interstellar force to cross temporal and spatial boundaries sends us not only to today’s K-pop but, rather unexpectedly, to midcentury America, where K-pop as such could not have been known. Lee’s florid, even lurid, out-of-this-world attire and futuristic electronic sound reference a notoriously occult figure of the mid-20th century American music scene: Sun Ra.

Jazz composer/pianist, leader of the independent record label/space travel agency El Saturn, the myth incarnation and many more, Ra claims to have come from outer space to bring all the Black people on earth back to where he came from through his music—where, as he says in the film Space is the Place, “sounds of guns, anger, frustration” of earth are no more. In a 1968 prose “My Music Is Words,” Ra writes:

To me all types of music are music but all types of music are not Space Music. According to my weigh of things: Space music is an introductory prelude to the sound of greater infinity. It is not a new thing project to me, as this kind of music is my natural being and presentation. It is a different order of sounds synchronized to the different order of Being.

A film poster for the musical film “Space is the Place” featuring Sun Ra and the Arkestra.On another occasion, Ra said of his space music that “the vibrations of it will just put them over in the sound and the sound becomes like a spaceship and lift ’em on out there.” This self-claimed rescue mission through new music and its “sound of greater infinity” was not merely a pretentious rhetoric or gesture. Ra was one of the earliest exponents of the portable electronic synthesizer Minimoog. Initially trained as a jazz pianist and having played in the big band tradition with jazz giants like Fletcher Henderson, Ra turned to what may be called “space sound engineering” to introduce space travel through otherworldly sounds.

As many scholars agree, Ra is considered one of the initiators of Afrofuturism. While the term itself was coined by Mark Dery in the 1990s, Afrofuturism describes a pre-existing, distinctive aesthetic style and politics of a group of work by artists—Samuel R. Delany, Octavia E. Butler, Tricia Rose, among others—who imagine and secure Black life and presence in a future where robots, cyborgs, and superhumans can be imagined without difficulty. Dery describes Afrofuturism’s core feature as “speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of twentieth-century technoculture—and, more generally, African-American signification that appropriates images of technology and a prosthetically enhanced future.” This “African-American signification” onto the future carried urgency because this future was, at least before Afrofuturists arrived, mostly white. Dery further asks, “Isn’t the unreal estate of the future already owned by the technocrats, futurologists, streamliners, and set designers—white to a man—who have engineered our collective fantasies?”

Grappling with this white-oriented future scheme and the contemporary narrative of “progress and conquer” under the headings of the official government space project and the expansion of suburbs, Ra offered an alternative space project: we’re leaving this planet earth behind and turning toward somewhere we can build a different future, and this will be done through new music, new sound: “Space Music.” Indeed, sound has long been a crucial theme and tool for black aesthetics and politics. Black studies scholars—Fred Moten, Alexander Weheliye, Louis Chude-Sokei, Tsitsi Jaji, andré carrington, Daphne Brooks, Anthony Reed, Carter Mathes, Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo, Tao Leigh Goffe, Matthew D. Morrison and more—take up Black sound (and often its relationship with technology) to discuss alternative stories of American racial history and future fraught with tensions, but not without hope (one of Afrofuturism’s main themes). Even long before this, though, Black artists had been engaging sound as power, from work song and holler to Blues and Jazz to Hip Hop and dance. Janelle Monáe immediately comes to mind as a contemporary figure who blends this sonic legacy with Afrofuturist features. She even directly comments on Ra’s precedent by conjuring up again his mirror-faced, black-hooded companion in Space is the Place in her own music video, “Tightrope.”

I’m by no means in a hurry to draw a line of influence or causal relationship between Lee and Ra. In fact, I’m not interested in saying that Lee somehow found this long tradition of Black sound and futurist aesthetics and “applied” or even “developed” it for her own use. Rather than setting up some sort of a kinship between Lee and Afrofuturists that may even remotely come across as appropriative, I’m much more interested in thinking, by way of juxtaposition, about whether it is possible to imagine Asian futurism informed and shaped not only by Afrofuturism but by K-pop. Ever since Dery’s inaugural coinage of the term, Afrofuturism has long been recognized for its versatility as a powerful concept to generate other kinds of futurity or futurism. For example, in his chapter for The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction, De Witt Kilgore writes that “Afrofuturism can be viewed within this more general political and aesthetic project, imbricating the experiences of the African diaspora with those of colonized peoples in Asia, South America, and elsewhere” (570). Dawn Chan confirms this root of Asian futurism and ponders upon its possibility, inspired by Ryan Lee Wong: “If Afrofuturist thinkers have created speculative realms of their own accord, carving out counterfactual worlds that might cast the shortcomings of our current one in high relief, might there be analogous ways for Asian artists to recast techno-clichéd trappings toward more generative ends?”

Despite all these ongoing discussions and questions, Asian futurism to this day remains significantly under-developed and -theorized. Further developing such a concept, not to mention its larger and broader—louder—cultural significances, seems to be in order, especially in light of the recent surge in successful renditions of the Asian future-scape as in A24 films like After Yang (2021) and Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022). So, how do we do this? My modest proposal would be that we listen; that we attune and thus open ourselves to the sound’s power to travel far and wide.

This is not about finding quintessentially “Asian” sound, as techno-orientalism might have us do; it is rather about recognizing sound and music as an aggregate of energies that transports you to different spaces and times—to myriad possibilities and futures yet to be charted. Famously, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari say as much when they comment on sound’s reterritorializing force: “sound invades us, impels us, drags us, transpierces us. It takes leave of the earth, as much in order to drop us into a black hole as to open us up to a cosmos. . . . . Since its force of deterritorialization is the strongest, it also effects the most massive of reterritorializations” (348). Taking sound’s reterritorializing nature up in the study of popular music, Josh Kun talks of Audiotopia, “music’s utopian potential, its ability to show us how to move toward something better and transform the world we find ourselves in” (17). Sound and the sound of music, as it were, move us beyond the confines of our present world and toward futurity.

It is, then, precisely the very difficulty of identifying an aesthetic and/or political genealogy between Lee and Ra that propels us toward a new futurism. The seemingly random parallel across time and space between the two artists makes more sense now—it confirms, if not strengthens, the mobilizing force of sound to travel far and wide—cross-culturally, cross-historically across eras, periods, nations, continents. Lee’s and Ra’s very taking up of popular music and its sound for their temporally and spatially distant futurist projects attests to this sonic force and, with it, the possibility of sonic world-building that, through its mobile energy, transports the listener somewhere not here and now.

In The Woman Warrior, whose title I borrow for this essay’s, Maxine Hong Kingston ponders upon her leaving home for America. In this moment of mixed regret and nostalgia, Kingston also learns to see things and the world more clearly: “Be careful what you say. It comes true. It comes true. I had to leave home in order to see the world logically, logic the new way of seeing. I learned to think that mysteries are for explanation. I enjoy the simplicity.” Relocation is never easy, but it also brings, along with shocks and traumas, new perspectives and understandings. Kingston talks of “the new way of seeing,” but can it also be of listening? Is it a pure coincidence that this passage appears in the chapter titled “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe”? If we can let our ears channel the invisible sounds of the world(s) alongside what we see, leaving or relocation may, at once and any moment, become reterritorialization.

In this way, sound calls for comparative approaches that extend from one culture and history to another, and asks for comparative work, both critical and creative, that welcomes sound as a hearing aid with which to listen to the world(s), both known and unknown. If, as sounders and soundees alike, we are lifted and opened up by sound and reterritorialized elsewhere, it only makes sense to look and listen away from where we already are or what we already know, and towards learning what other worlds and other-worlds might teach us. Let the sound open us, let ourselves sound out what we learn, then may we be able to finally begin to find courage for another beginning, another future.

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Featured Image: Lee Jung-Hyun (cover) on 2000’s STAR BOX “asian futurism” music video box set. via flickr

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Hoon Lee is a PhD candidate in English and Associate Instructor at Indiana University Bloomington. His focus is contemporary American poetry, poetry and institution, lyric theory, popular music, and sound studies. He is specifically interested in how poetry disrupts institutionality by creating spatial and temporal alterity, offering us alternative forms of living and future survival. He holds a BA in English Education and an MA in English Literature from Seoul National University, South Korea.

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Sonic Contact Zones: An Interview with DJs MALT and Eat Paint in Koreatown, Los Angeles—Shawn Higgins

Afrofuturism, Public Enemy, and Fear of a Black Planet at 25–andré carrington

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The passing of Quincy Jones has left a silence that feels almost impossible to fill. Every time I play Thriller at home now, it’s no longer just a celebration of his unparalleled artistry. It’s a ritual to sit with his legacy, listen more closely, and honor how his music shaped the sound of memory itself. With each spin of the record, my family and I find ourselves inside his arrangements, held by their richness, precision, and sense of story as though the music is breathing with us, speaking back across time. Jones’s work was never just production; it was communication. A language of sound connected us to melody and beat and the fuller spectrum of emotion, culture, and memory that lives in Black music.

This piece joins a tradition of Black sonic remembrance that Sounding Out! has previously offered in moments of profound cultural loss, from Regina Bradley’s remembrances of listening to Whitney Houston on the radio with her mother to Ben Tausig’s reflection on Prince’s passing to Kristin Moriah’s meditation on Savion Glover’s tap dance tribute to Amiri Baraka. Such pieces remind us that mourning Black artists is not only about personal grief; it’s about listening to the soundscapes they left behind, tracing how their artistry shaped how we collectively move, mourn, and remember. Houston’s voice, much like Jones’s production, was a vessel of Black sonic innovation, shaping how we collectively move, mourn, and remember. Like Prince, Jones’s catalog is a vast archive of Black sonic innovation, where every horn line, bass groove, and percussive hit tells part of a larger story about Black life, joy, survival, and creativity. Jones, like Baraka, understood the radical potential of sound to entertain and agitate, educate, and summon history into the present. Writing about Jones now in the quiet left by his absence is a mourning and a celebration, an offering of flowers in the form of careful attention, deep gratitude, and collective remembrance. This is a way of honoring him as a producer or composer and as a practitioner of sonic rhetoric, a storyteller who spoke through sound and whose language of rhythm and harmony shaped how we feel, remember, and belong.

Embed from Getty ImagesHATTINGEN, GERMANY – OCTOBER 03: Quincy Jones attends the “Steiger Award 2014” at Heinrichshuette on October 3, 2014 in Hattingen, Germany. (Photo by Sascha Steinbach/Getty Images)Two new books published in 2024, Matthew D. Morrison’s Black Sound and Earl H. Brooks’s On Rhetoric and Black Music, arrived at a particularly poignant moment, offering critical frameworks for understanding sonic rhetoric as a vital Black cultural practice. Morrison positions Black music as a vessel for cultural identity and history, emphasizing how it carries narratives that transcend mere auditory pleasure. Brooks extends this argument, demonstrating how Black music functions as a living, breathing rhetorical form, shaping and reshaping cultural identity and narrative with each performance, each recording, and each arrangement. That these books emerged in the same year the world lost Quincy Jones feels deeply significant, a reminder that his life’s work embodies precisely what they describe. Jones mastered using rhythm, melody, and arrangement to shape cultural memory and invite reflection. His genius does not reside solely in his ability to create captivating music but rather in his ability to layer each note with history, emotion, and meaning, sound as storytelling, sound as cultural conversation.

As I reflect on Quincy Jones’s legacy, I realize that his production and compositional skills have profoundly changed my understanding of sound. My admiration for Jones’s mastery of sound and his unique way of using music to communicate drove me to explore sound rhetoric more profoundly, especially how his work became the foundation of new sonic storytelling. His work allows me to imagine myself as a young Black boy, playing with sound and allowing it to communicate in ways that speak to the world. I am grateful for his inspiration, enabling us to envision the possibilities of sound and its power to connect us all. To honor Quincy Jones in rhetoric and sound, we must recognize his pioneering contributions to music as a form of communication. By studying his innovative approaches and the sonic landscapes he crafted, we can deepen our understanding of how sound shapes cultural narratives and personal identities. Engaging with his work encourages us to appreciate music’s profound impact on our lives and the stories it tells, ensuring that his legacy continues to inspire future generations of artists and listeners alike.

Quincy Jones leads his orchestra in Helsinki, Finland in 1960 – Finnish Heritage Agency, Finland – CC BY.For readers who may not be as familiar with his legacy, Quincy Jones is one of the most influential and celebrated figures in music history. His career spans more than seven decades, marked by numerous Grammy Awards, groundbreaking collaborations, and an ability to shape the sound of entire musical eras. Jones’s journey into music began with a chance discovery that would define the course of his life. As a young boy, he broke into an armory and found an upright piano, sparking his lifelong passion for music. This serendipitous moment led him to explore various instruments, from percussion to trombone, sousaphone, and eventually the trumpet, which would become his instrument of choice. These formative experiences gave Jones a diverse and rich understanding of sound that he would later weave into his compositions. His journey through different musical styles, be it jazz, R&B, or orchestral arrangements, allowed him to develop a unique ability to merge genres and cultures, creating works that resonated on a global scale. Jones’s work as a producer, composer, and arranger redefined what it meant to be a producer in the music industry, elevating the role to that of a creative force, an artist in their own right. Most famously known for his work with Michael Jackson, Jones’s sonic contributions to Thriller transformed pop music and how producers and artists interact to create timeless music. His groundbreaking approach to music production changed how the world listens to music, showing how sound can transcend entertainment and become a powerful form of cultural communication.

Quincy Jones in his home studio, August 10, 1980, Los Angeles Times, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International LicenseFor example, celebrating the Thriller album with my children has been an ongoing discovery. I am captivated by their responses to the music. They quickly catch specific sounds, anticipate instrumental flourishes, and react to subtle details, proving the immersive quality of Quincy Jones’s work. His production goes beyond entertainment; it engages listeners, inviting even young ears to feel part of the experience. The power of sonic storytelling is the ability to craft a narrative or evoke emotion purely through sound without relying on visuals or lyrics alone. Quincy Jones’s genius lies in how he layers instruments, sound effects, and vocal textures to create mood and atmosphere, building stories that listeners can feel unfolding around them. Sonic storytelling turns production into a cinematic experience, where a sudden bassline shift, a carefully placed synth, or an eerie silence all contribute to the larger emotional arc of a song. Jones doesn’t just produce songs. He builds immersive worlds through sound, showing how music, at its best, can tell stories as vividly as any film or novel. Songs such as “Thriller,” “Beat It,” and “Billie Jean” epitomize Jones’s mastery of this craft. Thriller is a prime example of his brilliance, each track meticulously balancing complex soundscapes with universal appeal.

Embed from Getty ImagesLOS ANGELES – FEBRUARY 28, 1984: Michael Jackson and his producer Quincy Jones pose with their Grammys at the 26th annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archive/Getty Images)With eerie beats, haunting synths, and Vincent Price’s chilling monologue, “Thriller” has become synonymous with Halloween, transforming it into an auditory icon that reshapes how we experience the holiday. It has a layered, cinematic arrangement, where Jones fuses a creeping synthesizer line with lush orchestral swells and Vincent Price’s velvety horror monologue. Each sonic element functions as a narrative device, placing the listener inside a haunted space where sound, the creak of a door, and the hiss of wind become part of the story. Brooks’s On Rhetoric and Black Music reminds us that sound arrangements can evoke emotion and memory, and Jones’s work exemplifies that power.

Then, consider the storytelling pulsing in the bassline of “Billie Jean,” a throbbing heartbeat grounding the song’s tale of obsession, fame, and denial in something bodily, felt in the chest and gut before the mind catches up. With every layered texture, from the crisp snap of the drum machine to the soaring, wordless vocal harmonies, Jones does not simply produce music; he scripts sonic stories where Black creativity and cultural history converge in every beat.

Jones’s approach to production embodies this idea, transforming how we listen and engage with music. Take “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” where layered percussion, call and response vocals, and a pulsing bassline create a sonic landscape that feels alive, constantly shifting and evolving. The song’s now iconic “Mama say mama sa mama coo sa” chant reaches back to the Cameroonian makossa tradition, embedding a diasporic history within a global pop hit (listen to the opening seconds of Manu Dijbango’s 1972 “Soul Makossa” to hear the resonance).

Then, in “Human Nature,” Jones works in the opposite direction, crafting an atmospheric, dreamlike arrangement where gentle synth pads and delicate electric guitar melodies wrap around Michael Jackson’s voice like mist, evoking a sense of vulnerability and wonder. These tracks, like so many in Jones’s catalog, do not merely present melodies and rhythms. They create spaces where memory, emotion, and history converge.

Jones’s ability to craft soundscapes has long extended beyond Thriller, both backward and forward in time. His track “Soul Bossa Nova” (1962), famously featured in the Austin Powers films, evokes nostalgia and joy, transporting listeners to memories of sunny beach days and family vacations. But there’s a deeper story behind this piece that’s often overlooked that spoke volumes in its original context. Originally released on Jones’s album Big Band Bossa Nova, the track arrived when the genre and the term “bossa nova” were being culturally sanitized and marketed to white audiences, particularly in the U.S. As scholars have noted, Black Brazilian musicians whose innovative work laid the foundation for bossa nova, were often erased from the story as the genre’s global fame became linked to lighter-skinned artists palatable to international audiences.

Jones’s decision to title the track “Soul Bossa Nova” at the height of the Civil Rights Movement and during the global rise of Bossa Nova was not merely clever branding. It bridged the emerging coolness of Bossa Nova with the distinct sensibilities and innovations of African American music, at a time when both the U.S. and Brazil were grappling with deep racial segregation and the commodification of Black art. It was also a subtle reclamation, insisting on Black presence in a genre already experiencing the erasure of Black Brazilian pioneers such as Johnny Alf. In “Soul Bossa Nova,” Jones fused the light bounce of Brazilian rhythms with a brassy, big-band jazz sensibility, centering Black sonic playfulness and cultural hybridity at a time when both were under threat from the forces of segregation and global anti-Blackness. The track’s instantly recognizable piccolo flute riff, playful, mischievous, and a little sly, becomes, in this light, not only catchy but also defiant, a declaration that Black sound is limitless, able to traverse continents and contexts while carrying the weight of memory, history, and joy.

And the story did not end there. Decades later, Ludacris and various hip-hop artists paid homage to Jones’s legacy in Jones’s last album, the 2010 project Q: Soul Bossa Nostra. This playful yet reverent tribute sampled and reimagined Jones’s catalog for a new generation. Soul Bossa Nostra is a clever play on “Cosa Nostra,” merging the sonic underworld of Jones’s orchestrations with the familial pride and intergenerational respect that defines hip hop’s tribute culture.

This interweaving of “Soul Bossa Nova”‘s history, from its quiet defiance in 1962 to its unexpected resurgence through Austin Powers to its embrace by Ludacris, exemplifies the lasting power of Jones’s compositions to connect across eras and genres, all while telling a much larger story about race, ownership, and the endurance of Black sonic innovation.

In Thriller and “Soul Bossa Nova,” Jones’s compositions offer listeners an immersive experience that connects personal and cultural narratives, proving that his work is more than entertainment. It is a powerful form of artistic communication that resonates across generations. I have experienced this firsthand, listening to these songs with my children, not just once or twice, but as an ongoing, evolving family ritual. Their responses, the way they anticipate certain flourishes, react to subtle shifts, or sing along with total abandon, remind me that Jones’s work does not sit still in time. It moves through us, binding my children’s joy to my own memories of discovery, just as it ties us all to the larger, unfolding story of Black sonic creativity. Through Jones’s soundscapes, we are not only hearing songs. We are participating in cultural memory, shaping it anew with every listen.

Being known as an unparalleled intergenerational sonic storyteller is already a feat, but Quincy Jones’s influence is embedded in the DNA of contemporary music production in other important ways. From the way producers are now seen as creative equals to artists to the expectation that producers bring their signature sound to every project they touch, every time a contemporary music producer is celebrated as a vital voice in shaping a record, they stand on the foundation Quincy Jones laid. Long before the term “producer” carried the weight and cultural significance it does today, Jones redefined what it meant to hold that title.

Embed from Getty ImagesAmerican composer and record producer Quincy Jones at work in a recording studio, 1963. (Photo by Gai Terrell/Redferns/Getty Images)In today’s music landscape, the constructive collaboration between an artist and producer can be a defining force, shaping careers and setting entire musical eras into motion. This reality exists in large part because of Jones, who was not just arranging instruments or overseeing technical sessions but building entire sonic worlds, shaping the emotional architecture of songs, and helping artists translate their most personal visions into soundscapes that could speak to the world. His work with Michael Jackson epitomizes the collaborative alchemy possible when a producer steps into the role of creative partner, cultural interpreter, and sonic architect all at once. With Thriller Jones did not merely produce an album, he co-authored a cultural phenomenon. Jones and Jackson’s collaboration not only redefined pop music but also set a lasting standard for artist-producer dynamics, showcasing the brilliance that can arise when two creative minds align. Jones’s legacy as a producer is one of vision, trust, and translation, helping artists hear possibilities in their work they could not fully imagine and giving the listening public music that defined moments and movements.

Hip Hop, in particular, has carved out a prominent role for music producers in the style of Quincy Jones, something that Nas pays homage to in his track “Michael and Quincy” from King’s Disease III (2022). In doing so, Nas directly parallels the collaborative genius between Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson with his recent creative collaboration with producer Hit-Boy, now running 6 albums strong.

This is not just a passing reference. It is part of Nas’s more prominent, ongoing project of honoring hip hop creators and the artistic lineages that shaped his career. Across the King’s Disease trilogy and in his The Bridge podcast (which he co-hosts with Miss Info), Nas has taken deliberate care to uplift the cultural architects of hip hop, weaving their stories into his narrative and preserving their legacies for future generations. On “Michael and Quincy,” Nas celebrates the power of collaboration, positioning the artist-producer relationship as a crucible for innovation and cultural impact. The track’s lyrics paint vivid images of creative combustion, with Nas rapping, “Smoke steaming off the microphone,” evoking the almost supernatural energy that fueled Michael and Quincy’s sessions. This imagery extends to Nas and Hit-Boy, capturing the intensity and urgency they bring to their creative process.

Sonically, “Michael and Quincy” also mirrors this spirit of collaborative innovation. Hit-Boy’s production constantly shifts, blending classic boom-bap drums with more atmospheric textures, creating a soundscape that feels both reverent and forward-thinking. The beat morphs beneath Nas’s verses, never settling into predictability, much like how Quincy Jones infused “Thriller” with unexpected sonic twists. Nas and Hit-Boy’s sonic interplay echoes the Jackson-Jones dynamic, where the producer’s vision expands and amplifies the artist’s voice. In its lyrics and production, “Michael and Quincy” serves as a sonic tribute, not just to a legendary duo, but to the transformative power of artist-producer partnerships, a lineage Quincy Jones helped define and one Nas is determined to carry forward. The era-defining success of Thriller still ripples through music today.

Nas and Quincy Jones, June 2017. Image from Nas’s Facebook post: “When u hang out with @bhorowitz0 and Quincy Jones all day and do a Show at Cali Roots and leave the stage with Big Quincy’s approval its so Real. Quincy paved the way and can hang out longer than I can. “Nas’s tribute serves as a powerful reminder of these partnerships’ enduring impact, bridging genres and generations. The image of “smoke steaming off of the microphone” is one I carry with me, embodying the intense, creative spirit that Michael and Quincy brought to their collaborations, a legacy now celebrated and extended through Nas’s words and music. Nas draws from their example to remind us that great partnerships, whether in music or other creative endeavors, are often the spark that ignites monumental cultural shifts. Their combined energy was undeniable as they pushed each other to new artistic heights. The success of their work was not only about the music; it was also about the more profound connection to culture, identity, and collective memory. Like the tracks he produced, his music lives on, inspiring us to reflect on how we listen to and engage with the world around us. By revisiting the breadth and depth of his work and the many sonic creations it has inspired, we continue to discover new layers of meaning and artistry, ensuring that Jones’s influence will be felt for generations to come.

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Featured Image: SO! Screencap from Nas’s performance at Rolling Loud, November 11, 2024
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Jaquial Durham is a multi-hyphenate social justice champion. The South Carolina native has spent over a decade actively engaged in various outreach initiatives to uplift and empower marginalized communities. He is also a passionate cultural enthusiast dedicated to exploring the rich tapestry of African American history, which drives him to continue making a meaningful impact in the lives of those around him. His advocacy for social-political issues that encompass race, prison culture and gender have been at the forefront of his work.

As the CEO of Public Culture Entertainment Group, an entity focused on raising public awareness about the myriad of components that influence culture, Durham spearheads the company’s TV/film projects and cultivates unique apparel capsules that showcase prominent African American figures, organizations and landmarks often absent from historical dialogue. The ambitious, young go-getter prolifically uses creative activism to amplify the voices, stories and experiences of those often overlooked. His
visionary brilliance can be seen in the groundbreaking documentary Southern Prison Culture, a cinematic film highlighting the challenges individuals face within the system and fiercely advocating for much-needed reforms. As a result of the film’s success, Durham has received prestigious awards like the Milan Gold Award, the Austin Lift-Off Film Festival Award and the London International Film Festival Award.

Durham has been a driving force behind various social justice reforms, calling for equitable and inclusive policies and practices. His unwavering dedication to helping others earned him widespread recognition that included opportunities to lecture at colleges such as American University, Benedict College, Claflin University, Clemson University and Texas State University. Durham was honored by Grammy-Award Winning rapper Killer Mike, who has respect and credibility within the culture. His dedication to the development of higher education institutions in America has led him to refine his intellectual and creative genius relentlessly. While Durham received a bachelor’s in African and African American Studies with a minor in Women and Gender Studies from Winston-Salem State University, he is pursuing a Ph.D.from Clemson University in Rhetorics, Communication and Information Design.

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On Donuts, Sandwiches and Beattapes: Listening for J Dilla Six Years On–DJ Primus Luta

Unlearning Black Sound in Black Artistry: Examining the Quiet in Solange’s A Seat At the Table–Kimberly Williams

Deep Listening as Philogynoir: Playlists, Black Girl Idiom, and Love–Shakira Holt

“Heavy Airplay, All Day with No Chorus”: Classroom Sonic Consciousness in the Playlist Project–Todd Craig

Mingus Ah Um (1959) and An Ethics of Care in Jazz–Brittany Proctor

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What. A. Year. Thank you to all of the amazing thinkers who generously shared their writing with us during rough waters worldwide. During those times when our work feels like we’re screaming underwater, it’s especially important that we’re still out here making waves. A special shout out in gratitude to our readers, who are listening even harder during our 15th year, and rocking the boat along with us into 2025. –JS, Ed-in-Chief

Here, beginning with number 10, are our Top 10 posts released in 2024 (as of 12/19/24)!

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(10). The Braids, The Bars, and the Blackness: Ruminations on Hip Hop’s World War III – Drake versus Kendrick (Part Two)

A Conversation by Todd Craig and LeBrandon Smith

What is it? The braids?–Kendrick Lamar, “Euphoria”

After a much-anticipated wait, Kendrick dropped “Euphoria.” It not only stopped Hip Hop culture in its tracks, but it allowed all spectators to realize this was gearing up to be an epic battle. The song starts with the backwards Richard Pryor sample from the iconic film The Wiz. For those unfamiliar, The Wiz is a film adaptation of The Wizard of Oz featuring an all-Black star-studded cast, including Diana Ross and Michael Jackson. Richard Pryor played the role of the Wizard. When the characters realize the Wizard is a fraud, he says, “Everything they say about me is true”; this is the sample Kendrick uses, grounding himself in 1970s Black culture and situating where he plans to go in his writing.

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(9). The Braids, The Bars, and the Blackness: Ruminations on Hip Hop’s World War III – Drake versus Kendrick (Part One)

A Conversation by Todd Craig and LeBrandon Smith

“By now, it’s safe to say very few people have not caught wind of the biggest Hip-Hop battle of the 21st century: the clash between Kendrick Lamar and Drake. Whether you’ve seen the videos, the memes or even smacked a bunch of owls around playing the video game, this battle grew beyond Hip Hop, with various facets of global popular culture tapped in, counting down minutes for responses and getting whiplash with the speed of song drops. There are multiple ways to approach this event. We’ve seen inciteful arguments about how these two young Black males at the pinnacle of success are tearing one another down. We also acknowledge Hip Hop’s long legacy of battling; the culture has always been a ‘competitive sport’ that includes ‘lyrical sparring.'”

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(8).Technologies of Communal Listening: Resonance at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

By Harry Burson

“In both sound studies and the sonic arts, the concept of ‘resonance‘ has increasingly played a central role in attuning listeners to the politics of sound. The term itself is borrowed from acoustics, where resonance simply refers to the transfer of energy between two neighboring objects. For example, plucking a note on one guitar string will cause the other strings to vibrate at a similar frequency. When someone or something makes a sound, everything in the immediate environs—objects, people, the room itself—will respond with sympathetic vibrations. Simply put, in acoustics, resonance describes a sonic connection between sounding objects and their environment. In the arts, the concept of resonance emphasizes the situated existence of sound as a transformative encounter between bodies in a particular time and place. Resonance has become a key term to think through how sound creates a listening community, a transitory assemblage whose reverberations may be felt beyond a single moment of encounter.

For its recent performance series, simply called Resonance, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago drew on this generative concept by bringing together four artists who explore sound as an “introspective force for greater understanding, compassion, and change.” Curated by Tara Aisha Willis and Laura Paige Kyber, the series builds on theories of resonance as an affective relationship between sounding bodies developed by writers and artists like Sonia Louis Davis, Karen Christopher, and Birgit Abels. . .”

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(7). Sonic Homes: The Sonic/Racial Intimacy of Black and Brown Banda Music in Southern California

by Sara Veronica Hinojos and Alex Mireles

“Sarah La Morena (Sarah the Black woman), or Sarah Palafox, was adopted and raised by a Mexican family in Mexico. At the age of five, she moved to Riverside, California, a predominantly Mexican city an hour east of Compton. Palafox started singing as a way to express the racism she faced as a child in Southern California, feeling caught between her Black appearance and her Mexican sound. She found her voice in church, a nurturing environment where she could be herself, surrounded by her family’s love. She gained attention with a viral video of her rendition of Jenni Rivera’s “Que Me Vas a Dar.” Palafox delivers each note with profound emotion and precision, leaving even the accompanying mariachi violinist in awe. . .”

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(6). Echoes of the Latent Present: Listening to Lags, Delays, and Other Temporal Disjunctions

—by Matthew Tomkinson

“Sometime last year, during a recent deep clean of the apartment, I pulled out a wooden chest that my father built for me when I was ten, a pine-scented time capsule of that period of my life, full of assorted construction-paper projects and faded movie tickets. Buried underneath all this loose paper, set apart by a shiny laminated cover, is the first “novel” I ever wrote, our final project in fourth grade, which was really just a few typed pages folded and stapled together, held between a cardstock cover. In this book, I write about a mall janitor with magic powers, who uses his mop handle to transform villains into piles of fabric, and who time travels throughout history by way of a magic corvette (clearly, I had just seen a certain Robert Zemeckis film).

Having rediscovered this story, I am struck by the realization that my writerly voice has hardly changed. I am still drawn to the same hokey surrealism, the same comic book sensibilities, the same spirit of hand-stapled publishing projects. This is to say: I could not help but to identify in this proto-novel traces of my work to come, early impulses that echo throughout my present practice. As Lisa Robertson puts it in an interview: “Defunct forms resurface after years of latency. New work speaks with old work, as well as with the future.”.”

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(5). Listening Together/Apart: Intimacy and Affective World-Building in Pandemic Digital Archival Sound Projects

by Emily Collins

“When the COVID-19 global pandemic began, news reports and studies throughout the world began citing a lot of sound-based statistics: drastic reductions in noise pollution in urban centres, AI recordings of cellphone coughs, shifting soundscapes at home with new routines and work settings, and sonic sensitivities cultivated in quarantine and isolation. At the same time, in conjunction with these new research studies and areas of interest, there was an outpouring of calls for sound recordings and contributions to digital archival sound projects, such as Sounds of Pandemia, the Pandemic Diaries project, Sound of the Earth: The Pandemic Chapter, Sounds like a Pandemic? (SLAP?), and Stories from a Pandemic, just to name a few. A perceptive post by Sarah Mayberry Scott (2021)outlines the stakes for these types of initiatives grounded in a particular yet ever-changing historical moment, and the stakes of listening (in its attentiveness) and sound (in its persuasive power) more broadly, though undoubtably mediated and defined by power relations in their various social and the cultural contexts. . .”

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—(4). Wingsong: Restricting Sound Access to Spotted Owl Recordings

by Julianne Graper****

“I am not a board games person, yet I always seem to find myself surrounded by them. Such was the case one August evening in 2023, during a round of the bird-watching-inspired game, Wingspan. Released in 2019 by Stonemaier Games, designer Elizabeth Hargrave’s creation is credited with a dramatic shift in the board game industry. The game received an unparalleled number of awards, including the prestigious 2019 Kennerspiel des Jahres (Connoisseur Game of the Year), and an unheard of seven categories of the Golden Geek Awards, including Best Board Game of the Year and Best Family Board Game of the Year. In addition to causing shifts in typical board game topic, artistry, and demographic, Wingspan has led many board game fans to engage with the natural world in new ways, even inspiring many to become avid birders.

Following the game’s rise to popularity, developer Marcus Nerger released an app, Wingsong which allows players to scan each of the beautifully illustrated cards and play a recording of the associated bird’s song. On the evening in question, the unexpected occurred when I scanned the Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis) card and received a message that read:

Playback of this birds[sic] song is restricted. . .”

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—(3). Rhetoric After Sound: Stories of Encountering “The Hum” Phenomenon

by Trent Wintermeier

“‘So I have heard The Hum… The rest of what I’m about to tell you is beyond reasoning, and understanding.” Here, in a Reddit post, Michael A. Sweeney prefaces their story of their first encounter with “the hum,” an unexplained phenomenon heard by only a small percentage of listeners around the world. The hum is an ominous sonic event that impacts communities from Australia to India, Scotland to the United States. And as Geoff Leventhall writes in “Low Frequency Noise: What We Know, What We Do Not Know, and What We Would Like to Know,” the hum causes “considerable problems” for people across the globe—such as nausea, headaches, fatigue, and muscle pain—as it continues to be an unsolved “acoustic mystery” (94). . .”

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(2). Listening to MAGA Politics within US/Mexico’s Lucha Libre

by Esther Díaz Martín and Rebeca Rivas

“The announcer’s piercing “lucharaaaaaán” cries from the middle of the ring proclaims the constitutional two-out-of-three-falls rule of lucha libre. But before the famous cry rings out to set the stage for the spectacularized acrobatic combat between costumed warriors, their theatrical entrances set the all-important emotional stakes of the battle. The entrances are loud, campy, interactive exchanges between luchadores and spectators. An entrance song itself cues the luchador’s persona: a cumbia could signal a técnico (a good guy); a heavy metal song more than likely indicates a rudo (a bad guy) typically donning black, death-themed getups. Luchadores saunter into the arena, stopping to pose, high five their fans, and verbally heckle their opponents. The storylines of good versus evil, betrayal and revenge, or humility versus arrogance are some of the more standard plots that motivate spectators to adamantly cheer for the favorite and jeer for the foe.

The sonic exchanges between luchadores’ and spectators before, during, and after the fight positions lucha libre as much more than a sport. And while the term spectators, suggests the privileged act of watching or viewing; here, we expand spectators within lucha libre arena to mean “a call to witness” (á la Chela Sandoval). Put simply, lucha libre is a cultural phenomenon where contemporary cultural, social, and political anxieties are often tapped as fodder for theatrical plots. In the U.S./Mexico’s sister cities of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, the political realities of border enforcement, immigration politics, and racial tensions are loudly heard and placed on display. . .”

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(1). to follow an invisible creek: in search of a decolonial soundwalk praxis

by ameia camielle smith****

“in the context of the rapid rise of big tech in san francisco, california, the perspective of land as perpetually exploitable is ever-present. tech-sponsored development projects are always framed by the city as being motivated by care and consideration for residents, and sometimes as being motivated by environmentalism. in reality, the displacement and destruction that results from projects like these falls primarily on poor people of color, and their homes, gardens, businesses, community spaces, and schools. similarly, large-scale development projects more often than not have devastating impacts on the land – whether it’s the land that’s being built over or the sacrifice zone elsewhere. perhaps the electric cars of san francisco are thought to represent clean energy and a healthy modern city, but the manufacturing of these cars is predicated upon extensive mining and exploitative and extractive labor outside far outside the city’s borders. and these cars drive over flattened creeks and sand dunes turned to asphalt—through gentrified neighborhoods on stolen land of the Ramaytush Ohlone, people who are still alive and fighting for sovereignty on their traditional territory, and who remain stewards of the land.

these disparities are present in the sounds of the bay area. sound, quite literally, does not exist in a vacuum. the presence of sound thus implies the presence of something outside of that sound; in every sound we hear, there is also information about the context that surrounds it. and the sounds that we do hear say something about the value of the sounds that we don’t. however, i want to argue for a soundwalking praxis that does not settle for the sounds that most easily reach the ear, as in the freeway noise or the planes passing above or the white people on the street, but that reaches beyond to listen for the negative sonic space that is always present and creating itself in the spaces between what we perceive as audible. in my understanding, this is a practice of giving life to that which capitalism/white supremacy/colonialism renders dead, a practice of centering the life that is otherwise stepped on, forgotten, discarded, silenced. listening for the ecologies of the dispossessed. for proof of life, insisting. this is a decolonial soundwalk praxis. . .”

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Featured Image “underwater scream” by Flickr User Smellslikeupdog CC BY-ND 2.0**

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This series listens to the political, gendered, queer(ed), racial engagements and class entanglements involved in proclaiming out loud: La-TIN-x. ChI-ca-NA. La-TI-ne. ChI-ca-n-@. Xi-can-x. Funded by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of the Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative, the Latinx Sound Cultures Studies Working Group critically considers the role of sound and listening in our formation as political subjects. Through both a comparative and cross-regional lens, we invite Latinx Sound Scholars to join us as we dialogue about our place within the larger fields of Chicanx/Latinx Studies and Sound Studies. We are delighted to publish our initial musings with Sounding Out!, a forum that has long prioritized sound from a queered, racial, working-class and “always-from-below” epistemological standpoint. —Ed. Dolores Inés Casillas

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Busco la colaboración universal donde todos los Benitos puedan llegar a ser Bad Bunny. –FlowGPT, TikTok

In November of 2023, the reggaetón song “DEMO #5: NostalgIA” went viral on various digital platforms, particularly TikTok. The track, posted by user FlowGPT, makes use of artificial intelligence (Inteligencia Artificial) to imitate the voices of Justin Bieber, Bad Bunny, and Daddy Yankee. The song begins with a melody reminiscent of Justin Bieber’s 2015 pop hit “Sorry.” Soon, reggaetón’s characteristic boom-ch-boom-chick drumbeat drops, and the voices of the three artists come together to form a carefully crafted, unprecedented crossover.

Bad Bunny’s catchy verse “sal que te paso a buscar” quickly inundated TikTok feeds as users began to post videos of themselves dancing or lip-syncing to the song. The song was not only very good but it also successfully replicated these artists– their voices, their style, their vibe. Soon, the song exited the bounds of the digital and began to be played in clubs across Latin America, marking a thought-provoking novelty in the usual repertoire of reggaetón hits. In line with the current anxieties around generative AI, the song quickly generated public controversy. Only a few weeks after its release, ‘nostalgIA’ was taken down from most digital platforms.

Screencaps of two TikTok videos posted by DJs in Argentina and Peru. On the left, it reads “This AI will heat up any club.” On the right, “Sorry, Benito.”The mind behind FlowGPT is Chilean producer Maury Senpai, who in a series of TikTok responses explained his mission of creative democratization in a genre that has been historically exclusive of certain creators. In one video, FlowGPT encourages listeners to contemplate the potential of this “algorithm” to allow songs by lesser-known artists and producers to reach the ears of many listeners, by replicating the voices of well-known singers. Maury Senpai’s production process involved lyric writing, extensive study of the singers’ vocals, and the Kits.ai tool.

Therefore, contrary to FlowGPT’s robotic brand, ‘nostalgIA’ was the product of careful collaboration between human and machine– or, what Ross Cole calls “cyborg creativity.” This hybridization enmeshes the artist and the listener, allowing diverse creators their creative desires. Cyborg creativity, of course, is not an inherent result of GenAI’s advent. Instead, I argue that reggaetón has long been embedded in a tradition of musical imitation and a deep reliance on technological tools, which in turn challenges popular concerns about machine-human artistic collaboration.

Many creators worry that GenAI will co-opt a practice that for a long time has been regarded as strictly human. GenAI’s reliance on pre-existing data threatens to hide the labor of artists who contributed to the model’s output. We may also add the inherent biases present in training data. Pasquinelli and Joler propose that the question “Can AI be creative?” be reformulated as “Is machine learning able to create works that are not imitations of the past?” Machine learning models detect patterns and styles in training data and then generate “random improvisation” within this data. Therefore, GenAI tools are not autonomous creative actors but often operate with generous human intervention that trains, monitors, and disseminates the products of these models.

The inability to define GenAI tools as inherently creative on their own does not mean they can’t be valuable for artists seeking to experiment in their work. Hearkening back to Donna Haraway’s concept of the cyborg, Ross Cole argues that

Such [AI] music is in fact a species of hybrid creativity predicated on the enmeshing of people and computers (…) We might, then, begin to see AI not as a threat to subjective expression, but another facet of music’s inherent sociality.

Many authors agree that unoriginal content—works that are essentially reshufflings of existing material—cannot be considered legitimate art. However, an examination of the history of the reggaetón genre invites us to question this idea. In “From Música Negra to Reggaetón Latino,” Wayne Marshall explains how the genre emerged from simultaneous and mutually-reinforcing processes in Panamá, Puerto Rico, and New York, where artists brought together elements of dancehall, reggae, and American hip hop. Towards the turn of the millennium, the genre’s incorporation of diverse musical elements and the availability of digital tools for production favored its commercialization across Latin America and the United States.

The imitation of previous artists has been embedded in the fabric of reggaetón from a very early stage. Some of the earliest examples of reggaetón were in fact Spanish lyrics placed over Jamaican dancehall riddims— instrumental tracks with characteristic melodies. When Spanish-speaking artists began to draw from dancehall, they used these same riddims in their songs, and continue to do so today. A notable example of this pattern is the Bam Bam riddim, which is famously used in the song “Murder She Wrote” by Chaka Demus & Pliers (1992).

This riddim made its way into several reggaetón hits, such as “El Taxi” by Osmani García, Pitbull, and Sensato (2015).

We may also observe reggaetón’s tradition of imitation in frequent references to “old school” artists by the “new school,” through beat sampling, remixes, and features. We see this in Karol G’s recent hit “GATÚBELA,” where she collaborates with Maldy, former member of the iconic Plan B duo.

Reggaetón’s deeply rooted tradition of “tribute-paying” also ties into its differentiation from other genres. As the genre grew in commercial value, perhaps to avoid copyright issues, producers cut down on their direct references to dancehall and instead favored synthesized backings. Marshall quotes DJ El Niño in saying that around the mid-90s, people began to use the term reggaetón to refer to “original beats” that did not solely rely on riddims but also employed synthesizer and sequencer software. In particular, the program Fruity Loops, initially launched in 1997, with “preset” sounds and effects provided producers with a wider set of possibilities for sonic innovation in the genre.

The influence of technology on music does not stop at its production but also seeps into its socialization. Today, listeners increasingly engage with music through AI-generated content. Ironically, following the release of Bad Bunny’s latest album, listeners expressed their discontent through AI-generated memes of his voice. One of the most viral ones consisted of Bad Bunny’s voice singing “en el McDonald’s no venden donas.”

The clip, originally sung by user Don Pollo, was modified using AI to sound like Bad Bunny, and then combined with reggaetón beats and the Bam Bam riddim. Many users referred to this sound as a representation of the light-heartedness they saw lacking in the artist’s new album. While Un Verano Sin Ti (2022) stood out as an upbeat summer album that addressed social issues such as U.S. imperialism and machismo, Nadie Sabe lo que va a Pasar Mañana (2023) consisted mostly of tiraderas or disses against other artists and left some listeners disappointed. In a 2018 post for SO!, Michael S. O’Brien speaks of this sonic meme phenomenon, where a sound and its repetition come to encapsulate collective discontent.

Another notorious case of AI-generated covers targets recent phenomenon Young Miko. As one of the first openly queer artists to break into the urban Latin mainstream, Young Miko filled a long-standing gap in the genre—the need for lyrics sung by a woman to another woman. Her distinctive voice has also been used in viral AI covers of songs such as “La Jeepeta,” and “LALA,” originally sung by male artists. To map Young Miko’s voice over reggaetón songs that advance hypermasculinity– through either a love for Jeeps or not-so-subtle oral sex– represents a creative reclamation of desire where the agent is no longer a man, but a woman. Jay Jolles writes of TikTok’s modifications to music production, namely the prioritization of viral success. The case of AI-generated reggaetón covers demonstrates how catchy reinterpretations of an artist’s work can offer listeners a chance to influence the music they enjoy, allowing them to shape it to their own tastes.

Examining the history of musical imitation and digital innovation in reggaetón expands the bounds of artistry as defined by GenAI theorists. In the conventions of the TikTok platform, listeners have found a way to participate in the artistry of imitation that has long defined the genre. The case of FlowGPT, along with the overwhelmingly positive reception of “nostalgIA,” point towards a future where the boundaries between the listener and the artist are blurred, and where technology and digital spaces are the platforms that allow for an enhanced cyborg creativity to take place.

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Featured Image: Screenshot from ““en el McDonald’s no venden donas.” Taken by SO!

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Laurisa Sastoque is a Colombian scholar of digital humanities, history, and storytelling. She works as a Digital Preservation Training Officer at the University of Southampton, where she collaborates with the Digital Humanities Team to promote best practices in digital preservation across Galleries/Gardens, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (GLAM), and other sectors. She completed an MPhil in Digital Humanities from the University of Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge scholar. She holds a B.A. in History, Creative Writing, and Data Science (Minor) from Northwestern University.

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A Conversation by Todd Craig and LeBrandon Smith

Happy Hip Hop History Month! Last week writer, educator and DJ Todd Craig and cultural curator and social impact leader LeBrandon Smith kicked off their three part series parsing out this past spring’s beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake, Hip Hop history in the making. We left off in the breath-holding moment just after Kendrick released “Euphoria” and “6:16 in LA” after eleven days of anticipation. Since the dust has settled a bit between K-Dot and OVO, it’s the perfect time for these intergenerational Hip Hop heads to tap in and sort out what this epic beef really meant for the artists, the sound, and most importantly, the culture. School is IN, yall! Click this link to read Part I; click this link to read Part II. And yes, we know a new Kendrick album came out! #whew #tvoff #whatatimetobealive

Approximately 14 hours after Kendrick released “6:16 in LA,” Drake responded with “Family Matters” on May 3, 2024. We’re connecting it to the ending snippet of “Push Ups,” which insinuates it may have been recorded even before the prior two Kendrick songs (we also get this song as a video, so the visuals add another element).

The three-part diss track aims at multiple people (Rick Ross, A$AP Rocky, the Weeknd [aka Abel Tesfaye], Metro Boomin and others), but its most disrespectful lines are clearly aimed at Kendrick. This is really and truly the moment when Drake moves to bring Kendrick’s family into his bars. He also aims at Kendrick’s blackness in a confusing line, saying “always rappin’ like you ‘bout to get the slaves freed/ You just actin’ like an activist, it’s make-believe.” This was a line we both agreed was not only a problematic misstep, but would taint some of the other formative disses in the song. In a moment where Drake’s own blackness and identity were in question, calling his own supporters – Black people – “slaves,” who need to get “freed” does more work to prove Kendrick’s point than to further Drake’s lyrical prowess on the scorecard. Todd also identified the second verse of “Family Matters” (from 2:43-5:15) as the most formidable – the beat switch, cadence and flow, that pocket Drake taps into lyrically is one of his best rapping moments of the battle. Drake’s flow in this part is impeccable, as we see him rhyming in rapid fire, sending shots against multiple foes.

LeBrandon tapped into the third verse (5:16 to 7:36), when out the gate, Drake says “Kendrick just opened his mouth, somebody hand him a Grammy right now.” Drake is at his best when he’s being facetious and petty and his hate for the Grammys is well documented. Drake disrespecting revered entities during this battle was enjoyable and garnered attention; anytime you can call an opponent’s accolades into question – whether it’s a Grammy or a Pulitzer – it’s helpful in a rap battle. LeBrandon could also imagine Kendrick chuckling at a few of the height one-liners like “These bars go over Kenny’s head no matter what I say,” as K.Dot manically crafted his response.

LeBrandon also pointed out that ownership of jewelry in Hip Hop is a staple, so he appreciated the flex of “You wanna take up for Pharrell?/ Then come get his legacy outta my house.” Since when is it acceptable for another rapper to own jewelry you purchased and proudly wore? We understand Drake owning Pharrell’s jewelry isn’t to pay homage, but to spite Pharrell and The Clipse. The quote is a great retort by Drake, and a keen reminder of how villainous and strategic he can be. This bar felt like the Michael Jordan shrug in audio form. Regardless of how Drake acquired the jewelry, he has it and that matters, and creating a visual in New Ho King with these pieces is devious work.

LeBrandon literally let out an audible sigh when we heard Drake say, “Your daddy got robbed by Top…” Rap is entertainment so there’s an expectation that lies may surface. Great lyrical battles are like playing the dozens: to garner the most rousing response from the audience, folks will definitely exaggerate. But we agreed that this line ain’t that. This is just straight up faulty comprehension, as the story of Kendrick’s dad and Top Dog’s meeting (in the song, “DUCKWORTH” ) was not a robbery narrative. Part of war is knowing your opponent’s weaknesses and “DUCKWORTH” as a song is bulletproof.

After Drake’s brash talking on both the verses and outro of “Taylor Made Freestyle” warning Kendrick he should be prepared, this uninformed lyrical analysis, or misstep at rewriting the factual narrative is disappointing, specifically because Drake is so talented; misses like this in the midst of a legendary battle makes him look foolish and lazy. Unfortunately, this isn’t the only time Drake does this during the battle, but we found this occurrence quite jarring.

We both agreed the craziest turn of events for the battle was when MINUTES after “Family Matters” dropped, Kendrick responded with “Meet the Grahams”: the darkest and most sinister song of the battle. The way in which Kendrick composed an open letter to members of Drake’s family after Drake mentioned Kendrick’s fiancé by name along with other accusations, put Kendrick in a space he describes, saying “this supposed to be a good exhibition within the game/ But you fucked up the moment you called out my family’s name/ Why you had to stoop so low to discredit some decent people?/ Guess integrity is lost when the metaphors doesn’t reach you.” This song exemplifies why Kendrick has been given the “BoogeyMan” moniker. These dark and disturbing lyrics are what nightmares are made of; and what better way to tap into such a dark landscape than with an eerie beat produced by the Alchemist.

We agreed it was the moment in the battle where Kendrick’s cerebral nature fully set in: new vocals, new flows and a new attack on Drake’s morals and character. At this point in the battle, Todd hoped Drake stopped rhyming because of just how dark this sonic happening was. “Meet the Grahams” is a cerebral and intense listening experience that took the battle to a whole other level. In addition, K.Dot showed us just how much he liked “Back to Back,” as he would double down and double-drop again, this time with the anthem “Not Like Us.” We both agreed that “Meet the Grahams” was the dark, uncomfortable turn, and “Not Like Us” felt like the sonic nails in the coffin for the battle. Besides the absolute instrumental bop DJ Mustard provides for Kendrick, the lyrics coupled with the anthem-feeling hook felt like Kendrick had outsmarted Drake, and simply beat him to the “bop-punch” that we’ve known Drake to produce.

When we listened to the bars, “I’m finna pass on this body, I’m John Stockton/ Beat your ass and hide the Bible if God watchin’/ Sometimes you gotta pop out and show niggas,” we knew it was going to be downhill for Drake. As Kendrick moved through the verses and tapped into the last verse with the lesson on Drake’s sonic connections to Atlanta, and calling him a “colonizer,” an important sentiment popped up for Todd. What’s really deceptive about these lines is that Kendrick is leaning into generational and cultural Blackness. He does it earlier in the references that LeBrandon picked up on with hair and “the braids.” But these sayings K.Dot continuously extols not only emanate from Southern culture, but are also older sentiments from elders in the Black community. So when Kendrick inserts these lines, they’re more harsh than even some of the direct disses, because they lean into Black American culture in ways that Drake would never understand as either a Canadian or a kid visiting his dad in the states (evidenced by “always rappin’ like you ‘bout to get the slaves freed”). However, sonically, it feels “super Black” – putting Black listeners right at home, like they’re hearing their grandma chastise someone. So by the time Kendrick gets to the call and response moment of “Lemme hear you say ‘O-V-Hoe’” (again, another Black trope that transcends Hip Hop), as listeners, we already feel like we’re in the livest cook-out and block party of the summer!

As we tuned into “The Heart Part 6” on May 5, 2024, we both agreed Drake sounded defeated, he was clearly waving the white flag, and he was continuing down the road of missteps that were no longer forgivable. When he lays the bars, “My Montreal connects stand up, not fall down/the ones that you’re gettin’ your stories from, they all clowns,” only to follow up three bars later with, “we plotted for a week and then we fed you the information,” it became clear that even Drake wasn’t sure how to move through the rest of the song as well as the battle. This was another unforced error, a critical misstep Drake simply could not afford at this juncture.

When thinking of this moment alongside Drake’s lack of comprehension around Kendrick’s song, “Mother I Sober,” (where Kendrick touches on abuse in his family – not to be confused with a personal admission of sexual abuse) this stands as Drake’s weakest song in the battle. It also doesn’t stand close to Kendrick’s initial chess move of usurping Drake’s “timestamp songs” – when Kendrick presents “6:16 in LA” (a series Drake has used on almost all of his albums), it proves to be a more robust offering than “The Heart Part 6” (a series Kendrick has used in his career). After this offering from Drake, we see The Ken and Friends: Pop Out (a concert streamed live via Amazon Prime on June 19, 2024: Juneteenth), followed by the “Not Like Us” video (which was released on July 4, 2024: Independence Day). These two drops on cultural “Independence Days” just furthers the notion that Kendrick had a level of vision and foresight far beyond where Drake could imagine. By “The Heart Part 6,” we also agreed Drake thought the song and visuals to “Family Matters” (which was probably recorded around the same time as “Push Ups” and “Taylor Made Freestyle”) would be the end of the battle with Kendrick. An egregious misstep by both Drake and his team to underestimate the BoogeyMan in such a way.

We close this article sharing an important intergenerational conversation that will serve as a Hip Hop cultural landmark. We’ve both seen various videos and TikToks deconstructing many of the “Easter eggs” left by both Drake and Kendrick in this battle. We hope this article serves as another perspective on how we might be able to think about these songs and this battle from a music as well as a cultural perspective, specifically as it relates to all things Hip Hop. And again, we both agreed there are complicated messages and moments in the battle that require further attention and future analysis.

We also felt a responsibility in sharing this dialogue in an academic space as two avid Hip Hop listeners from two different generations with two different seasoned and highly informed viewpoints. Our perspectives on Hip Hop are forever altered, especially with this battle following the 50th anniversary of the culture last year. So we feel obliged to document this moment, as the battle raised a series of questions for us. We introduce some of those questions throughout the article, while some questions might be answered over time, and others might never see a response. Each of our questions generate analysis that will remain critically relevant to the resonance of this historic battle, which has turned into a cultural moment and movement. It’s crucial to consider the artistic creation outside of any two individuals, as Hip Hop proved with this battle that it remains the biggest culture shaper in our world today.

We hope to see your thoughts on the topic, and, just like Kendrick, we reserve the right to return, and to even “pop out” one more time. . .Superbowl LVIII?

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Our Icon for this series is a mash up of “Kendrick Lamar (Sziget Festival 2018)” taken by Flickr User Peter Ohnacker (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) and “Drake, Telenor Arena 2017” taken by Flickr User Kim Erlandsen, NRK P3 (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

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Todd Craig (he/him) is a writer, educator and DJ whose career meshes his love of writing, teaching and music. His research inhabits the intersection of writing and rhetoric, sound studies and Hip Hop studies. He is the author of “K for the Way”: DJ Rhetoric and Literacy for 21st Century Writing Studies (Utah State University Press) which examines the Hip Hop DJ as twenty-first century new media reader, writer, and creator of the discursive elements of DJ rhetoric and literacy. Craig’s publications include the multimodal novel tor’cha (pronounced “torture”), and essays in various edited collections and scholarly journals including The Bloomsbury Handbook of Hip Hop Pedagogy, Amplifying Soundwriting, Methods and Methodologies for Research in Digital Writing and Rhetoric, Fiction International, Radical Teacher, Modern Language Studies, Changing English, Kairos, Composition Studies and Sounding Out! Dr. Craig teaches courses on writing, rhetoric, African American and Hip Hop Studies, and is the co-host of the podcast Stuck off the Realness with multi-platinum recording artist Havoc of Mobb Deep. Presently, Craig is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at New York City College of Technology and English at the CUNY Graduate Center.

LeBrandon Smith (he/him) is a cultural curator and social impact leader born and raised in Brooklyn and Queens, respectively. Coming from New York City, his efforts to bridge gaps, and build community have been central to his work, but most notably his passion for music has fueled his career. His programming has been seen throughout the Metropolitan area, including historical venues like Carnegie Hall, The Museum of the City of NY (MCNY) and Brooklyn Public Library.

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REWIND!…If you liked this post, you may also dig:

The Braids, The Bars, and the Blackness: Ruminations on Hip Hop’s World War III – Drake versus Kendrick (Part One): Todd Craig and LeBrandon Smith

The Braids, The Bars, and the Blackness: Ruminations on Hip Hop’s World War III – Drake versus Kendrick (Part Two): Todd Craig and LeBrandon Smith

“Heavy Airplay, All Day with No Chorus”: Classroom Sonic Consciousness in the Playlist Project—Todd Craig

SO! Reads: “K for the Way”: DJ Rhetoric and Literacy for 21st Century Writing Studies—DeVaughn (Dev) Harris

*SO! Amplifies: Regina Bradley’s Outkasted Conversations*

Sounding Out! Podcast #28: Off the 60: A Mix-Tape Dedication to Los Angeles–Jennifer Lynn Stoever

View Details

A Conversation by Todd Craig and LeBrandon Smith

Happy Hip Hop History Month! Last week writer, educator and DJ Todd Craig and cultural curator and social impact leader LeBrandon Smith kicked off their three part series parsing out this past spring’s beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake, Hip Hop history in the making. We left off in the wake of Drake’s rapid-fire releases from April 19th, 2024, the one-two punch of Drake’s “Push Ups” and “Taylor Made Freestyle.” Today, Craig and Smith pick up their conversation where Kendrick did, releasing “Euphoria” and “6:16 in LA” after eleven days of anticipation. Since the dust has settled a bit between K-Dot and OVO, it’s the perfect time for these intergenerational Hip Hop heads to tap in and sort out what this epic beef really meant for the artists, the sound, and most importantly, the culture. School is IN, yall! If you want to catch up with part one, click here.

What is it? The braids?–Kendrick Lamar, “Euphoria”

After a much-anticipated wait, Kendrick dropped “Euphoria.” It not only stopped Hip Hop culture in its tracks, but it allowed all spectators to realize this was gearing up to be an epic battle. The song starts with the backwards Richard Pryor sample from the iconic film The Wiz. For those unfamiliar, The Wiz is a film adaptation of The Wizard of Oz featuring an all-Black star-studded cast, including Diana Ross and Michael Jackson. Richard Pryor played the role of the Wizard. When the characters realize the Wizard is a fraud, he says, “Everything they say about me is true”; this is the sample Kendrick uses, grounding himself in 1970s Black culture and situating where he plans to go in his writing.

There are numerous layers that Kendrick builds into “Euphoria” – which gets back to Drake’s warning of “you better have a motherfuckin’ quintuple entendre on that shit.” The two specific lines that resonate for how K.Dot’s attack plan will unfold come at the beginning and the middle of the song. The choice of his introductory lines are a serious forewarning for Drake: “Know you a master manipulator and habitual liar too/ But don’t tell no lie about me and I won’t tell truths ’bout you.” Kendrick references the idea of a “friendly fade” but sounds firm in this warning.

The second line to resonate in our listening was “‘Back to Back’ I like that record/ I’ma git back to that for the record.” This bar was an intriguing foreshadowing of not only how Dot planned to approach the battle, but it also references the fact that Kendrick has studied Drake’s battles, thus he is prepared for this moment. It’s critical to note in Drake’s last battle with lyrical tactician Terrance Thorton aka Pusha T in 2018 (which Kendrick references in “Euphoria”), he mentioned Pusha T’s wife – this led to Pusha T introducing the world to Adonis, Drake’s then-infant child which he most definitely had NOT introduced to the world. As Kendrick runs through this 6:24 minute song, his indictments of Drake’s cultural voyeurism and appropriation are crystal clear, but Kendrick doubles down on this idea by saying: “It’s not just me, I’m what the culture’s feeling.” This is the start of Kendrick framing the argument of how Drake is exploiting Black American culture from the safety of the Embassy, his Canadian compound located in a different country.

a little ahead of ourselves, but Kendrick’s “Not Like Us” cover art features “The Embassy”LeBrandon highlighted a few additional quotes while also generating a series of questions. When he heard, “I even hate when you say the word ‘nigga’ but that’s just me, I guess/ some shit just cringeworthy it ain’t even gotta be deep, I guess,” it evoked the feeling of not having to justify why the usage of the word “nigga” is okay for Black people. While LeBrandon acknowledges his grandparents and parents may not agree with him, he feels its usage is not worthy of a fight unless used by a non-Black person; it’s widely accepted as part of the vernacular of Black people in Hip Hop culture. So to question Drake’s usage of the word and strip him of this privilege is a demoralizing and thought-provoking action. A second aspect of these bars considers hater-ation. Sometimes hate is irrational and without cause and sometimes that’s simply good enough! This moment also sparked questions for LeBrandon that we wanted to include:

Maybe it’s overstating the impact of the battle but will the remainder of Drake’s career be under a microscope?

Will Hip Hop heads and casuals now analyze and likely scrutinize Drake’s every move?

Another moment we both agreed on was an additional Kendrick quote LeBrandon highlighted: “What is it? The braids?” Hair, hair, hair: a fixture in these conversations as well as a clue into where this battle gets debated…the barbershop and even the hair salon. Drake’s masculinity, racial and cultural authenticity has always been sensitive; let us never forget Pusha T’s “Story of Adidon”: a song that questioned Drake’s character and even his hair, released with cover art displaying Drake in Blackface with Jazz hands. Drake’s perceived “entanglement” with Black American culture has always been warm, and felt like a younger cousin following their big cousin. Drake was younger then and Pusha T was written off by some as a bully: an old Hip Hop head yelling at the clouds.

But recently, Drake’s actions began to feel like a mockery, or even a caricature (like a “master manipulator”). How much of this behavior is Drake trying on costumes, using real hairstyles and real life experiences of Black folks to portray a life he hasn’t lived or interacted with? Fashion and swag regionalism has become lost in the internet age, which makes the concerns about Drake’s “costumes” jarring. And despite one of Hip Hop’s keys being the ability to flex individuality, Hip Hop has always been a conduit of style (think throwback jerseys and other fashion cues). So why does Drake’s recent fascination with braids and other things raise eyebrows? Are his braids too tight? Maybe the bobbles and barrettes are giving young Black girl vibes too much? Only time will tell…

  View this post on Instagram      A post shared by champagnepapi (@champagnepapi)

LeBrandon also tapped into the Kendrick line, “notice I said we, it’s not just me, I’m what the culture’s feeling.” How many behind-closed-doors conversations were had about the current state of Drake? Naturally, we’ve all had them, as he’s the second biggest artist in the world. Drake is a brand, a corporate behemoth, and one of Universal Music Group’s greatest interests. But is he a cultural thief? Another corporate behemoth once said “dark knight feeling, die and be a hero/ or live long enough to see yourself become a villain” (Carter). Is Drake becoming a villain or are these valid concerns and questions Kendrick has raised?

Hip Hop has existed for 50+ years now – but cultural moments and movements can die off, so can we just dismiss some of the thoughts this battle has provoked? Is it the responsibility of those at the forefront of the artform to behave a certain way? Or does innovation and variety–even at its silliest– keep Hip Hop’s spirit alive? Kendrick’s ability to stay off the grid, then “pop out and show niggas” is unparalleled. The way his city and coast showed up for him also has to be acknowledged in a time when access to rappers’ lives is oversaturated online. The line “I’m what the culture’s feeling” is interesting because it informs us that Kendrick is paying attention and considering the artform, even when we can’t see it with his presence in public or on social media.

Kendrick quickly followed up with “6:16 in LA,” and the layering throughout each song only gets impressively more intricate. For example, the length of the song refers back to the date the TV show “Euphoria” was released (Drake is credited as executive producer on the show). The entire first section is incredible, especially as Kendrick spits “Like Raphael, I can heal and give you art,” which speaks to the duality Kendrick uses to approach this battle.

It was also one of Todd’s favorite moments of the “Pop Out” show. While multiple online analyses say Kendrick is personifying Drake, the way in which he’s rhyming is undeniable. Furthermore, the Kendrick line telling Drake “every dog gotta have his day/ now live in your purpose” is quite condemning, especially alongside the concept of Drake being a voyeur of Black American Hip Hop culture. Couple this sentiment with Sounwave and Taylor Swift music collaborator Jack Antonoff producing the beat for the song that uses a sample from Al Green’s “What a Wonderful Thing Love Is” – a song that features Drake’s uncle (Mabon “Teenie” Hodges) on guitar – shows just how cerebral Kendrick has gotten with his sonic offerings. This song also presents a different tempo: a more soulful, Boom-Bap-style that highlights Kendrick’s flow and cadence, diverging from “Euphoria.”

We both agreed Kendrick may not enjoy tearing down another artist. LeBrandon highlights the lines, “Who am I if I don’t go to war.” This line, its surrounding bars, the tone, and delivery speak to the conflict Kendrick feels about the ensuing lyrical violence. It’s incredible that such conflict is being considered by Kendrick during a heated battle–it requires us to cherish this level of consideration and introspection. This line also feels layered because of Kendrick’s roots, and the enduring Hip Hop element of battling: “if I’m called out,” Kendrick raps, “who am I if I don’t answer that call?”

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Todd and LeBrandon’s Hip Hop History Month play-by-play concludes on November 23rd!

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Our Icon for this series is a mash up of “Kendrick Lamar (Sziget Festival 2018)” taken by Flickr User Peter Ohnacker (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) and “Drake, Telenor Arena 2017” taken by Flickr User Kim Erlandsen, NRK P3 (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

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Todd Craig (he/him) is a writer, educator and DJ whose career meshes his love of writing, teaching and music. His research inhabits the intersection of writing and rhetoric, sound studies and Hip Hop studies. He is the author of “K for the Way”: DJ Rhetoric and Literacy for 21st Century Writing Studies (Utah State University Press) which examines the Hip Hop DJ as twenty-first century new media reader, writer, and creator of the discursive elements of DJ rhetoric and literacy. Craig’s publications include the multimodal novel tor’cha (pronounced “torture”), and essays in various edited collections and scholarly journals including The Bloomsbury Handbook of Hip Hop Pedagogy, Amplifying Soundwriting, Methods and Methodologies for Research in Digital Writing and Rhetoric, Fiction International, Radical Teacher, Modern Language Studies, Changing English, Kairos, Composition Studies and Sounding Out! Dr. Craig teaches courses on writing, rhetoric, African American and Hip Hop Studies, and is the co-host of the podcast Stuck off the Realness with multi-platinum recording artist Havoc of Mobb Deep. Presently, Craig is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at New York City College of Technology and English at the CUNY Graduate Center.

LeBrandon Smith (he/him) is a cultural curator and social impact leader born and raised in Brooklyn and Queens, respectively. Coming from New York City, his efforts to bridge gaps, and build community have been central to his work, but most notably his passion for music has fueled his career. His programming has been seen throughout the Metropolitan area, including historical venues like Carnegie Hall, The Museum of the City of NY (MCNY) and Brooklyn Public Library.

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REWIND!…If you liked this post, you may also dig:

“Heavy Airplay, All Day with No Chorus”: Classroom Sonic Consciousness in the Playlist Project—Todd Craig

SO! Reads: “K for the Way”: DJ Rhetoric and Literacy for 21st Century Writing Studies—DeVaughn (Dev) Harris****

Deep Listening as Philogynoir: Playlists, Black Girl Idiom, and Love–Shakira Holt

“The (Magic) Upper Room: Sonic Pleasure Politics in Southern Hip Hop“–Regina Bradley

“‘I’m on my New York st’: Jean Grae’s Sonic Claims on the City”––Liana Silva**

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A Conversation by Todd Craig and LeBrandon Smith

By now, it’s safe to say very few people have not caught wind of the biggest Hip-Hop battle of the 21st century: the clash between Kendrick Lamar and Drake. Whether you’ve seen the videos, the memes or even smacked a bunch of owls around playing the video game, this battle grew beyond Hip Hop, with various facets of global popular culture tapped in, counting down minutes for responses and getting whiplash with the speed of song drops. There are multiple ways to approach this event. We’ve seen inciteful arguments about how these two young Black males at the pinnacle of success are tearing one another down. We also acknowledge Hip Hop’s long legacy of battling; the culture has always been a “competitive sport” that includes “lyrical sparring.”

This three-part article for Sounding Out!’s Hip Hop History Month edition stems from a longer conversation with two co-authors and friends, Hip Hop listeners and aficionados, trying to make sense of all the songs and various aspects of the visuals. This intergenerational conversation involving two different sets of Hip Hop listening ears, both heavily steeped in Hip Hop’s sonic culture, is important. Our goal here is to think through this battle by highlighting quotes from songs that resonated with us as we chronicled this moment. We hope this article serves as a responsible sonic assessment of this monumental Hip Hop episode.

First things first: what’s so intergenerational about our viewpoints? This information provides some perspective on how this most recent battle resonated with two avid Hip Hop listeners and cultural participants.

LeBrandon is a 33 year old Black male raised in Brooklyn and Queens, New York. He is an innovative curator and social impact leader. When asked about the first Hip Hop beef that impacted him, LeBrandon said:

The first Hip-Hop battle I remember is Jay x Nas and mainly because Jay was my favorite rapper at the time. I was young but mature enough to feel the burn of “Ether.” It’s embarrassing to say now, but truthfully I was hurt—as if “Ether” had been pointed at me. “Ether” is a masterclass in Hip Hop disrespect but the stanza that I remember feeling terrible about was “I’ll still whip your ass/ you 36 in a karate class?/ you Tae-bo hoe/ tryna work it out/ you tryna get brolic/ Ask me if I’m tryna kick knowledge/ Nah I’m tryna kick the shit you need to learn though/ that ether, that shit that make your soul burn slow.” MAN. I remember thinking, is Jay old?! Is 36 old?! Is my favorite rapper old?! Why did Nas say that about him? I should reiterate I am older now and don’t think 36 is old, related or unrelated to Hip Hop. Nas’s gloves off approach shocked me and genuinely concerned me. But I’m thankful for the exposure “Ether” gave me to the understanding that anything goes in a Hip-Hop battle.

Todd is a Black male who grew up in Ravenswood and Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City, New York. Todd is about 15 years older than LeBrandon, and is an associate professor of African American Studies and English. Todd stated:

The first battle that engaged my Hip Hop senses was the BDP vs. Juice Crew battle –specifically “The Bridge” and “The Bridge is Over.” The stakes were high, the messages were clear-cut, and the battle lines were drawn. I lived in Ravenswood but I had family and friends in QB. And “The Bridge” was like a borough anthem. Even though MC Shan was repping the Bridge, that song motivated and galvanized our whole area in Long Island City. This was the first time in Hip Hop that I recall needing to choose a side. And because I had seen Shan and Marley and Shante in real life in QB, the choice was a no-brainer. That battle led me to start recording Mr. Magic and Marley Marl’s show on 107.5 WBLS, before even checking out what Chuck Chillout or Red Alert was doing. As I got older, it would sting when I heard “The Bridge is Over” at a club or a party. And when I would DJ, I’d always play “The Bridge is Over” first, and follow it up with either “The Bridge” or another QB anthem, like a “Shook Ones Pt. 2” or something.

We both enter this conversation agreeing this battle has been brewing for about ten years, however it really came to a head in the Drake and J. Cole song, “First Person Shooter.” Evident in the song is J. Cole’s consistent references to the “Big Three” (meaning Kendrick Lamar, Drake and J. Cole atop Hip-Hop’s food chain), while Drake was very much focused on himself and Cole. It is rumored that Kendrick was asked to be on the song; his absence without some lyrical revision by Cole and Drake, seems to have led to Kendrick feeling snubbed or slighted in some way. This song gets Hip Hop listeners to Kendrick’s verse on the Future and Metro Boomin’ song “Like That” where Kendrick sets Hip Hop ablaze with the simple response: “Muthafuck the Big Three, nigguh, it’s just Big Me” – a moment where he “takes flight” and avoids the “sneak dissing” that he asserts Drake has consistently done.

We both agreed that Drake’s initial full-length entry into this battle, “Push Ups,” was the typical diss record we’d expect from him. Whether in his battle with Meek Mill or Pusha T, Drake’s entry follows the typical guidelines for diss records: it comes with a series of jabs at an opponent, which starts the war of words. The goal in a battle is always to disrespect your opponent to the fullest extent, so we find Drake aiming to do just that. We both noticed those jabs, most memorably is “how you big steppin’ with some size 7 men’s on.” We also noticed Drake’s misstep by citing the wrong label for Kendrick when he says “you’re in the scope right now” – alluding to Kendrick Lamar being signed to Interscope – even though neither Top Dog Entertainment (TDE) nor PGLang are signed to Interscope Records. Drake’s lack of focus on just Kendrick would prove a mistake: he disses Metro Boomin, The Weeknd, Rick Ross, and basketball player Ja Morant in “Push Ups.”

While we agree that in a rap battle, the goal is to disrespect your opponent at the highest level, we had differing perspectives on Drake’s second diss track “Taylor Made Freestyle.” LeBrandon felt this song landed because it took a “no fucks” approach to the battle. Regardless of how one may feel about Drake’s method of disrespect (by using AI), the message was loud and inescapable. LeBrandon highlighted the moment when AI Tupac says “Kendrick we need ya!”; outside of how hilarious this line is, Drake dissing Kendrick by using Tupac’s voice – a person with a legacy that Kendrick holds in the highest esteem – further established that this would be no friendly sparring match. Not only did Drake disrespect a Hip Hop legend with this line and its delivery, but an entire coast. The track invokes the spirit of a deceased rapper, specifically one whose murder was so closely connected to Hip Hop and authentic street beef. This moment was a step too far for Todd, who lived through the moment when both 2Pac and Biggie were murdered over fabricated beef.

Furthermore, LeBrandon pointed to the ever controversial usage of AI in Hip Hop, something Drake’s boss, Sir Lucian Grainge, recently condemned (especially when Drake, himself, condemns the AI usage of his own voice). By blatantly ignoring the issues and respectability codes the Hip Hop community should and does have with these ideas, Drake’s method of poking fun at his opponent was glorious. It was uncomfortable, condescending and straight-up gangsta. It also showcased Drake’s everlasting creative ability and willingness to take a risk. Todd acknowledged a generationally tinged viewpoint: this might also be a misstep for Drake because he used Snoop Dogg’s voice as well. Not only is Snoop alive, but Snoop was instrumental in passing the West Coast torch and crown to Kendrick. So when Drake uses an AI Snoop voice to spit “right now it’s looking like you writin’ out the game plan on how to lose/ how to bark up the wrong tree and then get your head popped in a crowded room,” it strikes at the heart of the AI controversy in music. This was not Snoop’s commentary at all. We both agree, however, that the “bark up the wrong tree” and “Kendrick we need ya” lines came back to haunt Drake. We also agree that dropping “Push Ups” and “Taylor Made Freestyle” is Drake’s battle format, hoping that he can overwhelm an opponent with multiple songs in rapid fire.

Todd and LeBrandon’s Hip Hop History Month play-by-play continues on November 11th with the release of Part 2! Return for “Euphoria” and stay until “6:16 in LA.”

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Our Icon for this series is a mash up of “Kendrick Lamar (Sziget Festival 2018)” taken by Flickr User Peter Ohnacker (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) and “Drake, Telenor Arena 2017” taken by Flickr User Kim Erlandsen, NRK P3 (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

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Todd Craig (he/him) is a writer, educator and DJ whose career meshes his love of writing, teaching and music. His research inhabits the intersection of writing and rhetoric, sound studies and Hip Hop studies. He is the author of “K for the Way”: DJ Rhetoric and Literacy for 21st Century Writing Studies (Utah State University Press) which examines the Hip Hop DJ as twenty-first century new media reader, writer, and creator of the discursive elements of DJ rhetoric and literacy. Craig’s publications include the multimodal novel tor’cha (pronounced “torture”), and essays in various edited collections and scholarly journals including The Bloomsbury Handbook of Hip Hop Pedagogy, Amplifying Soundwriting, Methods and Methodologies for Research in Digital Writing and Rhetoric, Fiction International, Radical Teacher, Modern Language Studies, Changing English, Kairos, Composition Studies and Sounding Out! Dr. Craig teaches courses on writing, rhetoric, African American and Hip Hop Studies, and is the co-host of the podcast Stuck off the Realness with multi-platinum recording artist Havoc of Mobb Deep. Presently, Craig is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at New York City College of Technology and English at the CUNY Graduate Center.

LeBrandon Smith (he/him) is a cultural curator and social impact leader born and raised in Brooklyn and Queens, respectively. Coming from New York City, his efforts to bridge gaps, and build community have been central to his work, but most notably his passion for music has fueled his career. His programming has been seen throughout the Metropolitan area, including historical venues like Carnegie Hall, The Museum of the City of NY (MCNY) and Brooklyn Public Library.

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REWIND!…If you liked this post, you may also dig:

“Heavy Airplay, All Day with No Chorus”: Classroom Sonic Consciousness in the Playlist Project—Todd Craig

SO! Reads: “K for the Way”: DJ Rhetoric and Literacy for 21st Century Writing Studies—DeVaughn (Dev) Harris****

Caterpillars and Concrete Roses in a Mad City: Kendrick Lamar’s “Mortal Man” Interview with Tupac Shakur–Regina Bradley

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This series listens to the political, gendered, queer(ed), racial engagements and class entanglements involved in proclaiming out loud: La-TIN-x. ChI-ca-NA. La-TI-ne. ChI-ca-n-@. Xi-can-x. Funded by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of the Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative, the Latinx Sound Cultures Studies Working Group critically considers the role of sound and listening in our formation as political subjects. Through both a comparative and cross-regional lens, we invite Latinx Sound Scholars to join us as we dialogue about our place within the larger fields of Chicanx/Latinx Studies and Sound Studies. We are delighted to publish our initial musings with Sounding Out!, a forum that has long prioritized sound from a queered, racial, working-class and “always-from-below” epistemological standpoint. —Ed. Dolores Inés Casillas

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No tengo nada de sangre de Mexico. Soy afro americano.

(I have no Mexican blood. I am African American.)

El Compa Negro (Ryhan Lowery)

The grain is the body in the singing voice, in the writing hand, in the performing limb.

Roland Barthes (The Grain of the Voice,1971)

**This post is co-authored by Sara Veronica Hinojos and Alex Mireles*

Sarah La Morena (Sarah the Black woman), or Sarah Palafox, was adopted and raised by a Mexican family in Mexico. At the age of five, she moved to Riverside, California, a predominantly Mexican city an hour east of Compton. Palafox started singing as a way to express the racism she faced as a child in Southern California, feeling caught between her Black appearance and her Mexican sound. She found her voice in church, a nurturing environment where she could be herself, surrounded by her family’s love. She gained attention with a viral video of her rendition of Jenni Rivera’s “Que Me Vas a Dar.” Palafox delivers each note with profound emotion and precision, leaving even the accompanying mariachi violinist in awe.

  View this post on Instagram      A post shared by Sarah La Morena (@carne\_a\_sarah)

Similarly, El Compa Negro (The Black Friend/Homie) or Rhyan Lowery heard the sounds of banda coming from his neighbor’s backyard in Compton; a historically Black-populated city with a current Mexican majority. Lowery couldn’t shake the song out of his head and learned the song’s Spanish-language lyrics. Like Palafox, videos of him singing in Spanish during high school made him a viral sensation. “They called me ‘el compa negro’ (…) All I heard was ‘blah blah blah negro or negro’ and I wasn’t having it until they explained to me what it meant. And I was like ‘ok, cool’.”

The sonic stylings of El Compa Negro and Sarah La Morena within the banda genre enable transcultural connections beyond the pan-Chicano-Mexican-Central American popularity of tecnobanda and la quebradita. The 1990s banda craze, writes George Lipsitz “challenged traditional categories of citizenship and culture on both sides of the US-Mexico border.” Banda music might sound like it was established south of the border, but multicultural listeners and dancers continue to influence its vibrations. Pop stars like Snoop Dogg, Shakira, Bad Bunny, and Karol G have released (tokenized) songs with Mexican-tinged, banda-recognizable beats. Yet, both El Compa and Sarah demonstrate a form of musical Black/Brown, working-class intimacy. Their respective musics are much less about a pop star (duet) kind of solidarity and much more about a deep knowing, a sensibility among working-class cultures and othered people that resonates through the aesthetics of sound. As Karen Tongson writes in Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries, about her experience of “queer, brown, immigrant musical discovery” in Riverside, the hometown she shares with Sarah La Morena: “It is the music that inspires us to ask questions” (26).

Certainly, US Mexican immigrant culture does not have the same (mainstream) cultural caché as African American culture, unless somehow softened or filtered. Jalapeños get “de-spicifed“; pre-made Día de Los Muertos altares are now at Wal-Mart, and huipiles are available as fast-fashioned “peasant blouse;” filtering out their Mexican-indigenous origins. Thus, classics like “La Yaquesita” and originals like “Yo Soy Compton” heard through the grain of Black voices affirm the possibilities of U.S. Mexican belonging or what D. Travers Scott characterizes as a form of “intimate intersubjectivities;” rooted in long-established Black/Brown co-existences across the borderlands and city barrios. Turning the volume up on these artists serves an important counterpoint to Latino anti-Black racism.

Their voices, blending with brass and tambora, embody a Black-Brown sonic and symbolic solidarity, or spatial entitlement. As theorized by Gaye Theresa Johnson in Spaces of Conflict, Sounds of Solidarity, innovative applications of technology, creativity, and space foster new collectives which, even when “unheard” by historians, assert social citizenship and pave the way for new working-class political futures. In the contested neighborhoods of greater Los Angeles, Black and Brown communities are often pitted against one another through processes of containment and confinement leading to competitions for jobs, housing, status, and political power. Yet, they share the experiences of labor exploitation, housing segregation, and cultural vilification. Filmed in the intimate settings of backyards, the viral videos underscore Black/Brown hood/barrio soundscapes as multi-generational, familial, and culturally hybrid. Home is where shared class, racial, and gender politics are negotiated and resolved.

Asserting Black identity and the choice to perform in Spanish creates a unique visual and auditory experience within the Mexican-dominant world of banda. In fact, in 2024, Lowery made history as the first Spanish-language artist signed by Death Row Records, a label known primarily for hip hop. The lively rhythms of banda – oompah-oompah-oompah – offers both banda and hip hop listeners a new orientation to discern the racial-cultural politics of broader Los Angeles.

Like the mid-century Haitian-Mexican bolero singer Antonia del Carmen Peregrino Álvarez, alias “Toña La Negra,” the added tags “Negro” and “la Morena” signals Black singers’ recognition of the meaning(s) of their racial difference within the transnational Mexican music scene. The auditory discomfort that their vocal grain might cause is named and thus recognized as the persistent colorism of listeners at large. Lowery describes his initial unease with the given “Compa Negro” nickname. “My Mexican friends always tell me ‘Hey, compa negro, you’re Mexican, man. God just left you in the oven a little too long.’” The harassment came from both Black peers and Mexicans alike, for liking banda, dating Latinas, or dressing “like a Mexican.” “They would say, ‘You hate being Black. Self-hate. Self-hate. I’m like man it ain’t that I self-hate, it’s just that I embrace something. I took the time to have an open mind and study something, you know?” His way of being made sense in the context of a Compton teenage experience. “Becoming Mexican” by way of musical/cultural engagement surpassed skin tone-deep and nationalist differences.

Or, as Mexican ranchera singer Chavela Vargas–born in Costa Rica–famously asserted, “Mexicans are born wherever the hell they want!” Try listening to Juan Gabriel’s “Amor Eterno” to find out. Black creatives like Evander, Vaquera Canela, and Terry Turner are just a few more examples of Black mexicanidad.Yessica Garcia Hernandez reminds us that Black and Brown sonic solidarities have been the driving pulse of US popular music. She argues, “Home and sound is acknowledging that both corridos, hip-hop, and G-funk relationally, has formed paisas.”

El Compa Negro’s “Verde es Vida,” a tribute to California’s weed culture, lowriders, and corridos, booms loudly. The song begins with an accordion playing reggae rhythms, soon interrupted by percussion, guitars, and El Compa’s fast-paced verses. About a minute in, the accordion slows the tempo with a few reggae notes before the vocals return, reintroducing the corrido rhythm: “Hoy andamos en LA bien tranquilitos. En el lowrider escuchando corridos.” The reggae-corrido fusion ends with the familiar “pom pom pom pom!” of the drums, typical of banda and corrido finales, as the accordion plays its last note. Through Lowery’s reggae corrido, we hear his “sonic home” rooted in Black and Brown Los Angeles.

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Featured Image: still from Sarah La Morena’s “La Llorona” (2020)

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Sara Veronica Hinojos is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies and on the advisory board for Latin American and Latino Studies at Queens College, CUNY. Her research focuses on representations of Chicanx and Latinx within popular film and television with an emphasis on gender, race, language politics, and humor studies. She is currently working on a book manuscript that investigates the racial function of linguistic “accents” within media, called: GWAT?!: Chicanx Mediated Race, Gender, and “Accents” in the US.

Alex Mireles is a PhD student in the Department of Feminist Studies at UC Santa Barbara. She writes on Latinx identity and queerness, labor, and global capitalism through aesthetic movements in fashion, beauty, media, and visual cultures. Her dissertation explores the queer potential and world-making capabilities of Chicanx popular culture through Mexican regional music, social media, queer nightlife, and film.

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REWIND!…If you liked this post, you may also dig:

Boom! Boom! Boom!: Banda, Dissident Vibrations, and Sonic Gentrification in Mazatlán—Kristie Valdez-Guillen

Listening to MAGA Politics within US/Mexico’s Lucha Libre –Esther Díaz Martín and Rebeca Rivas

Ronca Realness: Voices that Sound the Sucia Body—Cloe Gentile Reyes

Echoes in Transit: Loudly Waiting at the Paso del Norte Border Region—José Manuel Flores & Dolores Inés Casillas

Sounding Out! Podcast #28: Off the 60: A Mix-Tape Dedication to Los Angeles–Jennifer Stoever

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This series listens to the political, gendered, queer(ed), racial engagements and class entanglements involved in proclaiming out loud: La-TIN-x. ChI-ca-NA. La-TI-ne. ChI-ca-n-@. Xi-can-x. Funded by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of the Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative, the Latinx Sound Cultures Studies Working Group critically considers the role of sound and listening in our formation as political subjects. Through both a comparative and cross-regional lens, we invite Latinx Sound Scholars to join us as we dialogue about our place within the larger fields of Chicanx/Latinx Studies and Sound Studies. We are delighted to publish our initial musings with Sounding Out!, a forum that has long prioritized sound from a queered, racial, working-class and “always-from-below” epistemological standpoint. —Ed. Dolores Inés Casillas

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Boom! Boom! Boom! Da-da-da-da-da— The unmistakable blast of the tuba and the resounding crash of cymbals, embedded in banda sinaloense, reverberate through the narrow streets of Mazatlán, Sinaloa. It’s a sound that shakes you to your core, quite literally—a sound that some may find overwhelming but for others, it’s the heartbeat of the city. Yet, this very heartbeat is increasingly at odds with a new rhythm, imposed by the influx of white American settlers (retirees, snow birds) and tourists who prefer quieter, more sanitized (less sucio) soundscapes. Public debates about sound – its volume, its rightful “place” – demonstrate how sonic gentrification displaces local, cultural identities and highlights the impact of globalization on indigenous soundscapes.. In a city where culture has always been expressed loudly and proudly, this clash is more than just about volume; it’s about identity, survival, and the right to exist audibly.

Banda is unapologetically brass-heavy with its tubas, trumpets, clarinets, and trombones–direct inheritances from the German brass bands brought to Mexico in the late 19th century by German immigrants and traders. Helena Simonett’s hallmark book, Banda: Mexican Musical Life Across Borders, details how the influence of polka is unmistakable in the rhythmic patterns of banda, with its characteristic 2/4 meter and the upbeat, driving rhythms that push the music forward. Both styles share repetitive rhythmic, danceable, lively tempos and showcase the tuba’s full, resonant sound. In polka, the tuba provides a consistent “oom-pah” bass line, while in banda, the tuba drives the harmonic structure with deep, grounding tones that propel the music forward, often in a steady and rhythmic pulse that mirrors the polka bass line. The accompanying tambora, a large bass drum unique to the genre, adds an unmistakable Mexican flair, infusing banda music with rhythmic accents that tie it back to the Mexican dance traditions of sones and norteños. With the loud combination of brass and tambora blaring through the city, it’s understandable that white tourists and settlers would feel a dissonance between the soundscape and their Western settler notions of respectability.

The tambora leads Banda La Amistad in NYC, Image by Chris GoldNY, *CC BY-NC 2.0Sonic gentrification refers to the process in which local auditory cultures are marginalized or displaced by soundscapes that cater to the preferences of more affluent or dominant groups as Marie Thompson discusses in Beyond Unwanted Sound* (2017). This concept aligns with Stoever’s “listening ear,” which privileges certain auditory experiences—such as quiet and controlled soundscapes favored by Western tourists—while marginalizing others. This phenomenon in Mazatlán manifests through tensions surrounding the sounds of banda, increasingly heard as incompatible with the tranquil settings promoted by the tourist industrial complex. To Western ears unaccustomed to such instruments blaring through their environments, banda is heard as intrusive or abrasive. Yet, banda was never meant to be quiet or contained; it’s a celebratory proclamation of life itself.

As a symbol of the region’s cultural, namely working-class identity, banda’s shaky acceptance dates back to when nobility regardedbandaas music of the commoners. It is often mariachi music, with its more melodic and string-dominated compositions, that is seen as “easier on the ear” and perceived as a more sophisticated representation of Mexico’s soundscape— incidentally hailing from a racially whiter region of Mexico. Reclaiming banda as a proud symbol of Northern Mexican culture is a direct challenge to both the casteism of Spanish settlers and the sonic imperialism imposed by white American settlers.

The response by local musicians to new ordinances aimed at limiting live banda performances on Mazatlán’s beaches are being met with “dissident vibrations.” Or, as I describe, when a musical collective effervescence can be harnessed to challenge dominant structures and create spaces for marginalized voices to assert their rights and identities. In Mazatlán, these dissident vibrations took on a visible and visceral form when a viral video showed tourists enjoying a classical guitar performance inside a hotel while the energetic sounds of banda blasted from the beach just outside.

Y hoy los músicos de Mazatlán tomaron las avenidas principales del puerto pic.twitter.com/6LOQ8axGu7— Revista ESPEJO (@EspejoRevista) March 27, 2024

This video sparked a heated online debate about noise levels, with some tourists and local authorities advocating for more restrictions on banda music. Soon after, the conversation escalated with a public notice at a condominium complex prohibiting the hiring of live bands in the beach area—a move that directly impacted local banda musicians who depend on beach performances for their livelihood.

The tensions culminated in a nine-hour protest, during which hundreds of musicians marched through the streets of Mazatlán, playing their instruments in defiance of the regulations that aimed to control the noise. Their march, which eventually turned into a riot after clashes with police, was a sonic manifestation of resistance, challenging the regulations that limited not only the number of live banda performances but also attempted to regulate the very essence of Mazatlán’s cultural identity. These acts of dissident vibrations served as powerful counter-narratives to the dominant discourse that seeks to sanitize public spaces from their vibrant soundscapes. These musicians not only contested their economic marginalization but also championed the existential right of their culture to flourish in its native setting, resisting efforts to reduce their sound to mere noise in favor of tourist comforts. Their defiance highlights the complex interplay between cultural and economic survival, identity, and resistance within the broader context of globalization and cultural homogenization.

Critics who dismissbanda often fail to appreciate its rich harmonics and historical significance in the cultural landscape of Mazatlán. By reducing this music to mere noise, they overlook the deep-rooted connections it fosters within local communities and its role as a communal bond reflecting the spirit and resilience of the people. Such dismissals prioritize the comfort of tourists over the cultural rights of the local population, further entrenching inequalities between those who advocate for cultural integrity and those who perceive the city merely as a short-term, leisure destination.The role of banda in Mazatlán, an exemplary case of sonic gentrification, raises essential questions about who has the authority to define the cultural and sonic boundaries of public spaces.

Sonic gentrification in Mazatlán serves as a poignant example of global discussions on cultural identity, heritage, and the impacts of globalization on local communities. But this isn’t just a local issue; bandahas followed the Mexican diaspora, becoming an audible assertion of identity in cities across the United States. The call to action is clear: to preserve banda not as a relic of the past, but as a living, breathing sound that defines working class public spaces of color far beyond Mexico’s borders. Whether in Los Angeles, Chicago, or Houston, these vibrant sounds demand to be heard, and more importantly, understood. The beat of the tuba and tambora still thunder on, daring us to listen.

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Featured Image: “Todos dorados” by Flickr User Juanantibes CC BY-SA 2.0**

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Kristie Valdez-Guillen, PhD, is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work bridges the fields of musicology and decolonial studies. With a PhD in Musicology from UCLA and advanced training in American Studies and Ethnicity at USC, her research delves into the critical intersections of decoloniality, music, and politics across the Americas and the Caribbean. Currently, she brings her expertise to USC’s Writing Program, where she teaches first-year and first-generation students, with a focus on writing across disciplines. Dr. Valdéz-Guillén is dedicated to fostering critical thinking and empowering the next generation of scholars and writers.

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REWIND!…If you liked this post, you may also dig:

Ronca Realness: Voices that Sound the Sucia Body—Cloe Gentile Reyes

Echoes in Transit: Loudly Waiting at the Paso del Norte Border Region—José Manuel Flores & Dolores Inés Casillas

Listening to MAGA Politics within US/Mexico’s Lucha Libre –Esther Díaz Martín and Rebeca Rivas

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This series listens to the political, gendered, queer(ed), racial engagements and class entanglements involved in proclaiming out loud: La-TIN-x. ChI-ca-NA. La-TI-ne. ChI-ca-n-@. Xi-can-x. Funded by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of the Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative, the Latinx Sound Cultures Studies Working Group critically considers the role of sound and listening in our formation as political subjects. Through both a comparative and cross-regional lens, we invite Latinx Sound Scholars to join us as we dialogue about our place within the larger fields of Chicanx/Latinx Studies and Sound Studies. We are delighted to publish our initial musings with Sounding Out!, a forum that has long prioritized sound from a queered, racial, working-class and “always-from-below” epistemological standpoint. —Ed. Dolores Inés Casillas

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This post is co -authored by Esther Díaz Martín and Rebeca Rivas
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“Lucharaaaaaán a dos a tres caídas sin limite de tiempoooo!“

[“They will fight two out of three falls, with no time limit!”]

Announcer at Lucha Libre, El Paso, Texas

“This ain’t no sideshow.”

George Lipsitz on the role of popular culture

The announcer’s piercing “lucharaaaaaán” cries from the middle of the ring proclaims the constitutional two-out-of-three-falls rule of lucha libre. But before the famous cry rings out to set the stage for the spectacularized acrobatic combat between costumed warriors, their theatrical entrances set the all-important emotional stakes of the battle. The entrances are loud, campy, interactive exchanges between luchadores and spectators. An entrance song itself cues the luchador’s persona: a cumbia could signal a técnico (a good guy); a heavy metal song more than likely indicates a rudo (a bad guy) typically donning black, death-themed getups. Luchadores saunter into the arena, stopping to pose, high five their fans, and verbally heckle their opponents. The storylines of good versus evil, betrayal and revenge, or humility versus arrogance are some of the more standard plots that motivate spectators to adamantly cheer for the favorite and jeer for the foe.

The sonic exchanges between luchadores’ and spectators before, during, and after the fight positions lucha libre as much more than a sport. And while the term spectators, suggests the privileged act of watching or viewing; here, we expand spectators within lucha libre arena to mean “a call to witness” (á la Chela Sandoval). Put simply, lucha libre is a cultural phenomenon where contemporary cultural, social, and political anxieties are often tapped as fodder for theatrical plots. In the U.S./Mexico’s sister cities of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, the political realities of border enforcement, immigration politics, and racial tensions are loudly heard and placed on display. As part of Rebeca Riva’s ongoing research about the history of lucha libre at the border—which too often gets skipped over for Mexico City as the epicenter of the sport—we listen for the exchanges between luchadores and spectators as resonant participants in the ritual of this sport. Specifically, we tune into lucha libre and its accompanying mega-spectacle to analyze how fans scoff at lucha libre’s MAGA-spectacles. In Time Passages, George Lipsitz (2001) reminded scholars of popular culture decades ago that “this ain’t no sideshow.” In a similar vein, lucha libre directly engages in the larger social and political arena that contextualizes the sport.

In lucha libre, spectators are resonant participants in the construction of an essential “hi-fi” sonic ambiente. Like in football, as Kaj Ahisved notes, the “noise of the crowd” (building on Les Back’s concept) are essential to a “hi-fi” sound where a high degree of information exchange occurs between listeners and the sound environment.Or, as David Hendy describes Olympic arenas, “cauldrons of concentrated sound, [where] the roar of the spectators took on a collective force of its own – a volatile quality rich with cultural and political repercussions.” The crowd’s response, experienced by athletes as ambient noise, bolsters athlete’s spirits and develops an emotional plot for the contest. In certain cases, for instance in Algeria as Stephen Wilford documents, it is a venue for social critique; football stadiums served as “safe zones” where fans could dissent the Abdelaziz Bouteflika dictatorship through chanting political slogans and songs as an anonymous crowd (139).

By listening to lucha libre, we gain a deeper understanding of the embodied components of fan activism, collective identity, and political action. Visual spectacle, bodily gestures, and musical choices, coupled with verbal taunts and visceral grunts serve as interactive storytelling tools. Yet, the crowd’s noise and, importantly, the sonic memories evoked by visual parafenalia amplify a shared political consciousness and prompts the expression of their allegiance with and opposition to the symbolic representations staged.

Chris Watson proudly holds the MAGA flag. Image by Rebecca Rivas *

The following audio was captured in November 2023 at a parking lot across from El Paso City Hall during a children’s fundraiser. We hear Chris Watson, a previous college wrestler from Oklahoma, make his debut appearance in lucha libre as a white supremacist character. Wearing a clichéd U.S. flag-themed bandana and waving a Trump 2024 campaign flag, he points towards the crowd and makes swimming motions with his arms to communicate the pejorative “wetback.”

Aligning these symbols of MAGA ideologies with Watson’s role as a rudo in the match positions him as a willing vessel for the scorn of the mostly Mexican American spectators. His red-white-and-blue echoes Trump’s xenophobic statements burned into Latinx consciousness: “they’re all rapists,” “bad hombres,” from “shithole countries” as well as renewed promises to “build a great wall… and Mexico will pay” and enact the largest deportation effort in U.S. history since Eisenhower’s “Operation Wetback.”

The reactions from spectators are visceral and cathartic, eliciting camaraderie, anger, or empowerment. They retaliate strongly: “Fuck you! Fuck Donald Trump!”‘ and “Fuera!”, a seemingly hateful exchange interjected with cheering and laughter. Spectators are amused by the insults and retaliations. Watson’s staged “gimmick” prompts spectators to playfully rage against the violence he embodies. Their taunting in Spanish represents both resistance as cultural pride and insider knowledge. The joke is on Watson, who (presumably) does not understand the double entendres hurled at him.

A MAGA luchador evokes the memory of violence carried out against Mexicans and African Americans in Texas since at least the mid 1800s by white enslavers, colonial settlers, Texas Rangers, border patrol, and the modern police force. White supremacist violence is not mere political rhetoric but an ongoing contemporary reality. On August 3rd, 2019 a white man motivated by the “Great Replacement” theory popular in MAGA circles, drove 9 hours from his home in Allen, Texas to a Walmart in El Paso, a majority Latino city, to carry out a mass shooting with the intent of discouraging immigration. He killed 23 people and left 22 injured. Listening and yelling at Watson and his MAGA symbols at the US/Mexico border vocalizes the cultural, political and humanitarian crisis propelled by neoliberalism, the militarized police, and the exploitation of White supremacist sentiments by a wannabe fascist dictator.

Image by Flickr User C-Monster, taken in Ontario, CA (2017) CC BY-NC 2.0
Watson comes from a line of “gringo” white supremacist luchadores such as Sam Adonis (Sam Polinsky) who sprays himself orange and waves a US flag stamped with a Trump portrait. El Migra (Gonzalo Garcia), a U.S.-born Mexican American border enforcer performed during the Bush/Clinton era, who threw tortillas while taunting “traguense estas tortillas frijoleros nopaleros” (“choke on these you cactus-eating beaners”) and growled the U.S. national anthem into the mic. Spectators jeered and threw their drink cups at him; an opportunity to retort white supremacist rhetoric.

In another instance from the 1990s, a major showdown between Love Machine (a gringo wrestler turned técnico) and Blue Panther (a tejana wearing feline-themed rudo) the crowd favor turned against the yankee when his neck-breaking illegal move prompted fans to reconsider their alliances in the context of massive Mexican emigration prompted by the devastating yoke of the country’s debt to the IMF and subsequent neoliberal economic reforms. Love Machine’s fake benevolence would seem to embody U.S. gleeful exploitation of Mexico’s expatriated campesinos while simultaneously introducing legislation to further marginalize them.

Screencapture: Blue Panther enters a fight to the tune of “La Puerta Negra”Unlike Karen Yamashita‘s staging of SUPERNAFTA vs. El Gran Mojado in her 1997 novel Tropic of Orange, or the masked Chicano poetry of the Rudo Revolutionary Front, MAGA-spectacles within lucha libre are not intentionally staged to politicize the public but tap into the raw political nerve of the moment. They allow fans to emotionally resolve social and political anxieties when excoriating the “bad guy,” be it an anti-social character or the symbols of the oppressor, even if only for dos de tres caidas.

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Featured image by Flickr User C-Monster, taken in Ontario, CA (2017) CC BY-NC 2.0**

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Esther Díaz Martín is an assistant professor of Latin American and Latino Studies and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. Her book, Latina Radiophonic Feminisms: Sounding Gender Politics into the Digital Age, (forthcoming UT Press, Spring 2025) theorizes Chicana feminist listening attending to the political work of Latina voices in contemporary sound media.

Rebeca Rivas is a graphic artist and doctoral student in History at the University of Texas at El Paso. Her research examines the lucha libre and community building in El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. She is currently conducting an extensive oral history and archival project documenting this spectacular sport at the border.

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Xicanacimiento, Life-giving Sonics of Critical Consciousness—Esther Díaz Martín and Kristian E. Vasquez

Ronca Realness: Voices that Sound the Sucia Body—Cloe Gentile Reyes

Echoes in Transit: Loudly Waiting at the Paso del Norte Border Region—José Manuel Flores & Dolores Inés Casillas

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In both sound studies and the sonic arts, the concept of “resonance” has increasingly played a central role in attuning listeners to the politics of sound. The term itself is borrowed from acoustics, where resonance simply refers to the transfer of energy between two neighboring objects. For example, plucking a note on one guitar string will cause the other strings to vibrate at a similar frequency. When someone or something makes a sound, everything in the immediate environs—objects, people, the room itself—will respond with sympathetic vibrations. Simply put, in acoustics, resonance describes a sonic connection between sounding objects and their environment. In the arts, the concept of resonance emphasizes the situated existence of sound as a transformative encounter between bodies in a particular time and place. Resonance has become a key term to think through how sound creates a listening community, a transitory assemblage whose reverberations may be felt beyond a single moment of encounter.

For its recent performance series, simply called Resonance, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago drew on this generative concept by bringing together four artists who explore sound as an “introspective force for greater understanding, compassion, and change.” Curated by Tara Aisha Willis and Laura Paige Kyber, the series builds on theories of resonance as an affective relationship between sounding bodies developed by writers and artists like Sonia Louis Davis, Karen Christopher, and Birgit Abels. Crucially, the curators cite composer Juliana Hodkinson’s definition of resonance as an action occurring “when the space between subject and object starts to be reduced, without them fusing into one.” Sound has the capacity for creating a moment of connection, but resonance doesn’t efface difference. As Willis notes in the series program, the artists in the series largely identify as women of color, occupying a position “where distinction and difference are most ingrained in lived experience, and where practice of creating resonance across them are most honed.”

Although the artists in the series, Anita Martine Whitehead, Samita Sinha, Laura Ortman, and 7NMS, are at least partially working within musical traditions, the curators’ framing of the series in terms of sound rather than music speaks to a broader aural turn that has animated both sonic art and scholarship. The essential conceptual move underlying the growth of sound art in the museum and sound studies in the academy is the identification of sound as a medium of expression not fully contained by the history of music. Abstracting from the realm of music to the broader terrain of sound allows these artists to reconsider the materiality of sound and practices of listening—in short, to explore the resonant relations between bodies coexisting in time and space. Yet these pieces do not search for an ahistorical sonic ontology, but instead use sound as a situated tool to forge new social realities in the present. As the artist Samita Sinha puts it, her piece “offers technologies of listening and being together.” Thinking of listening in terms of resonance, we can hear these works as technologies of communal listening.

The series kicked off with the world premiere of Anna Martine Whitehead’s FORCE! an opera in three acts. I attended the evening of March 28, the first of three scheduled performances. Each performance in the series began at 7:30pm at the MCA’s Edlis Neeson Theater. The experimental musical work is an oneiric meditation on the US carceral state centered on the experience of trio of Black femmes passing time in a prison waiting room, ruminating on their dreams, living with state violence, and the unceasing passage of time. Choreographed and co-written by Whitehead, this particular performance of FORCE began with the audience congregated outside the museum’s Edlis Neeson Theater in the transitional space of the lobby, appropriately waiting for the show to start. The opera’s first act took in this space, as a group of performers entered and sat on the grand spiral stairs of the MCA, patiently biding their time. After a few minutes, a mass of four dancers joined them, slowly making their way down the long lobby corridor towards the group on the stairs; their bodies rhythmically moved as one, limbs interlinked and breathing heavy as if burdened by an invisible weight.

The choreography of FORCE continued this motif, as weary bodies became enmeshed, leaning and relying on each other for support. When this phalanx reached the stairwell and laboriously climbed as a unit, the first song began and their voices resonated through the halls of the museum. From there, the audience members were led to the stage not through the theater’s main doors, but through the innards of the museum. Laying the institution bare, the performers led us downstairs through hallways of lockers, then backstage, before we finally took our seats on stage.

Photo: Shelby Ragsdale, from @forceanoperaThe majority of FORCE is then performed on a bare theater stage, the audience in rows encircling the singers and dancers accompanied by a small ensemble of bass, drums, and keys. Just as the audience surrounds the stage, an array of speakers arranged along the edges of the room faces inward to create a shared soundscape inhabited by both the spectators and performers. As an opera, FORCE presents less a linear narrative than a series of songs swirling with reoccurring motifs that, through their repetition, suggest the temporality of waiting. One of the most powerful of these lyrical motifs introduced early in the show is that of fungal growth, of lichens felt on the body, in the nose, and on the eyes. This bivalent image of fungus both points towards an omnipresent carceral power felt on the body, while also recognizing the strategic possibilities of rhizomatic forms. The major theme of the work is of course waiting and time itself, with the singers repeatedly asking how long they have been here—the waiting room, the prison system, the police state—and how much longer they may have yet to go.

While addressing these weighty themes, the work still makes space for the possibility of joy and alternative futures. The performance ends with the singers repeating lines about freedom in a song that never concludes. As we exited, again through the bowels of the MCA, the song reverberated from the theater into the lobby. If FORCE’s first act took place before the audience entered the space of the theater, then the third act likewise continued beyond these four walls as our temporary listening community dispersed into the streets of Chicago. Even after the show, the song did not end.

The second work in the series, Samita Sinha’s Tremor built on these themes of power, space, and sonic connections between resonating bodies. I attended the first of three performances at the MCA on the evening of April 18. Performed on a minimal stage set designed by architect Sunil Bald consisting of three dramatic red sashes suspended from the ceiling, Tremor is an hour-long piece centered on Sinha’s “unraveling” of Indian vocal traditions. Of the artists in this performance series, Sinha perhaps most explicitly explored the theme of resonance, describing her work as “the practice of attuning oneself to the raw material of vibration and its emergence in space, as well as unfolding the possibilities that arise from encounters between this sonic material and other individuals.” In Tremor, the artist is accompanied by the dancer Darrell Jones, vocalist Sunder Ganglani, and an electronic soundscape created live by Ash Fure. As in FORCE, the audience was seated on the stage around the performers, with the shared sonic environment emphasizing the coexistence of our bodies in space.

In broad strokes, Tremor demonstrates the power of sonic community in the face of entropy, presenting a pair of singers competing with a barrage of electronic sound, finding solace in each other’s voice, and ultimately emerging together after an overwhelming onslaught of noise. Accompanied by a low rumble of barely audible sound, the piece begans with the four performers entering the stage and walking in an ever-widening circle, a starting point of social dispersal. Sinha, Ganglani, and Fuhre then took their places at opposing corners of the stage, on cushions placed under the suspended sashes. Jones moved around the center of the stage in ways alternately suggesting ecstasy and pain. The vocalists tentatively began singing wordless vocalizations that tended to resolve to a single note, sometimes accompanied by Sinha’s droning ektara.

Photo: Rachel Topham Photography, on https://mcachicago.org/As the performance continued, the lights dim and Fure’s electronic sound become increasingly loud and abrasive, a heavily delayed electronic whirring alternately suggesting buzzsaws or heavy machinery. When this noise reached a sustained roaring climax, the dancer and singers moved to the center of the stage, forming a circle with their bodies. Finally, the electronic sound subsides, and the vocalists, led by Sinha, begin singing again—this time with a more supple melody, no longer abrasive vocalizations centered on a single note. This circle of bodies—the performers and we, the audience—have outlasted the assault of noise, co-existing in space, transformed and fortified by this resonant encounter.`

White Mountain Apache sound artist and musician Laura Ortman’s performance marked the release of her latest album, Smoke Rings Shimmers Endless Blur and it provocatively reframes the spatiality of resonance in temporal terms. Ortman performed twice at the MCA, and I attended the first night on April 26. White Mountain Apache sound artist and musician Laura Ortman’s performance marked the release of her latest album, Smoke Rings Shimmers Endless Blur and it provocatively reframes the spatiality of resonance in temporal terms. Where the idea of resonance largely has spatial connotations of synchronic coexistence, Ortman challenges us to think of resonance in terms of time and history through her use of looping sound. Curator Laura Paige Kyber points to this aspect of the artist’s practice, drawing on the work of writers Joseph M. Pierce and Mark Rifkin to argue against the linear time of settler history in favor of “many distinct and self-determined notions of time.” As Kyber suggests, while past histories may resonate through her work, Ortman’s vital sound-making confronts us forcefully in the present.

For her hour-long set, Ortman employed a minimal—but powerful—toolkit for her practice of “sculpting sound”: a single electrified violin run through a pedal board, occasionally supplemented by her voice, a whistle, and a small bell. Throughout the show, the violin was heavily augmented by distortion, delay, and a looping pedal run through a Fender amplifier. Ortman used the loop to build repeating layers of shoegaze-like fuzz over which she improvised on her violin, her bowing veering ecstatically between melodic phrases and rhythmic noise. For most of the performance, she was alone in front of the bare black wall of the Edlis Neeson Theater, with heavy fog machine haze dramatically lit by spotlights and two lines of fluorescent lights on the floor receding into a vanishing point at the back of the stage. She was also accompanied by two short films for the first half: footage of dramatic New Mexico landscapes shot in collaboration with Daniel Hyde and Echota Killsnight, and a video directed by Razelle Benally of Ortman performing in Prospect Park near her home in Brooklyn.

Like Ortman’s music, Benally’s film plays with time, freely shifting between slow motion and double time footage of her performance. Likewise, Ortman’s use of the loop inherently emphasized temporality; with each decaying loop, the past continues to noisily repeat in the present—yet remains with us even as it becomes harder to discern. But amidst the resonance of the past, we are confronted with the artist meeting us in the here and now. We continue to hear the past resonating with is its own distinct temporality and it becomes the basis for Ortman’s vital artistic practice in the present. At the end of her performance, the loops fade away and we are ultimately faced with the artist standing before us sculpting sound with the violin.

The final work in the series, Prophet: The Order of the Lyricist by 7NMS, a collaboration between Marjani Forté-Saunders and Everett Saunders, centered on the figure of the Emcee and the tradition of hip-hop as powerful forces in the Black radical imagination. I attended the May 9 performance. Charting the creative journey of an aspiring lyricist, the piece mixes choreography by Forté-Saunders, an extended spoken-word monologue by Saunders, and a collage of music and sound partially drawn from the Sun Ra Collection at Chicago’s Experimental Sound Studio. Putting the communal ideals of resonance into practice, the artists developed this work in collaboration with the Chicago artistic community, finding inspiration from visits to the city’s South Side Community Arts Center, Stony Island Arts Bank, and Miyagi Records.

7NMS | Everett Asis Saunders and Marjani Forté Saunders, Prophet: The Order of the Lyricist, REDCAT, September 21, 2023. Photo: Angel Origgi.The performance begins with a choreographed prelude with Forté-Saunders and dancer Marcella Lewis moving together on a bare stage. Upon Saunders’s entrance onto the stage as the titular lyricist, Forté-Saunders and Lewis largely recede, becoming silent specters, moving through, and occasionally entering the ensuing narrative. In the first section, the lyricist recounted his youth training to be an emcee, adopting an increasingly martial cadence as he described his hard work developing breath control, free-styling, and rhyme-writing skills. This artistic intensity is followed by the most powerful part of the show: a long audio montage of interviews with other lyricists, their voices emanating from speakers surrounding Saunders. As their words ping-ponged from speaker to speaker, the narrator began flinging his body across the stage, before finally collapsing in a roar of white noise and projected static. From there, the lyricist described his further spiritual and political education under the tutelage of “three kings,” wise men he met on the streets of Philadelphia. In the show’s final moments, we watched the emcee frantically writing his lyrics on the stage floor, his words projected, resonating through the auditorium.

The diversity of performances in the series speaks to the capacious power of the concept of resonance, and the continued vitality of sound as a medium of expression. Through the series, sound was employed as a situated tool of connection, convening audience and performer in a communal space without eliding difference.

In her piece, Samita Sinha draws on the thinking of Caribbean philosopher’s Éduoard Glissant’s notion of trembling. Trembling thinking “is the instinctual feeling that we must refuse all categories of fixed and imperial thought … We need trembling thinking – because the world trembles, and our sensibility, our affect trembles … even when I am fighting for my identity, I consider my identity not as the only possible identity in the world.” Airek Beauchamp suggests a similar connection between sound and trembling, writing about the potential for sonic connection between marginalized queer bodies. Beauchamp argues that strategically deployed noise “communicates in trembles, resonating in both the psyche and the actual body,” coalescing disparate identities into a powerful social form. Trembling then, like resonance, doesn’t offer a single solution to global crises—likewise these artists do not treat sound as an inherently revelatory tool of political liberation. But through resonance, understood as a technology of communal listening, the artists invite us to hope for transformative encounters, for new ways of hearing the world.

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Featured Image: Photo: Rachel Keane on https://mcachicago.org/

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Harry Burson holds a PhD in Film & Media from the University of California, Berkeley. He researches and teaches on the theory and history of sonic media, exploring the intersection of digital and aural cultures, with particular focus on immersive media, sound art, and VR. His work examines how sound technologies have shaped both our understanding of and embodied relationship to digital media. He is currently a Lecturer at the University of Illinois Chicago (hburson@uic.edu)

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This article also benefitted from the editorial review of Dahlia Bekong. Thank you!

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i begin with an acknowledgement of the myriad of organizers, scholars, artists, and teachers that have shaped and continue to shape the way that i think and write. Édouard Glissant, Christina Sharpe, Lucille Clifton, Saidiya Hartman, Fred Moten, Sylvia Wynter, Katherine McKittrick, Dionne Brand, June Jordan, and Audre Lorde. it is through their profound reflections on questions of Blackness, place, belonging, earth, and love, that i have found meaning in and context for what follows.

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in the context of the rapid rise of big tech in san francisco, california the perspective of land as perpetually exploitable is ever-present. tech-sponsored development projects are always framed by the city as being motivated by care and consideration for residents, and sometimes as being motivated by environmentalism. in reality, the displacement and destruction that results from projects like these falls primarily on poor people of color, and their homes, gardens, businesses, community spaces, and schools. similarly, large-scale development projects more often than not have devastating impacts on the land – whether it’s the land that’s being built over or the sacrifice zone elsewhere. perhaps the electric cars of san francisco are thought to represent clean energy and a healthy modern city, but the manufacturing of these cars is predicated upon extensive mining and exploitative and extractive labor outside far outside the city’s borders. and these cars drive over flattened creeks and sand dunes turned to asphalt—through gentrified neighborhoods on stolen land of the Ramaytush Ohlone, people who are still alive and fighting for sovereignty on their traditional territory, and who remain stewards of the land.

these disparities are present in the sounds of the bay area. sound, quite literally, does not exist in a vacuum. the presence of sound thus implies the presence of something outside of that sound; in every sound we hear, there is also information about the context that surrounds it. and the sounds that we do hear say something about the value of the sounds that we don’t. however, i want to argue for a soundwalking praxis that does not settle for the sounds that most easily reach the ear, as in the freeway noise or the planes passing above or the white people on the street, but that reaches beyond to listen for the negative sonic space that is always present and creating itself in the spaces between what we perceive as audible. in my understanding, this is a practice of giving life to that which capitalism/white supremacy/colonialism renders dead, a practice of centering the life that is otherwise stepped on, forgotten, discarded, silenced. listening for the ecologies of the dispossessed. for proof of life, insisting. this is a decolonial soundwalk praxis.

Allie Martin describes “decolonial soundwalk praxis” as a way of listening that disrupts and disturbs dominant western understandings of sound and space, in “Hearing Change in the Chocolate City: Soundwalking as Black Feminist Method” (2019). to me, it also involves cultivating an embodied practice of centering that life which dominant pedagogies deem less than, exploitable, and extractable. in the specific geographies of the bay area, it has meant that my primary orientation while soundwalking has been to listen for the creek that runs through the land—even when the water runs dry, even when all we can see is an intersection.

following lobos creek, this and all remaining images by the authorthe creeks i followed were mostly routed underground, culverted to run under parking lots, freeways, shopping malls, grocery stores, and other urban sites of development. the prioritizing of urban development/renewal/gentrification in the bay area over tending to the ecologies of its creeks points to the place that the land is seen to hold in so-called modern society: as a resource available to exploit as desired, as is convenient for the logistics of capitalist expansion and development. to listen in such a way, for the creek and for other forms of life forced underground and to the margins, requires methods perhaps alternative to the traditional soundwalk. we must renegotiate the categories of sound that are implied in western colonial pedagogies. we must reevaluate what constitutes a “creek sound” or a “nature sound” in the first place.

to listen for the creek when it is covered by concrete necessitates that we reach beyond thinking of a creek as something which exists in and of itself, in isolation.

∼∼∼might the sound of a creek be more than just trickling water falling through rocks? can it not be heard still in the place where it meets the ocean?∼∼∼

lobos creek soundwalk. recorded at the point where lobos creek meets the pacific ocean..

∼∼∼or in the rustling of the trees who drink from the same groundwater?∼∼∼

garden soundwalk, recorded at the head of the eggplant bed, by the marigolds, looking out at the southeast mulberry tree. strawberry creek runs alongside the garden and though it is in an underground tunnel, i like to think of it as feeding the plants..

∼∼∼couldn’t a creek be heard in a voice that speaks of it, as in a prayer, or a promise, or a song?∼∼∼

pinole creek soundwalk. a white man approaches me and talks about how sick pinole creek is, but he also says that he walks along it often.lobos creek soundwalk. Joel points out that lobos creek is visible. brushing past the foliage, i press my face against the fence that encloses it to get a look..

if we understand space as relational, as Nigel Thrift offers in “Space: The Fundamental Stuff of Human Geography” (96), then perhaps we can reach an imagining of a creek as finding its life everywhere where water is sacred, running freely through the bodies of those that know it is there.

acknowledging the body as the point of contact between the self and the environment is an important part of a decolonial soundwalk praxis. “place is involved with embodiment” Thrift says (103), and in fact, when we truly acknowledge the body, the very boundary between the body and the environment begins to dissipate, because the body itself is constantly a part of place-making processes. if sound is a dimension through which we can understand place, then, similarly, listening for the life insisting in a place is not separate from listening for the people who are in relationship with it.

in my soundwalks, i leaned into the fact that i was experiencing every place principally through my body, and as i became more comfortable recording, i gave myself more permission to allow my experience to be subjective. what i realized is that my subjectivity, my specific presence to my body’s relationship with the places i was in, was an important orientation to be able to embody a decolonial soundwalk praxis – to be able to hear the sounds that otherwise may have been neglected.

∼∼∼while walking along lobos creek trail, for example, i noticed, growing out of the sand, plants that were familiar to me, that i had relationships with. the house finches were chirping, and my footsteps were clear∼∼∼

lobos creek soundwalk, sounds of walking.

∼∼∼but the plants i recognized were not – could not be – audible to me until i spoke their names and touched their seed pods.∼∼∼

lobos creek soundwalk, identifying the wild coastal lupine that grows near the water, and noticing that it had gone to seed..

∼∼∼i pulled a few pods off a branch and holding them near the microphone i cracked them open, letting the seeds fall into my hands. i listened to the pods split down the middle and drop the seeds, and in their snapping i heard how much tension they were holding.∼∼∼

lobos creek soundwalk, cracking open the seed pods.

i felt how much strain it must be to make and carry all those seeds, how much release it must be to crack open and spill out of yourself, and i was grateful to bear witness. i held the seeds in my hand and some time later, i gave them to the creek. in allowing myself the trust to follow my body’s intuitive relationship with the given place, i found sounds that i otherwise would not have heard. ultimately, i found a depth of connection to and intimacy with a place that before listening to in this way, i was a stranger to.

the work of giving attention to the sounds that go unheard is necessarily an embodied exercise. it demands relationship and it demands entanglement. it demands crawling inside a mossy culvert to hear the creek talk.

bushy dell creek soundwalkcurious to hear how the creek sounded differently in the tunnel, i went off the trail at piedmont park to climb inside the section where the culvert begins. with the dripping, there was a nuance to its rhythm distinct from its sounds outside of the tunnel. i was able to hear, but only by coming inside and joining the creek. we sat there together, in the dark, for a while.

it also meant sawing down a 20-foot-tall agave in order to save the seeds after the 30-something-year-old plant finally bloomed—with bright yellow flowers on branches shaped like coral—and then began to dry out and lean precariously. to keep the other plants safe, and to release some pressure from the agave, we cut its stalk and from it saved its branches, seed pods, and seeds. the pods are now hanging around the garden at the Land of Disturbance and Defiance as art.

cracking of pods audible in garden soundwalki am principally interested in sound because i am interested in love, and when i imagine a decolonial soundwalk praxis, intimacy is surely at the center. this perspective offers a way of learning place from the position of a being who is co-creating it – not as a scientist but as a steward. a decolonial soundwalk praxis complicates traditional soundwalking’s aversion to the body. we cannot exist separate from the sonic space around us anymore than we can exist separately from the ecologies woven into our lives. to touch is to alter, and so the work here is to lean into the inevitability of connection, the impossibility of objectivity. a decolonial soundwalk praxis rejects the extraction of sound as data, pushing us instead to open our bodies/hearts/minds to receive the sounds of a place as the place is receiving us. how might we use sound to remove ourselves from the perspective of the observer? and what kind of responsibility to place does this open up? if we are a part of the places we are in and listening to, then surely we owe them reciprocity, love, conversation, patience; we must listen as we would a relative, a lover, or a friend.

altar at the garden, image by authori chose to record my final soundwalk at the garden on walnut and virginia street in berkeley, california, because it is a place that i know well and love dearly and i hoped to center that. the north side of the garden runs alongside strawberry creek.

rather than imposing a plan/route through the garden upon arriving, i allowed my relationship with the land to guide my movement through it. in my final mix, i layered pieces from this soundwalk together with selected excerpts from a meeting i attended with two fellow members of A.G.A.V.E., or Aspiring Gardeners Affirming Vibrant Ecologies (also Aspiring Gardeners Against Violent Extraction).in which we were trying to synthesize a manifesto using notes from previous conversations, itself a process of collective and layered creation. i chose to include portions of our conversation centered around ideas of relationship and care grounded in land, and i chose sounds from the walk that i feel hold in them intimacy and history:

∼∼∼the crows, who we feed every day and who plant seeds for us∼∼∼

garden soundwalk∼∼∼the lock, which only those who know the land can open∼∼∼

garden soundwalk∼∼∼and the marigolds, which we grow every year and which we harvest for offerings∼∼∼

garden soundwalk .

these sounds are proof of relationship. small sounds that are easy enough to forget to hear, but that are important to remember – and so i try, as i would for an invisible creek.

if a decolonial soundwalk praxis is anything, it is that love is listening, and so, my promise to invisible creeks (and all quiet[ed] sounds) everywhere is to lean a little closer,

and feel your whisper on my neck,

and to listen well,

and to take notes,

and to remember,

and to conspire.

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Featured Image: “California Pepper Tree” by Flickr user baird, CC BY-SA 2.0**

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ameia camielle smith (they/she) is an aspiring gardener, dancer, and writer based in the san francisco bay area (Ohlone land). they are of mixed Afro-Indian ancestry and are greatly shaped by the seeds/shells/lives that exist at the intersection of these diasporas. ameia’s work is anchored in cultural ecologies and Black feminist geographies, and they are most inspired by stories of survival and collaboration between people and plants.

ameia received their B.A in geography from the university of california berkeley in may 2024. they are currently traveling through the southern united states where they are exploring maroon swamp geographies, tracing the steps of Zora Neale Hurston, and listening to the swampy cicada sounds of their childhood in north-central florida.

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What is a music video, anyway? Historically dismissed by film theorists as cinematically flawed or by the public as mere promotional snippets, music videos didn’t used to get the credit they deserve as a serious artistic medium. In the 1990s, Carol Vernallis challenged both notions, suggesting that they are actually a unique genre where music and visuals aren’t just paired—they communicate deeply with each other. Since then, scholars have taken diverse approaches to try to make sense of how film theory is applicable to these delicious nuggets of musical storytelling. For example, Phoebe Macrossan argues that Beyoncé’s Lemonade is a signal example of “film worlding,” indicating how the artist uses video to create her own intimate and all-encompassing environment. Additionally, Olu Jenzen and colleagues have found that political remix videos use recombinations of existing sounds and images to make rhetorical points that can challenge mainstream media reporting in real time. According to Stan Hawkins and Tore Størvold, from the perspectives of musicology or music theory, perhaps it is the video that amplifies the song’s harmonic structure or musical form, as suggested by their analysis of Justin Timberlake’s “Man of the Woods.”

Through skillful harmonic analysis or rhetorical analysis or cataloging of film techniques, scholars and critics now take music videos seriously. Yet, across interdisciplinary research approaches to music videos, what is largely taken for granted is that the music video is an object, a work to which various theories can be applied. What if we extend these approaches further and consider the music video not just as an object of analysis to be dissected, but as a representation of a creative process that entwines sound and vision in innovative ways to connect people and forge relationships? Such an analysis is especially possible when listening to independent creators who take an active role in conceptualizing, shooting, and editing their videos. By shifting our perspective to view the music video as documenting an ongoing creative and relational journey rather than solely as an object for analysis, we open up new possibilities for understanding the deeper significance of these works. Music videos can serve not just as vehicles for artistic expression, but as catalysts for strengthening bonds, preserving cultural knowledge, and fostering a sense of pride and resilience within communities.

Still image from music video for “Revitalize” by T-Rhyme (2021)Music Video as ProcessIn 2023, I co-organized a series of performances for Native Jam Night at UC Riverside, an annual music showcase featuring Indigenous artists from California and across Turtle Island. One way my colleagues and I honed in on guest artists was by asking students to listen to several playlists and recommend the music that spoke to them. The song “Revitalize” by T-Rhyme came up as a favorite. T-Rhyme has released music that tells personal stories and responds to contemporary social realities. At times, this music responds to her lived experience as a woman with Nehiyaw and Denesuline roots.

The music video for “Revitalize” is not only a popular extension of the song’s appeal, but an audiovisual series of connections and interactions. Paying attention to it in this way shows what can emerge from one kind of nontraditional listening posture, this one inspired by my conversations with T-Rhyme and also grounded in the way I have been opening my ears to her music. I first got to know T-Rhyme in-person when I invited her and MC Eekwol to perform as part of the Show & Prove hip hop event in 2018. We stayed in touch over the next several years.

T-Rhyme in still image from music video for “Revitalize” by T-Rhyme (2021)As part of T-Rhyme’s return visit to California in 2023, we got to drive around and talk music business, have dinner with Native directors and actors as part of an Indigenous Storytelling event, go shopping, and get tacos at one of my favorite hole-in-the-wall spots. When it came time to make plans around the release for my book Sonic Sovereignty: Hip Hop, Indigeneity, and Shifting Popular Music Mainstreams, I knew it made sense to keep building on dialogues with musicians. Instead of just talking about myself, or even ideas that were already published, I wanted to keep the conversation going, continue listening, and find ways to share what I was hearing with more audiences. When I talked with T-Rhyme in the winter and spring of this year, then, it was to hear more about her creative process beyond any single project, to talk about what I was hearing and how I was listening, and to make space for that meaning making that almost approaches a musical flow that can bubble up out of a good dialogue.

RevitalizationA years-long process led up to “Revitalize,” T-Rhyme told me, and there are goals for the song that stretch beyond the moment of recording. To make the video, T-Rhyme went out to ceremonial grounds with her family and her photographer cousin Tennille Campbell’s family, spending time out with buffalo so Campbell could record. Looking back, she went through over a year and a half of her recordings of family and friends to select moments of daily life to interweave with special moments of celebration.

To convey the importance of land with viewers, the rapper worked with her brother, who shared his drone landscape footage that he recorded where he lives in northern Saskatchewan. She filmed other pieces at a powwow in Treaty Six territory in Alberta, finding inspiration from old friends she reconnected with for the occasion, as well as other Indigenous musicians and dancers she met while looking to connect there. T-Rhyme delivers the chorus and rapped verses over a beat by Doc Blaze, while collaborators in the music video mouth key words, notably “revitalize,” to her audio. Each aspect of the video was made with family or friends, and together they encompass years of work and hopes for the future.

Still image from music video for “Revitalize” by T-Rhyme (2021)From her past work, T-Rhyme recalled that shooting a music video can be stressful and involve intense time pressure. Instead, she told me, “I wanted none of those vibes to be involved with this project. I wanted the whole entire thing to be good vibes. And positive because part of our healing is through laughter and joking and being together as family.”

So, what is “revitalization” in the context of making music with family and friends? For T-Rhyme, “These are people I trust, I grew with, I evolved with, I changed with. All these people make me feel good and that I’m proud of, that I want to show off.” Paying attention to how musicians choose to tell their stories and further relationships with others is part of recognizing their sovereignty through sound. Sonic sovereignty is an active process.

The notion of “sonic sovereignty” builds from Jolene Rickard’s determination in “Diversifying Sovereignty and the Reception of Indigenous Art,” that “the idea of our art serving Indigenous communities reinforced my understanding that sovereignty is more than a legal concept”(82), and Tewa and Dine scholar-filmmaker Beverly Singer’s working through what she refers to as “cultural sovereignty,” in Wiping the War Paint off the Lens: Native American Film and Video, “which involves trusting in the older ways and adapting them to our lives in the present”(2). It’s meaningful to move into celebration together, as T-Rhyme explains: “Part of revitalization, especially when it comes to our healing as Native people, is we need to remember love. We don’t need to be in survival mode all the time.”

Intergenerational TeachingGenerations of T-Rhyme’s family stretch throughout the video for “Revitalize”. In the first verse, the musician’s mother stands in a bright red ribbon skirt at the edge of the river, near a photo frame.Then this photo of the rapper’s grandparents smiles out from the rocky shores of a river. A kid in sneakers runs nimbly over these same rocks, generations converging at the water. When T-Rhyme raps in the chorus, “raise your fists high in the air right now,” viewers see her mother raising her fist, the river greenery behind her, then proudly holding the picture of her own parents.

Still image from music video for “Revitalize” by T-Rhyme (2021)Music videos are often associated with youth culture, especially in a North American context. Yet in process and in content, this music video showcases intergenerational teaching and learning, with the involvement of elders, parents, children, and friends, connecting embodied knowledge across generations.Men and boys teaching intergenerationally feature onscreen, notably a father and son in regalia and an entrepreneur who runs Cree Coffee Company. Community leaders and scholars across Turtle Island share stories of diverse Indigenous masculinities, highlighting the kinds of teaching, leadership, and care that men, boys, and masculine people share from the present into the future. T-Rhyme reflected, “we have men out here who are trying to be warriors still, in their own way, whether they’re dancing powwow, whether they’re running their own business, and just being present fathers.”

Still image from music video for “Revitalize” by T-Rhyme (2021)T-Rhyme described that over the years, her relationship with her mother has changed. And yet, they have an ongoing push and pull between being serious and being playful together. With her mom, she says, “laughter and joking is our medicine.” She laughed as she recalled that for filming, “we’d be trying to have a serious moment and I’d say ‘okay mom, stand in the water’ and she’d say, ‘okay, like this.’ ‘Yeah, that looks good. Rest your face. You look real Kookum right now.’ Just cracking jokes at her.” T-Rhyme uses a word for grandmother to kid with her mom.

The process of writing the lyrics, too, involved reflecting on the relationship she has had with her mom across the past, present, and future. T-Rhyme raps, “My mother is sacred, she’s a survivor for real, though it’s taken her and I so many decades to heal.” This comes from what the rapper describes as a way to highlight how her mom is a “survivor and somebody that I respect and ultimately, enabled and motivated me to do my own healing too.”

Still image from music video for “Revitalize” by T-Rhyme (2021)In the context of intergenerational healing, T-Rhyme’s music video, which involves multiple generations of her family, embodies Indigenous survivance –the active transition from mere survival to resilience—in the face of historical and ongoing colonial violence. T-Rhyme brought her grandparents into the filming through their photograph, and their living memory. She explained, “Without them, I wouldn’t be here, my kids wouldn’t be here and my mom wouldn’t be here. Speaking of revitalization, they were the ones that were the front lines of maintaining our culture through a literal, cultural genocide in our communities.” Since “they really had to do their part in maintaining our culture enough to survive through residential school,” she recalls, “It was important to me to acknowledge them as survivors.”

T-Rhyme included her daughter in ‘Revitalize,” as well as in other music videos, notably the title track on “For Women By Women.” She explains, “I always want to feature her because she’s such a powerhouse.” T-Rhyme’s visual narrative brings in a photo of her daughter dancing at one of her shows, and the rapper has made music videos with her son as well.

When they were all getting stir-crazy from COVID shutdowns, T-Rhyme and her kids made the video “Trap’d,” for which the rapper helped then-12-year-old Joaquem act as videographer. Teaching her son and daughter and giving them space to make their own art, she calls her kids her “heroes,” explaining, “I just love including them where I can.”

The Story Beyond the Video Watching and listening to the work of independent artists, such as T-Rhyme, complements existing writing on music video that comments on mainstream names like Madonna and Beyoncé. Furthermore,approaching music videos as processes through which relationships are built and furthered rather than solely as objects for analysis invites other forms of listening, especially modes that acknowledge the network of people whose interactions create the sounds that vibrate audience members’ eardrums.

Still image from music video for “Revitalize” by T-Rhyme (2021)The people who click play on the finished music video make up what is traditionally understood as its audience. By witnessing relationships behind musical choices, we can recognize that there is another group, too, that the video is for: media professionals, family members, and community participants who work together to create it. Making a piece as complicated as a music video can become an occasion for all of these actors to further and strengthen relationships: filming may offer the excuse everyone needed to visit an important location together, or storyboarding brings people in the room together who hadn’t been able to find the time, or the song provides a vehicle for talking about a topic that would otherwise be repeatedly put on the shelf for another day. Listening for process in this way can encourage audience members who view the video, too, to use this communally crafted artistic labor as an invitation for connection.

“Revitalize” particularly serves as an example of how making a music video can involve collaboration with family and friends over an extended period, encompassing years of documentation and strengthening relationships. In addition to sharing a past and inspiring interaction for the making of the video, the song carries hopes for a future. As T-Rhyme says, “I want “Revitalize” to be a catalyst for healing and pride.” Paying attention to how musicians tell their stories and build relationships through music videos is part of recognizing their sovereignty and cultural continuity through sound and visuals.

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Featured Image: Still from music video for “Revitalize” by T-Rhyme (2021)

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Dr. Liz Przybylski (pronunciation) is an ethnomusicologist and pop music scholar working in hip hop and electronic music in the US and Canada. Dr. Przybylski is an Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of California, Riverside. A graduate of Bard College (BA) and Northwestern University (MA, PhD), Liz’s research appears in Ethnomusicology, Journal of Borderlands Studies, and IASPM Journal, among others. Dr. Przybylski has presented research nationally and internationally, including at the Society for Ethnomusicology, Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, Feminist Theory and Music, International Association for the Study of Popular Music, and International Council for Traditional Music World Conferences. Recent and forthcoming publications analyze how the sampling of heritage music in Indigenous hip hop contributes to dialogues about cultural change in urban areas. Dr. Przybylski has also published on popular music pedagogy. Liz was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship and a Fulbright Fellowship. Liz’s most recent book Sonic Sovereignty: Hip Hop, Indigeneity, and Shifting Popular Music Mainstreams was published in July 2023 (NYU Press). This follows Liz’s first book, Hybrid Ethnography: Online, Offline, and In Between (SAGE Publications, 2020) which develops an innovative model of hybrid on- and off-line ethnography for the analysis of expressive culture. In addition to university teaching, Liz has taught adult and pre-college learners at the American Indian Center in Chicago and the Concordia Language Villages program of Concordia College in Bemidji. On the radio, Liz hosted the world music show “Continental Drift” on WNUR in Chicago and has conducted interviews with musicians for programs including “At The Edge of Canada: Indigenous Research” on CJUM in Winnipeg. Dr. Przybylski served as the Media Reviews Editor for the journal American Music, the President of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Southern California and Hawaii Chapter, and on the Society for Ethnomusicology Council.

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The “Tribal Drum” of Radio: Gathering Together the Archive of American Indian Radio–Josh Garrett Davis

Sonic Connections: Listening for Indigenous Landscapes in Kent Mackenzie’s The Exiles–Laura Sachiko Fugikawa

Unsettling the World Soundscape Project: Soundscapes of Canada and the Politics of Self-Recognition–Mitchell Akiyama

Becoming Sound: Tubitsinakukuru from Mt. Scott to Standing Rock–Dustin Tahmahkera

EPISODE 60: Standing Rock, Protest, Sound and Power–Marcella Ernest

A Tribe Called Red Remixes Sonic Stereotypes–Christina Giancona

I’m on my New York st”: Jean Grae’s Sonic Claims on the City––Liana Silva**

How not to listen to Lemonade: music criticism and epistemic violence–Robin James

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“So I have heard The Hum… The rest of what I’m about to tell you is beyond reasoning, and understanding.” Here, in a Reddit post, Michael A. Sweeney prefaces their story of their first encounter with “the hum,” an unexplained phenomenon heard by only a small percentage of listeners around the world. The hum is an ominous sonic event that impacts communities from Australia to India, Scotland to the United States. And as Geoff Leventhall writes in “Low Frequency Noise: What We Know, What We Do Not Know, and What We Would Like to Know,” the hum causes “considerable problems” for people across the globe—such as nausea, headaches, fatigue, and muscle pain—as it continues to be an unsolved “acoustic mystery” (94).

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Sweeney’s story of encountering the hum for the first time is remarkable. It begins in Taft, California, which Sweeney recounts as “a podunk little desert bowl town in the middle of nowhere. You can literally drive from one end to the other in under 10min, under 5 if you was speeding.” On this particular night, while walking down the main road of Taft, they report the scene being charged with electricity, and following this charge, hearing a moving sound, a traveling yet invisible sound. “This invisible thing was creating a noise like I had never heard before and sending a wave of static electricity throughout the air in every direction around it,” Sweeney explains. They try to track it down, but to no avail. After following the hum a few blocks and around a couple of corners, it just simply vanishes. As Kristin Gallerneaux aptly claims in her book High Static, Dead Lines: Sonic Spectres and the Object Hereafter, “the Hum’s oppression seems to come from everywhere and nowhere” (196), and this is especially true in Sweeney’s encounter.

“Spectrogram of Papuan Malay Sentence De Bicara Keras” by WikiMedia User Emflazie CC0 1.0 DEEDWhile their account of the hum as electrically-charged is exceptional, Sweeney’s story adequately represents both the anomalistic qualities of the hum and its ability to elude a locatable and identifiable source. They attempt to describe the hum during this encounter as “like an invisible traveling vehicle of some sort,” but that, altogether, they are “not really sure” what it is. And they even admit that this explanation “makes no sense… whatsoever.” This difficulty in describing the phenomenon is reaffirmed not only by the stories told by other listeners but, too, the numerous scientific experiments that have been conducted after the hum’s frequent emergence beginning around the 1970s (Deming “The Hum: An Anomalous Sound Heard Around the World” 583).

“Praat-Spectrogram-Tatata” by WikiMedia User Maksim CC BY-SA 3.0 DEEDIn the US, two major studies have been conducted on the hum: The first in Taos, New Mexico, and the second in Kokomo, Indiana (Cowan “The Results of Hum Studies in the United States”; Mullins and Kelly “The Mystery of the Taos Hum”). Collectively, nearly three hundred residents in these communities have reported hearing a mysterious hum that exists without a known source. While it may sound like an idling diesel truck engine (Frosch “Manifestations of a Low-Frequency Sound of Unknown Origin Perceived Worldwide, Also known as ‘The Hum’ or the ‘Taos Hum’” 60), a dentist’s drill (Deming 575), “someone’s high-powered audio bass running amok” (Mullins and Kelly “The Elusive Hum in Taos, New Mexico”), or simply just an “invisible force”—as Sweeney claims—it may be none of the above. Musicologist Jorg Muhlhans asserts that “there is no clear evidence for either an acoustic or electromagnetic origin, nor is there an attribution to some form of tinnitus” (“Low Frequency and Infrasound: A Critical Review of the Myths, Misbeliefs and Their Relevance to Music Perception Research” 272). Thus, according to Muhlhans, these studies reveal that while hum’s sensorial impact is that of sound, the phenomenon itself is likely neither acoustic nor electromagnetic.

“Spectrogram -Minato-” by WikiMedia User Ish Ishwar CC BY 2.0 DEEDBeyond the limits of current scientific logics which attempt to make sense of sonic events and their impacts, the hum exists as an exceptional and unknown anomaly. It transcends the valuative limits of current knowledge in acoustics and ways of understanding how sound moves through, across, and within spaces to address potential listeners. “I’m not saying I saw waves of electricity or anything of the sort,” Sweeney adds to their above description of the hum as a sound “charged with electricity.” “It was more of a feeling than something you saw. I could just feel electricity everywhere, and see little tendrils of it from my fingertips as I ran them across each other… I just KNEW it was coming from whatever was making that sound, this invisible force that was traveling down the road.” In such an account, the hum defies scientific explanation, and this fact is supported by the multiple failed investigations into the phenomenon. As Franz Frosch details in their article “Hum and Otoacoustic Emissions May Arise Out of the Same Mechanisms,” some scientists have built multiple “custom shielded chamber[s]” out of copper and magnetic material to test for a potential acoustic or electromagnetic source of the hum (604). These investigations, time after time, can’t provide an answer—leaving it up to listeners of the hum to form their own.

“Spectrogram-Buy” by WikiMedia User COMDJ PUBLIC DOMAINSweeney’s story—and the endless other stories of the hum that have been told across the world—depict the lived, affective, and rhetorical experience of anomalistic listening. To hear, to listen with the hum, is to experience the affective dimensions of a “sound” that has no apparent acoustic or electromagnetic source. This is because “sonic knowledge is framed through acoustics and experience” (84), as Mark Peter Wright notes in his book Listening After Nature: Field Recording, Ecology, and Critical Practice. So, to listen with the hum is to occupy a state of affection that is altogether unknown to not only science but the listener themself. Sweeney bluntly continues, writing about their experience of the hum, saying, “I only know exactly what I’ve told you today.” To know this sound, for this sound to exist as truth, this unfolds through stories found in the still-to-be-explained.

“Spektrogram Liten” By WikiMedia User Nikke_T PUBLIC DOMAINI consider “after sound” to characterize this felt condition for rhetorical action that is a result of listening beyond or after acoustic valuations. Instead of this being a moment void of sound, “after sound” defines a state of experience that is complicated by an attempt to control the valuative limits of what is and isn’t sonic. In this way, “after sound” only gestures toward the temporal to develop the different emergence of the sensorial. Because the hum affects in a manner similar to sound but without acoustic or electromagnetic origin, people who hear the hum make sense of this relentless experience through a condition that is after sound. Such a claim is represented in Sweeney’s admission that “[they] just have this weird feeling that this story needs to be told. That there’s more to The Hum than anyone has realized, and that maybe it needs to be further studied and looked into” (added emphasis). This felt, “weird feeling” is initiated after sound, and this is what I am considering as the call for rhetorical action. Such an affective, felt, and lived experience may only exist after the “logical” answers, failed scientific studies, and experiments lacking helpful results become determinative of sonic limits.

“Abschaltung Sender Muehlacker” by WediaMedia User Zonk43 CC BY-SA 3.0 DEEDFurther, “after sound” moves from Marie Thompson’s discussion of “source-oriented” noise (30) that she posits in her book Beyond Unwanted Sound: Noise, Affect, and Aesthetic Moralism. Speaking to the phenomenon of the hum, Thompson explains that an “unidentifiable noise is often amplified in perception, grasping the attention of the listener” (29). “After sound” is an hyper-attuned condition wherein the rhetorical actions of listeners are always attentive to what-may-(not)-be acoustics. It is their presence within utter sonic mystery that fuels the potential for persuasive response. And David Deming, a researcher in Geosciences, articulates in his article “The Hum: An Anomalous Sound Heard Around the World” that “in the absence of an answer provided by science, Hum hearers tend to find an explanation and hang on to it” (579), which illustrates the potential for listeners to respond via story within the conditions foregrounded by anomalistic encounters. “After sound” describes a moment of malleability that opens up in soundtime for different negotiations of sense and affect.

“Spectrogram -Iua-” By WikiMedia User Java13690-commonswiki CC BY 2.0 DEEDResponding to the conditions of listening with story, like Sweeney does, reflects an intention to share and persuade through an expression of sonic experience. As Katherine McKittrick states in her book Dear Science and Other Stories, “story opens the door to curiosity; the reams of evidence dissipate as we tell the world differently, with creative precision” (7). And V. Jo Hsu, speaking to the rhetorical potential of story, elucidates in their book Constellating Home: Trans and Queer Asian American Rhetorics that “story can slow down, hold still, redefine, and/or reimagine our physical movements to renegotiate their shared meanings” (18). How I’m conceiving of storytelling after sound develops from the insights developed by these authors and other scholars exploring the rhetorical potential of story in cultural rhetorics.

“Spectrogram of I Owe You” By WikiMedia User Jonas.kluk PUBLIC DOMAINStory, in the domain of sound, enables listeners to reconsider how, when, why, and where the sonic is defined and valued. While it must not be the sole rhetorical technology after sound, Sweeney clearly relies on storytelling to make sense of their encounter with the hum. This story and other stories told about the hum illustrate how listeners practice the negotiation of sound’s meaning by collectively exploring ways of investigating and experimenting with(in) phenomena. Telling stories after sound is to reach across and through a community of listeners to find shared truths that come to be through encounters with hearing. Altogether, rhetoric after sound queries the intersection of perception and intelligibility to jostle forward the meaning of listening. At a moment when the world is at a loss for answers, this is a practice of seizing opportunities for hopeful and imaginative intervention into the valuative limits of the sonic.

“Spektrogram – Jag Skulle Vilja” By WikiMedia User Caesar PUBLIC DOMAIN“I’ll end it here,” Sweeney begins in their last paragraph, “and I can assure you that everything I have told you is the absolute truth. It happened to me and not a friend of a friend. I was awake, I’m not making any of it up, and all I want are REAL answers.” Sweeney’s call for a resolution was posted 10 months ago, in May 2023. And still today, the hum continues to lack answers, and the unsolved mystery continues to impact listeners. More recently, Popular Mechanics reported in a November 2023 article, titled “A Ghostly Nighttime Hum Is Invading Random Towns. Scientists Don’t Know What It Means,” that the hum has reached Omagh in Northern Ireland and that citizens are “trapped inside [of a mystery].” So far, no matter the amount of media coverage nor number of affected people across the world, encounters are ultimately defined by sounds unknown. After sound—when communities of listeners are left behind by these valuative limits—rhetorical action persists in search of an explanation.

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Featured Image: Spiral by Flickr User Richard CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED

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Trent Wintermeier is a second-year PhD student in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Texas at Austin. He’s a Graduate Research Assistant for the AVAnnotate project, where he helps make audiovisual material more discoverable and accessible. Next year, he will be an Assistant Director for the Digital Writing & Research Lab. His research interests broadly include sound, digital rhetorics, and community. Currently, he’s interested in how researchers can responsibly engage with communities impacted by sound and the local rhetorical ecologies which materialize under sonic conditions.

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REWIND!…If you liked this post, you may also dig:

Becoming a Bad Listener: Labyrinthitis, Vertigo, and “Passing”–Aaron Trammell

Live Through This: Sonic Affect, Queerness, and the Trembling Body–Airek Beauchamp

Listening to Tinnitus: Roles of Media When Hearing Breaks Down—Mack Hagood

My Time in the Bush of Drones: or, 24 Hours at Basilica Hudson–Robert Cashin Ryan

Echoes of the Latent Present: Listening to Lags, Delays, and Other Temporal Disjunctions–Matthew Tompkinson

Re-orienting Sound Studies’ Aural Fixation: Christine Sun Kim’s “Subjective Loudness”–Sarah Mayberry Scott

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Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

–Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five

On an almost visceral level, we may likewise remark that states of “latency” involve downward movement, as in the case of something falling by the wayside and lying unnoticed until its presence is felt.

— Hans Gumbrecht, After 1945: Latency as Origin of the Present

Sometime last year, during a recent deep clean of the apartment, I pulled out a wooden chest that my father built for me when I was ten, a pine-scented time capsule of that period of my life, full of assorted construction-paper projects and faded movie tickets. Buried underneath all this loose paper, set apart by a shiny laminated cover, is the first “novel” I ever wrote, our final project in fourth grade, which was really just a few typed pages folded and stapled together, held between a cardstock cover. In this book, I write about a mall janitor with magic powers, who uses his mop handle to transform villains into piles of fabric, and who time travels throughout history by way of a magic corvette (clearly, I had just seen a certain Robert Zemeckis film).

Having rediscovered this story, I am struck by the realization that my writerly voice has hardly changed. I am still drawn to the same hokey surrealism, the same comic book sensibilities, the same spirit of hand-stapled publishing projects. This is to say: I could not help but to identify in this proto-novel traces of my work to come, early impulses that echo throughout my present practice. As Lisa Robertson puts it in an interview: “Defunct forms resurface after years of latency. New work speaks with old work, as well as with the future.”

“Latency” by Flickr User Frances, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEEDThis work speaks to a recurrent theme in my life: namely, my pervasive sense of feeling out-of-sync with the world, or as Vonnegut puts it, “unstuck in time.” In this essay, I want to think about latency—essentially, the time it takes for data to transfer between two points—as a poignant extended metaphor for the temporal disjunctures of the present moment. Indeed, the frantic mantra of “being present,” as popularized among Western spiritualists by Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now (1997), is a kind of antiphrasis, a phrase which evokes precisely the opposite thought. In this case, the power of now simultaneously diagnoses the perils of asynchronicity. And yet, perhaps there are some counterintuitive reasons why latency might be politically productive at times, as I will discuss in the sections that follow.

Fittingly, the concept of “echoic memory” suggests that the brain acts as a kind of temporary holding tank for sounds, not unlike an old wooden chest full of memorabilia. The difference, in this case, is that echoic memory is a short-term storage system. One example of this memory structure at work is when someone asks “What did you say?” only to answer their own question after a half-second, since they are somehow able to retrieve this latent information, one might say unconsciously, from the holding tank.

As a sound artist, I am interested in multiple facets of latency, from its aesthetics to its politics, and especially its psychoacoustics, the way that sound acts tangibly upon bodies and minds. This post will examine how audio latency encapsulates the paradoxical tension between the desire for sonic immanence—in the sense of longing for an immediate experience—and the frustrations of technology, its delays and disruptions. A prime example of this tension is that you and I could be seated right beside each other and still experience a laggy phone call. The paradoxical element starts to emerge when one tries to achieve zero latency, since any signal must travel through space and time, just like Achilles and the tortoise, and thus subject itself to delay.

(Latency Commercial)Latency, as such, is a shifty concept. By one definition, it refers to any length of interval between impulse and response, including the time it takes to respond to a handwritten letter, or, in my case, the rediscovery of an old book after twenty-something years. By another definition, latency refers to all manner of system delays, including the quality of a network connection, the time it takes for data to transfer between two points. The term might also be familiar from biology or psychology, where it refers to anything hidden or dormant that has not yet manifested, like a disease or an unconscious desire. Another context in which the term frequently shows up is laboratory studies, measuring the delay between some kind of sensory stimulus and reaction, such as a honeybee’s conditioned response to a scent. Lastly, and most importantly for the purposes of this discussion, “audio latency” refers to a very short period of delay that causes sound to lag behind imagery, or, ultimately, behind itself.

(Latency Test)The latency test video above provides a helpful listening exercise. Though such small intervals of time, measured in milliseconds, are hard to conceptualize in the abstract, they are jarringly comprehensible as sound. With just five milliseconds of latency, a chorus effect is applied to the experimenter’s finger snap, which now sounds as though it has been placed inside a drainpipe. At ten milliseconds of latency, one can already hear two distinct transients, otherwise known as amplitude spikes, where the sound of the snap abruptly begins. By fifty milliseconds, a more dramatic delay effect emerges, and it sounds as though the finger snap is being pulled apart. This bifurcation process culminates at three hundred milliseconds, when the concept of “latency” begins to overlap with that of “delay,” such that there are now two distinct snaps.

(Network Audio Latency)Latency, then, can be both a problem and an intentional effect. If you have ever tried to record an acoustic guitar, or a vocal track, on an outdated computer, you may have encountered this phenomenon in the form of a technological issue. Everything is plugged in and ready to go, the active track in your audio workstation is armed, headphone monitoring is turned on, and you begin to strum or sing. To your dismay, the sound you hear from the computer starts to fall behind the sounds you are making in the real world. Not only does the recording sound off, and out of time, but it becomes physically impossible to play an instrument when your fingers and ears are thrown out of alignment, like attempting to ride the backwards brain bicycle.

(Guitar Latency)Diagnosing and solving latency issues is another game entirely: lowering the buffer size, enabling delay compensation, or simply going rogue and recording without monitoring playback, with the hope of nudging the recording back into alignment after the fact. In a home studio, sometimes a full half of the day’s recording session will get swallowed up by these technological battles, trying to shrink latency down to smaller and smaller increments. Given the sheer number of YouTube tutorials dedicated to reducing latency, it is clear how pervasive this issue is for musicians and audio engineers.

(Singing)As Mitch Gallagher suggests in the video above, some singers can detect latency as short as three milliseconds, which can significantly throw off their performance. If you have ever been in a Zoom call where you can hear yourself through the other person’s speaker, this feeling will be all too familiar. This is not unlike a less aggressive form of speech jamming, which refers to a kind of crowd-control tactic employed by the military in order to break someone’s concentration using delayed audio. Known as “acoustic hailing and disruption” (AHAD), this process makes it very difficult to speak consistently, because a live recording of one’s voice is beamed instantaneously back at the speaker with a certain length of delay, in milliseconds, as demonstrated in a 1974 piece by Richard Serra and Nancy Holt, called Boomerang. As with the backwards brain bicycle, but perhaps far less benign, latency can take the form of weaponized confusion. The same principle, however, is used for positive ends in the case of Delayed Auditory Feedback (DAF) devices which people who stutter use as an assistive technology.

Being out of sync with the present moment, in other words, can be both disorienting and orienting. Latency can mean one thing for a musician trying to lay down a vocal track, but something else entirely for a political protestor attempting to address a crowd, or someone consciously manipulating their own speech patterns.

As a form of sonic violence, weaponized latency has an ancient Greek precedent in the myth of Echo, a nymph who is cursed with repeating the last words spoken to her, such that she can no longer express herself. This archetypal figure, both gendered and pathologized, embodies a form of perpetual exclusion from discourse. Speaking to this subject, Katie Kadue underlines a pertinent quote in literary critic Barbara Johnson’s essay, “Muteness Envy”: Feminist criticism has been pointing this out for at least thirty years. But why is female muteness a repository of aesthetic value? And what does that muteness signify?” At the same time as Echo’s curse represents a metaphorical silencing, it also signifies something else in its insistence on rhetorical conformity, denying and dislocating her from the present of her own thoughts—a “living death,” in the words of Rebecca Solnit.

“Still Time” by Flickr User Eneas De Troya CC BY 2.0 DEEDIf patriarchy loves the sound of its own voice, then capitalism loves the beat of its own drum, which speeds up or slows down depending on competing urgencies. Ultimately, this manufactured present moves much faster than the embodied present, moving at such a rate that one cannot even decipher the words that one is meant to repeat.

To operate outside of this temporal structure then, is to move and make sound at a tempo that does not match the dominant rhythms of hypercapitalism. To this end, Fred Moten quotes the following passage from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952): “Invisibility, let me explain, gives one a slightly different sense of time, you’re never quite on the beat. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes behind.” Moten calls this “improvisational immanence,” characterized by “disruptive surprise.” Bringing these concepts together, Fiamma Montezemolo’s Echo (2014) is a work of video art that “disrupts and dissents from the ways that race and gender are produced and experienced through sound and listening,” to quote Lois Klassen and Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda. It does so by assembling an archive of earlier artworks in which women share their personal testimonies of discrimination and inequality, along with hopes for the future. Through this archive, Montezemolo helps these voices to reverberate, latently, in the present. With this in mind, one begins to hear how latency can function both as a barrier, as well as a boon, to expressivity. Especially in those cases where the original sound might have gone unheard, or was actively obstructed, there is always the possibility of a disruptive re-sounding.

In practice, audio latency can often feel like a curse, and it is difficult to see the upsides. In the recording studio, it can turn even the most fluid riff into a halting mess, interrupting creative flow with high-tech tedium. As Rebekah Wilson points out in her study of networked music performances, these technological failures have “aesthetic implications” beyond a mere computer glitch, insofar as rhythmic music is much harder to coordinate over long distances; more than anything, latency “affects time keeping and human-level rhythms” (Wilson 2020).

“MY Brain Waves” by Flickr User Cindy, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEEDMust audio latency always be met with resistance, however? No doubt, such glitches could be treated as opportunities for creative misuse. What might happen, for example, were someone to treat these rhythmic glitches as an intentional musical element or a compositional technique reminiscent of a musical canon? As discussed in a previous post, Eleni Ikoniadou presents such thought experiments in The Rhythmic Event (2014), where the author asks what alternative modes of expression might arise when we are able to “twist chronology and rethink the latent tendencies of the event, outside the tyranny of the ticking clock” (68). Latency takes us off the grid and into the abstract, unquantized space of the timeline, where notes are free-floating, and other temporalities become possible, as in Ellison’s description of the jazz musician who plays behind or ahead of the beat, while still remaining “in time,” moving within a loose present that is spacious enough for jazz artists to name it “the pocket.”

(Latency Sucks)Pondering the relationship of “latency” to the present moment, I am reminded of Boris Groys’ definition of the contemporary: “To be con-temporary does not necessarily mean to be present, to be here-and-now; it means to be ‘with time’ rather than ‘in time.’” For the percussionist whose dexterity has been scrambled by latency issues, to be a “comrade of time,” in the words of Groys, would mean “collaborating with time, helping time when it has problems, when it has difficulties.” This is a counterintuitive approach, however, which does not call for latency to be fixed, necessarily, but rather to be adopted as a political and aesthetic strategy.

The laggy outbursts of latency belong to the anti-capitalist “ritual of wasting time,” in resistance to “contemporary product-oriented civilization,” which would have us chase ultra-low latency for the sake of faster sports betting and stock trading. This ritualistic rejection of capitalist time resonates with Kemi Adeyemi’s description of “strategic pattern interruptions,” in a previous article, where the author shows how “lean” (a narcotic drink consumed by some rappers) is absorbed into the slowed-down aesthetics of their music, in objection to “the demands the neoliberal state places on the black body.” In this way, Adeyemi underscores the racial politics of latencies, particularly in the way that the “dissociative pleasures controlled substances offer to black people have been historically criminalized, and radically different sentencing guidelines continue to be handed down,” depending on the drug.

Where the cocaine-fuelled algorithmic traders of Wall Street chase a asymptotic present in their attempt to reach zero latency (transfers are now measured in picoseconds), contemporary sound artists might explore more audaciously the latent present, wherein one moment, one sound, is always imbricated in the next. To quote Groys once more: “we are familiar with the critique of presence, especially as formulated by Jacques Derrida, who has shown—convincingly enough—that the present is originally corrupted by past and future, that there is always absence at the heart of presence.”

“Slow Dance” by Flickr User Sam Wild, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEEDSuch absent presences are reflected in one of the secondary definitions of latency (as concealment). For instance, Alan Licht references Alvin Lucier’s famous sound art piece, I Am Sitting in a Room, as an example of a room’s latent resonant frequencies, which are amplified via a feedback loop. Aptly, room tone is also referred to as “presence” in the film industry. Lucier’s piece resonates with Groys’ model for the prototypical time-based artist: Sisyphus. Like the happy boulder-roller, Lucier commits to a process of absurd repetition, and reveals the present to be, in Groys’ words, “a site of the permanent rewriting of both past and future.” In the case of Serres and Holt’s experiment in Boomerang, this rewriting is also an overwriting of thought, with latency preventing the speaker from formulating her next sentence. As if to evoke the dislocation of a time traveler, at one point Holt says, “I am not where I am.” With the undercurrent of cruelty running throughout this performance piece, the artists demonstrate the disembodying effects of latency and its potency as a metaphor for systemic threats to women’s self-expression.

“Waiting” by Flickr User Alexander Svensson, CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED
Groys also mentions Francis Alÿs’ animated film, Song For Lupita (1998) in which a woman pours water back and forth between two glasses, in a gesture of anti-capitalist counterproductivity. Here, it is worth noting the discrepancy in attitudes between the tragic male heroism of Sisyphus and the cursed mimicry of Echo, whereby one is celebrated for his resistance in the face of futility, whereas the other is not often mythologized in the same way, though women working in contemporary sound art have begun to redress this representational imbalance by mobilizing the concept of subversive difference. The Alÿs animation linked above takes a similar but slightly different approach, of subversive indifference, where pointless repetition pushes back against capitalism’s intolerance of delay (unless it serves the status quo, e.g., climate inaction). Underscored by lyrics which repeat the phrase “mañana, mañana,” the score reflects this theme of deferral while also indicating that actions taken (or not taken) today might have a delayed effect tomorrow.

(Phone Latency)As I work through the second draft of this essay, I can hear the boomerang of latency returning to me, offering another chance to rethink, reformulate, reword, and re-listen. Much like how latency has the potential to alienate performers from the flow of a recording session, it can often feel to me as though I am permanently trailing behind the sonic present, caught in its slipstream, an exasperated Achilles chasing after the tortoise of time. As I type these words, I can just barely sense the time it takes the letters to leave my fingers through the keyboard and appear on screen. I think about the illusion of instantaneity, and how the typewriter was a constant reminder of this delay between the exciter of the key and the resonator of the page. Suddenly I can hear the letters smacking the screen. I feel anxiously attuned to the basic math of my estrangement, knowing that sound travels at just over a thousand feet per second.

“Cords” by Susan Sermoneta, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEEDAs a matter of fact, this means that my sonic present and yours are subject to a proximity effect, depending on who is closer to the megaphone. Sometimes it can feel like one is always trying to make sense of a belated reality. And yet, old books are often showing up just when they are needed most, and it is in this way that “intense collective potentials hover as forms in the present,” in the words of Lisa Robertson. The poet reminds us that not only is every historical moment charged with the latent potential to act, but that such political actions are latent in language, surviving as poems and essays “across long durations,” ready to reach someone in a new instant.

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Featured Image: “Minema Maxima” by Laurence Chan (2015) CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED

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Matthew Tomkinson is a writer, composer, and postdoctoral research fellow based in Vancouver. He holds a PhD in Theatre Studies from the University of British Columbia, where he studied sound within the Deaf, Disability, and Mad arts. His current book project, Sound and Sense in Contemporary Theatre: Mad Auralities (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), examines auditory simulations of mental health differences. As a composer and sound designer, he has presented his work widely throughout the US, Canada, Germany, Austria, Ireland, Portugal, Bosnia, Kosovo, and the UK, collaborating with companies such as Ballet BC, Company 605, Magazinist, and the All Bodies Dance Project. Matthew lives on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the qʼʷa:n̓ƛʼən̓ (Kwantlen), q̓ic̓əy̓ (Katzie), SEMYOME (Semiahmoo), and sc̓əwaθən məsteyəx (Tsawwassen) Nations.

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“Playback of this birds[sic] song is restricted.” I am not a board games person, yet I always seem to find myself surrounded by them. Such was the case one August evening in 2023, during a round of the bird-watching-inspired game, Wingspan. Released in 2019 by Stonemaier Games, designer Elizabeth Hargrave’s creation is credited with a dramatic shift in the board game industry. The game received an unparalleled number of awards, including the prestigious 2019 Kennerspiel des Jahres (Connoisseur Game of the Year), and an unheard of seven categories of the Golden Geek Awards, including Best Board Game of the Year and Best Family Board Game of the Year. In addition to causing shifts in typical board game topic, artistry, and demographic, Wingspan has led many board game fans to engage with the natural world in new ways, even inspiring many to become avid birders.

Following the game’s rise to popularity, developer Marcus Nerger released an app, Wingsong which allows players to scan each of the beautifully illustrated cards and play a recording of the associated bird’s song. On the evening in question, the unexpected occurred when I scanned the Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis) card and received a message that read:

Playback of this birds[sic] song is restricted.

Of course, I had to know more. Although the board game was originally designed using information from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s eBird.org website, Wingsong derives its recordings from another free database, xeno-canto.org. A quick search of the website revealed the following statement:

Some species are under extreme pressure due to trapping or harassment. The open availability of high-quality recordings of these species can make the problems even worse. For this reason, streaming and downloading of these recordings is disabled. Recordists are still free to share them on xeno-canto, but they will have to approve access to these recordings.

Though Xeno-Canto does not give specific details about each recording, the Wingspan card offers a clue in italics at the bottom: “Habitat for these birds was a topic in logging fights in the Pacific Northwest region of the US.”

The unexpected incursion of such politics into a board game is startling, especially given the limited information in the initial message. As such, the restriction of Spotted Owl recordings on Xeno Canto, and by extension Wingsong, suggests complicated issues relating to the ownership and distribution of sound, censorship, and conservation.

Spotted Owl RecordingsThe status of the Spotted Owl was a major issue of public debate in Oregon of the 1980s and 90s, where I grew up. As Dr. Rocky Gutiérrez, the “godfather” of Spotted Owl research, wrote in an article for The Journal of Raptor Research, “Conservation conflicts are always between people – not between people and animals” (2020, 338). In this case, concerns about the impacts of logging in old-growth forests, thought to be the primary habitat of the Spotted Owl, pitted loggers and the timber industry against conservationists. On both sides, national entities like the Sierra Club and the Western Timber Association helped turn a regional management issue into one with implications for forest protection, wildlife conservation, and economic development across the nation. Forty years later, it is still a hot button issue for scientists, industry, and the government, now with added complications of fire control, climate change, and competing species like the Barred Owl (Strix varia).

Xeno-Canto uses a Creative Commons license, meaning that users can access and apply to a wide variety of projects without explicit permission of the recordist, but it also offers tools for contacting other users. I wrote to two recordists who uploaded Spotted Owl calls to Xeno Canto: Lance Benner and Richard Webster, both recording in southern areas where the Spotted Owl’s conservation status is slightly less dire than in Oregon. Benner is a scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, whose recordings have been used in scientific research projects, at nature centers, in phone apps, and notably, in a Canadian TV show. Benner told me via email that he agrees with Xeno-Canto’s restriction on the Spotted Owl recordings to the public, writing

I used to play spotted owl recordings when leading owl trips but I don’t any more now that the birds have been classified as “sensitive.” There have also been multiple attempts to add the California Spotted Owls to the endangered species list, so if I find them, I’m not sharing the information the way I used to….

Webster, on the other hand, offered a slightly different perspective:

There are enough recordings in the public domain that restricting XC’s recordings probably will not make a difference. However, some populations of Spotted Owl are threatened, and abuse is quite possible…

As Webster points out, numerous recordings of Spotted Owls are readily available, including via The Cornell Lab of Ornitology’s Voices of North American Owls and other audio field guides. The concern with such recordings, Gutiérrez told me over Zoom, is that anti-Spotted Owl activists might use the recordings to “call in” Spotted Owls – essentially a form of audio catfishing historically used in activities like duck hunting. In the case of Spotted Owls, the concern is that activists might deliberately harm the birds. However, it can also be a dangerous practice when used by birders who simply want to get a closer look: birds may abandon their nests, leaving chicks vulnerable and unprotected.

From a sound studies perspective, “calling in” underscores questions of avian personhood. Rachel Mundy contends that audio field guides are structured by people in ways that highlight animal musicianship. Yet when we consider the practice of “calling in,” it becomes clear that birdsong recordings are not only designed for human ears, but also avian ones.

Spotted Owl Spotted in Medford, OR by the Bureau of Land Management, CC BY 2.0 DEEDNonetheless, while birds are considered intelligent enough to recognize a call from their own species, they are not believed to be able to identify the difference between a recording and a live performance. The bird’s sensorium is short-circuited by the audio recording, tricking it into thinking a mate is nearby. Not only does this recall the interspecies history of the RCA Victor label His Master’s Voice, it highlights distinctly human anxieties about the role of recording and its ability to dissimulate. Restricting access to such recordings, then, revives deep-seated ethical questions that require a nuanced application.

Whether or not Spotted Owls are able to differentiate between a recorded call or the call of a live mate it is likely to be of decreasing concern, however: Gutiérrez suggests that Northern Spotted Owl populations are so small that anyone attempting to call one in would be unlikely to actually find one.

Immersion, Conservation, ReflectionApp developer Marcus Nerger conceptualizes Wingsong as part of an immersive augmented reality experience, one that situates the game player in a more realistic soundworld. In the world of board games, parallels might be drawn to audio playlists used in tabletop role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, or to the immersive soundscape design used in video games.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Wingsong (@songsofwingspan)

Via Zoom, Nerger and I discussed the importance of sound in bird identification, which is arguably more significant than vision given birds’ general fearfulness of humans, branch cover, and the physical distance bird and observer – a separation underscored by the pervasive use of technologies like binoculars. Wingsong is not simply immersive because it connects the player to the real bird species, but because the experience of birding relies as much on hearing as it does on sight.

However, the Spotted Owl restriction message provides a provocative interruption to the immersive bird song experience provided by Wingsong. It is a jarring contrast to the benign experience of listening to recorded bird song, reminding the player of both the artifice of game play and the consequences of environmental actions. It suggests that the birds in the game are not hyper realistic Pokémon to be simply collected, but rather living animals embedded in environmental and political histories. The lack of information provided in the “restricted” message leaves the player wanting more – and subsequently, with a bit of searching, unearthing the mechanics behind the app, the politics of bird song recording, and finally, the specific histories of the species contained there, the ghost in the machine irrevocably unveiled.

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Featured Image: by author

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Julianne Graper (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in Ethnomusicology at Indiana University Bloomington. Her work focuses on human-animal relationality through sound in Austin, TX and elsewhere. Graper’s writing can be found in Sound Studies; MUSICultures; forthcoming in The European Journal of American Studies and in the edited collections Sounds, Ecologies, Musics (2023); Behind the Mask: Vernacular Culture in the Time of COVID (2023); and Songs of Social Protest (2018). Her translation of Alejandro Vera’s The Sweet Penance of Music (2020) received the Robert M. Stevenson award from the American Musicological Society.

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Still of the sensory map from The Pandemic Sensory ArchiveWhen the COVID-19 global pandemic began, news reports and studies throughout the world began citing a lot of sound-based statistics: drastic reductions in noise pollution in urban centres, AI recordings of cellphone coughs, shifting soundscapes at home with new routines and work settings, and sonic sensitivities cultivated in quarantine and isolation. At the same time, in conjunction with these new research studies and areas of interest, there was an outpouring of calls for sound recordings and contributions to digital archival sound projects, such as Sounds of Pandemia, the Pandemic Diaries project, Sound of the Earth: The Pandemic Chapter, Sounds like a Pandemic? (SLAP?), and Stories from a Pandemic, just to name a few. A perceptive post by Sarah Mayberry Scott (2021)outlines the stakes for these types of initiatives grounded in a particular yet ever-changing historical moment, and the stakes of listening (in its attentiveness) and sound (in its persuasive power) more broadly, though undoubtably mediated and defined by power relations in their various social and the cultural contexts.

Part of this surge in scholarly attention and artistic projects is premised on the idea that sound and sound recordings are important additions to cultural heritage in documenting histories and personal evidence, and yet, they are often viewed as supplementary adjuncts to more physical or visual archival artefacts. This subjugation to the primacy of the visual extends to the arts, humanities, and social sciences, but this is beginning to change as scholars across these fields increasingly argue that sound (with its attendant listening) is an especially critical medium for cultivating different modes of attention, forging affective relations, producing alternative knowledges, revealing hidden narratives, and attuning to neglected pasts.

Still of Cities and Memory #StayHomeSounds Map Two digital sound archival projects created in response to the pandemic, The Pandemic SensoryArchive and#StayHomeSounds, are especially instructive in thinking about sound as a key medium for engaging with the monumental a/effects of the present and as important contributions to cultural history. Like other pandemic digital sound archival projects, these two projects sought to document the present for the future – creating a “past” in real time, based on the underlying assumption that sound – as a material-discursive apparatus – can offer particularly generative possibilities in this context. The methods, scope, and presentation design employed by these two web-based archival platforms generates a sense of intimacy, proximity, andcollectivity in otherwise surreal, secluded, uncertain, detached, and disconnected situations, much like in radio and podcasting though in this case with different infrastructure and interactivity.

In these online, mediated spaces where worlds intensely collide and conflate, and users become flattened out and disembodied, new configurations of intimacy, subjectivities, and world-building emerge through alternative forms of affective archival engagement. This was (and still is) particularly important and complex during COVID-19, which is marked not only by a series of indefinite lockdowns and uneven distribution of intervention measures, but an affective logic whereby life is completely reconfigured and capacities within the world are diminished and redistributed. Part of making mass sound archives usable relies on the medium for circulation, the presentation for users, and what user participation empowers for these living histories, as Fabiola Hanna makes clear. These two projects generate what Hanna identifies as a particular orientation in digital humanities projects through a politics of listening that necessitates an active mode of participation that is not simply one-directional but a two-way engagement.

Still from The Pandemic Sensory ArchiveThe Archive of Intimacy, later renamed The Pandemic Sensory Archive (PSA), wascreated by professors William Tullett (Associate Professor in Sensory History, Anglia Ruskin University, U.K.) and Hannah McCann (Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies, University of Melbourne, Australia) with the goal of exploring the senses through a digital platform and to act as an open data bank of contributions from the public. Their open call for contributions asks for a response that considers two questions: What smells, sights, sounds, touch, and/or tastes do you associate with the pandemic? Has your experiences of the senses (smell/sight/hearing/touching/taste) changed at all as a result of the pandemic? Contributors are then asked to drop a pin on the map (though this is not a typical Google Maps rendition of a specific locale, but a sort of simplified graphic representation of sensory input/output waves) and follow the prompts to anonymously submit. The digital map is divided among the five senses and features the entries that contain a title and brief response, such as:

Quiet where there should not be quiet: “Being in my flat in the centre of town on my own with nobody else around on a Saturday. Everything weirdly, eerily, quiet.”

Birdsong: “Hearing birdsong in the garden having not noticed it before, no longer drowned out.”

You’re on mute! “Did the conversation in meetings become less robust as we all sit there on mute, politely waiting for our turn to speak?”

Less sound, more sound: “Blissfully quiet at night as curfew curtails the normal constant traffic roars, far more voices in the early morning and through the day as people‘exercise together’ to socialize in the park”

Complimenting this map, which may seem limited in scope but allows users to engage without having to sift through an overwhelming amount of content, is the Sound category page, where four interviews are embedded with “sensory experts on sound during the Covid-19 pandemic,” including Shoshana Rosenberg, Andrew Mitchell, Martin Stewart, and Stephen Sullivan. One interview considers how the pandemic clarified the immensely relational dimension of artistic sound practice and that the lack of access to intimacy during lockdown instigated a radical reformatting and questioning of what it means, more broadly and now, to be intimate and close in creating sound art. For them, what the pandemic spelled out is that intimacy is fragile and valuable, and that this delicate balance and fluctuating ratio has come to the fore during this time.

The initial designation for the platform, “the archive of intimacy,” is worth meditating on to consider the particular forms of intimacy in this context, perhaps through Lauren Berlant’s “intimate publics” – a concept that captures the affective and collective dimensions of intimacy among strangers. The notion lends itself to understanding the mediated social intimacy in these spaces and the different affective experiences they invite in varying capacities through sound.The connection between imagined publics and community through sound has, of course, been conceptualized by scholars who do historical work on radio and podcast studies, but it can also be extended to these digital, affective, pandemic sound archives. Evidenced in the submission prompts and interview data, the emphasis on the distinct shifts and palpable changes resulting from this new situation, and its accompanying affective logic, can be read as a strategy for cultivating intimacy and connection because attending to these changes may render their intensities as less alarming.

“Listening” by Flickr User Silvia Siri, April 4, 2020 CC BY-NC 2.0 DEEDThrough the descriptions and dialogues of these new affective environments grounded in sound, some users might feel a sense of camaraderie, connection, and affinity to these novel experiences and how it relates or compares to one’s own (or the sense of not being so alone), especially in the personalized, diaristic, idiosyncratic tone in the short text extracts and longer interview forms. According to Tizian Zumthurm and Stefan Krebs (2022), digital spaces enable this type of “self-affirmation: by contributing and following the contributions of others, users are assured that they are not alone in whatever they experienced” (492). They also point out that as a result crowdsourced archives, particularly related to traumatic events, have a curative function.

Although the PSA may not be what likely comes to mind when thinking about a digital sound archive, presumably composed exclusively of musical or field recordings, it provides an entry point into a confluence of concerns to grapple with some of the key questions and issues related to sound, intimacy, and affect during the pandemic. In particular, diversity in form – between short excerpts and lengthier conversations, creates different engagement options for users based on preference and capacity (quick snapshots of the sonic changes in daily life or deeper explorations concerning sonic worlds), and across sensory inputs. Moreover, interviews add an oral history aspect to the project, which some scholars argue is more empowering and intimate than other modes of telling or sharing history. As a historically feminist practice, oral history has the potential to expose ignored topics and present diversified perspectives on traumatic pasts (like the 1918 pandemic) which is also especially important considering the research areas and professional backgrounds among the interview experts.

Home page of #stayhomesounds, click to enlarge#StayHomeSounds is part of a larger project led by UK-based sound artist Stuart Fowkes, who created Cities and Memories in 2014, which Milena Droumeva describes as a “one-of-a-kind sonic portal dedicated to the exploration of place, sound and memory” (147). The website boasts being the largest sound project in the world with over 5000 sound recordings from over 1000 different contributors across 100 territories worldwide. It encompasses field recordings, sound art, and sound mapping, and each location features two sounds: the original field recording of that place and a reimagined sound that presents that place and time as somewhere, something else. The listener can explore sites through their actual sounds or the reimagined versions, flipping between the two different sound worlds. #StayHomeSounds is one of the latest ongoing sub-projects on the site and it is a collection of recordings during the pandemic from all over the world mostly done using cell phone recordings.

Bari lockdown sound recorded by Roberto Lippolis.Although there is a wide range of quality and content, #StayHomeSounds offers a glimpse into the everyday sonic realities of quarantine life that cut across geography, life, and circumstances. The immensely mundane soundscapes and sheer multitude of recordings across cities and regions allows us to listen comparatively and try to notice the striking sonic cultures of different places even in lockdown. Those submitting sounds are required to provide a reflective text, and an elective representative image, to accompany their recording which details the changes in the soundscape as well as any a/effects that change has produced on other aspects of life.

An entry from Vancouver reads “Their chorus runs day and night and is a most pleasant soundtrack to both fall asleep with and wake up to. In this clip the background birds have joined in to add their avian melody to the amphibian bass line.”

Another from the Greek island of Crete, “after a heavy rain last night, the chirping of the birds woke me up this morning. It was such a powerful sound, like waking up from a sweet dream or a bad nightmare. I think that due to quarantine measures the nature’s sounds are more clear than even before.”

Athens, Greece lockdown sound recorded by Stamatis Mitrou.

In New Orleans, “I’m thankful for my quiet spot out here on the edges of town, but I worry about how the city can recover and for all those sick, out of work, or unable to stay home.”

New Orleans lockdown sounds recorded by Elizabeth Joan Kelly.

The objectives of the project, as described by Fowkes in the online text, are largely affective or affectively oriented, that is, to establish a sense of connection in the present, “how it feels at this unique moment,” by being able to discover new relations to place, to others, and to our sentient selves, through these sonic recordings and texts. In an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Fowkes said, “(You can) see what other people are hearing around the world and also read their stories and see that actually people are feeling similarly… hopefully that helps to make us feel a little bit more connected.” The breadth of contributions in terms of different locations and number of entries helps build this sense of connection, increasing the possibility of similar experiences to be seen and heard.

Lockdown sound from Lagos, Nigeria recorded by Ibukun Sunday.
By attending to personal struggles, observations, and speculations in relation to sound, these two digital sound archival projects gesture towards the intersections of intimacy, memory, and world-building, and alleviate and mediate some of the dominant and pervading affects that marked lockdown and remote life. In undertaking this project, I found pleasure in the informality of the responses and both the fresh insights and shared resonances, creating an experience that was jointly intimate (feeling seen and validated) and expansive (an opening to alternative experiences). In cultivating openness and a space for difference, and making the reflections and recordings publicly available, so that we can listen together but apart, the projects cultivate new forms of intimacy, empathy, collectivity, and nostalgia.

Dhaka, Bangladesh lockdown sound recorded by youKnowWho.But, of course, the potential affective experience with the entries and recordings is not a given, much like with any critical scholarly intervention or artwork that attempts to raise awareness (in this case, to both the grave and minute effects of the pandemic) and resist dominant narratives (that the pandemic is under-control, over, or effects only one’s respiratory system), there is no guarantee that the intended experience will transpire in every engagement, but the possibility to do so – to cultivate intimacy and world-building at a time of profound uncertainty and physical distance – is nonetheless still valuable. Much like the diversity in responses, undoubtedly there are varying degrees and types of resonances, perceptions, and impacts within each visit.

Using an open access, crowdsourced approach, the PSA and #soundsathome construct participatory, community archives, creating and remediating documents and recordings for collective access and engagement on behalf of a global community that underwent monumental change, disruption, and loss. Calling explicit attention to palpable sensory shifts and disruptions is a central way to track, record, and make sense of the immense changes in this historical moment, and to illuminate the inequalities in environments and experiences that have been exacerbated by the (lack of) responses by governments and policy. The very existence of these projects and their participation through listening marks a resistance to the discourses of a “return to normalcy” or that we are on the other end of the pandemic. Because affects live in the body and are not often considered as objects of knowledge, the ongoing presence, use, and discussion of these two projects amplifies the a/effects, and a resistance to the affective logic of the pandemic, that they seek to produce. By considering COVID as an unprecedented, deeply affective, traumatic event, these online spaces operate to archive this moment in time and its myriad sonic dimensions, bringing these affective worlds into dialogue through an intimate exchange and assemblage between different bodies, experiences, and locations.

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Emily Collins is an interdisciplinary researcher, writer, educator, and PhD Candidate in Cinema and Media Studies at York University in Tkaronto (Toronto) whose work draws on sound studies, feminist theory, critical disability studies, and cultural theory to examine sonic social relations and materiality through entanglements of resistance and care within contemporary artworks and creative practices. As a cultural worker and active member in the arts community, Emily has worked at diverse film, visual arts, and digital media organizations, institutions, and research networks within Canada and abroad, including Archive/Counter-Archive, PUBLIC Journal, VUCAVU, Festival Scope (Paris), the Toronto International Film Festival, and the Walter Phillips Gallery at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

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“Share your story” – but who will listen?–Fabiola Hanna

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SO! Podcast #79: Behind the Podcast: deconstructing scenes from AFRI0550, African American Health Activism – Nic John Ramos and Laura Garbes

A Day on the Dial in Cap Haïtien, Haiti—Ian Coss

Echoes in Transit: Loudly Waiting at the Paso del Norte Border Region—José Manuel Flores & Dolores Inés Casillas

Archivism and Activism: Radio Haiti and the Accountability of Educational Institutions–Laura Wagner

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Usually when we celebrate our year in review, we get a little bit loud. . .okay, well, maybe we get REAL loud! We’re not usually ones to shy away from joyous bombast, especially when celebrating the hard work of our writers and editors, and the deep relationship we have with our readers. We wouldn’t be here without your clicks, your sharing, and your inspiration, and we love the excitement of readers becoming writers. It’s our favorite! But we don’t want our joy and celebration to be drowned out by 2023’s many loudnesses. We’re starting off 2024 with neither a bang nor a wimper, but instead, with the quiet but powerful resonance of ripples in water, which is exactly the energy our top ten posts bring. Please enjoy them, and keep these ideas spreading far and wide, near and far. Thank you. We’ll be dropping more gems in the pond in 2024. –JS

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(10). From Spanish to English to Spanish: How Shakira’s VMA Performance Showcases the New Moment in Latin Music “Crossover”

by Petra Rivera-Rideau* and Vanessa Díaz***

“On the night of September 12, Colombian pop star Shakira made history as the first predominantly Spanish-language artist to be honored as MTV’s Video Vanguard at the Video Music Awards (VMAs). The award recognizes artists who have had a major and innovative impact on music videos and popular music. Shakira played a 10-minute medley of Spanish and English hits from her three-decades long career. Her performance demonstrated her breadth as an artist as she shifted from pop to rock to reggaetón.

Not only did she demonstrate her impressive musical range, but of her 69 singles, Shakira selected those that represent two significant crossover moments for Latin music. She sang hits like “Wherever, Whenever,” “Hips Don’t Lie,” and “She Wolf” from her English-language crossover in the early 2000s as part of the so-called “Latin Boom.” She sang 2001’s “Objection (Tango)” with the same samba/rock music arrangement she used at her very first VMA performance in 2002.”

[Click here to read more]

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(9). The Cyborg’s Prosody, or Speech AI and the Displacement of Feeling

by Dorothy R. Santos

“[. . .] The past few years may have been a remarkable advancement in voice tech with companies such as Amazon and Sanas AI, a voice recognition platform that allows a user to apply a vocal filter onto any human voice, with a discernible accent, that transforms the speech into Standard American English. Yet their hopes for accent elimination and voice mimicry foreshadow a future of design without justice and software development sans cultural and societal considerations, something I work through in my artwork in progress, The Cyborg’s Prosody (2022-present).

The Cyborg’s Prosody is an interactive web-based artwork (optimized for mobile) that requires participants to read five vignettes that increasingly incorporate Tagalog words and phrases that must be repeated by the player. The work serves as a type of parody, as an “accent induction school” — providing a decolonial method of exploring how language and accents are learned and preserved. The work is a response to the creation of accent reduction schools and coaches in the Philippines. Originally, the work was meant to be a satire and parody of these types of services, but shifted into a docu-poetic work of my mother’s immigration story and learning and becoming fluent in American English.”

[Click here to read more]

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(8). Echoes in Transit: Loudly Waiting at the Paso del Norte Border Region

by José Manuel Flores & Dolores Inés Casillas

Geographically, the Paso del Norte (PdN) region includes the city of El Paso, Texas, Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, as well as neighboring cities in the state of New Mexico (see map). U.S. citizens live and play in Juárez, and those in Juárez (Juarenses), live and work in El Paso with families extended on both sides; continually moving back and forth. Yet, this broader region has long been plagued with sensationalizing headlines, both in the U.S. and in Mexico, that cast violent and limiting portrayals of these borderland communities. Recognized as sister cities, El Paso and Ciudad Juárez are seen less as close-knit siblings and more like distant cousins with Juárez routinely referred to undesirably as the little sister or ugly sister in comparison to El Paso. Indeed these hierarchical north/south (first world/not-quite-first-world) distinctions are products of histories of colonialism, unequal trade policies, and racial capitalist systems galvanized by immigrant detention camps (a tenant of the Immigration Industrial Complex). Within larger conversations about border cities, both Tijuana (San Diego) and Reynosa (McAllen) are recognized as the “primary” border cities due to their larger population size, transnational capital, and industrious reputations.

Two decades ago, Josh Kun’s concept of the “aural border” invited scholars to consider the US/Mexico border as a “field of sound, a terrain of musicality and music-making, of melodic convergence and dissonant clashing” (2000). Kun’s writings over the years have roused generations of sound scholars to listen to borders, border crossings, border communities and how they reverberate their economic, social, and migrant conditions. This essay intentionally moves away from Kun’s (beloved) border city of Tijuana and towards a less-referenced US/Mexico border city: Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Here, 1,201 kilometers east of Tijuana, we offer an opportunity to listen to Juárez’s everyday bustling of migratory life through the digital sound repository, the Border Soundscapes Project.

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(7). Beyond the Every Day: Vocal Potential in AI Mediated Communication

by Amina Abbas-Nazari

“[. . .] I have a particular interest in extended and experimental vocality, especially gained through my time singing with Musarc Choir and working with artist Fani Parali. In these instances, I have experienced the pleasurable challenge of being asked to vocalise the mythical, animal, imagined, alien and otherworldly edges of the sonic sphere, to explore complex relations between bodies, ecologies, space and time, illuminated through vocal expression.

Following from [Nina] Eidsheim, and through my own vocal practice, I believe AI’s prerequisite of voices as “fixed, extractable, and measurable ‘sound object[s]’ located within the body” is over-simplistic and reductive. Voices, within systems of AI, are made to seem only as computable delineations of person, personality and identity, constrained to standardised stereotypes. By highlighting vocal potential, I offer a unique critique of the way voices are currently comprehended in AI recognition systems. When we appreciate the voice beyond the homogenous, we give it authority and autonomy, ultimately leading to a fuller understanding of the voice and its sounding capabilities.”

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(6). Tuning In to the Desi Valley: Getting to Know a Community via Radio

by Noopur Raval

“Sound has a peculiar relationship to mindfulness; zoning in and out, active and passive forms of listening while we situate our listening practices alongside other daily activities. Especially when it comes to driving, listening to something or someone or just singing aloud by myself, I have realized, helps me drown out other noises of alertness. Over the years I have come to value background music or chatter and especially radio programming that takes the burden of curation and scheduling off my back, in all sorts of tasks that require deep concentration. Enough and more has been said about the visual-bias in various forms of ethnographic inquiry (see Andrew C. Sparkes’s “Ethnography and the senses” for a good example). Without belaboring these arguments, I also find that knowing through listening and listening as a mode of non-haptic yet immersive and intimate engagement can also prove to be a fruitful method of inquiry, especially in our post-pandemic worlds, where it feels a lot harder to establish intimacy. The United Nations noted that radio, in particular, “provided solace” during that period of physical distancing and social isolation.

For me, radio sparked my accidental realization and foregrounding of sonic methods as an itinerant means of getting to know new things, people and surroundings in life and research when I moved from New York to the San Francisco Bay Area in mid-2022 to start a new position as a postdoctoral researcher. Knowing that I would continue living in California for the near future, after eight long years of having deferred driving in America, I decided to learn driving and buy a car.”

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(5). Ronca Realness: Voices that Sound the Sucia Body

by Cloe Gentile Reyes

“[. . .] My mother grew up listening to her father sing boleros, and she would later sing with the Florida Grand Opera Chorus when I was a child. My early knowledge of opera came from her. Growing up in Miami Beach, I would also listen to reggaetón and hip-hop in afterschool programs. The Parks & Recreation department would host dances for us, and that was where I first learned to dance perreo. My early musical surroundings represent what it means to be a colonial subject, to hear the Italianate vocal legacies of opera mixed with the Afro-Diasporic and Indigenous rhythms of reggaetón. This post contextualizes my experience within bolero’s colonial history and legacy particularly its operatic disciplining of brown and Black bodies and voices. Reggaetóneras provide models for sonic subversion by being ronca, raspy, or breathy, and thus overriding internalized Eurocentric dichotomies of feminine and masculine vocal timbres.

When I began my own operatic training in college, I was constantly told to “purify” my voice, to resist vocal “fry,” and to handle my acid reflux by avoiding spicy foods. I was steered away from singing the pop songs I had grown up with, and kept many musical activities secret, like when I soloed for the tango ensemble and my a cappella group. In graduate school, thanks to my Latina roommates, I began listening to reggaetón again. I reunited with the voices that raised me and was reassured that their teachings of resistance would always present themselves when I needed them”

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(4). “Caught a Vibe”: TikTok and The Sonic Germ of Viral Success

by Jay Jolles

“[. . .]The app currently known as TikTok began as Musical.ly, which was shuttered in 2017 and then rebranded in 2018. By March of 2021, the app boasted one billion worldwide monthly users, indicative of a growth rate of about 180%. This explosion was in many ways catalyzed by successive lockdowns during the first waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the relaxation and subsequent abandonment of COVID mitigation measures, the app has retained a large volume of its users, remaining one of the highest grossing apps in the iOS environment. TikTok’s viral success (both as noun and adjective) has worked to create a kind of vibe economy in which artists are now subject to producing a particular type of sound in order to be rendered legible to the pop charts. [. . .] The app, which is the perfect–if chaotic–fusion of both radio and video is enmeshed in a wider media ecosystem where social networking and platform capitalism converge, and as a result, it seems that TikTok is changing the music industry. . .”

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(3). “In My Life”: Loving Queerly and Singing Across Generations

by Casey Mecija

The cold winds staked their claim over Toronto, where my parents had recently arrived from the Philippines. They were underdressed and making their way down Parliament Street. Despite being warned of a shift in temperature, they were not expecting the brutal intensities of Canadian winter. I’m not sure how anyone anticipates the sharp sting of negative temperatures when they are arrivants used to tropical climates. Undeterred, my mother and father headed to a small Filipino grocer, hoping to encounter a semblance of domestic familiarity. Pressed against the biting winds, my mother abruptly stopped, looked at my father and said, “Tumutolo ang sipon” – you have a runny nose. To which my father replied, “Ikaw din” – you do too! They both started laughing and laughed again when they retold me this story 48 years later. When faced with the challenges of migrating to a new and very cold country, they managed to mine humour from a deep well of difficult circumstances. We had been listening to the song “In My Life” by the Beatles (Lennon & McCartney 1965). Something in its expression, melody, and feeling caused my parents to be transported to this small but important moment.

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(2). “Hey Google, Talk Like Issa”: Black Voiced Digital Assistants and the Reshaping of Racial Labor

by Golden Owens

“In October 2019, Google released an ad for their Google Assistant (GA), an intelligent virtual assistant (IVA) that initially debuted in 2016. As revealed by onscreen text and the video’s caption, the ad’s announced that the GA would soon have a new celebrity voice. The ten-second promotion includes a soundbite from this unseen celebrity—who states: “You can still call me your Google Assistant. Now I just sound extra fly”— followed by audio of the speaker’s laughter, a white screen, the GA logo, and a written question: “Can you guess who it is?”

Consumers quickly speculated about the person behind the voice, with many posting their guesses on Reddit. The earliest comments named Tiffany Haddish, Lizzo, and Issa Rae as prospects, with other users affirming these guesses. These women were considered the most popular contenders: two articles written about the new GA voice cited the Reddit post, with one calling these women Redditors’ most popular guesses and the other naming only them as users’ desired choices. Those who guessed Rae were proven correct. One day after the ad, Google released a longer promo revealing her as the GA’s new voice, including footage of Rae recording responses for the assistant. The ad ends with Rae repeating the “extra fly” line from the initial promo, smiling into the camera.

Google’s addition of Rae as an IVA voice option is one of several recent examples of Black people’s voices employed in this manner. Importantly, this trend toward Black-voiced IVAs deviates from the pre-established standard of these digital aides. While there are many voice options available, the default voices for IVAs are white female voices with flat dialects. This shift toward Black American voices is notable not only because of conversations about inclusion—with some Black users saying they feel more represented by these new voices—but because this influx of Black voices marks a spiritual return to the historical employment of Black people as service-providing, labor-performing entities in the United States, thus subliminally reinforcing historical biases about Black people as uniquely suited for performing this type of work.”

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(1). “Your Voice is (Not) Your Passport”

by Michelle Pfeifer

“In the 1992 Hollywood film Sneakers, depicting a group of hackers led by Robert Redford performing a heist, one of the central security architectures the group needs to get around is a voice verification system. A computer screen asks for verification by voice and Robert Redford uses a “faked” tape recording that says “Hi, my name is Werner Brandes. My voice is my passport. Verify me.” The hack is successful and Redford can pass through the securely locked door to continue the heist. Looking back at the scene today it is a striking early representation of the phenomenon we now call a “deep fake” but also, to get directly at the topic of this post, the utter ubiquity of voice ID for security purposes in this 30-year-old imagined future.

In 2018, The Intercept reported that Amazon filed a patent to analyze and recognize user’s accents to determine their ethnic origin, raising suspicion that this data could be accessed and used by police and immigration enforcement. While Amazon seemed most interested in using voice data for targeting users for discriminatory advertising, the jump to increasing surveillance seemed frighteningly close, especially because people’s affective and emotional states are already being used for the development of voice profiling and voice prints that expand surveillance and discrimination. For example, voice prints of incarcerated people are collected and extracted to build databases of calls that include the voices of people on the other end of the line.“

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Featured Image “ripples in monochrome” by Flickr User SalmonSalmon CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED

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Photo of Francisco and Emma Mecija in their apartment near Parliament Street. December 1975. Courtesy of Francisco and Emma Mecija.December 1975.The cold winds staked their claim over Toronto, where my parents had recently arrived from the Philippines. They were underdressed and making their way down Parliament Street. Despite being warned of a shift in temperature, they were not expecting the brutal intensities of Canadian winter. I’m not sure how anyone anticipates the sharp sting of negative temperatures when they are arrivants used to tropical climates. Undeterred, my mother and father headed to a small Filipino grocer, hoping to encounter a semblance of domestic familiarity. Pressed against the biting winds, my mother abruptly stopped, looked at my father and said, “Tumutolo ang sipon” – you have a runny nose. To which my father replied, “Ikaw din” – you do too! They both started laughing and laughed again when they retold me this story 48 years later. When faced with the challenges of migrating to a new and very cold country, they managed to mine humour from a deep well of difficult circumstances. We had been listening to the song “In My Life” by the Beatles (Lennon & McCartney 1965). Something in its expression, melody, and feeling caused my parents to be transported to this small but important moment.

In her conversation with Christine Bacareza Balance, “‘Revolutions in Sound’: Keynote Duet” (2022) Alexandra T. Vazquez writes: “The popular…leaves so much room for engagement with sound artists (musicians without the gallery). None of them need theorists to argue for them, to argue for their mattering because to so many, they already do. How do they instead invite theorists to take part in something alongside them?” (12). I was never a big fan of the Beatles, but regardless of my opinions, they were popular. As a relentlessly oppositional teenager, I was put off by their mass popularity. As Vazquez suggests, despite one’s musical taste, songs are invitations, not scholarly conquests. The memory re-opened by my parents’ connection to “In My Life” was an invitation for me to take stock of the song’s affective and, for them, diasporic trajectories. As Balance (2022) suggests songs request us to “listen long so we hear where another is coming from” (15). For her, “long” describes temporality and commitment. To “listen long” implies that duration and attention are the pretext for empathic relations.

“In My Life” was released in 1965. My mother was fifteen years old when she first heard the song on the radio in a boarding house in Marbel, Philippines. One year later, on July 16, 1966 the Philippine Free Press would announce, “The Beatles Are Coming” (de Manila as cited by Robert Nery in “The Hero Takes a Walk” 2018). At that time, Ferdinand Marcos was the newly elected president of the Philippines, and Imelda Marcos was his First Lady. The Marcoses would later unleash an era of violent dictatorial power and impose Martial Law in 1972, escalating political suppression (Burns 2013). My mother recalls that the band’s first and only appearance in the Philippines was remembered by many less for their two scheduled concerts and more for their “snub” of Imelda. The Beatles were noticeably absent at a lunch reception they were expected to attend with the First Lady at the Presidential Palace. Their absence, attributed to a communication error between the concert promoter and the band’s manager, incited public disapproval and resulted in the sudden disappearance of their security escort and hotel and porter service. Unlike in other cities, the band was refused room service and was forced to carry their own luggage (Nery 2018).

What is striking about this moment is that it breaks from preoccupations with Filipinx desires for assimilation and mimicry of Western imperial projects. In Video Night in Kathmandu and Other Reports from the Not-So-Far East, British travel writer Pico Iyer (1988) famously stated that Filipinx people are the “[m]aster of every American gesture, conversant with every western song…the Filipino plays minstrel to the entire continent (153)” Turning against imperial scripts and the band’s documented disdain of “Mosquito City” and even worse, John Lennon’s comment that a return to the Philippines would require “an H-bomb,” the soured residues of their visit marks a queer rupture in Beatlemania. The public decried that Filipinx people deserved better from the band, capturing what Balance describes in Tropical Renditions: Making Musical Scenes in Filipino America (2016),as “disobedience” in that “disavows a belief in the promises of assimilation” (5). For me, Filipinx non-compliance textures the sonic substance of “In My Life.” While the shadow of the Marcoses cronyism and corruption is an inescapable footnote, it is the defiant voices of hotel employees, dismayed fans, and airport workers that insisted on the “ordinariness” (Wofner & Smeaton, 2003) of the Beatles that holds the song’s queer decibels.

Photo of Hannah Dyer and Casey Mecija at their baby shower. December 2017. Image by Sarah Creskey.

There are places I’ll remember all my life, though some have changed. Some forever, not for better. Some have gone, and some remain.

“In My Life” (Lennon & McCartney 1965).

January 2018.I am sitting on my couch watching a Toronto Raptors game. The television emits light that flickers through a large window that frames a bright winter moon. I am 41 weeks pregnant at this point (feeling similarly shaped and sized as the moon outside). My stubborn queer resistance to the Beatles somehow dissipated during my pregnancy, and the song “In My Life” made its way to me. I would quietly sing the song to my pregnant belly. Then, that January night, I felt a snap inside my body and a rush of water down my legs. I won’t go into much gratuitous detail other than to say that at 12:49 pm the next day, Asa Cy Dyer-Mecija was born at home.

And these memories lose their meaning when I think of love as something new.

“In My Life” (Lennon & McCartney 1965)

Sometimes, I needed to couch the queerness of pregnancy in words that were not mine. The distance between these words and the ones I had yet to find would help to structure my unfolding love for Asa. Here, queerness presented a modality of encounter with uncensored desires. Queerness is often theorized as a utopian impulse; the queerness of my pregnancy jostled both the hopes and fears brought up by the unknown terrain of parenting amidst heteronormativity. For me, “In My Life” is riven by sentimentality and nostalgia, but it also gave melody to a tender relationship with myself and my new role in the world. This was the sonic throughline to my parents, a queer inheritance of tension made from the hopes for kinder contexts amidst the limitations of harsh realities.

Photo of Asa Cy Dyer-Mecija and Casey Mecija at home. January 2018. Image by Casey Mecija.December 2022.

I was invited to perform as part of the Queer Songbook Orchestra’s holiday fundraiser. The Queer Songbook Orchestra is a chamber pop ensemble that hosts an annual concert focused on songs and stories about “chosen family and queer joy” (Queer Songbook n.d.). At that time, Asa was four years old. He is a child of the pandemic. He’s a kid with two moms, a present and kind donor, and is dearly loved by his Lolo and Lola, his grandparents, aunts, titas, uncles, cousins, kuya, ate, and his beautiful chosen family. My partner, Hannah, and I sometimes worry about how his world will be affected by reactions to the makeup of our family, but mostly, we know he’ll be sure he’s loved by many.

To me, the song “In My Life” offers a useful sonic response to homophobia. As a baby, after Asa’s baths, I would often wrap him in a towel, and while rocking him back and forth, I would sing these lyrics from the song: “Though I know I’ll never lose affection for people and things that went before, I know I’ll often stop and think about them. In my life, I love you more” (Lennon & McCartney 1965). To me, this statement is a queer ethos. We know that 2SLGBTQ+ people have necessarily and creatively reworked and reimagined the organization and expression of kinship. When family is so often bounded by what Julianne Pidduck calls “constraints of relationality” in “Queer Kinship and Ambivalence”(2008: 441), the lyrics “In my life, I love you more” are a call to action. More is a word used comparatively to insist that there is something greater, something more exists, something more is possible. I embrace the challenge to love more. My queerness urges me to love more, and parenting Asa does, too. On the evening of the performance, indexed by my parents’ struggles and our shared disdain for the chill of winter, Asa and I performed “In My Life” together. The video of our performance will remain a treasured sonic archive that I will return to often, and as Asa gets older, I hope it reminds him of how beautiful he’s always been.

Video credit: Directed by Colin Medley—

Casey Mecija is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication & Media Studies at York University. Her current research examines sound as a mode of affective, psychic, and social representation, specifically in relation to diasporic experience. Drawing on sound studies, queer diaspora studies and Filipinx Studies, her research considers how sensorial encounters are enmeshed and disciplined by social and psychic conditions. In this work, she theorizes sounds made in and beyond Filipinx diaspora to make an argument about a “queer sound” that permeates diasporic sensibilities. She is also a musician and filmmaker whose work has received several accolades and has been presented internationally.

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Blank Space and “Asymmetries of Childhood Innocence” –Casey Mecija

The Sound of What Becomes Possible: Language Politics and Jesse Chun’s 술래 SULLAE (2020)–Casey Mecija

The Cyborg’s Prosody, or Speech AI and the Displacement of Feeling–Dorothy Santos

Tape Hiss, Compression, and the Stubborn Materiality of Sonic Diaspora–Chris Chien

Xicanacimiento, Life-giving Sonics of Critical Consciousness—Esther Díaz Martín and Kristian E. Vasquez

Moonlight’s Orchestral Manoeuvers: A duet by Shakira Holt and Christopher Chien

Enacting Queer Listening, or When Anzaldúa Laughs–Maria Chaves Daza

Echoes in Transit: Loudly Waiting at the Paso del Norte Border Region—José Manuel Flores & Dolores Inés Casillas

The Queerness of Wham’s “Last Christmas”–Justin Burton

Could I Be Chicana Without Carlos Santana?–Wanda Alarcón

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or, Last Summer a DJ Saved My Life“Hip Hop does work that a lot of other things don’t do” Young Guru (viii).

The way that we imagine English Studies, specifically Composition and Rhetoric (Comp/Rhet), today needs a radical shift. Specifically, we need new techniques for Writing Studies pedagogy to reach students in a more meaningful and contemporary fashion. Todd Craig’s “K for the Way:” DJ Rhetoric and Literacy for 21st Century Writing Studies (Utah State University Press, 2023) both documents the need for this shift and enacts it. Craig’s work enables us to recognize the pedagogical impact on writing that Hip Hop has had over the last 50 years—specifically how the DJ/deejay as twenty-first century new media reader and writer teaches students not just to think about sound, but to compose with it, too.

An Associate Professor of English at CUNY Graduate Center, Craig has little desire to shake the foundations of English Studies, but instead do what Hip Hop has always done—make a way where there is none. The point is to (re)imagine new ways of doing old things; in this case, of teaching and reaching students who arrive in First-Year Writing courses. “K for the Way” does more than demonstrate the ways in which the DJ is a twenty-first century pedagogical savant; it also teaches readers, using DJ Rhetoric and DJ Literacy, about the culture that makes them possible.

This summer, a DJ really did save my life: as someone who feels consistently overwhelmed by the vast nature of scholarly discourse, “K for the Way” gave me a chance to breathe, to identify with something that has been a part of me for the better part of my life, and to see myself in a conversation about a topic I am more than passionate about. For Craig, community, history, and culture are the core of his mission as a scholar, educator, and DJ.

Craig defines several new terms that bridge the worlds of Hip Hop and Composition and Rhetoric. First, we have DJ Rhetoric, which can be understood as the modes, methodologies, and discursive elements of the DJ. For Craig, it “encompasses the quality of oral, written, and sonic language that displays and expresses sociocultural, historical, and musical meanings, attitudes, and sentiments” (23). Next, there is DJ Literacy, which is the “sonic and auditory practices of reading, writing, critically thinking, speaking, and communicating through and with the rhetoric of Hip Hop DJ culture” (23). These two definitions, operating in conjunction, situate the DJ as a kind of griot, a figure that Adam Banks invokes as a carrier of tradition, stories, and histories in Digital Griots: African American Rhetoric in a Multimedia Age (Studies in Writing and Rhetoric) (2011). The mission of the griot is to carry stories and translate them to various audiences while adhering to the rhetorical conventions and modes of whichever audience they find themselves before; similarly, the DJ is responsible for “communicating the pulse and the evolution of a culture that once sat as ‘underground’ but now has dramatically evolved to ‘mainstream’” (25). These definitions serve as guides for the reader as they are tethered to all of the concepts and (re)imagining happening throughout the book.

Craig is intimately close to the work he is doing. He lives and breathes Hip Hop; and what should a book about the Hip Hop DJ be if not written by someone who embodies the role, culture, and practice of DJing? Craig uses a a research methodology known as hiphopography in which Hip Hop ways of being are central to studying it. Coined by James G. Spady, this term is defined as “a shared discourse with equanimity, not the usual hierarchical distancing techniques usually found in published and non-published (visual-TV) interviewers with rappers” (27). Craig states that hiphopography “allowed me to engage a variety of Hip Hop DJs while also maintaining my own shared values and sentiments around my love of Hip Hop culture and DJ practices” (28). Hiphopography constructs a conversational, intimate space—touched by history, culture, and music—wherein the interviewer and interviewee can engage and produce meaningful data. This methodology—and Craig’s many interviews with DJs about their craft—becomes part of the text’s core as we begin to see how Craig’s two-pronged argument connects DJ Rhetoric and DJ Literacy to bring both life throughout the book.

If one understands the DJ as a twenty-first century rhetorician and compositionist and considers the ways in which the DJ is a cultural meaning-maker, sponsor, and master sampler, then one can clearly see the connections between the DJ, DJ culture, and Writing Studies in the contemporary moment. In the first part of his argument supporting the significance of DJ Rhetoric and Literacy in writing pedagogy Craig asserts that, “it is essential that the academy at large works to strengthen students’ undergraduate experiences by reinforcing their racial, ethnic, and cultural ties” (14). This perspective provides the foundation for the second part of his argument that “the DJ (and thus, Hip Hop DJ culture) is the epicenter of Hip Hop culture’s creation” (23). Taken together, these dynamic arguments make the claim that the DJ offers a powerful model of a new media reader, writer, and critic. Today, our students come to writing classrooms with a “vast array of cultural capital. . .in their philosophical and cultural backpacks” (107). If we, as writing teachers, want to honor that cultural capital and build with it, we should follow Craig’s lead and look toward the DJ for some pointers on how to expand students’ access to a language that represents them.

Readers will also see a developing research agenda in “K for the Way” that thinks toward changing the culture beyond the present, while acknowledging the groundwork laid for the current moment and building genealogically upon that foundation, just as DJs do with sampling. Craig best exemplifies this when he writes, “in order to fully engage in a conversation—whether intellectual, pedestrian or otherwise—that discusses what DJ Rhetoric might look like, one has to think about the cultural and textual lineage of sponsors and mentors” (51). This notion of textual lineage is borrowed from Alfred W. Tatum who explains the term as “Similar to lineages in genealogical studies” and continues to note that textual lineage is “made up of texts (both literary and nonliterary) that are instrumental in one’s human development because of the meaning and significance one has garnered from them” (Tatum, qtd. in Craig, 51). Craig builds upon Tatum’s idea by introducing sonic lineage, which follows the same logic as Tatum’s term, but through sound (51). What becomes apparent, is that the DJ, as a cultural sponsor, can deploy sonic lineage as a way of communicating history and culture to members within and outside of the Hip Hop community and, more specifically, DJ culture.

Chapter three, especially, works at the interdisciplinary junction of Sound Studies, Writing Studies, and Hip Hop studies to convey a clear critique of the dominant discourse surrounding plagiarism. Craig is unsatisfied with the black-and-white conception of plagiarism as it presents itself in the academy. As a result, he moves to inquire “how we as practitioners [of teaching composition] approach citation methods and strategies within a twenty-first century landscape” (75). Craig promptly turns us toward the DJ’s conceptualization of sampling as a citation practice. Sampling in Hip Hop, as defined by Andrew Bartlett, “is not collaboration in any familiar sense of the term. It is a high-tech and highly selective archiving, bringing into dialogue by virtue of even the most slight representation” (77). The highly selective archiving, a.k.a crate diggin’, builds upon the idea of sonic lineage.

For the DJ, the process of diggin’ through crates to find that right sound, that one joint that going to get the party jumpin’, is a key element in the practice of “text constructing” (79). The Hip Hop sample functions alongside an understanding, offered by Alasdair Pennycook, of “transgressive-versus-nontransgressive intertextuality,” which, for an academic audience, complicates the idea of plagiarism.. The DJ becomes a figure through which we can understand intertextuality, sampling becomes the practice through which we can see parallels to citation through text construction, and the mix is where we begin, with the help of Pennycook, to complicate notions of plagiarism. In this chapter, readers are able to understand through sound.

Subsequently, Craig explores the concept of revision as it relates to the DJ’s ability to engage with an emcee on the point of “remix as revision” (107). Building from on Nancy Sommers’ article, “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers,” Craig lifts and examines four strategies of revision through the lens of the Hip Hop DJ: deletion, substitution, addition, and reordering (Sommers, qtd. in Craig, 107). These practices not only identify the Hip Hop DJ as a master of revision but also center the DJ, in the context of the writing classroom, as a key figure for understanding editorial practice. As teachers of writing—and especially for those of us who are deeply connected to Hip Hop culture—we have traditional scholars, such as Sommers, but we also have the DJ as cultural scholar, which offer new models with communicating and practicing the craft of writing in the twenty-first century.

Prof. Todd Craig, aka DJ T. O. Double D, in the Mix: Deejaying, Teaching, Writing, Making, Speaking, Listening (Source: Twitter, 11/7/2023)Chapter Five, which is co-written by Craig and Carmen Kynard, centers on six women DJs: DJs Spinderella, Pam the Funkstress, Kuttin Kandi, Shorty Wop, Reborn, and Natasha Diggs to work toward developing a “Hip Hop Feminist Deejay Methodology” that positions women in Hip Hop culture as a key source of key knowledge production–as meaning-makers, theoreticians, storytellers–and as tastemakers in twenty-first century discourse about education, technologies, race, and gender. This chapter is also apt representation of hiphopography at work, as both Craig and Kynard ground their position in the interviews of these six women deejays, “deliberately situating their stories first… as opposed to the usual academic expectation that a tedious delineation of methods and an extant literature review come before a discussion of the actual subjects” (123).

In part, this chapter focuses on the affordances and limitations—political, social, and economic—present in DJ culture, and the effects it has on these women DJs to make it do what it does. For example, the introduction of the digital software Serato has simultaneously made access to music easier, and complicated access to the cultural archive that made the music possible in the first place. Natasha Diggs, states, “While she values the ability to access mp3 files so readily, she argues a deejay’s research and craft suffer, because many times the mp3 files do not include information about an artist’s name, history, or band” (129). Pam the Funkstress ties this sentiment up nicely when she argues, “There’s nothing like vinyl” (129).

The final chapter is fashioned like a Hip-Hop outro, with Craig leaving with a few parting ideas. Most important among them is his vision of “Comp 3.0,” a version of Comp/Rhet wherein “we have to push the scope of writing and rhetoric—with or without the field’s permission or acknowledgement” (171). For scholars of composition and rhetoric and writing teachers who ground part of their understanding of the field in Black Studies, Hip Hop, and the DJ, we gotta make it do what it do, regardless of who says what! Comp 3.0 does not seek approval or recognition from the powers that be; instead, it focuses on the new ways of thinking and writing, and of teaching, that we are able to conjure—with history, culture, and practice propelling us—when we invoke that which got us to the academy in the first place.

What is at stake, for those of us who engage Black Studies, Sonic Studies, Comp/Rhet, and Hip Hop Studies as critical points of departure for the teaching of writing, is that our presence—our being, methods, and our teaching—is crucial for developing a genealogy of scholars and world citizens who are aware of the myriad possibilities present in the twenty-first century.

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Featured Image: Cover Art for “K for the Way”: DJ Rhetoric and Literacy for 21st Century Writing Studies by Cathey White

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DeVaughn (Dev) Harris is a PhD student studying composition and rhetoric in NYC. His academic interests are mainly in writing studies and pedagogy, but those are often supported by other sub-interests in music, creative writing, African American studies, and philosophy. When not reading or writing, Dev enjoys making music wherever and however possible. He has published music before under the collective AbstraktFlowz.

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“Heavy Airplay, All Day with No Chorus”: Classroom Sonic Consciousness in the Playlist Project—Todd Craig

Deep Listening as Philogynoir: Playlists, Black Girl Idiom, and Love–Shakira Holt

SO! Reads: Steph Ceraso’s Sounding Composition: Multimodal Pedagogies for Embodied Listening--Airek Beauchamp

The Sounds of Anti-Anti-Essentialism: Listening to Black Consciousness in the Classroom- Carter Mathes

Contra La Pared: Reggaetón and Dissonance in Naarm, Melbourne–Lucreccia Quintanilla

Ill Communication: Hip Hop and Sound Studies–Jennifer Stoever

SO! Amplifies: Regina Bradley’s Outkasted Conversations

A Listening Mind: Sound Learning in a Literature Classroom–Nicole Brittingham Furlonge

View Details

This series listens to the political, gendered, queer(ed), racial engagements and class entanglements involved in proclaiming out loud: La-TIN-x. ChI-ca-NA. La-TI-ne. ChI-ca-n-@. Xi-can-x. Funded by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of the Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative, the Latinx Sound Cultures Studies Working Group critically considers the role of sound and listening in our formation as political subjects. Through both a comparative and cross-regional lens, we invite Latinx Sound Scholars to join us as we dialogue about our place within the larger fields of Chicanx/Latinx Studies and Sound Studies. We are delighted to publish our initial musings with Sounding Out!, a forum that has long prioritized sound from a queered, racial, working-class and “always-from-below” epistemological standpoint. —Ed. Dolores Inés Casillas

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This post is co-authored by Sara Veronica Hinojos and Eliana Buenrostro

Cardi B eloquently reminds us that our español, as US Latinxs, might seem “muy ratata;” an apt phrase, heard lyrically within her music, used here to characterize inventive, communicative Spanglish word play. Yet, the proliferation of hashtags used to shame and silence second and later generations of Latinx kids runs counter to Cardi B’s ratata blessings.

The hashtags #nosabokid #nosabokids #nosabokidsbelike #nosabokidsorry #iamanosabokid represents a collective acknowledgment of Gloria Anzaldúa’s “linguistic terrorism.” Featured on NBC News, Locatora Radio, the Los Angeles Times and, surely, referenced within familial discussions, #nosabo has brought, once again, to the fore the coupling and, we fiercely argue, the need to decouple language (“proficiency”) from that of Latinx identities. The phrase “no sabo” – a non-standard Spanish conjugation of the phrase “no sé” for “I don’t know” – has become a stand-in as both a linguistic (bad) sign of Americanization and/or a (good) marker of ethnic, bicultural pride.

Anzaldúa has long warned us that, “[e]ven our own people, other Spanish speakers nos quieren poner candados en la boca [want to put locks on our mouths]” (1999, 76). In many ways, the “no sabo” label silences or “locks” one’s mouth. The institutional attempts to Americanize Spanish-speaking individuals constitute a form of violence that has led to the erosion of Spanish spoken among Mexican and Latino families in the United States. Today, children of immigrants are ridiculed for speaking “broken” Spanish, yet, for decades Mexicans raised in the United States experienced harsh consequences and blatant discrimination for speaking Spanish in public; this racism continues today.

As scholars of Latinx listening, these social media posts can be incredibly frustrating. They remind us of the sad reality that many Latinx people do not know their own history or better yet futures. Anzaldúa would describe the intraethnic linguistic policing as, “peleando con nuestra propia sombra” (fighting with our own shadow) (1999, 76); it’s both unproductive and self-inflicting. Poet Michele Serros describes her experiences being policed in her 1993 poem “Mi Problema”:

Eyebrows raise

My sincerity isn’t good enough

when I request:

“Hable mas despacio por favor.”

My skin is brown

just like theirs,

but now I’m unworthy of the color

‘cause I don’t speak Spanish

the way I should.

Then they laugh and talk about

mi problema

in the language I stumble over [. . .]

–Opening stanza of “Mi Problema” from Chicana Falsa

Applied to speakers (mostly kids) whose Spanish is identified as grammatically wrong or heard with an Anglicized accent, “no sabo” hashtags can encourage people to police each other’s tongues. Social media videos even show parents testing their children’s Spanish. When a child cannot remember or (mis)pronounces a Spanish word, or worse, uses a Spanglish iteration, they are disparagingly called “no sabo kids” (Stransky et al. 2023). Other posts reveal Latinx users’ fear of having and raising a “no sabo kid” or not wanting to date a “no sabo kid.”

Speaking to my kids in Spanish and telling them buenas noches they giggle and say buenos nachossss

I’m not tryna have some no sabo kids

— 𝖁𝖊𝖊 (@megumis_mama) October 13, 2023

https://twitter.com/SimplySelena101/status/1591649430117273604?s=20Lastly, other posts proudly admit to being a “no sabo kid.” The latest series of “no sabo kids” hashtags are also unapologetic declarations that their language does not define the totality of their being or experiences.

I’m a Yo No Sabo kid and proud of it!!

— RAMONISLOVE (@ramonislove_) March 22, 2022

Indeed, speaking Anglicized Spanish as Latinx can surface feelings of embarrassment, disappointment, and mockery from presumed “perfect” Spanish speakers or self-appointed “real” Spanish-English bilinguals. Televised instances of Latin Americans chastising the Spanish spoke of Latinx speakers or the public praise thrown at Ben Affleck for his spoken Spanish in comparison to the public side eyes given to wife, Bronx-raised, Jennifer Lopez are both hyper-mediated instances of #nosabokids.

Here’s Ben Affleck speaking better Spanish than JLo pic.twitter.com/D1eRFrNHn3

— Laura Martínez (@miblogestublog) April 9, 2022

White people might be praised for learning Spanish – no matter how Anglicized their accent – yet Latinx people whose Spanish is detected as Anglicized, are (racially whitewashed) “no sabo kids” (Urciuoli 2013). And yes, the use of the word “kids” alone infantilizes the speaker as some social media posts point to both children and adults as “no sabo.”

Irrespective of the proficiency in English or Spanish, Latinx individuals share experiences of being corrected in educational settings, at home, or online. The misuse of verb conjugation, such as using “sabo” instead of “sé,” is a developmental challenge encountered even by Spanish-speaking children who are learning solely Spanish. In other words, it is not an exclusive practice among Spanish-English bilingual speakers, despite what social media posts insist. The public discourse that some Latinx social media users are battling is what Jonathan Rosa calls “looking like a language” and, in this case, not “sounding like a race” (Rosa 2019).

imagine i was a no sabo kid & didn’t know what bad bunny was saying

— M (@pra_dough) October 3, 2022

Speaking, listening, and living “muy ratata” with inventive modes of Spanish and English in the U.S. is clearly heard as threatening. For instance, knowledge of another language has always challenged monolingual conservative speakers. Bilingual speakers and listeners routinely teach us how to resignify language practices and ultimately, the meaning of being a “no sabo kid.” (Or how Nancy Morales argues about Los Jornaleros del Norte and Radio Ambulante in the ways they offer new forms of belonging by understanding themselves and respecting each other.)

Entrepreneurs with Chicana and Latina feminist identities are modeling refashioned ways of belonging. For example, Los Angeles-based brand Hija de tu Madre created t-shirts and crewneck sweatshirts with the words “no sabo” to counter the ridicule heard and circulated within social media and to loudly claim a racial, linguistic identity that has nothing to do with shame. Similarly, the card game “Yo Sabo,” founded by a first generation college student of Mexican descent, Carlos Torres, looks for ways to improve his Spanish and simultaneously creates another way to connect with immigrant family members. Labels like “no sabo ” that are intended to categorize people in harmful ways are being repurposed to build community.

The podcast Locatora Radio: A Radiophonic Novela released an episode on April 12, 2023, Capítulo 160: No Sabo Kids, detailing historical reasons why Latinx ethnicities have structurally been banned from learning and speaking Spanish. Perhaps most importantly, Locatora Radio shares with listeners lengthy listener-recorded testimonios.

They provide diverse personal reasons for identifying as a “no sabo kid.” One listener, Paula, is a transracial adoptee whose first language was Spanish. However, because of forced family separation and the foster care system in Virginia, she “lost” her Spanish. Paula was enrolled in Spanish language classes throughout her formal schooling and accepts that her reclaiming of culture and language is a lifelong process. The use of verbal testimonios, a format that makes it possible for podcast listeners to listen to fellow listeners, moves away from posts above that wag their digital finger at “no sabo kids” and instead gives them a space to speak for themselves.

The intense personal and communal fear of losing aspects of culture or language makes it difficult to understand how shifts in language practices and accents are important new forms of belonging as Latinx in the U.S. If we cannot accept our own linguistic diversity, how do we expect others to listen to us?

—

Featured Image: A selection of TikTok #nosabo memes from @marlene.ramir, @yospanishofficial, and @saianana

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Sara Veronica Hinojos is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Queens College, CUNY. Her research focuses on representation of Chicanx and Latinx within popular film and television with an emphasis on gender, race, language politics, and humor studies. She is currently working on a book manuscript that investigates the racial function of linguistic “accents” within media, called: GWAT?!: Chicanx Mediated Race, Gender, and “Accents” in the US.

Eliana Buenrostro is a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Riverside in the Department of Ethnic Studies. She received her master’s in Latin American and Latino Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research examines the criminalization, immigration, and deportation of Chicanes and Latines through the lens of music and other forms of cultural production. She is a recipient of the Crossing Latinidades Mellon Fellowship.

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Ronca Realness: Voices that Sound the Sucia Body—Cloe Gentile Reyes

From Spanish to English to Spanish: How Shakira’s VMA Performance Showcases the New Moment in Latin Music “Crossover”—Petra Rivera-Rideau* and Vanessa Díaz***

Echoes in Transit: Loudly Waiting at the Paso del Norte Border Region—José Manuel Flores & Dolores Inés Casillas

Xicanacimiento, Life-giving Sonics of Critical Consciousness—Esther Díaz Martín and Kristian E. Vasquez

“Don’t Be Self-Conchas”: Listening to Mexican Styled Phonetics in Popular Culture*–Sara Hinijos and Inés Casillas

View Details

**This post is co-written by Petra Rivera-Rideau and Vanessa Díaz*

On the night of September 12, Colombian pop star Shakira made history as the first predominantly Spanish-language artist to be honored as MTV’s Video Vanguard at the Video Music Awards (VMAs). The award recognizes artists who have had a major and innovative impact on music videos and popular music. Shakira played a 10-minute medley of Spanish and English hits from her three-decades long career. Her performance demonstrated her breadth as an artist as she shifted from pop to rock to reggaetón.

Not only did she demonstrate her impressive musical range, but of her 69 singles, Shakira selected those that represent two significant crossover moments for Latin music. She sang hits like “Wherever, Whenever,” “Hips Don’t Lie,” and “She Wolf” from her English-language crossover in the early 2000s as part of the so-called “Latin Boom.” She sang 2001’s “Objection (Tango)” with the same samba/rock music arrangement she used at her very first VMA performance in 2002.

During this “Latin Boom” of the late 1990s and early 2000s, Shakira and other established Latin stars who had previously performed in Spanish, such as Ricky Martin, Marc Anthony, and the late Selena Quintanilla, dominated the charts with English-language albums. Despite their successful global careers in the Latin market—and the long history and influence of Latinx musicians in U.S. pop music–U.S. media consistently portrayed these artists as exotic newcomers to the scene, praised more for being “Latin lovers” than established musicians. The Latin boom stars were valued as spicy foreigners there to expose Americans to new, exotic Latin sounds – conga beats, flamenco-style guitar riffs, and festive horns – even as many of these songs draw from familiar rock/pop references. Draco Rosa, one Ricky Martin’s co-writers, remembers “channeling [Jim] Morrison” and “elements of big band … a little bit of surf guitar” in the 1999 smash “Livin’ La Vida Loca.”

Despite the Latin Boom’s English-language crossovers, the images and sounds associated with the moment underscored the artists’ foreignness, something that continues today. This year’s Grammys’ botched treatment of superstar Bad Bunny’s performance and acceptance speech, in which, in lieu of translations, the subtitles merely declared that his words were “non-English.” Spanish has long been used to signify Latinxs’ alleged foreignness and inability to assimilate into US life and culture despite the fact that Latinx communities have been part of the fabric of the US for centuries. In the context of increased anti-immigrant sentiment, the popularity of Spanish-speaking artists like Bad Bunny and Shakira takes on even greater significance.

Following the Grammy’s disastrous handling of Bad Bunny’s performance and speech, backlash ensued. A plethora of popular memes and even t-shirts proudly claiming non-English popped up almost overnight. New York Times’ critic and Princeton professor Yarimar Bonilla proclaimed that “Bad Bunny is [Winning in Non-English].” Celebrities from comedian Cristela Alonzo to rapper 50 Cent admonished CBS. Even California Congressman Robert Garcia sent a letter directly to the CBS president and CEO George Cheeks, writing that the incident “display[ed] a lack of sensitivity and foresight. For too many Spanish-speaking Americans, it felt disrespectful of our place in our shared society, and of our contributions to our shared culture.” CBS eventually released a tepid statement saying that their vendor was not adequately equipped to manage Benito’s Spanish-language speech and performance, and Cheeks took “full responsibility” for the incident. Overall, the Grammys snafu reflects the ways in which the American mainstream still is incapable of embracing the status of Latin artists as equal players in the US and global music markets, in any language.

Compared to this year’s Grammys, however, MTV’s VMAs offered a much more inclusive approach, with a historic perspective that demonstrated exactly how we were able to arrive at this new moment in Latin music. When Puerto Rican and Cuban American rapper Fat Joe and Mexican pop star Thalia presented the award for Best Latin video, Thalia reminded the audience that “in the 2000s’ first Latin explosion, we had a song together, and now we’re here celebrating again this new Latin explosion.” This new Latin explosion refers to the numerous Spanish-language artists like Shakira, Bad Bunny, Karol G, and Peso Pluma who have recently broken out in the US mainstream.

But, unlike the previous Latin Boom, these artists have maintained their Spanish and their musical style. Bad Bunny’s Grammy performance included plena, reggaeton, and merengue rather than the kitschy styles of his Latin Boom predecessors. In addition to selling out stadiums around the country, Karol G drew 15,000 fans, the largest crowd in the Today Show’s history, for her reggaetón performance as part of the program’s Summer Concert Series in Rockefeller Center. Just this past September, Eslabon Armado became the first Mexican regional music group to ever perform on Good Morning America with their chart-topping hit “Ella Baila Sola” (the first Mexican regional song to ever hit number one on Billboard’s Global 200 chart). Whether it is the percussive dembow beat of reggaetón or the syncopated horns of corridos tumbados, all of these musicians have maintained the sounds of their respective genres, foregoing the stereotypical “Latin” sonic signifiers historically associated with Latin music.

Shakira herself reflected this moment in her Video Vanguard performance. She performed her new Spanish-language songs as 2022’s “Te Felicito,” and 2023’s “TQG” and “Bzrp Music Sessions: Volume 53” (the latter having broken four Guinness world records, including the most streamed Latin track in 24 hours). All of these songs have been part of this new Latin music movement. In fact, her “TQG” collaborator Karol G also performed her Spanish hits at the show. Mexican regional phenom Peso Pluma sang “Lady Gaga” on a small stage, surrounded only by his band, and called out “¡arriba México!” at the end. Brazilian artist Anitta performed a multilingual medley from her Funk Generation: A Favela Love Story. In addition, Shakira and Karol G won the award for best collaboration for “TQG.” Not only did the women give their acceptance speech in Spanish, shouting out their home country of Colombia, but they also won in a category otherwise populated by mainstream English-language artists like Doja Cat with Post Malone, and Metro Boomin with The Weeknd, 21 Savage, and Diddy. The interchangeable, tropical Latinidad of the earlier Latin boom was replaced with shout outs to specific countries and regions, and the crowd proudly waved Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Colombian flags. At the VMAs, Latin musicians were not isolated in Latin awards categories or depicted as exotic novelties. They were central to the show – nominated for major awards, and celebrated for some of the night’s most memorable performances.

Much like this year’s Coachella, which featured Bad Bunny and K-Pop sensation Black Pink as headliners, this year’s VMAs reflects a more global approach to pop music. Tuesday night’s award show also featured two performances by K-Pop groups, and MTV offered its first ever award in Best Afrobeats. In this context, it makes sense that Latin music would have a significant presence in the program. But the dominance of Latin music right now makes it so that no part of the music industry can leave Latin music out anymore. Not the VMAs, not the Grammys, not Coachella. As Thalia proudly declared on stage, “this last year for the first time in the US Latin music made a billion dollars in streaming.” Bad Bunny has been the most streamed artist on Spotify for three years in a row, has the longest-running Spanish-language album at the top of the Billboard chart, and in 2022 became the only artist in history to stage two separate $100 million-grossing tours in less than 12 months. Karol G became the first woman to have a Spanish-language debut at number one, and came to the VMAs after a string of historic performances at her Mañana Será Bonito stadium tour. Latin music’s global appeal is undeniable and the industry has to respond accordingly.

This is among the most important times in history for Latin music, and honoring artists like Shakira center stage at the VMAs helps underscore the musical evolution we are lucky enough to witness. Twenty years ago, Shakira had to crossover into the US market in English; now she performs in her native Spanish and is more relevant than ever. The global success of stars like Peso Pluma, Karol G, and Bad Bunny means we need to completely reevaluate the concept of the crossover. Latin artists today did not crossover, the market crossed over into them. They are not compromising their language, their identity, or their culture. They do not have to kowtow to industry expectations that they perform the exotic, sexy Latin other. So while the VMA Vanguard Award winner Shakira may have had to crossover into English to make it during the ‘90s Latin boom, she can proudly return to her roots and, this time, the market will follow her.

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Featured Image: Screen shot by SO! from Shakira’s MTV 2023 Video Vanguard acceptance speech

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Petra Rivera-Rideau is Associate Professor of American Studies at Wellesley College, and the author of Remixing Reggaetón: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico and the forthcoming book Fun, Fitness, Fiesta: Selling Latinx Culture in Zumba Fitness. Vanessa Díaz is Associate Professor of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at Loyola Marymount University, and the author of Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters in Hollywood. Díaz and Rivera-Rideau are the co-creators of the Bad Bunny Syllabus.

—

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Ronca Realness: Voices that Sound the Sucia Body—Cloe Gentile Reyes

Contra La Pared: Reggaetón and Dissonance in Naarm, Melbourne—Lucreccia Quintanilla

Unapologetic Paisa Chingona-ness: Listening to Fans’ Sonic Identities–Yessica Garcia Hernandez

SO! Podcast #74: Bonus Track for Spanish Rap & Sound Studies Forum

Listening (Loudly) to Spanish-Language Radio– D. Inés Casillas

View Details

This series listens to the political, gendered, queer(ed), racial engagements and class entanglements involved in proclaiming out loud: La-TIN-x. ChI-ca-NA. La-TI-ne. ChI-ca-n-@. Xi-can-x. Funded by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of the Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative, the Latinx Sound Cultures Studies Working Group critically considers the role of sound and listening in our formation as political subjects. Through both a comparative and cross-regional lens, we invite Latinx Sound Scholars to join us as we dialogue about our place within the larger fields of Chicanx/Latinx Studies and Sound Studies. We are delighted to publish our initial musings with Sounding Out!, a forum that has long prioritized sound from a queered, racial, working-class and “always-from-below” epistemological standpoint. —Ed. Dolores Inés Casillas

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This post is co-authored by José Manuel Flores & Dolores Inés Casillas

A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition.

Gloria Anzaldúa (1999)

Ciudad Juárez es número uno/

y la frontera más fabulosa y bella del mundo

Juan Gabriel (lyric to “Juárez es el #1” – 1984)

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Geographically, the Paso del Norte (PdN) region includes the city of El Paso, Texas, Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, as well as neighboring cities in the state of New Mexico (see map). U.S. citizens live and play in Juárez, and those in Juárez (Juarenses), live and work in El Paso with families extended on both sides; continually moving back and forth. Yet, this broader region has long been plagued with sensationalizing headlines, both in the U.S. and in Mexico, that cast violent and limiting portrayals of these borderland communities. Recognized as sister cities, El Paso and Ciudad Juárez are seen less as close-knit siblings and more like distant cousins with Juárez routinely referred to undesirably as the little sister or ugly sister in comparison to El Paso. Indeed these hierarchical north/south (first world/not-quite-first-world) distinctions are products of histories of colonialism, unequal trade policies, and racial capitalist systems galvanized by immigrant detention camps (a tenant of the Immigration Industrial Complex). Within larger conversations about border cities, both Tijuana (San Diego) and Reynosa (McAllen) are recognized as the “primary” border cities due to their larger population size, transnational capital, and industrious reputations.

Two decades ago, Josh Kun’s concept of the “aural border” invited scholars to consider the US/Mexico border as a “field of sound, a terrain of musicality and music-making, of melodic convergence and dissonant clashing” (2000). Kun’s writings over the years have roused generations of sound scholars to listen to borders, border crossings, border communities and how they reverberate their economic, social, and migrant conditions. This essay intentionally moves away from Kun’s (beloved) border city of Tijuana and towards a less-referenced US/Mexico border city: Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Here, 1,201 kilometers east of Tijuana, we offer an opportunity to listen to Juárez’s everyday bustling of migratory life through the digital sound repository, the Border Soundscapes Project.

Sound structures our social, cultural, and political relations, and as Tom Western reminds us succinctly: “sounds have politics” (2020). Indeed, Juárez’s soundscapes are microcosms of economic, immigration and border enforcement policies as the city’s migratory composition changes depending on the latest economic crisis in the global south. “Whether intentional or unintentional,” Sarah Barns insists “urban soundscapes are by-products of both active design strategies as well as infrastructure and socio-economic organization” (2014). In essence, listening to migrants within Juárez, along with those planning to traverse Ciudad Juárez (to el norte), shapes our multiethnic and multiracial understandings of Latinidad.

City life in Ciudad Juarez in 2016 through the lens of the Red Nacional de Ciclismo Urbano organization(CC BY-NC 2.0)Field audio recordings of public life including nuanced linguistic expressions, comprise a rich sonic site that best demonstrates Juárez’s daily sounds of transit. This Project benefits tremendously from José Manuel Flores’s attentive ear, raised as a borderlander himself, and a seasoned crosser of the bridges linking Juárez and El Paso. Flores created this Project in 2018, the same year, Ciudad Juárez became a prominent make-shift, temporary “home” for groups of migrants – currently a majority of Venezuelan-nationals with previous waves of Cubanos and Salvadoreños. Within Juárez, these migrant caravans initially settled on the primary Paso del Norte bridge and later to nearby main border bridges. Migrants have felt comfortable settling in this arid city of approximately 1.5 million people, while others consider Juárez more of a “waiting room” before setting their sights on securing political asylum in the United States. Either way, Juárez becomes part of both their journey and resettlement.

Below are five instances where we listen to migrants in Juárez.

Track 1: Migrants in Ciudad Juarez: “Te traigo un manguito”Near the Paso del Nte. International Bridge, in Juárez, on Avenida Juárez, a downtown street where people begin to line up to cross the border. Cars are heard passing. A Venezuelan man wants to rest on this hot day yet his friend cajoles him to get ready to work. He promises his resting friend un mangito o agua (a mango or water) as soon as he’s up and ready to tackle some work.

Track #2: Migrants in Ciudad Juarez: “Cualquier bendición que le sale a tu corazón es buena”Near Juárez’s Migration’s national institute and Presidencia Municipal de Ciudad Juárez, an older woman cleans car windshields during traffic stops. As she cleans, she is heard laughing while conversing and doling out bendiciones (blessings) to those who gave her work. She’s assumed to be Venezuelan yet her use of the word “carnal” –a Mexican phrase to say brother – indicates that she’s been in Juárez for sometime.

Track #3: Migrants in Ciudad Juarez: “El Escandalo”Local news highlights the influx of migrant caravans in promising tones. In an interview for local and national media in Mexico, Mr. José Luis Cruzalta, Cuban migrant, comments that: “no hay que ir para el lado de allá (EE.UU.), aquí se vive igual o mejor que del lado de allá, menos sacrificio, sin meterte en problemas, aquí no hay problemas de ningún tipo.”

“you don’t have to go there (USA), here you live the same or better than on that side, less sacrifice, without getting into trouble, there are no problems of any kind here, they can stay here.”

He later sends assurances that there is enough work for everyone and that only a willingness and desire to work is required, that nothing else.

Track #4: Migrants in Ciudad Juarez: “Rincon Cubano”A group of Cuban migrants started a small Creole street food business offering “frituras de maíz” and Cuban “tamales.” The sound space of the downtown of Ciudad Juárez is nourished by the voices of a group of Cubans proclaiming Cuban Corn, “Maíz Cubano”. These contemporary Cuban criers conjure the city’s sonic memories of previous food vendors. Flores remembers fondly as a child the shouting of “Caldo de Oso” (Bear Broth) for sale and the fear that he’d find a grizzly bear in his soup.

Track #5: Migrants In Ciudad Juarez: Haitians Talking in La TaqueríaThe small restaurant,”La Taqueria,” in downtown Juárez has undergone ethnic transformations. A few years ago it used to be a place known for traditional Cuban food –el rincón cubano–, nowadays it is a place recognized for its tasty, Venezuelan food. Caribbean music attracts some Haitian migrants to this place, inside the restaurant there are some families eating and having a restful moment. Outside the place, there are some Haitian families moving through the city carrying their luggage.

Bonus Track and OutroThe Border Soundscapes Project offers an acoustic ecology of this region through a site that acts as part-archive, part-map, and perhaps even, part-love-song, à la the late singer Juan Gabriel, a globally famous Juaranese who dedicated six songs to his beloved home city.

The Border Soundscapes Project invites listeners to hear for yourself why Juan Gabriel characterized Juárez as the most beautiful borderland in the world. His lyrics fiercely defended Juárez, and decades later, the Border Soundscapes Projects demonstrates how Juarez, the “little sister,” dignifies their migrant communities, in the critical context of Gloría Anzaldúa’s conceptions of borders as vague, “unnatural boundaries” crafted by the “emotional residue” of two other siblings: colonialism and capitalism.

Inspired by the written musings of Valeria Luiselli (2019), the Border Soundscapes Project also functions as an “inventory of echoes,” where sounds are not simply recovered or used within a larger catalog project. Instead, sounds are considered “present in the time of recording and that, when we listen to them, remind us of the ones that are lost” (p. 141), and we would add, in transit. Most importantly, echoes cannot be placed on static, visual representations of standard “maps.” In offering audio snippets of Juárez’s public life, sound becomes a different migrant-led “scale of analysis” (DeLeon 2016); a type of audio counter-mapping of the U.S./Mexico border that lends itself uniquely to sound.

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Featured Image by Flickr User Simon Foot, “Ciudad Juárez, from El Paso, Texas” (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

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José Manuel Flores is a Ph.D. student in the Rhetoric and Composition Program at The University of Texas at El Paso. He holds an MA in Studies and Creative Processes in Art and Design. He considers that the sounds that arise between the Juarez and El Paso border are relevant because they contribute to the historical heritage of the region. That is why his interest as a researcher focuses on Sound Studies, specifically in the intersection between Soundscapes and philosophy from a disciplinary posture of rhetoric.

Dolores Inés Casillas is Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies and Director of the Chicano Studies Institute (CSI) at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is author of Sounds of Belonging: U.S. Spanish-language Radio and Public Advocacy (2014), which received two book prizes, and co-editor of the Companion to Latina/o Media Studies (2016) and Feeling It: Language, Race and Affect in Latinx Youth Learning (2018).

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Xicanacimiento, Life-giving Sonics of Critical Consciousness—Esther Díaz Martín and Kristian E. Vasquez

Ronca Realness: Voices that Sound the Sucia Body—Cloe Gentile Reyes

SO! READS: Melissa Mora Hidalgo’s Mozlandia: Morrissey Fans in the Borderlands–Nabeel Zuberi

Your Voice is (Not) Your Passport–Michelle Pfeiffer

Óyeme Voz: U.S. Latin@ & Immigrant Communities Re-Sound Citizenship and Belonging-Nancy Morales

“Don’t Be Self-Conchas”: Listening to Mexican Styled Phonetics in Popular Culture*–Sara Hinijos and Inés Casillas

“Listening to the Border: ‘”2487″: Giving Voice in Diaspora’ and the Sound Art of Luz María Sánchez”-D. Ines Casillas

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This series listens to the political, gendered, queer(ed), racial engagements and class entanglements involved in proclaiming out loud: La-TIN-x. ChI-ca-NA. La-TI-ne. ChI-ca-n-@.  Xi-can-x. Funded by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of the Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative, the Latinx Sound Cultures Studies Working Group critically considers the role of sound and listening in our […]

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This series listens to the political, gendered, queer(ed), racial engagements and class entanglements involved in proclaiming out loud: La-TIN-x. ChI-ca-NA. La-TI-ne. ChI-ca-n-@.  Xi-can-x. Funded by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of the Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative, the Latinx Sound Cultures Studies Working Group critically considers the role of sound and listening in […]

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In summer 2021, sound artist, engineer, musician, and educator Johann Diedrick convened a panel at the intersection of racial bias, listening, and AI technology at Pioneerworks in Brooklyn, NY. Diedrick, 2021 Mozilla Creative Media award recipient and creator of such works as Dark Matters, is currently working on identifying the origins of racial bias in voice interface systems. Dark Matters, according to Squeaky […]

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In summer 2021, sound artist, engineer, musician, and educator Johann Diedrick convened a panel at the intersection of racial bias, listening, and AI technology at Pioneerworks in Brooklyn, NY. Diedrick, 2021 Mozilla Creative Media award recipient and creator of such works as Dark Matters, is currently working on identifying the origins of racial bias in voice interface systems. Dark Matters, according to Squeaky […]

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In summer 2021, sound artist, engineer, musician, and educator Johann Diedrick convened a panel at the intersection of racial bias, listening, and AI technology at Pioneerworks in Brooklyn, NY. Diedrick, 2021 Mozilla Creative Media award recipient and creator of such works as Dark Matters, is currently working on identifying the origins of racial bias in voice interface systems. Dark Matters, according to Squeaky Wheel, “exposes the absence of Black speech in the datasets used to train voice interface systems in consumer artificial intelligence products such as Alexa and Siri. Utilizing 3D modeling, sound, and storytelling, the project challenges our communities to grapple with racism and inequity through speech and the spoken word, and how AI systems underserve Black communities.” And now, he’s working with SO! as guest editor for this series for Sounding Out! (along with ed-in-chief JS!). It kicked off with Amina Abbas-Nazarii’s post, helping us to understand how Speech AI systems operate from a very limiting set of assumptions about the human voice. Today Golden Owens explored what happens when companies sell Black voices along with their Intelligent Virtual Assistants. Tune in for a deep historical dive into the racialized sound of servitude in America. Even though corporations ain’t trying to hear this absolutely critical information, they better listen up. –JS

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In October 2019, Google released an ad for their Google Assistant (GA), an intelligent virtual assistant (IVA) that initially debuted in 2016. As revealed by onscreen text and the video’s caption, the ad’s announced that the GA would soon have a new celebrity voice. The ten-second promotion includes a soundbite from this unseen celebrity—who states: “You can still call me your Google Assistant. Now I just sound extra fly”— followed by audio of the speaker’s laughter, a white screen, the GA logo, and a written question: “Can you guess who it is?”

Consumers quickly speculated about the person behind the voice, with many posting their guesses on Reddit. The earliest comments named Tiffany Haddish, Lizzo, and Issa Rae as prospects, with other users affirming these guesses. These women were considered the most popular contenders: two articles written about the new GA voice cited the Reddit post, with one calling these women Redditors’ most popular guesses and the other naming only them as users’ desired choices. Those who guessed Rae were proven correct. One day after the ad, Google released a longer promo revealing her as the GA’s new voice, including footage of Rae recording responses for the assistant. The ad ends with Rae repeating the “extra fly” line from the initial promo, smiling into the camera.

Google’s addition of Rae as an IVA voice option is one of several recent examples of Black people’s voices employed in this manner. Importantly, this trend toward Black-voiced IVAs deviates from the pre-established standard of these digital aides. While there are many voice options available, the default voices for IVAs are white female voices with flat dialects. This shift toward Black American voices is notable not only because of conversations about inclusion—with some Black users saying they feel more representedby these new voices—but because this influx of Black voices marks a spiritual return to the historical employment of Black people as service-providing, labor-performing entities in the United States, thus subliminally reinforcing historical biases about Black people as uniquely suited for performing this type of work.

Marketed as labor-saving devices, IVAs are programmed to assist with cooking and grocery shopping, transmit messages and reminders, and provide entertainment, among other tasks. Since the late 2010s they have also been able to operate other technologies within users’ homes: Alexa, for example, can control Roomba robotic vacuums; IVA-compatible smart plugs or smart home devices enable IVAs to control lights, locks, thermostats, and other such apparatuses. Behaviorally, IVAs are designed and expected to be on-call at all times, but not to speak or act out of turn—with programmers often directed to ensure these aides are relatable, reliable, trustworthy, and unobtrusive.

Round Grey Speaker On Brown Board, gadget, google assistant, google home (public domain)Far from operating in a vacuum, IVAs eerily evoke the presence of and parameters set for enslaved workers and domestic servants in the U.S.—many of whom have historically been Black American women. Like IVAs, Black women servants cooked, cleaned, entertained children, and otherwise served their (predominantly white) employers, themselves operating as labor-saving devices through their performance of these labors. Employers similarly expected these women to be ever-available, occupy specific areas of the home, and obey all requests and demands—and were unsettled if not infuriated when maids did not behave according to their expectations.

White women being the default voices of IVAs has somewhat obfuscated the degree to which these aides have re-embodied and replaced the Black servants who once predominantly executed this work, but incorporating Black voices into these roles removes this veil, symbolically re-implementing Black people as labor-performing entities by having them operate as the virtual assistants who now perform much of the labor Black workers historically performed. Enabling Black people to be used as IVAs thus re-aligns Black beings with the performance of service and labor.

Still image from Mozilla Explains: Bias in AI Training DataWhile Black women were far from the only demographic conscripted into domestic labor, by the 1920s they comprised a “permanent pool of servants” throughout the country, due largely to the egress of white American and immigrant women from domestic service into fields that excluded Black women (183). Black women’s prominence in domestic service was heavily reflected in early U.S. media, which overwhelmingly portrayed domestic servants not just as Black women, but as Black Mammies—domestic servant archetypes originally created to promote the myth that Black women “were contented, even happy as slaves.” Characters like Gone with the Wind’s “Mammy” pulled both from then-current associations of Black women with domestic labor and from white nostalgia for the Antebellum era, and specifically for the archetypal Mammy—marking Black women as idealized labor-performing domestics operating in service of white employers. These on-screen servants were “always around when the boss needed them…[and] always ready to lend a helping hand when times were tough” (36). Historian Donald Bogle dubbed this era of Hollywood the “Age of the Negro Servant,” referenced in this reel from the New York Times.

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—–Cinema and television merely built from years of audible racism on the radio—America’s most prominent form of in-home entertainment in the first half of the 20th century—where Black actors also played largely servant and maid roles that demanded they speak in “distorted dialect, exaggerated intonation, rhythmic speech cadences, and particular musical instruments” in order to appear at all (143). This white-contrived portrayal of Black people is known as “Blackvoice,” and essentially functions as “the minstrel show boiled down to pure aurality” (14). These performances allowed familiar ideals of and narratives about Blackness to be communicated and recirculated on a national scale, even without the presence of Black bodies. Labor-performing Black characters like Beulah, Molasses and January, Aunt Jemima, and Amos and Andy were prominent in the Golden Age of Radio, all initially voiced by white actors. In fact, Aunt Jemima’s print advertising was just as dependent on stereotypical representations of her voice as it was on visual “Mammy” imagery.

Close up of Aunt Jemima advertising appearing in Woman’s Day in 1948. When Black actors broke through white exclusion on the airwaves, many took over roles once voiced by white men and/or were forced by white radio producers and scriptwriters to “‘talk as white people believed Negroes talked’” so that white audiences could discern them as Black (371). This continuous realignment undoubtedly informs contemporary ideas of labor, labor performance, and laboring bodies, further promoted by the sudden influx of Black voice assistants in 2019.

Specifically, these similarities demonstrate that contemporary IVAs are intrinsically haunted by Black women slaves and servants: built in accordance with and thus inevitably evoking these laborers in their positioning, programming, and task performance. Further facilitating this alignment is the fact that advertisements for Black-voiced IVAs purposefully link well-known Black bodies in conjunction with their Black voices. Excepting Apple’s Black-sounding voice options for Siri, all of the Black IVA voice options since 2019 have belonged to prominent Black American celebrities. Prior to Issa Rae, GA users could employ John Legend as their digital aide (April 2019 until March 2020). Samuel L. Jackson became the first celebrity voice option for Amazon’s Alexa in December 2019, followed by Shaquille O’Neal in July 2021.

The ads for Black-voiced IVAs thus link these disembodied aides not just to Black bodies, but to specific Black bodies as a sales tactic—bodies which signify particular images and embodiments of Blackness. The Samuel L. Jackson Alexa ad utilizes close-ups of Jackson recording lines for the IVA and of Echo speakers with Jackson’s voice emitting from them in response to users. John Legend is physically absent from the ad announcing him as the GA; however, his celebrity wife directs the GA to sing for her instead, after which she states that it is “just like the real John”—thus linking Legend’s body to the GA even without his onscreen presence. Amazon has even explicitly explored the connection between the Black-voiced IVA and the Black body, releasing a 2021 commercial called “Alexa’s Body” that saw Alexa voiced and physically embodied by Michael B. Jordan—with the main character in the commercial insinuating that he is the ideal vessel for Alexa.

By aligning these bodies with, and having them act as, labor-performing devices in service of consumers, these advertisements both re-align Blackness with labor and illuminate how these devices were always already haunted by laboring Black bodies—and especially, given the demographics of the bodies who most performed the types of labors IVAs now execute, laboring Black women’s bodies. That the majority of the Black celebrities employed as Black IVA voices are men suggests some awareness of and attempt to distance from this history and implicit haunting—an effort which itself exposes and illuminates the degree to which this haunting exists.

In some cases, the Black people lending their voices to these IVAs also speak in a way that sonically suggests Blackness: Issa Rae’s “Now I’m just extra fly,” for example, incorporates Black American slang through the use of the word “fly. As part of African American Vernacular English (AAVE), the term “fly” dates back to the 1970s and denotes coolness, attractiveness, and fashionableness. Because of its inclusion in Hip Hop, which has become the dominant music genre in the United States, the term, its meaning, and its racial origins are widely known amongst consumers. By using the word “fly,” Rae nods not only at these qualities but also at her own Blackness in a manner that is recognizable to a mainstream American audience. Due in part to Hip Hop’s popularity, U.S.-based media outlets, corporations, and individuals of varying races and ethnicities regularly appropriate AAVE and Black slang terms, often without regard for the culture that created them or the vernacular they stem from. The ad preceding Issa Rae’s revelation as the GA specifically invited users to align the voice with a celebrity body, and users’ predominant claims that the voice was a Black woman’s suggest that something about the voice conjured Blackness and the Black female body.

“Alexa Voice” by Stock Catalog, (CC BY 2.0)This racial marking was also likely facilitated by how people naturally listen and respond to voices. As Nina Sun Eidsheim notes in The Race of Sound, “voices heard are ultimately identified, recognized, and named by listeners at large. In hearing a voice, one also brings forth a series of assumptions about the nature of voice” (12). This series of assumptions, Eidsheim asserts in “The Voice as Action,” is inflected by the “multisensory context” surrounding a given voice, i.e., “a composite of visual, textural, discursive, and other kinds of information” (9). While we imagine our impressions of voices as uniquely meaningful, “we cannot but perceive [them] through filters generated by our own preconceptions” (10). As a result, listening is never a neutral or truly objective practice.

For many consumers, these filters are informed by what Jennifer Lynn Stoever terms the sonic color line, “a socially constructed boundary that racially codes sonic phenomena such as vocal timbre, accents, and musical tones” (11). Where the racial color line allows white people to separate themselves from Black people on the basis of visual and behavioral differences, the sonic color line allows people “to construct and discern racial identities based on voices, sounds, and particular soundscapes” and to assign nonwhite voices with “differential cultural, social, and political value” (11). In the U.S., the sonic color line operates in tandem with the American listening ear, which “normalizes the aural tastes and standards of white elite masculinity as the singular way to interpret sonic information” (13) and therefore marks-as-Other not only the voices and bodies of Black people, but also those of non-males and the non-elite.

Voice bubble from 1940’s print ad for Aunt Jemima Pancake mix: the sonic color line in sight and sound. Ironically, the very listening practices which make consumers register particular voices and vocal qualities as Black also make Black voices inaccessible to Alexa and other IVAs. Scholarship on Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) systems and Speech AI observes that many Black users find it necessary to code-switch when speaking to IVAs, as the devices fail to comprehend their linguistic specificities. A study by Christina N. Harrington et al. in which Black elders used the Google Home to seek health information discovered that “participants felt that Google Home struggles to understand their communication style (e.g., diction or accent) and language (e.g., dialect) specifically due to the device being based on Standard English” (15). To address these struggles, participants switched to Standard American English (SAE), eliminating informal contractions and changing their tone and verbiage so that the GA would understand them. As one of the study’s participants states,

You do have to change your words. Yes. You do have to change your diction and yes, you have to use… It cannot be an exotic name or a name that’s out of the Caucasian round. …You have to be very clear with the English language. No ebonic (15).

This incomprehension extends to Black Americans of all ages, and to other IVAs. A study by Allison Koenecke et al. on ASR systems produced by Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Apple discovered that these entities had a harder time accurately transcribing Black speech than white speech, producing “an average word error rate (WER) of 0.35 for black speakers compared with 0.19 for white speakers.” (7684). A study by Zion Mengesha et al. on the impact of these errors on Black Americans—which included participants from different regions with a range of ages, genders, socioeconomic backgrounds and education-levels—discovered that many felt frustrated and othered by these mistakes, and felt further pressure to code-switch so that they would not be misunderstood. Koenecke et al. concluded that ASR systems could not understand the “phonological, phonetic, or prosodic characteristics of” AAVE (7687), and that this ignorance would make the use of these technologies more difficult for Black users—a sentiment that was echoed by participants in the study conducted by Mengesha et al., most of whom marked the technology as working better for white and/or SAE speakers (5).

The speech recognition errors these technologies demonstrate—which also extend to speakers in other racial and ethnic groups—illuminate the reality that despite including Black voices as IVAs, these assistant technologies are not truly built for Black people, or for any person that does not speak Standard American English. And where AAVE is largely associated with Blackness, SAE is predominantly associated with whiteness: as a dialect widely perceived to be “lacking any distinctly regional, ethnic, or socioeconomic characteristics,” it is recognized as being “spoken by the majority group or the socially advantaged group” in the United States—both groups which are solely or primarily composed of white people. SAE is so identified with whiteness that Black people who only speak Standard English are often told that they sound and/or “talk” white, and Black people who deliberately invoke SAE in professional and/or interracial settings (i.e., code switching) are described as “talking white” or using their “white voice” when doing so. That IVAs and other ASR systems have such trouble understanding AAVE and other non-standard English dialects suggests that these technologies were not designed to understand any dialect other than SAE—and thus, given SAE’s strong identification with whiteness, were designed specifically to assist, understand, and speak to white users.

Writing on this phenomena as a woman with a non-standard accent, Sinduja Rangarajan highlights in “Hey Siri—Why Don’t You Understand More People Like Me?” that none of the IVAs currently on the market offer any American dialect that is not SAE. And while users can change their IVA’s accents, they are limited to Standard American, British, Irish, Australian, Indian, and South African—which Rangarajan rightly highlights as revealing who the IVAs think they are talking to, rather than who their user actually is. That most of these accents belong to Western, predominantly white countries (or to countries once colonized by white imperialists) strongly suggests that these devices are programmed to speak to—and perform labor for—white consumers specifically.

“Voice is Already Big”: Adobe Sayspring Founder Mark Christopher Webster Presents At Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator Demo Day in April 2017 (CC BY-SA 4.0)When considering the primary imagined and target users of IVAs, the sudden influx of Black-voiced IVAs becomes particularly insidious. Though they may indeed make some Black users feel more represented, cultivating this representation is merely a byproduct of their actual purpose. Because these technologies are not built for Black consumers, Black-voiced IVAs are meant to appeal not to Black users, but to white ones. Rae, Jackson, and the other Black celebrity voices may provide a much-needed variety in the types of voices applied to IVAs, but they primarily operate as “further examples of technology companies using Black voices to entertain white consumers while ignoring Black consumers.” Black-voiced assistants, after all, no better understand Black vernacular English than any of the other voice options for IVAs, a reality marking Black speech patterns as enjoyable but not legitimate.

By excluding Black consumers, the companies behind these IVAs insinuate that Blackness is only acceptable and worthy of consideration when operating in service of whiteness. Where Black people as consumers have been delegitimized and disregarded, Black voices as labor-saving assistants have been welcomed and deemed profitable—a reality which further emphasizes how historical constructions of Black people as labor-performing devices haunts these contemporary technologies. Tech companies reinforce historical positionings of white people as ideal consumers and Black people as consumable products—repeating historical demarcations of Blackness and whiteness in the present.

In imagining the futures of IVAs, the companies behind them would need to reconsider how they interact—or fail to interact—with Black users. Both Samuel L. Jackson and Shaquille O’Neal, the last of the Black-celebrity-voiced IVAs still currently available to users, will be removed as Alexa voice options by September 2023, presenting an opportunity for these companies to divest. Whether or not the brands behind these IVAs take this initiative, consumers themselves can be critical of how AI technologies continue to reestablish hierarchical systems, of their own interactions with these devices, and of who these technologies are truly made for. In being critical, we can perhaps begin to envision alternative, reparative modes of AI technology—modes that serve and support more than one kind of user.

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Featured Image: Issa Rae gif from the 2017 Golden Globes

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Golden Marie Owens is a PhD candidate in the Screen Cultures program at Northwestern University. Her research interests include representations of race and gender in American media and popular culture, artificial intelligence, and racialized sounds. Her doctoral dissertation, “Mechanical Maids: Digital Assistants, Domestic Spaces, and the Spectre(s) of Black Women’s
Labor,” examines how intelligent virtual assistants such as Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa evoke and are haunted by Black women slaves, servants, and houseworkers in the United States. In her time at Northwestern, she has had internal fellowships through the Office of Fellowships and the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities. She currently holds an MMUF Dissertation Grant through the Institute for Citizens and Scholars and Ford Dissertation Fellowship through the National Academy for Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

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Beyond the Every Day: Vocal Potential in AI Mediated Communication –Amina Abbas-Nazari

Voice as Ecology: Voice Donation, Materiality, Identity–Steph Ceraso

Mr. and Mrs. Talking Machine: The Euphonia, the Phonograph, and the Gendering of Nineteenth Century Mechanical Speech – J. Martin Vest

Echo and the Chorus of Female Machines—AO Roberts

Black Excellence on the Airwaves: Nora Holt and the American Negro Artist Program —Chelsea Daniel and Samantha Ege

Spaces of Sounds: The Peoples of the African Diaspora and Protest in the United States–Vanessa Valdes

On Whiteness and Sound Studies–Gus Stadler

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In summer 2021, sound artist, engineer, musician, and educator Johann Diedrick convened a panel at the intersection of racial bias, listening, and AI technology at Pioneerworks in Brooklyn, NY. Diedrick, 2021 Mozilla Creative Media award recipient and creator of such works as Dark Matters, is currently working on identifying the origins of racial bias in voice interface systems. Dark Matters, according to Squeaky Wheel, “exposes the absence of Black speech in the datasets used to train voice interface systems in consumer artificial intelligence products such as Alexa and Siri. Utilizing 3D modeling, sound, and storytelling, the project challenges our communities to grapple with racism and inequity through speech and the spoken word, and how AI systems underserve Black communities.” And now, he’s working with SO! as guest editor for this series for Sounding Out! (along with ed-in-chief JS!). It starts today, with Amina Abbas-Nazari, helping us to understand how Speech AI systems operate from a very limiting set of assumptions about the human voice– are we training it, or is it actually training us?

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Hi, good morning. I’m calling in from Bangalore, India.” I’m talking on speakerphone to a man with an obvious Indian accent. He pauses. “Now I have enabled the accent translation,” he says. It’s the same person, but he sounds completely different: loud and slightly nasal, impossible to distinguish from the accents of my friends in Brooklyn.

The AI startup erasing call center worker accents: is it fighting bias – or perpetuating it? (Wilfred Chan, 24 August 2022)

This telephone interaction was recounted in The Guardian reporting on a Silicon Valley tech start-up called Sanas. The company provides AI enabled technology for real-time voice modification for call centre workers voices to sound more “Western”. The company describes this venture as a solution to improve communication between typically American callers and call centre workers, who might be based in countries such as Philippines and India. Meanwhile, research has found that major companies’ AI interactive speech systems exhibit considerable racial imbalance when trying to recognise Black voices compared to white speakers. As a result, in the hopes of being better heard and understood, Google smart speaker users with regional or ethnic American accents relay that they find themselves contorting their mouths to imitate Midwestern American accents.

These instances describe racial biases present in voice interactions with AI enabled and mediated communication systems, whereby sounding ‘Western’ entitles one to more efficient communication, better usability, or increased access to services. This is not a problem specific to AI though. Linguistics researcher John Baugh, writing in 2002, describes how linguistic profiling is known to have resulted in housing being denied to people of colour in the US via telephone interactions. Jennifer Stoever‘s The Sonic Color Line (2016) presents a cultural and political history of the racialized body and how it both informed and was informed by emergent sound technologies. AI mediated communication repeats and reinforces biases that pre-exist the technology itself, but also helping it become even more widely pervasive.

“pain” by Flickr user Pol Neiman (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)Mozilla’s commendable Common Voice project aims to ‘teach machines how real people speak’ by building an open source, multi-language dataset of voices to improve usability for non-Western speaking or sounding voices. But singer and musicologist, Nina Sun Eidsheim describes how ’a specific voice’s sonic potentiality [in] its execution can exceed imagination’ (7), and voices as having ‘an infinity of unrealised manifestations’ (8) in The Race of Sound (2019). Eidsheim’s sentiments describe a vocal potential, through musicality, that exists beyond ideas of accents and dialects, and vocal markers of categorised identity. As a practicing vocal performer, I recognise and resonate with Eidsheim’s ideas I have a particular interest in extended and experimental vocality, especially gained through my time singing with Musarc Choir and working with artist Fani Parali. In these instances, I have experienced the pleasurable challenge of being asked to vocalise the mythical, animal, imagined, alien and otherworldly edges of the sonic sphere, to explore complex relations between bodies, ecologies, space and time, illuminated through vocal expression.

Joy by Flickr user François Karm, cropped by SO! (CC BY-NC 2.0)Following from Eidsheim, and through my own vocal practice, I believe AI’s prerequisite of voices as “fixed, extractable, and measurable ‘sound object[s]’ located within the body” is over-simplistic and reductive. Voices, within systems of AI, are made to seem only as computable delineations of person, personality and identity, constrained to standardised stereotypes. By highlighting vocal potential, I offer a unique critique of the way voices are currently comprehended in AI recognition systems. When we appreciate the voice beyond the homogenous, we give it authority and autonomy, ultimately leading to a fuller understanding of the voice and its sounding capabilities.

My current PhD research, Speculative Voicing, applies thinking about the voice from a musical perspective to the sound and sounding of voices in artificially intelligent conversational systems. Herby the voice becomes an instrument of the body to explore its sonic materiality, vocal potential and extremities of expression, rather than being comprehended in conjunction to vocal markers of identity aligning to categories of race, gender, age, etc. In turn, this opens space for the voice to be understood as a shapeshifting, morphing and malleable entity, with immense sounding potential beyond what might be considered ordinary or everyday speech. Over the long term this provides discussion of how experimenting with vocal potential may illuminate more diverse perspectives about our sense of self and being in relation to vocal sounding.

Vocal and movement artist Elaine Mitchener exhibits the disillusion of the voice as ‘fixed’ perfectly in her performance of Christian Marclay’s No!, which I attended one hot summer’s evening at the London Contemporary Music Festival in 2022. Marclay’s graphic score uses cut outs from comic book strips to direct the performer to vocalise a myriad of ‘No”s.

In connection with Fraenkel Gallery’s 2021 exhibition, experimental vocalist Elaine Mitchener performs Christian Marclay’s graphic score, “No!” Image by author.Mitchener’s rendering of the piece involved the cooperation and coordination of her entire body, carefully crafting lips, teeth, tongue, muscles and ligaments to construct each iteration of ‘No.’ Each transmutation of Mitchener’s ‘No’s’ came with a distinct meaning, context, and significance, contained within the vocalisation of this one simple syllable. Every utterance explored a new vocal potential, enabled by her body alone. In the context of AI mediated communication, we can see this way of working with the voice renders the idea of the voice as ‘fixed’ as redundant. Mitchener’s vocal potential demonstrates that voices can and do exist beyond AI’s prescribed comprehension of vocal sounding.

In order to further understand how AI transcribes understandings of voice onto notions of identity, and vocal potential, I produced the practice project Polyphonic Embodiment(s) as part of my PhD research, in collaboration with Nestor Pestana, with AI development by Sitraka Rakotoniaina. The AI we created for this project is based upon a speech-to-face recognition AI that aims to be able to tell what your face looks like from the sound of your voice. The prospective impact of this AI is deeply unsettling, as its intended applications are wide-ranging – from entertainment to security, and as previously described AI recognition systems are inherently biased.

Still from project video for Polyphonic Embodiment(s). Image by author.This multi-modal form of comprehending voice is also a hot topic of research being conducted by major research institutions including Oxford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We wanted to explore this AI recognition programme in conjunction with an understanding of vocal potential and the voice as a sonic material shaped by the body. As the project title suggests, the work invites people to consider the multi-dimensional nature of voice and vocal identity from an embodied standpoint. Additionally, it calls for contemplation of the relationships between voice and identity, and individuals having multiple or evolving versions of identity. The collaboration with the custom-made AI software creates a feedback loop to reflect on how peoples’ vocal sounding is “seen” by AI, to contest the way voices are currently heard, comprehended and utilised by AI, and indeed the AI industry.

The video documentation for this project shows ‘facial’ images produced by the voice-to-face recognition AI, when activated by my voice, modified with simple DIY voice devices. Each new voice variation, created by each device, produces a different outputted face image. Some images perhaps resemble my face? (e.g. Device #8) some might be considered more masculine? (e.g. Device #10) and some are just disconcerting (e.g. Device #4). The speculative nature of Polyphonic Embodiment(s) is not to suggest that people should modify their voices in interaction with AI communication systems. Rather the simple devices work with bodily architecture and exaggerate its materiality, considering it as a flexible instrument to explore vocal potential. In turn this sheds light on the normative assumptions contained within AI’s readings of voice and its relationships to facial image and identity construction.

Through this artistic, practice-led research I hope to evolve and augment discussion around how the sounding of voices is comprehended by different disciplines of research. Taking a standpoint from music and design practice, I believe this can contest ways of working in the realms of AI mediated communication and shape the ways we understand notions of (vocal) identity: as complex, fluid, malleable, and ultimately not reducible to Western logics of sounding.

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Featured Image: Still image from Polyphonic Embodiments, courtesy of author.

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Amina Abbas-Nazari is a practicing speculative designer, researcher, and vocal performer. Amina has researched the voice in conjunction with emerging technology, through practice, since 2008 and is now completing a PhD in the School of Communication at the Royal College of Art, focusing on the sound and sounding of voices in artificially intelligent conversational systems. She has presented her work at the London Design Festival, Design Museum, Barbican Centre, V&A, Milan Furniture Fair, Venice Architecture Biennial, Critical Media Lab, Switzerland, Litost Gallery, Prague and Harvard University, America. She has performed internationally with choirs and regularly collaborates with artists as an experimental vocalist

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“When I wake up, I can’t even stay up/I slept through the day, fuck/I’m not getting younger,” laments Willow Smith of The Anxiety on “Meet Me at Our Spot,” a track released through MSFTSMusic and Roc Nation in March of 2020. Despite the song’s nature as a “sludgy alternative track with emo undertones that hits at the zeitgeist,” “Meet Me at Our Spot” received very little attention after its initial release and did not chart until the summer of 2021, when it went viral on TikTok as part of a dance trend. The short-form video app which exploded in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, catalyzed the track’s latent rise to success where it reached no. 21 on the US Billboard Hot 100, becoming Willow’s highest charting song since her 2010 hit, “Whip My Hair”.

The app currently known as TikTok began as Musical.ly, which was shuttered in 2017 and then rebranded in 2018. By March of 2021, the app boasted one billion worldwide monthly users, indicative of a growth rate of about 180%. This explosion was in many ways catalyzed by successive lockdowns during the first waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the relaxation and subsequent abandonment of COVID mitigation measures, the app has retained a large volume of its users, remaining one of the highest grossing apps in the iOS environment. TikTok’s viral success (both as noun and adjective) has worked to create a kind of vibe economy in which artists are now subject to producing a particular type of sound in order to be rendered legible to the pop charts.

For anyone who has yet to succumb to the TikTok trap, allow me to offer you a brief summary of how it functions. Upon opening it, you are instantly fed content. Devoid of any obvious internal operating logic, it is the media equivalent of drinking from a fire hose. Immersive and fast-paced, users vertically scroll through videos that take up their entire screen. Within five minutes of swiping, you can–if your algorithm is anything like mine–see: cute pet videos, protests against police brutality, HypeHouse dance trends, thirst traps, contemporary music, therapy tips, attractive men chopping wood, attractive women lifting weights, and anything else you can fathom. Since its shift from Musical.ly, the app has also been a staging ground for popular music hits such as Lil Nas X’s’ “Old Town Road”, Lizzo’s “Good As Hell”, and, recently, Harry Styles’ “As It Was.”

The app, which is the perfect–if chaotic–fusion of both radio and video is enmeshed in a wider media ecosystem where social networking and platform capitalism converge, and as a result, it seems that TikTok is changing the music industry in at least three distinct ways:

First, it affects our music consumption habits. After hearing a snippet of a song used for a TikTok, users are more likely to queue it up on their streaming platform of choice for another, more complete listen. Unlike those platforms, where algorithms work to feed a listener more of what they’ve already heard, TikTok feeds a listener new content. As a result, there’s no definitive likelihood that you’ve previously heard the track being used as a sound. Therefore, TikTok works the way that Spotify used to: as a mechanism for discovery.

Second, TikTok is changing the nature of the single. Rather than relying upon a label as the engine behind a song’s success, TikTok disseminates tracks–or sounds as they’re referred to in the app–widely, determining a song’s success or role as a debut within a series of clicks. Particularly during the pandemic, when musicians were unable to tour, TikTok’s relationship to the industry became even more salient. Artists sought new ways to share and promote their music, taking to TikTok to release singles, livestream concerts, and engage with fans. Moreover, Spotify’s increasingly capacious playlist archive began to boast a variety of tracklists with titles such as, “Best TikTok Songs 2019-2022”, “TikTok Songs You Can’t Get Out Of Your Head”, and “TikTok Songs that Are Actually Good” among others. The creation and maintenance of this feedback loop between TikTok and Spotify demonstrates not only the centrality of social media ecosystems as driving current popular music success, but also the way that these technologies work in harmony to promote, sustain, or suppress interest in a particular tune.

Most notoriously, the bridge of Olivia Rodrigo’s “drivers license”, went viral as a sound on TikTok in January 2021 and subsequently almost broke the internet. Critics have praised this 24-second section as the highlight of the song, underscoring Rodrigo’s pleading soprano vocals layered over moody, syncopated digital drums. Shortly after it was released, the song shattered Spotify’s record for single-day streams for a non-holiday song. New York Times writer Joe Coscarelli notes of Rodrigo’s success, “TikTok videos led to social media posts, which led to streams, which led to news articles , and back around again, generating an unbeatable feedback loop.”

And third, where songwriting was once oriented towards the creation of a narrative, TikTok’s influence has led artists to a songwriting practice that centers on producing a mood. For The New Yorker, Kyle Chayka argues that vibes are “a rebuke to the truism that people want narratives,” suggesting that the era of the vibe indicates a shift in online culture. He argues that what brings people online is the search for “moments of audiovisual eloquence,” not narrative. Thus, on the one hand, media have become more immersive in order to take us out of our daily preoccupations. On the other, media have taken on a distinct shape so that they can be engaged while doing something else. In other words, media have adapted to an environment wherein the dominant mode of consumption is keyed toward distraction via atmosphere.

“Vibes graffiti, Leake Street,” Image by Flickr user Duncan Cumming (CC BY-NC 2.0)Despite their relatively recent resurgence in contemporary discourse, vibes have a rich conceptual history in the United States. Once a shorthand for “vibration” endemic to West Coast hippie vernacular, “vibes” have now come to mean almost anything. In his work on machine learning and the novel form, Peli Grietzer theorizes the vibe by drawing on musician Ezra Koenig’s early aughts blog, “Internet Vibes.” Koenig writes, “A vibe turns out to be something like “local colour,” with a historical dimension. What gives a vibe “authenticity” is its ability to evoke–using a small number of disparate elements–a certain time, place, and milieu, a certain nexus of historic, geographic, and cultural forces.” In his work for Real Life, software engineer Ludwig Yeetgenstein defines the vibe as “something that’s difficult to pin down precisely in words but that’s evoked by a loose collection of ideas, concepts, and things that can be identified by intuition rather than logic.” Where Mitch Thereiau argues that the vibe might just merely be a vocabulary tick of the present moment, Robin James suggests that vibes are not only here to stay, but have in fact been known by many other names before. Black diasporic cultures, in particular, have long believed sound and its “vibrations had the power to produce new possibilities of social attunement and new modes of living,” as Gayle Wald’s “Soul Vibrations: Black Music and Black Freedom in Sound and Space,” attests (674). We might then consider TikTok a key method of dissemination for a maximalist, digital variant of something like Martin Heidegger’s concept of mood (stimmung), or Karen Tongson’s “remote intimacy.” The vibe is both indeterminate and multiple, a status to be achieved and the mood that produces it; vibes seek to promote and diffuse feelings through time and space.

Much current discourse around vibes insists that they interfere with, or even discourage academic interpretation. While some people are able to experience and identify the vibe—perform a vibe check, if you will—vibes defy traditional forms of academic analysis. As Vanessa Valdés points out, “In a post-Enlightenment world that places emphasis on logic and reason, there exists a demand that everything be explained, be made legible.” That the vibe works with a certain degree of strategic nebulousness might in fact be one of its greatest assets.

“Vibes, Shoreditch” by Flickr User Duncan Cumming, (CC BY-NC 2.0)Vibes resist tidy classification and can thus be named across a variety of circumstances and conditions. Although we might think of the action of ‘vibing’ as embodied, and the term vibration quite literally refers to the physical properties of sound waves and their travel through various mediums, the vibe through which those actions are produced does not itself have to be material. Sometimes, they name a genre of feeling or energy: cursed vibes or cottagecore vibes. Sometimes, they function as a statement of identification: I vibe with that, or in the case of 2 Chainz’s 2016 hit, “it’s a vibe.” Sometimes, vibes are exchanged: you can give one, you can catch one, you can check one, So, while things like energy and mood—which are often taken as cognates for vibes—work to imagine, name, and evoke emotions, vibes are instead invitations.

Not only do vibes serve as a prompt for an attempt at articulating experience, they are also invitations to co-presently experience what seems inarticulable. By capturing patterns in media and culture in order to produce a coherent image/sound assemblage, the production of a vibe is predicated upon the ability to draw upon large swathes of visual, aural, and environmental data. Take for example, the story of Nathan Apodaca, known by his TikTok handle as: 420doggface208. After posting a video of himself listening to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” while drinking cranberry juice and riding a longboard, Apodaca went viral, amassing something like 30 million views in mere hours. This subsequently sparked a trend in which TikTok users posted videos of themselves doing the same thing, using “Dreams” as the sound. According to Billboard, this sparked the largest ever streaming week for Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 hit with over 8.47 million streams. Of his overnight success, Apodaca says, “it’s just a video that everyone felt a vibe with.” To invoke a vibe is thus to make a particular atmosphere more comprehensible to someone else, producing a resonant effect that draws people together.

As both an extension and tool of culture, vibes are produced by and imbricated within broader social, political, and economic matrices. Recorded music has always been confined—for better and worse—to the technologies, formats, and mediums through which it has been produced for commercial sale. On a platform like TikTok, wherein the emphasis is on potentially quirky microsections of songs, artists are invited to key their work towards those parameters in order to maximize commercial success. Nowadays, pop songs are produced with an eye towards their ability to go viral, be remixed, re-released with a feature verse, meme’d, or included in a mashup. As such, when an artist ‘blows up’ on TikTok, it does not necessarily mean that the sound of the song is good (whatever that might mean). Rather, it might instead be the case that a hybrid assemblage of sound, performance, narrative, and image has coalesced successfully into an atmosphere or texture – that we recognize as a/the vibe – something that not only resonates but also sells well. As TikTok’s success continues to proliferate, the app is continually being developed in ways that make it an indispensable part of the popular music industry’s ecosystem. Whether by exposing users to new musical content through the circulation of sounds, or capitalizing upon the speed at which the app moves to brand a song a ‘single’ before it’s even released, TikTok leverages the vibe to get users to listen differently.

@jimmyfallon This one’s for you @420doggface208 #cranberrydreams#doggface208#dogfacechallenge♬ original sound – Jimmy Fallon

We might indeed consider vibes to be conceptual, affective algorithms created in the interstice between lived experience and new media. “Meet Me At Our Spot,” the track through which I’ve framed this article, is full of allusions to youth culture: drunk texts, anxiety over aging, and late-night drives on the 405. It is buoyed by a propulsive bass line that thumps with a restless energy and evokes a mood of escapism. Willow Smith’s intriguing timbre and the pleasing harmonies she achieves with Tyler Cole invite listeners to ride shotgun. For the two minutes and twenty-two seconds of the song, we are immersed within their world. In the final measures the pop of the snare recedes into the background and Tyler’s voice fades away. The vibe of the track – both sonically and thematically – is predicated on the experience of a few, fleeting moments. Willow leaves us with a final provocation, one that resonates with popular music’s current mode: “Caught a vibe, baby are you coming for the ride?”

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Featured Image: Screencap of Nathan Apodaca’s viral TikTok post, courtesy of SO! eds.

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Jay Jolles is a PhD candidate in American Studies at the College of William and Mary currently at work on a dissertation tentatively titled “Man, Music, and Machine: Audio Culture in a/the Digital Age.” He is an interdisciplinary scholar with interests in a wide range of fields including 20th and 21st century literature and culture, critical theory, comparative media studies, and musicology. Jay’s scholarly work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Los Angeles Review of Books, U.S. Studies Online, and Comparative American Studies. His essays can be found in Per Contra, The Atticus Review, and Pidgeonholes, among others. Prior to his time at William and Mary, he was an adjunct professor of English at Drexel University and Rutgers University-Camden.

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“Pushing Record: Labors of Love, and the iTunes Playlist”–Aaron Trammell

Critical bandwidths: hearing #metoo and the construction of a listening public on the web–Milena Droumeva

TiK ToK: Post-Crash Party Pop, Compulsory Presentism and the 2008 Financial Collapse—Dan DiPiero (The other “TikTok”! The people need to know!)

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Sound has a peculiar relationship to mindfulness; zoning in and out, active and passive forms of listening while we situate our listening practices alongside other daily activities. Especially when it comes to driving, listening to something or someone or just singing aloud by myself, I have realized, helps me drown out other noises of alertness. Over the years I have come to value background music or chatter and especially radio programming that takes the burden of curation and scheduling off my back, in all sorts of tasks that require deep concentration. Enough and more has been said about the visual-bias in various forms of ethnographic inquiry (see Andrew C. Sparkes’s “Ethnography and the senses” for a good example). Without belaboring these arguments, I also find that knowing through listening and listening as a mode of non-haptic yet immersive and intimate engagement can also prove to be a fruitful method of inquiry, especially in our post-pandemic worlds, where it feels a lot harder to establish intimacy. The United Nations noted that radio, in particular, “provided solace” during that period of physical distancing and social isolation.

For me, radio sparked my accidental realization and foregrounding of sonic methods as an itinerant means of getting to know new things, people and surroundings in life and research when I moved from New York to the San Francisco Bay Area in mid-2022 to start a new position as a postdoctoral researcher. Knowing that I would continue living in California for the near future, after eight long years of having deferred driving in America, I decided to learn driving and buy a car. I was also especially excited to be moving to Sunnyvale, a city in the Southern Peninsula, located between more known places like Palo Alto and San Jose. Sunnyvale is often jokingly called the desi capital, perhaps the most Indian of any ‘Little India’ you could find in America. As shorthand, desi, a Hindi word,refers to anyone and everything with ties to the South Asian subcontinent. In more recent years, the term has gained currency especially among South Asian diasporic communities to self-refer to culture, music, food, often to signify the presence and strength of transnational ties (between India and their countries of settlement).

What I hadn’t anticipated was that driving brought about a new connection to the medium of radio, as I started tuning in to take my mind off the jitters that come with the new sounds of an automobile-dependent region: fast moving rubber hitting the freeway tarmac and the lane changes and the scalar adjustments that demand driving tens of miles to ensure you still have a social life stitched together across the vastness of California. I began to find the act of tuning in and out of stations fascinating, especially how the radio as a device holds the parallel realities of so many people with different interests, languages and politics together but separate. Scholarship and even casual listening shows that non-English radio stations catering to various immigrant and other communities have existed for a long time in the US and elsewhere (I wish pondering the sonic geographies of Radio Garden, a web-based map interface that allows listeners to access any free-to-air radio stations across the world, wasn’t beyond the scope of this post!). Both as an ethnographer and as an insider-outsider within the larger Indian immigrant and diaspora community (but a newcomer to the Bay Area), tuning into the local desi radio station while driving offered me a good way to enter the desi community of the Bay Area, to know what it means to be desi and perform Indianness in 2022, in a place where I regularly see so many Indians and South Asians every single day.

As a friend who recently visited me in Sunnyvale remarked as we waited for our table at the always-busy Madras Cafe, Sunnyvale feels so much like India! And I felt it too; what she was referring to was not only the very visible presence of Indian people all around town or the abundance of restaurants catering to various sub-regional cuisines from India. What felt different to me here was how relaxed everyone looked in grocery stores, restaurants and elsewhere, how utterly remade Sunnyvale is as a pan-Asian but mostly Indian space that even the smallest performances of fitting in feel unnecessary. In fact, shopping her reminded me of a point Purnima Mankekar’s Indian narrators made in her iconic essay on Indian grocery shopping in the San Francisco Bay Area (2010), that Indian stores in Sunnyvale and Milpitas as places where “white people look out of place” as compared to the ones in Berkeley.

The juxtaposition of the non-performances and the weight of being comfortably in place in a community like Sunnyvale only settles on the mind and body very slowly, like a faint but familiar smell from home. Words and demands often stumble out of my mouth at the grocery store, as if I am allowed and I will be completely understood. Immigrant life in America is steeped in language acrobatics, balancing being understood with becoming deliberately opaquely incomprehensible, using one accent for the ones from home, one for those who make you feel at home, and then the American accent for the Americans outside. The contrast of places like Sunnyvale, Fremont, Milpitas and other similar Northern California cities that have been transformed by immigrant presence is not just one of tangible and observable things, but sonic markers too, like Bolly 92.3FM.

Bolly 92.3FM is the default desiradio station that services the entire San Francisco Bay Area. As the name suggests, for the most part the station plays popular Bollywood songs from recently released movies and albums, but just as other stations do in India, Bolly92.3FM leverages its listener demographics at different times of the day to also play classics and hits from older Hindi films during late night slots. Interestingly, as the presenters repeat the station name and jingle time and again, they also remind you that you are listening to Bay Area’s Bollywood station owned by the Silicon Valley Asian media network. The name Bolly92.3FM is a play on the broad familiarity with Bollywood in the US even as Indian audiences globally have moved away from the older connotations of Bollywood as North Indian cinema with song, dance and people dressed in flashy clothes. Much like the hyper-authentic Indian restaurants that serve regional cuisines such as Andhra, Tamil, Gujarati, Rajasthani and Marathi food to their loyal and affording immigrant patrons, Bolly92.3FM has also configured its programming to cater to different regional and linguistic communities from India in the Bay Area. For instance, Saturday morning and afternoon slots are dedicated to Telugu programs—everything is in Telugu (language) from the hosts discussions to the songs being played as well as the actual topics being discussed—as if the station turns into a different station with the implicit acknowledgement of the substantial cultural presence and possibly the sonic and financial power of Telugu listeners among the wider Indian community here. There are similar slots dedicated to Gujarati language programming.

In addition to language and topical interests, listening to Bolly92.3FM has been instructive in getting a feel for communal desires, aspirations and anxieties through its advertisement. There are fellow desi real estate agents, tax planners, dentists, travel agencies and coaching centers, each signaling to why they are trustworthy. Some remind their audiences of their shared cultural background as key to them being able to understand their customers’ needs, others also indicate their familiarity with America: one realtor is the only Indian-origin person to feature in a top realtor list, another tax planner’s family has been in the US for three generations and thus he is well aware of the nitty-gritties of transnational estate planning. A known Indian-origin realtor in the area even sponsors his own radio show on the weekends where he takes questions from prospective home buyers and sellers. Before and beyond giving them financial advice, he often explains how fellow Indian immigrants think about financial opportunities, investments, how they might seek social validation from fellow Indians who might see their home and so on. He weaves in such exposition before talking dry financial facts about mortgages. The same tax planner and his co-host occasionally offer historical accounts of changing real estate trends, how certain places used to be affordable for Indian immigrant buyers and how new places are becoming of interest as vacation homes for more affluent Indian immigrants.

image by authorHearing the tax planners and real estate agents plot these dynamic and speculative maps of South Asian financial, cultural and political futures week-after-week felt like witnessing what many historical texts on migration within the Bay Area have described as waves in the past. As I mentioned earlier, Sunnyvale is not the only ‘Little India’ in the Bay Area, let alone in California, but rather, is a more recent iconic place in the Indian and South Asian diaspora map where the younger and newer immigrants are finding homes. Fremont, Milpitas, and Hayward in the East Bay closer to Oakland, and San Jose in the South Bay, saw similar waves of Indian immigrant settlements in the past, many of whom now far more affluent than their younger counterparts. In my short time since moving here, I learned both from conversations with friends who grew up in the area as well as from communication scholar Anne Marie Todd’s work on the past and present of Santa Clara Valley, this region has not only seen waves of migration from settlers across the world but with each incoming wave and turn in occupational trends from farming to railroads to IT work. Multiple communities have remade cities in the Bay Area over the decades.

I also find advertisements as well as talk shows interesting because they offer a more proximate and concentrated triangulation of otherwise scattered, overheard communal talk – I’ve heard things about Indian immigrants and real estate, their aspirations for their children to get into Ivy league colleges. I have also been asked at the grocery store if I know people looking to get married; I’ve overheard aunties at the grocery store consulting each other about dealing with death, financial loss, planetary alignments and more. But it is through the radio that these private interests, anxieties and futures take more collective and articulate forms.

To speak, to be heard, and to be understood as intended are as important as visual representation to allow for feeling in place in the world and for feeling at home in the United States. Very simply put, in the American context, while Black and Brown vocal expression and volume or the stereotype of loudness have been historically stigmatized as a part of the larger racist depiction of ‘unruly’ bodies, various forms of Asian speech, languages and expression including loudness but also silence and the absence of vocality, have also been racialized against the backdrop of white socio-linguistic normativity. Specifically, Indian and South Asian immigrants have been repeatedly represented in popular American culture as muted characters whose interiority is either irrelevant to the plot or cannot be accessed. Think of Raj Koothrappali from the show The Big Bang Theory, an accomplished scientist at the prestigious Caltech university who loses his voice around women. In accounts of Indian tech workers in the US from the Y2K era, one finds multiple articles casting them as the back-office worker – good at laborious and boring work but not presentation material. Some of these stereotypes have changed and splintered as more South Asians technologists have gone on to become successful executives and leaders in US companies, but vocality as a form of publicity can be crucial to sonic forms of belonging.

Downtown Sunnyvale, By Vadim Manuylov, CC BY-SA 3.0, When I arrived in the Bay Area, I was still trying to figure out how to form a community and how to immerse myself in the desi community here, somewhat selfishly to get a glimpse of how Indian presence is remaking the Valley, not only through IT work but also through cultural and political performances. But I also wanted to get to know people, be known by people around. Olakhita means “people known to us” in Gujarati, my mother tongue; in Hindi jaan-pehchaan means to be in each other’s knowing that gives you some claim and affiliation over others without deep intimacy, not quite acquaintances or neighbors like in the American context. Apart from the numerous Whatsapp and Facebook groups aimed at desifolks living in the same neighborhood or city, Bolly92.3FM acts as a beacon for Indians and South Asians spread across San Francisco, the East Bay and the South Bay areas, offering a medium for the various Indian associations and event organizers to reach out to thousands and invite them to Diwali, Dussehra and other festival celebrations as well as any major concerts by visiting Indian artists in the area.

Image by authorThis is the far from the first or only time that a radio station has facilitated the forging of affective ties and social and material connections in diaspora. Rather this post recounts how active and passive listening to and through the station revealed over time how much South Asian presence has transformed the Bay Area. I attended the massive Diwali and Dussehra events advertised on 92.3, and once there, I could recognize so many of the organizers and sponsors’ names – some of them were the same tax planners and realtors that also run ads and sponsored segments on the station. One week in late September, an ad played on the radio, announcing that a famous hotel in downtown San Jose was now able to accommodate more than a thousand guests and offer a special entryway for the baraat procession (when the groom’s party of a few hundred comes dancing up to the wedding venue). The ad ended with the contact details of a South Asian representative of the hotel who could handle all queries related to Indian wedding arrangements! Bolly92.3FM mediates and shapes the collective desi identity through its programming and advertising, in turn also stitching, materializing and rendering visible a map of the Indian community spread across dozens of non-contiguous cities and neighborhoods in the Bay Area.

image by authorIt bears noting, however, that the idea of Indianness or desi-ness (an imagined brotherhood among all the expats here) advanced through the radio programs, advertisements as well as the cultural celebrations, is very much a nationalistic and Hindu-dominant one. Although India is an ethnically, linguistically and culturally diverse country and not all people of Indian origin in the Bay Area are Hindu, the radio announcers never really celebrate or discuss Eid, Christmas, or Thanksgiving as events of possible interest. Just based on what is said and what is left unsaid, the dominant self-imagination of the Bay Area desi community as advanced through the radio station feels like it quietly aligns with the dominant religious and political imagination of India as Hindu, middle-class, post-religious and post-caste.

In the process of seeing this map render in my own imagination through regular listening, I also realized how this form of distant listening replicated the mode of jaan-pehchan (getting to know) for the itinerant immigrant-ethnographer. There is always the pre-fieldwork moment, the slightly promiscuous exploratory moment of getting to know and immersing oneself before one can articulate stakes and research questions. It is also often a period of deep uncertainty and ambivalence, since, as ethnographers, responsibility for and towards our field, communities, and interlocutors is always at the center of every project. We are always reminded not to be extractive and to think deeply about power relations even as we attempt to forge meaningful ties with those whom we want to observe and learn from and write about. Much like other visa-workers and international scholars in US academia, being a non-citizen ethnographer engenders multiple kinds of precarities—there is no straightforward or replicable guidebook on how to establish rapport, gain access, build trust and more with a community. More importantly, the itinerant-immigrant ethnographer’s relationships are also always interrupted, prone to arbitrary border restrictions and chronic deracination.

In the early days of digital ethnography, Kate Crawford powerfully argued to reframe acts of lurking (silently and passively hanging out in online communities) as forms of listening and by extension, listening as a concomitant and constitutive practice when we consider participation as speaking or having a voice. In the case of diasporic radio, as I realized, not only is the act of listening quite literal but it also affords and reinforces the vitality of different modes of agentic power and participation, those marked by ambivalence, yet-to-be gained legitimacy; forms of minor participation if you will. Via Crawford, listening and/as lurking also emerges as specifically racially inflected modes of agentic participation against the backdrop of media policy and the emphasis on free expression and speech as the ultimate realization of democratic power.

Among diasporic communities and further among itinerant immigrants within those communities, listening, overhearing and eavesdropping become the de facto modes of democratic and communitarian participation. Listening to the radio as a way of immersion is not a solution to these enduring dilemmas of ethical ethnography but to borrow from the analogy of Californian driving, listening to the radio, just like other forms of digital and analog lurking, allowed me an ‘on-ramp’ to gradually merge and embed myself in the larger South Asian diasporic community.

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Featured Image: “Driving” by Flickr User AnnaNakami (CC BY-NC 2.0)

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Noopur Raval is an interdisciplinary researcher interested in understanding global futures of work, the life and work decisions made by immigrant workers in tech companies, changing values and moral norms and projects of personhood especially in postcolonial settings. Noopur received a PhD in Informatics from University of California Irvine (UCI) in September 2020 and, through July 2022 was a postdoc researcher at the AI Now Institute at New York University. Noopur is currently a postdoctoral researcher at UC Santa Cruz – Silicon Valley Extension in the Computational Media department, working with Dr Norman Su. In Fall 2023, Noopur will join the Department of Information Studies at UCLA as an assistant professor.

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“Gendered Soundscapes of India, an Introduction“–Monika Mehta and Praseeda Gopinath

The Queer Sound of the Dandiya Queen, Falguni Pathak–-Pavitra Sundar

“Out of Sync: Gendered Location Sound Work in Bollywood“—Priya Jaikumar

SO! LA: Sounding the California Story–Bridget Hoida

“Vous Ecoutez La Voix du Peuple”: The Kreyol Language Pirate Radio Stations of Flatbush, Brooklyn–David Goren

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The history of technology has politics.

In the consensus version of podcasting’s history, the emergence of the medium is typically traced to software developer Dave Winer’s publication – with significant contribution from the former MTV VJ and Internet entrepreneur Adam Curry– of RSS (“Rich Site Summary,” or “Really Simple Syndication”) version 0.92 in December 2000, which allowed for the distribution of digital audio files. The first podcast feed followed in January 2001, and, with the launch of Curry’s iPodder podcast aggregator and his program Daily Source Code in 2004, podcasting began to coalesce as both technology and cultural form. In the 20-odd years since, the medium’s technical infrastructure has remained essentially unchanged: RSS continues to be the predominant format of podcast syndication.

So this past July, when Podnews editor James Cridland cheekily suggested that it was not Dave Winer, nor “the podfather” Adam Curry, but comedian Robin Williams who had actually been the world’s first podcaster, industry graybeards were quick to push back on his claim.

Cridland’s argument went like this: As an early investor in Audible.com, Williams launched a bi-weekly talk show called RobinWilliams@Audible in early 2000 (several months before Winer’s pioneering RSS), which listeners could download onto their mp3 players. Subscribers who owned an Audible Mobile Player could even have RobinWilliams@Audible automatically pushed to their device. “Of course, that’s what the first podcast was, too,” Cridland noted, “something you downloaded to your computer, then synched to your mp3 player.”

The crucial distinction, however, was that RobinWilliams@Audible was not distributed via RSS. For some, this meant that the show was definitively not a podcast – and Cridland’s claim patently absurd.

On The New Media Show, for instance, Todd Cochrane, founder-CEO of Blubrry, and Rob Greenlee, VP of Libsyn, spent nearly eighteen minutes on the subject, recounting the early history of online file sharing and concluding that a podcast could only be a podcast if it used RSS. For Audible to suggest that they had been the first in podcasting (Cridland’s post relied in part on Audible founder Don Katz as a source) was ego-driven revisionism.

On Twitter, meanwhile, Greenlee replied to Cridland’s article by clarifying that audible was a distribution platform and not a podcast. When Cridland later disagreed with Greenlee’s assessment it set off a whole conversation on Twitter which ended with Greenlee resignedly saying he wished that he had never written his article in the first place. In the end, even Dave Winer got involved. He argued that podcasts had to be a public technology, they could not be owned by single platform like Audible.

Admittedly, this was a very niche dispute – a handful of insiders arguing over an historical footnote. After a day or two, they all moved on.

But however minor (and however much Cridland may have wished he hadn’t written the article), I argue that the flap over RobinWilliams@Audible can be a useful lens with which to understand contemporary debates over the future of podcasting: about whether the decentralized and open RSS-based ecosystem will long endure, or whether walled gardens will prevail.

To better understand, however, we need to back up a bit. By the fall of 2000, Dave Winer had earned a reputation as a pioneer of web syndication – he had been credited with launching the first blog – and someone who, according to the podcaster and author Eric Nuzum, “believed in making systems open, democratic, and easily accessible,” pushing back against the trend toward centralization and proprietary control of Internet infrastructures.

David Winer. Photcredit: Joi Ito CC BY 2.0On a trip to New York that October, Winer met up with Adam Curry, who had been closely following his work. Over several hours in Curry’s hotel room, the entrepreneur attempted to convince Winer that web syndication technologies could be leveraged to distribute audio and video files – a vision of the Internet as “Everyman’s broadcast medium” – if only the so-called “last yard” problem of slow DSL connections could be resolved. By his own admission, Winer at first didn’t quite understand what Curry had in mind, but he was open experimenting with using RSS as “virtual bandwidth” that could deliver large media files during off-peak hours. In January 2001, Winer successfully used an RSS enclosure tag to distribute a single Grateful Dead song (it was U.S. Blues), inaugurating the first podcast feed – though what he had created wouldn’t become known as a “podcast” for some time.

Though interest in RSS-delivered audio files was slow to develop (indeed, even Winer and Curry pursued other projects for a time), “it was not lost on … early adopters,” as Andrew Bottomley has observed, adding “that the technology shifted power to the audience and also opened up opportunities for more democratized radio production” (111-112). The days of corporate gatekeepers exercising oligopolistic control over the production and distribution of audio content seemed numbered; no longer would broadcasting be subject to an economy of scarcity. Theoretically anyone with web hosting, a microphone, and an RSS feed could set themselves up in the radio business.

Since those early days, RSS has become “the currency of podcasting,” to borrow a phrase from Dave Jones, Adam Curry’s Podcasting 2.0 collaborator. Indeed, as Cridland himself wrote in his primer, “What is a Podcast?,” technically speaking, a “podcast” is comprised of an audio file, without DRM restrictions, that is available to download, and is “distributed via an RSS feed using an tag.”

But RSS is not without its detractors. Last July, for instance, Anchor.fm co-founder Michael Mignano argued that while technical standards like RSS (or HTTP, or SMTP, or SMS) provide a “common language” that allows for the rapid spread of new technologies, standardization inevitably stifles growth. “The tradeoff,” he wrote, “is that a lower barrier to entry means more products get created in a category, causing market fragmentation and ultimately, a slow pace of innovation.” The consequence of this “Standards Innovation Paradox” is that even as podcast listening apps proliferate, because they must conform to the RSS standard, the differences between them are superficial. Proprietary systems, Mignano argued, offer an alternative, allowing developers the flexibility to build – and rapidly improve – dynamic user experiences.

Naturally, Mignano pointed to Spotify – which acquired Anchor in 2019 – as an example of how closed systems could break the “curse” of standardization: When the company began to expand from music to other forms of audio content, he wrote, there was some speculation that the company would launch a dedicated podcast app. But, “if they had done so, they’d have to contend with the aforementioned ocean of podcast listening apps which were all offering users roughly the same features that were limited by the standard.” Instead, “Spotify used their existing music user base inside of the existing Spotify app to distribute podcasts to hundreds of millions of users.”

Image used for purposes of critique.But this framing soft pedals Spotify’s aggressive attempts to steer podcasting away from RSS and toward platform enclosure. As John L. Sullivan argued in a 2019 paper, Spotify’s emphasis on exclusive releases (which has included the removal of content previously available via RSS, like The Joe Budden Podcast), and its $340 million acquisitions of Anchor and Gimlet are all part of an effort to control distribution and “maximize the ‘winner take all’ functions of platforms.” More recently, Anchor has stopped automatically generating an RSS feed at the time of publication, making it an opt-in function (meaning that creators have to know what RSS is to have their podcast distributed to directories otherthan Spotify). “We’ve been able to replace RSS for on-platform distribution,” noted one Spotify executive at a recent investor event, “which means that podcasts created on our platform are no longer held back by this outdated technology.”

Given the challenges that platform enclosure poses to RSS, its defenders’ insistence that “it’s not a podcast if it doesn’t have an RSS feed, and it’s not a podcast app if you can’t add your own RSS feeds,” as an episode title of Curry and Jones’s Podcasting 2.0 puts it, is understandable. Or, as Cochrane declaredon The New Media Show, “until you tear my RSS feed through my dead hands, podcasts technically are podcasts that are delivered via RSS.”

Image used for purposes of critique.And understandable, too, is the prickly reaction to Cridland’s alternate history: To claim that RobinWilliams@Audible may have been the first podcast is to suggest that RSS – and the open and democratic values which it represents – are inessential; and more troubling, that proprietary systems are deeply rooted in the history of the medium.

Of course, there’s also the sticky fact that RobinWilliams@Audible premiered before the word “podcast” entered the lexicon. But even this history is messy. In his original coinage, the technologist Ben Hammersley applied the term to a variety of different forms of downloadable audio media, including Audible originals like In Bed with Susie Bright. According to this early conception, in other words, podcasting described a cultural practice rather than a specific distribution infrastructure.

It is likely, too, that technological distinctions are irrelevant to listeners. Citing data from Edison Research showing that a significant percentage of listeners use Spotify and YouTube to access podcasts (even though content on these platforms don’t meet the strict technical definition of a “podcast”), Cridland has suggested that, for most people, podcasting is simply “on-demand audio. Like a radio show, but on-demand.”

Likewise, the question of whom the first podcaster was is of narrow interest. “Who cares?” an exasperated Cochrane finally concluded.

But reviewing the pre-2004 history of downloadable audio media can open up questions of the interpretive flexibility of technology (how technological artifacts come to have different meanings for different groups of users) and rhetorical closure (when the need for alternative designs diminish) that the late Trevor Pinch and Wiebe Bijker identified as key concepts in the Social Construction of Technology.

And so, rather than arguing about whether RobinWilliams@Audible – or, for that matter, Cochrane’s audio file sharing on FidoNet in the early 1990s – was the “first” podcast, further examination of this complex genealogy suggests the more interesting questions of how and why online distribution of audio files was apparently such a desirable goal that there were several paths to its development.

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Featured Image of Robin Williams (2008) by Flickr User Shameek (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

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Andrew J. Salvati is an adjunct professor in the Media and Communications program at Drew University, where he teaches courses on podcasting and television studies. His research interests include media and cultural memory, television history, and mediated masculinity. He is the co-founder and occasional co-host of Inside the Box: The TV History Podcast, and Drew Archives in 10.

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It’s baaaaack! For your end-of-the year reading pleasure, here are the Top Ten Posts published within the last three years (totals as of 12/8/22). Read and re-read this brilliance today–and often! And please do listen out for us in 2023– our Racial Bias in Speech AI series co-edited with Johann Diedrick is already in the works for May 2023 and a new CFP related to a print edition (!!) of Sounding Out! just launched! Please take good care, stay safe and well, and we’ll see you in January. Thank you for your readership and continued support. We’re here because you are here. –JS

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10). A Feast of Silence: Listening as Stoic Practice

Andrew Salvati

. . .Over the past decade, Stoicism, which teaches that self-discipline, moderation, and emotional equanimity are key to overcoming hardship and living a good life, has had something of a revival as a self-help paradigm – and Holiday has been one of its most energetic evangelists. Articles in Vice, the New York Times, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, the Guardian, Forbes, Wired, and Sports Illustrated have all taken note of his influence among Silicon Valley tech workers, corporate executives, professional athletes, military personnel, and celebrities to whom he markets the philosophy as a “life-hack”; his six best-selling books on the subject, meanwhile, have positioned him as perhaps the most commercially successful author in a mushrooming genre of Stoic literature; and The Daily Stoic’s A-level guest list, which has included Malcom Gladwell, Camilla Cabello, Matthew McConaughey, and Charlamagne Tha God, has established Stoicism’s cultural cachet as a practical guide for living, and positioned Holiday as its authoritative interpreter. . . [Click here to read the full post!]

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9). Voice as Ecology: Voice Donation, Materiality, Identity

Steph Ceraso

I first heard about voice donation while listening to “Being Siri,” an experimental audio piece about Erin Anderson donating her voice to Boston-based voice donation company, VocaliD. Like a digital blood bank of sorts, VocaliD provides a platform for donating one’s voice via digital audio recordings. These recordings are used to help technicians create a custom digital voice for a voiceless individual, providing an alternative to the predominately white, male, mechanical-sounding assistive technologies used by people who cannot vocalize for themselves (think Stephen Hawking). VocaliD manufactures voices that better match a person’s race, gender, ethnicity, age, and unique personality. To me, VocaliD encapsulates the promise, complexity, and problematic nature of our current speech AI landscape and serves as an example of why we need to think critically about sound technologies, even when they appear to be wholly beneficial. . . [Click here to read the full post!]

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8). Broadcast Kidnapping: How the Rise of the Radio led to the Fall of Jean-Claude Duvalier

Jennifer Garcon

On January 23, 1973, Jean-Claude Duvalier, only 18 months into his life-long appointment, received a call that threatened to profoundly destabilize his nascent presidency. On the other end was Clinton E. Knox, a close political ally and advisor, who also happened to be the US Ambassador to Haiti. Knox, Jean-Claude was informed, along with US consul general Ward Christensen were being held hostage at a residence just outside of Port-au-Prince. To secure the safe return of two high-ranking US officials, the captors demanded the release of political prisoners, a hefty ransom, and a plane to facilitate their escape. The kidnappers “meant business,” reported The Washington Post, Times Herald on Jan 26, 1973, and during the call, Knox warned Jean-Claude of the severity of the situation, that they ”threatened to blow my head off, if they didn’t get what they wanted” . . . [Click here to read the full post!]

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7). “Vous Ecoutez La Voix du Peuple”: The Kreyol Language Pirate Radio Stations of Flatbush, Brooklyn

David Goren

‘A lot of these stations, especially the Haitian stations, they have such an extensive music library that a song will come on the radio and all of a sudden my mom is like, ‘Oh my God! Your grandma used to have this record and she played it every Saturday!’ says Joan Martinez, a young Haitian-American born in the US and a former program host on some of the unlicensed Kreyol language stations. “Now she’s transported back to being on the island, with the big radio that’s a piece of furniture in the living room. People are chatting, little drinks are flowing about, my grandmother milling about in a gorgeous dress. It’s kind of like that whole nostalgia era that unfortunately was probably lost because of the political turmoil in Haiti. So it’s harkening back to a good time, to a simpler time, a better time, a more carefree era.” . . . [Click here to read the full post!]

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6). “One Scream is All it Takes: Voice Activated Personal Safety, Audio Surveillance, and Gender Violence

*María Edurne Zuazu*

Just a few days ago, London Metro Police Officer Wayne Couzens pled guilty to the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by, a 33-year-old woman he abducted while she walked home from a friend’s house. Since the news broke of her disappearance in March 2021, the UK has been going through a moment of national “soul-searching.” The national reckoning has included a range of discussions–about casual and spectacular misogynistic violence, about a victim-blaming criminal justice system that fails to address said violence–and responses, including a vigil in south London that was met with aggressive policing, that has itself entered into and furthered the UK’s soul-searching. There has also been a surge in the installation of personal safety apps on mobile phones; One Scream (OS), “voice activated personal safety,” is one of them. . .[Click here to read the full post!]

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5). “Teaching Soundwalks in a Course on Gentrification, Black Music, and Corporate America

Rami Toubia Stucky

On May 5, 2018, the C-ville Weekly, a newspaper based out of Charlottesville, Virginia, published an article titled “Sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll: new apartment complex promises at least one of those.” The headline referred to the complex being built at 600 West Main St. in Charlottesville. The complex has since been completed and studio bedrooms currently cost more than $1000 a month. As the C-ville Weekly headline shows, the developers were using the term and connotations of “rock ’n’ roll” to sell exclusive – and in many ways unaffordable – housing.

After reading this headline, I began to develop an idea for a summer course at my institution, the University of Virginia (UVA). I ultimately titled that course “Black Music and Corporate America” which I offered online during the summer of 2021 (syllabus available for download via the link above). Although the course discussed varied content – from the multi-ethnic, multi-racial, and multi-gendered histories of rock and roll to the endorsement of conspicuous forms of consumption in hip hop – I wanted to spend one unit focusing on the interrelationship between music, corporate America, and gentrification. I strove to solidify this connection by assigning two related articles. The first article, by geographer and sociologist Brandi Thomson Summers, argues that black residents in Washington D.C. adopt go-go music as a form of reclamation aesthetics to combat their city’s increasingly rampant gentrification. In the second article, ethnomusicologist Allie Martin conducts a soundwalk of D.C.’s Shaw District to forefront the experience of a black woman in the city and help displace white hearing as the default standard of interpreting sound (see Sounding Out!’s Soundwalking While POC series from Fall 2019). These two articles served as a foundation for one of the assignments the students had to complete in class: conducting a soundwalk of their own in which they had to walk around a field site of their choosing and think critically about the sounds they were hearing. . .[Click here to read the full post!]

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4). Archivism and Activism: Radio Haiti and the Accountability of Educational Institutions

Laura Wagner

For four years, I spent forty hours a week in a cubicle in a converted tobacco warehouse with noise-cancelling headphones over my ears, listening to and describing the entire audio archive of Haiti’s first independent radio station, Radio Haïti-Inter. Though my title was “project archivist,” I am not an archivist by training. But I am compelled to compile, assemble, and preserve stories from lost people and lost worlds. Sound is more intimate than printed words or video. With sound, voices are inside your head, as close as another person can be. As I processed the Radio Haiti collection, I would forget that many of the voices I heard every day belonged to people I never knew in life. Sometimes in my dreams I would see the station’s director, Jean Dominique, alive and laughing. . . [Click here to read the full post!]

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3).Listen to yourself!: Spotify, Ancestry DNA, and the Fortunes of Race Science in the Twenty-First Century

Alexander W. Cowan

If you could listen to your DNA, what would it sound like? A few answers, at random: In 1986, the biologist and amateur musician Susumo Ohno assigned pitches to the nucleotides that make up the DNA sequence of the protein immunoglobulin, and played them in order. The gene, to his surprise, sounded like Chopin.

With the advent of personalized DNA sequencing, a British composition studio will do one better, offering a bespoke three-minute suite based on your DNA’s unique signature, recorded by professional soloists—for a 300GBP basic package; or 399GBP for a full orchestral arrangement.

But the most recent answer to this question comes from the genealogy website Ancestry.com, which in Fall 2018 partnered with Spotify to offer personalized playlists built from your DNA’s regional makeup. For a comparatively meager $99 (and a small bottle’s worth of saliva) you can now not only know your heritage, but, in the words of Ancestry executive Vineet Mehra, “experience” it. Music becomes you, and through music, you can become yourself. . . [Click here to read the full post!]

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2).Sonic Lessons of the Covid-19 Soundscape

Sarah Mayberry Scott

It’s understandable to resist reading or thinking about Covid in late-2021, even as the Delta variant’s new surges are making headlines around the world. Covid has surrounded and overwhelmed us for over a year, and many people’s reluctance to engage meaningfully with it at this time is fueled by feelings of fatigue, mental exhaustion, and frustration. However, I urge in this post that we have a continued responsibility to sustain our sonic engagement and listen to what the Covid-19 soundscape teaches us.

Covid-19, as most of us now know now, is a virus caused by the coronavirus strain SARS-CoV-2. While the symptoms of Covid-19 are many and varied, one symptom seemed most vital and censorious—a nagging and persistent dry cough that became referred to as the “Covid cough” in everyday vernacular. The Covid cough became an intrusive and yet all too familiar presence in the Covid soundscape—an isolated acoustic environment that allows us to study its characteristics. For instance, investigations within the Covid soundscape have studied the noise annoyances of traffic, neighbors, and personal dwellings; have recorded the quieting of the usually bustling streets of New York City; have researched whale stress hormones linked to less noise pollution in our ocean waters; and have analyzed the reception and aural imagery of sirens. I seek to add to this research by bringing the sounds of the Covid body (or a body perceived to have Covid) into the larger soundscape conversation . . . [Click here to read the full post!]

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1).A Day on the Dial in Cap Haïtien, Haiti

Ian Coss

Fabrice Joseph is a mender, set up on a street corner in Cap Haïtien, Haiti’s second largest city. He shows me a red plastic toolbox filled with supplies — thread, wires, scraps of fabric—which he can use to fix a jammed zipper or stitch up a torn backpack strap. I stop because he’s cradling a radio set in his hands, tuned to the city’s most popular station: Radio Venus.

We meet on a quiet day; Fabrice has been sitting on the stoop for five hours already with no work. Another day he’s engrossed in assembling a large umbrella—the kind food vendors use for shade—but the radio is still on, now propped on a ledge just behind his head. He replaces the batteries almost weekly, because the radio is always on. In the morning Radio Venus plays news, Fabrice tells me, followed by music as the day heats up. Then in the afternoon he’ll hear sports or perhaps a religious program, before the station returns to music in the evening.

This arc Fabrice describes is designed to follow the arc of his day. In this post, I trace that link: between the rhythms of radio programming and the rhythms of daily life, to show how formatting choices create a heightened sense of ‘liveness’ on Haiti’s airwaves, with all content located in a specific moment: the present moment. . .[Click here to read the full post!]

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Featured Image: “New Years, about to unfurl” by Flickr User Darwin Bell, Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0)

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The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2019!

The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2018!

The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2017!

The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2016!

The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2015!

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: SO! Podcast #81: The Intimacy and Public Feeling of a Post-Troika Emotional Recovery SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST This week we are glad to share a podcast on intimacy and public feeling. Our host, Ana Pais looks at several performances which premiered in Portugal […]

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Welcome to Next Gen sound studies! Here, you will be treated to the future. . . today! In this series, we will share excellent work from undergraduates, along with the pedagogy that inspired them. You’ll read voice biographies (Kaitlyn Liu’s “My Voice, or On Not Staying Quiet,”) check out blog assignments (David Lee’s “Mukbang Cooks, Chews, […]

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Welcome to Next Gen sound studies! In the month of November, you will be treated to the future. . . today! In this series, we will share excellent work from undergraduates, along with the pedagogy that inspired them. You’ll read voice biographies (Kaitlyn Liu’s “My Voice, or On Not Staying Quiet,”) check out blog assignments (David […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: SO! Podcast #78: Ethical Storytelling in Podcasting SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST Here at Sounding Out! we think that it’s best to learn from the experts. That’s why we sat in as a fly on a wall for a panel on ethics in podcasting put together by […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: X! SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST X! Priests, “Texas Instruments”—THE EDITORIAL COLLECTIVE Government Cheese, “Fish Stick Day”—Kevin Archer Princess Nokia, “Brujas”—Reina Prado Sammus, “Mighty Morphing”—Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo Lucreccia Quintanilla, “Como Mujer (Ivy Queen+General Feelings+NaRemix)—Lucreccia Quintanilla LSD, feat. Sia, Diplo, and Labrinth, “Genius”—Kaitlyn Liu The Beths, “Future […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: F*** U Pay Us @ UC Riverside PunkCon SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST Sounding Out! was naturally curious about the amazing UC Riverside Punk Con–organized by Marlen Rios-Hernandez and Susana Sepulveda–and so we asked if we could listen in on some of the amazing conversations […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Wring Out Fairlea SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST This podcast commemorates the thirty-year anniversary of the first Wring Out Fairlea demonstration, which was organised by the Coalition Against Women’s Imprisonment to take place at the former Fairlea women’s prison in Melbourne on 26 June 1988. […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Bonus Track for Spanish Rap & Sound Studies Forum SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST In “Asesina,” Darell opens the track shouting “Everybody go to the discotek,” a call for listeners to respond to the catchy beat and come dance. In this series on rap in […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD:  SO! Podcast #73: NYC Highline Soundwalk SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST In a recent profile, New Yorkmagazine’s Justin Davidson called the NYC High Line, a “tunnel through glass towers,” an urban beautification project that had been designed with local real estate prices in mind, which […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD:  SO! Podcast #72: Not Your Muse (Episode 1 feat. Hailey Niswanger) SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST Not Your Muse is a podcast series that dissects the unique experience of being a woman in the music industry. Each episode features an interview with a different […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD:  SO! Podcast #71: Everyday Sounds of Resilience and Being: Black Joy at School SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST Inspired by the recent Black Perspectives “W.E.B. Du Bois @ 150” Online Forum, SO!’s “W.E.B. Du Bois at 150” amplifies the commemoration of the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Du Bois’s […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD:  Listening In with Sounding Out! (Shauna Bahssin) SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST Join host James Tlsty in the second installment of his podcast miniseries–“Listening In with Sounding Out!” In this miniseries Tlsty and co-host Shauna Bahssin dig deep into the archives of Sounding Out! and […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Sound The Alarm SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST Sound The Alarm Elvis Costello and the Attractions, “Night Rally”—Jeremy Braddock J. Ballin and Carla Morrison, “Mi Gente”—Liana Silva Snap!, “I’ve Got the Power!”—Robin James Diana Gordon, “Woman”—Allie Young The Raincoats, “No One’s Little Girl”—Gina Arnold Sam […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD:  Listening In with Sounding Out! (feat. Pavitra Sundar) SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST Join host James Tlsty in the second installment of his podcast miniseries–“Listening In with Sounding Out!” In this miniseries Tlsty and co-host Shauna Bahssin dig deep into the archives of Sounding Out! […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD:  Listening In with Sounding Out! (feat. Claire Cooley) SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST Join host James Tlsty in the second installment of his podcast miniseries–“Listening In with Sounding Out!” In this miniseries Tlsty and co-host Shauna Bahssin dig deep into the archives of Sounding Out! […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD:  Listening In with Sounding Out! (feat. Marlen Rios) SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST Join host James Tlsty in the second installment of his podcast miniseries–“Listening In with Sounding Out!” In this miniseries Tlsty and co-host Shauna Bahssin dig deep into the archives of Sounding Out! […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD:  Listening In with Sounding Out! (feat. Jenny Stoever) SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST Join host James Tlsty as he kicks off a special podcast miniseries–“Listening In with Sounding Out!” In this miniseries Tlsty and co-host Shauna Bahssin dig deep into the archives of Sounding Out! […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Standing Rock, Protest, Sound and Power (Part 2) SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST Part Two of a special series on Standing Rock, Protest, Sound and Power. The guest for today’s podcast is Tracy Rector. Tracy is a Choctaw/Seminole filmmaker, curator, community organizer, and Executive Director […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: The Sonic Landscapes of Unwelcome: Women of Color, Sonic Harassment, and Public Space SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST This podcast focuses on the sonic landscapes of unwelcome which women and femmes of color step into when we walk down the street, take the bus, and […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: ¡¡¡¡RESIST!!!! SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST ¡¡¡¡RESIST!!!! The Clash, “Guns of Brixton”—The Editorial Collective Alice Bag, “Programmed”—Jenny Stoever Speedy Ortiz, “Raising the Skate”—Liana Silva OutKast, “Humble Mumble”—Regina Bradley The Staple Singers, “Freedom Highway”—Shakira Holt El Jornaleros del Norte, “Serenata a un Indocumentado”—Dolores Inés Casillas A […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Ni Le Pen, ni Macron: Parisian Soundscapes of Resistance SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST What does the opposition to global Trumpism sound like? Or the opposition to neoliberalism? With extreme centrist Emmanuel Macron the frontrunner and eventual winner of the French presidential elections, there were calls […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Standing Rock, Protest, Sound and Power (Part 1) SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST On March 10th 2017, The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and Indigenous grassroots leaders called upon allies across the United States and around the world to peacefully March on Washington DC. The March […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Soundwalk of the Women’s March, Santa Ana SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST WOMEN, UNITED, WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED! As reported by the statistics gurus at fivethirtyeight.com, almost half a million people marched in Washington and Los Angeles each on Saturday, January 21st 2017. New York City […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: The Meaning of Silence SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST In this podcast Marcella Ernest discusses the cultural use of sound in Hula and other Native languages with discussants Candace Gala and Nancy Marie Mithlo. They consider the role of silence in understand an Indigenous intellectual […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: The Reykjavik Sound Walk SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST Standing in front of our rented apartment in Túngata, a residential street just a few blocks from central Reykjavík, I am struck by the stillness of the city that surrounds me. Having lived most of my […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: !!!!!!! Mix SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST !!!!!!! Beyoncé, “Formation”—Regina N. Bradley & André Carrington Mitski, “My Body’s Made of Crushed Little Stars”—Liana Silva & Chris Chien Desi Arnaz, “Babalu”—Reina Prado Celia Cruz, “La Vida es un Carnaval”—Dolores Inés Casillas Audra Mae, […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: The New Brunswick Music Scene Symposium SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST Join Frank Bridges and Christine Lutz–founders of the New Brunswick Music Scene Archive, at Rutgers University–as they converse with a panel of seasoned veterans from the New Jersey music scene. Included on the panel […]

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Each of the essays in this month’s “Medieval Sound” forum focuses on sound as it, according to Steve Goodman’s essay “The Ontology of Vibrational Force,” in The Sound Studies Reader, “comes to the rescue of thought rather than the inverse, forcing it to vibrate, loosening up its organized or petrified body (70).  These investigations into medieval sound […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: H. Cecilia Suhr’s “From Ancient Soul to Ether” SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST Cecilia Suhr’s sound art piece, From Ancient Soul to Ether, reflects on how sound can describe beings from the past, present and future in simultaneous coexistence. From the vibrational level of the earth to the futuristic murmurs […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Listening to the New England Soundscape Project SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST This week’s podcast is a continuation of this Monday’s article “Reflective Sound Gathering via the New England Soundscape Project.” Here Daniel Walzer shows how his work in gathering sounds from different New England areas […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Creating New Words from Old Sounds SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST This podcast looks at how ancestral languages are spoken in today’s changing environment of technology and popular culture. Here, Marcella Ernest leads a discussion considering how Indigenous people are adapting heritage languages to modern times. With an open mind […]

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SO! Amplifies. . .a highly-curated, rolling mini-post series by which we editors hip you to cultural makers and organizations doing work we really really dig.  You’re welcome! —   This whole world’s wild at heart and weird on top —Wild at Heart Por tu amor. . . — Buyepongo Radio Coyote is a San Francisco-based web radio program […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Yoshiwara Soundwalk: Taking the Underground to the Floating World SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST Join Gretchen Jude as she performs a soundwalk of the Yoshiwara district in Tokyo. Throughout this soundwalk, Jude offers her thoughts on the history, materiality, and culture of the Yoshiwara, […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Sound and Sexuality in Video Games SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST This week’s podcast questions how identity is coded into the battle cries shouted by characters in video games. By exploring the tools that sound studies provides to understand the various dynamics of identity, this podcast aims […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Languages of Exile SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST Factual Dispersion, Poetic Compression With words stepping backwards from the wave of news coverage, attempting to retrace a moment or point in time, to go back where things began, to the innocuous genesis of a single deliberate […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Finding the Lost Sounds of Kaibah SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST In the early 1960s Native American women had few opportunities and rights as citizens. During this politically charged era, a young Navajo woman, Kay Bennett, or “Kaibah”, defied those restrictions by recording and releasing […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Ruptures in the Soundscape of Disneyland SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST In this podcast, Cynthia Wang shares examples taken from a soundwalk she performed at Disneyland. Disneyland has been an idealized space for the middle-class white American experience, and the aural signals and music used […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Immersion and Synesthesia in Role-Playing Games SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST In tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons players collaboratively and improvisationally create and explore imagined worlds primarily constructed through speech. In this episode Nicholas Mizer explores what it means to bring those imagined worlds into […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Keep on Pushing! Mix SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST Keep On Pushing! The Style Council, “Walls Come Tumbling Down”—Aaron Trammell Tricky, “Black Steel”—Brían Hanrahan Alabama Shakes, “Dunes”—Liana Silva INSTRUMENTAL #1: Physics, “Delayed Drone”—Stuart Fowkes Boris Dlugosch, “Keep Pushin” (Original Club Mix)—Luis-Manuel Garcia […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Retail Soundscapes and the Ambience of Commerce SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST What is the ambient sound of commerce? Equally reviled and revered, the programmed soundscapes of retail space combine wonderful serendipity with quotidian blandness. This podcast examines field recordings from luxury megastores, suburban fast […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Listening in on Noisy Ghost ‘Our Madonnas Our Nobodies’ SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST This week, Sounding Out! is happy to share a podcast on nostalgia, performance, and sound. Please join host, Eleanor Russell (Northwestern University), as she guides us through through the popular sounds of the […]

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This April forum, Acts of Sonic Intervention, explores what we over here at Sounding Out! are calling “Sound Studies 2.0”–the movement of the field beyond the initial excitement for and indexing of sound toward new applications and challenges to the status quo. Today Salomé Voegelin, treats us to a multimedia re-sonification of the keynote she gave at 2014’s Invisible Places, Sounding Cities conference in […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Linguicide, Indigenous Communities and the Search for Lost Sounds SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST This podcast is an effort to understand the cultural practices which surround the recovery of “lost sounds.” These are early linguistic sounds that have been forgotten after years of […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Soundwalking New Brunswick, NJ and Davis, CA SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST This is a comparison of two soundwalks performed by SO! Multimedia Editor Aaron Trammell in two different cities–New Brunswick, NJ and Davis, CA. In this podcast Aaron listens to his […]

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. CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Radio Frequencies, Radio Forms LIVE SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST Today’s podcast is an archival recording of “Radio Frequencies, Radio Forms LIVE,” a special program on WHRW, Binghamton University’s free-format radio station, broadcast on December 15, 2014 from 6:00-7:30.  Part original radio art broadcast and […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: The Edison Soundwalk SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST Join Media Frank Bridges as he takes a soundwalk around the premises of the Thomas Edison Center in Menlo Park New Jersey. Bridges touches upon how the space tells a story of the dense […]

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It’s an all too familiar movie trope. A bug hidden in a flower jar. A figure in shadows crouched listening at a door. The tape recording that no one knew existed, revealed at the most decisive of moments. Even the abrupt disconnection of a phone call manages to arouse the suspicion that we are never […]

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. CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Roundtable on Sonic Beyoncé SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST . This September, Sounding Out! challenged a #flawless group of scholars and critics to give Beyoncé Knowles-Carter a close listen, re-examining the complex relationship between her audio and visuals and amplifying what goes unheard, even as her every move–whether […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Sonia Li’s “Whale” SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST Reflecting on Whale, an interactive, multichannel sound installation, this sound art piece documents how the installation came about. When designing Whale, Sonia Li used sound to communicate the often visceral emotions underlying her […]

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Flawless Mix SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST We woke up like this! #Flawless: “Baddygirl” – M.I.A. “The Walker” – Fitz and the Tantrums “Watch Us Work It” – DEVO “Summertime” – DJ Jazzy Jeff “Givin’ Them What They Love” – Janelle Monae […]