Postcolonial Repercussions: On Sound Ontologies and Decolonised Listening 9783839462522

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Sound Studies Series

Series edited by Holger Schulze  Volume 6

Advisory Board Sam Auinger (Linz/Berlin) Diedrich Diederichsen (Wien/Berlin) Florian Dombois (Zürich/Bern) Sabine Fabo (Aachen) Peter Kiefer (Mainz) Doris Kolesch (Berlin) Elena Ungeheuer (Berlin) Christoph Wulf (Berlin)

Sound Studies The book series Sound Studies presents research results, studies and essays on a rather new yet well-known field of research: How do human beings and animals and things live together with all the sounds and noises, tones and signals of their times? How do they shape and design sounds – and how do they act through sounds and explore their world, even in foreign or in maybe only superficially known cultures? The research field of Sound Studies is transdiciplinary and transmethodologically by nature: the publications of this book series therefore present artistic and design concepts from fields such as sound art, composition, performance art, conceptual art and popular culture as well as articles from disciplines such as cultural studies, communication studies, ethnography and cultural anthropology, music studies, art history and literary studies. Artistic research as a whole is therefore an important approach in the field of sound studies. The Sound Studies book series intends to open up a discourse in, on and about sound – across the boundaries of academic disciplines and methods of research and artistic invention: a speaking about sound beyond the hitherto alltoo well-known academic discourse. Series editor: Holger Schulze A publication of the Sound Studies Lab at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de © 2022 trancript Verlag, Bielefeld All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover photo: Gilles Aubry, Filmstill, Salam Godzilla, 2019. Editorial Staff: M. Lane Peterson, Berlin, 2020. Design and Layout: Christina Giakoumelou, www.melgrafik.de, Berlin Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar ISBN Print: 978-3-8376-6252-8 ISBN PDF: 978-3-8394-6252-2

Johannes Salim Ismaiel-Wendt Andi Schoon (eds.) Postcolonial Repercussions. On Sound Ontologies and Decolonised Listening

Contents 9 Instead of an Editorial Johannes Salim Ismaiel-Wendt and Andi Schoon

21 Salam Godzilla. Unsounding the 1960 Agadir Earthquake Gilles Aubry 45 A Conversation on Race, Sound, and the Im/possibility of Decolonised Listening Peggy Kyoungwon Lee, Pedro Oliveira, Shanti Suki Osman and Marie Thompson 59 Playing it Back. Critical Reflections on Curating Sound Bhavisha Panchia

77 »offensichtlich unbegründet«: a work in progress meditation on sonic biometry, migration and the archive Pedro J. S. Vieria de Oliveira 85 From a Postmodernist Sound to a Decolonized Dancefloor. From Glitch to Deconstructed Club Music Nadine Schildhauer 101 Meandering Feuilleton Essay about two concerts that I did not see. Or: About how I read Hall, Mignolo and Walsh instead because I want to write an article for an anthology on Decolonizing Arts and think about whether it is possible to decolonialize Popular Music Johannes Salim Ismaiel-Wendt

117 (Post) Colonial Streaming: The Social Reproduction of Listening and Deafness in the Anthropocene Henrique Souza Lima 133 Buried in the Colonial Graveyard? Indigenous Sound Ontologies, Repatriation and the Ethics of Curating Ethnographic Sounds Michael Fuhr and Matthias Lewy 153 Tangier 1999. In search of authenticity. Paul Bowles longs for something and insists on its existence Andi Schoon

165 Passageways of Knowing. Music, Movement, Reconnection Birgit Abels

179 Authors 183 List of Illustrations

Instead of an Editorial Johannes Salim Ismaiel-Wendt and Andi Schoon

Dear Andi, The academic ritual certainly expects that we precede the anthology with something like an editorial. It is also one of those rituals, in which the editors of anthologies try to talk their way around the fact that the book’s contributions are so diverse that there is hardly any common thread to be found, and they proceed to editorialise, using the argument that they wanted to show how broad the spectrum is, which is, in fact, united by the book’s title. Should we try this trick too? Honestly, either way, I think I have to try to use something equally ambivalent because even at the beginning, I was very unsure about the subtitle we articulated in the Call for Contributions. »Auditory Culture between Signification and the New Ontology« – I saw the subtitle as a kind of a trick. With the word »between«, the subtitle suggests indecisiveness, yet I actually understand it as a »no« statement. Whether ›Old‹ or ›New‹ – is it even possible, in just a little bit of ›ontology‹? A little bit of ›non-ontology‹ would have actually been a clear concession to ›Signification‹, wouldn’t it? I read and hear this as I do theses on ›genetic influences on socialisation‹. When I look at the names of the contributors and read what they have written, it becomes clear that we have not really invited positions that are interested in engaging in academia-centred scribblings, which struggle between ›New Ontology‹ and ›Signification‹. In my opinion, these are contributions that deal with questions of oscillating situatedness in postcolonial entanglements. Do we want to disclose something like this in the »editorial«? Cheers, Johannes



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Dear Johannes, »Oscillating situatedness in post-colonial entanglements« describes it pretty well, I think. I would be in favour of using something like it for the subtitle – because then we wouldn’t have to pretend that the volume was planned exactly as it has turned out to be. I don’t think we owe anything to the Call for Contributions – it was just a means to inspire submissions. But you are right, of course: the ontological position does not tolerate any kind of »between« within itself, and accordingly, it is rarely found in the contributions. In the call, we also referred to approaches for emancipatory forms of ontological listening: Those, who renounce their sovereign self, might be better able to perceive non-human voices. I would have been interested to receive further contemplations on this topic. However, I can understand that most of the authors are currently more concerned with oscillating situatedness. I am too. By the way, we have deliberately decided against aligning certain spellings (such as ‘decolonised’ and ‘decolonized’). They stand side by side without comment. It seems to me that this volume is a collective conversation. In any case, it cannot be more than an intermediate state. This is why we are not simulating a unified voice in this editorial. And we will not set a full stop at the end of it. Warmly, Andi

Dear Andi, These emancipatory forms of listening, which are capable of perceiving something in a breadth, which was unimaginable until now, is something I read in Gilles Aubry’s contribution in particular: »Salam Godzilla. Unsounding the 1960 Agadir Earthquake«. It is Gilles Aubry’s text that leads me to identify the contributions under the heading »oscillating situatedness in postcolonial entanglements«. I also interpret an emancipation from established research approaches in the following sentence by Gilles Aubry: »I return to the 1960 Agadir earthquake in order to study the multiple sonic dimensions of this event and its aftermaths, as part of my research project on sound and listening histories in Morocco« […]. In such a sentence, there is a refusal of unambiguous linear temporal processes – in this contribution, Aubry makes non-human voices audible, listens to human voices that have long been condensing and poeticising sound, and interweaves continuums and vibrations with various »actors« to create a new »heterochronicity«,1 an interaction at eye level. 1 Pelleter 2018, 149.

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It is this other knowledge, or more precisely: auditory knowledge, marginalised in the Playback Mode of Academia, that we wanted to promote with our call. Later, I will write something about the obstacles that we were not able to overcome, but first: a few sentences about Birgit Abels’ contribution to the anthology. Birgit Abels is perhaps the author, who responded most directly to the subtitle that was formulated in the call. And then, at a certain point, she simply leaves our provocation on the sidelines, as it were, writing: ›Signification‹, yes; ›New Ontology‹, yes – could be anything, but she is interested in the »Ontogenetic« in the sense of something becoming. Like Aubry, Birgit Abels questions how sound is known, but her style of doing so is quite different. I read Abel’s text as being even more strongly connected with a subject from within an academic discipline – or as working on and working off of something like a Eurocentric music ethnology. She presents us with a plurality of epistemologies: »Sound knowledge thus gives rise to an ecological and ethical understanding that everyone and everything is connected, an insight that deeply resonates with Pacific Islander notions« […]. Without wanting to up- or downgrade the one or the other, an additional dimension of Postcolonial Repercussions lies, for me, in the juxtaposition and the connecting of the various ways of speaking and writing – in their style and attitude – which is worth perceiving and which lies in the texts themselves, even beyond the content conveyed. I am glad that the contributions are heterogeneous. But at the same time, I see no reason for us to pat ourselves on the back just because we have found a way to include diverse perspectives. Somehow, I had the naive fantasy of using the call to facilitate a collaboration between researchers and activists, who are perhaps otherwise not closely connected to Sound Studies, Musicology, etc., and I was honestly quite unreflectingly greedy for any other form of knowledge that might have come along in any other kind of format. But the one, who proclaims, »We’re making a book!«, should not be surprised that in the end, words land on the page. As busy as the contributors were with their articles, we were just as busy working on contributions that ultimately did not make it into the anthology. I would like to remind you of a few events that took place while planning in Autumn 2018: We were asking ourselves, who should contribute and who shouldn’t? We were hoping for a contribution from Dylan Robinson and were communicating with him about an advanced publication of a chapter from his book Hungry Listening. Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies (the book was published in 2020 and thus ultimately before this anthology). It was very interesting to observe how voracious academics, including myself, tried to incorporate this position of »Writing Indigenous Space«. Even before the book was published, Dylan Robinson was absorbed with presenting his work – preparing and presenting talks, lectures, article requests, seminars, festivals. I think that Dylan Robinson resists exactly this kind of voraciousness in his decision to write a chapter »exclusively for Indigenous readers« in his book. We were (and still are) also in contact with a (let’s call it for the moment) (queer) feminist collective that is doing great activist work – among other things by creating

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space for really quite heterogeneous music practices. The collective arduously worked out a dialogical contribution for this anthology and collected samples of various voices, even marginalised ones. In the end, however, the members withdrew their contribution because the structure and imprecision of a written text does not sufficiently capture the processual spirit of the work, and the understanding of concerns and demands could not be opened in the way the collective wanted. But the exchange with the (queer)feminist collective also triggered new thoughts in us, as so-called editors, about how we can try to offer the space, which is given to us relatively easily due to various privileges, to heterogeneous positions from different parts of the world. At the same time, we are trying to avoid an identitarian policy of testimony, which functions as a form of tokenism. I would like to take the opportunity to thank these people for the exchange (you know who you are). Warmest regards, Johannes

Dear Johannes, We have now referred to the call a few times. Perhaps we have to re-call it – at least in part – for illustration: An academic debate is taking place in the slipstream of musicology – one that has not emerged directly from the discipline itself, but is demonstrably having an impact on it. The discourse in question does not happen merely in an ivory tower, but is part of a real, existing cultural landscape. The object of this debate is the renaissance of ontology and its quest for the basic structures of reality. What began in speculative realism has recently also reached the world of sound: the practice of thinking beyond the imperfection of creation. The »sonic flux« concept of the East-Coast philosopher Christopher Cox, for example, states that sound-in-itself is sufficient. It needs no subject, no meaning and no discourse. Within this paradigm, the strongest positions in the sonic arts refer not to an author, but to the sounding essence. By contrast, others shift their focus to take issues of identity politics into account, such as the English media theorist Marie Thompson, who has engaged critically with the work of Christopher Cox in a recent article in the journal Parallax. She proposes that his construction of a neutral, discourse-free stance is »predicated upon a […] ›white aurality‹«.2 By refusing to problematise the sub-

2 Cf. Thompson 2017.

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ject, she believes he is ignoring the constraints and obstacles to which the »nonwhite« subject is beholden. Thompson’s dialectical approach situates her within an auditory culture that is keen to embed sonic phenomena in media history,3 while in her opinion sound studies adhere to an ontological perspective. […] It is primarily the field of Anthropology that offers possibilities for emancipatory forms of ontological hearing. Following on from Bruno Latour, for example, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro suggests that dividing up cultural constructions, including critical self-reflection, essentially remains rooted in Western thinking.4 Lisa Stevenson and Eduardo Kohn argue that »letting go of our sovereign self« can help us open ourselves up to perceiving hitherto unheard voices, including those of non-human entities.5 The sound artist Gilles Aubry sees an opportunity for a »decolonized listening« here that might enable new relations between voices of very different origins.6 Our anthology aims to encompass potentially conflicting positions in Sound Studies, between Signification and the New Ontology, and to situate these in relation to each other. Our goal is furthermore to observe contemporary approaches to the postcolonial and the decolonised in context, in order to determine possible (sound) strategies by reconciling them. Or would that just be a fantasy of a quick solution in the sense of neo-colonial »hungry listening«7? We had given particular emphasis to Marie Thompson’s position and, in doing so, also reduced it, which she rightly drew our attention to. I liked the fact that her reaction was not to simply repeat her arguments as a contribution to our book, but rather to discuss them in a collective piece. With Peggy Kyoungwon Lee, Pedro Oliveira and Shanti Suki Osman, there are even correlations to activism, such as the Sonic Cyberfeminisms project. The discussion seems to me to be how a document of activism should be: rich in consulted sources, with a clear stance but also full of cultivated doubt about its own blind spots. The »impossibility of decolonized listening« is repeatedly mentioned in the discussion. But this supposed impossibility nevertheless offers suggestions and perspectives. They agree that attention to nuances and relations is necessary in order to overcome Othering. The bottom line stands as a plea for speculative listening, critical fabulation and a practice of care. I was glad to read their discussion because I was concerned at one point that a serious clarification of the conditions for the possibility of speaking for oneself could lead to silence or being silenced. You also alluded to this. There are, however, further attempts in the book not to simply fall back on established ways of speaking, but to (forcedly) 3 4 5 6 7

Cf. Sterne 2003. Cf. Viveiros de Castro 2014 / Rocha de Souza Lima 2018. Cf. Kohn / Stevenson 2015. Cf. Aubry 2017. Cf. Robinson 2020.

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invent them to some extent. Bhavisha Panchia avoids all too general considerations in her article by speaking from her own practice as a sound curator. And you too, Johannes, wring numerous words out of the almost inexpressible in your contribution. Would you like to comment on it yourself? Sincerely, Andi

Dear Andi, I don’t think I’m really wringing words out of »the almost inexpressible« in my text. Rather, I think it is the opposite: I try to resist clichéd criticism, which all too easily makes it possible for ›Brave New Words‹ to proliferate. Along the lines of Popular Music, I question the inflationary use of the concept of ›decolonisation‹ in whitedominated institutions and especially in academia. I am somewhat astonished at how easily recent calls such as the one to »Decolonize!« graced the lips of even the largest German cultural and educational institutions and exporters while barely anything was changed about the institution’s own programme (in a broader sense). The institutions that were conceived for epistemic colonisation are now offering themselves as spaceproviders and mediators in the context of discussions on restitution and for trainings in Critical Whiteness. This brings me back to the aforementioned (queer)feminist collective and your concern that reflection on one’s own speaking position may lead to silence. I understand the collective’s reaction more as a not wanting to be yet another group of white people, generating capital by representing the critical positions that have for the most part been developed by activist People of Color. We are walking a very fine line between ›generating vocal heterogeneity‹, ›creating other spaces‹ and ›paternalism‹ – something that I experience again and again within the university setting, for example, which often surprises me: Is anything really changed when you read the self-flagellating and self-labelling of students’ theses or research such as »I, as a white, cis-male or cis-woman«? Yes, and my reputation as an academic will probably be enhanced by anthologies like this one. That is important to me. Even more important to me, however, is to take advantage of the privileges that are now relatively easily granted to me in the sense of making it easier to find interesting work, even in various aesthetic formats, in as many places as possible. I got to know Bhavisha Panchia, a sound curator from South Africa, at an event of a large German foundation that was strange in the sense outlined above. I learned from Bhavisha Panchia that she had just completed an exhibition and vinyl record project

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with contributions from John Akomfrah and Trevor Mathison, Tony Cokes, DJ/rupture (Jace Clayton), Em’kal Eyongakpa, Lamin Fofana and Val Jeanty, which »brought together audio works of various modalities of Black sonic and cultural formations from within the contemporary African diaspora« […]. We met as she was curating an exhibition, titled Buried in the Mix (2017), at the MEWO Kunsthalle in Memmingen, Germany. It is a gift that these curatorial works are once again reflected in this anthology in an overview by Bhavisha Panchia. For me, the contribution also stands for a deconstruction of the idea of the ›Academic‹ and of a conservative understanding of research. Not that I want to discredit academic work; on the contrary, I would like to point out that the perspectives and sounds of Bhavisha Panchia’s work can be understood as an alternative and peculiar way of generating knowledge. This is also the way that I read Pedro Oliveira’s contribution for the anthology, which was originally conceived as a sound performance lecture on speech recognition software. Of course, the sound work loses a lot of its expressiveness when it is clamped between two book covers. However, in the written form, it also takes up the more permanent space which is otherwise reserved for the hard and soft sciences, beyond the sometimes tokenised placement at singular events. The sound performance lecture is a profound study and it is – I will deliberately use a term here, which is all too often only associated with white artists – avant-garde. Even the voices that Pedro Oliveira compiles are avant-garde in their neo-colonialist criticism. All the best, Johannes

Dear Johannes, I hope that in my own contribution I do not engage in »clichéd criticism«, which – I agree with you on that part – we currently encounter in the most astonishing places. In fact, self-incrimination often seems to be associated with the hope of returning to everyday business. However, in this half-researched, half-invented short story, I am interacting with a discussion about »troubled whiteness« (as Gilles Aubry calls it in his forthcoming dissertation). It is the investigation of an experience, which must be accounted for on an individual level, because no one else can take responsibility for it. It is perhaps curious that the writer Paul Bowles appears in it, whose whiteness was not particularly troubled, but I found him quite suitable as an object of investigation (and to a certain extent also as a character and foil of a short story). Fiction as a means of choice is also present in Nadine Schildhauer’s contribution, but on a musical level: Schildhauer describes Deconstructed Club Music from the musical, material point of view as a design that breaks through closed musical narratives. The genre is situated in a complicated way: transnational, decentralised, often based on di-

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asporic experiences. Here, the track becomes a fictional space that enables movement instead of administering claims; a disruptive entity that is capable of dissolving binary structures. The routes or exhausting ›treks‹, to use your term, of slavery and migration are reflected in the ›track‹. Cheers, Andi

Dear Andi, Michael Fuhr and Matthias Lewy submitted their contribution a few days ago and I was finally able to read it yesterday. We requested a text from the two of them very late in the process of creating this anthology – after they had given a lecture on »Indigenous sound ontologies, repatriation and the ethics of curating ethnographic sounds« at the symposium Ethics of Curating in February 2020 in Hildesheim. In this anthology, I would like to place their contribution before your story »In search for authenticity«. Your more or less fictitious writing about the character, Dieter Ganske, who wants to expose the fact that Paul Bowles did not proceed cleanly in his research, compilations and publications of Moroccan music, can also be found in the examples that Fuhr and Lewy present in relation to perhaps well-intentioned archive compilations about the »music« of the Selk’nam and Yagán as well as the Pemón and the circum-Roraima people. Fuhr and Lewy point out how incorrect and insufficient information can be supplied to CD compilations of old recordings of the songs of communities from Tierra del Fuego or Venezuela/Brazil. What they essentially deal with in their contribution, however, is, in my understanding, not only the issue of non-authentic representation or appropriation by white researchers, but the massive violence of representation in general. This does not mean anything general, abstract or postmodern such as »the crisis of representation«, which concerns the hundred-year-old phonograph recordings of a German ethnologist. It is about violence against family members, for example, whose wishes have been manipulated or who were even not informed of the European archives that make the voices of their grandparents accessible worldwide. Fuhr and Lewy name these phonogram archives and museums »Colonial Graveyards«. After reading the article, I wondered whose cemetery culture should now be entrusted with the care of such graves, so that the colonial matrix does not copy itself endlessly. Actually, no, I am not really wondering. In their text, Fuhr and Lewy describe the locking ritual performed in a Berlin ethnographic museum as Balbina Lambos, a Pemón indigenous researcher, finds out about a pakara bag with a stone inside it, and decides to bury the powerful »object« inside the museum’s archives,. And still, the act is not about authentic burial rituals of the Pemón people, but about the invention of an own ritual. Decolonisation seems to me to have

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a lot to do with »Invention of Tradition« – but this time it will have to be shaped by forces other than European (neo-)colonialism. Warmly, Johannes

Dear Johannes, The question of who invents or discursively controls something brings me back to Gilles Aubry, to whom we also owe the cover motif: his contribution deals with the severe earthquake in Agadir in 1960, in the wake of which seismic aurality became a battlefield of political negotiation. The experts of the former colonial administration forced a »technocratic listening« by means of technical measuring methods, which enabled the reconstruction of the city according to certain criteria. Aubry shows how in Ibn Ighil’s sung poem »Tale of Agadir« a completely different recapitulation of events occurs – one that allows the listeners to experience and process them once again. Sound, and also »unsound«8 in the sense of virtual or future sounds, can thus be colonised, and therefore reappropriated. Our cover shows a film still from Aubry’s audiovisual essay Salam Godzilla: The record player isolates the sound in the Western sense, but the stomping of a Rwais dance disrupts the sound, forcing the record player’s needle to skip. Speaking of sound reproduction: Henrique Souza Lima has given us a very insightful view on the state of the »listening regime«9 from a Global South perspective. The piece begins its analysis with advertising from the 1970s for record players, which was aimed at white men, to a recent case study in São Paulo, where Spotify advertised on certain underground lines; here, the streaming company becomes a symptom and expression of the »capitalocene«. Souza Lima writes: »The regime of listening produced by the streaming-based phonographic industry organises aurality so that the local soundscape is always in the deaf spot« […]. The consumer is not supposed to listen to the acoustic environment when the money is flowing in another sphere. A decolonised listening practice would have to be situated in a specific context. Best, Andi

8 Cf. Goodman 2010. 9 Cf. Szendy 2001.

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Dear Andi, Your reference to Henrique Souza Lima reminded me once more of the missing contribution of Dylan Robinson. In Hungry Listening, he explains how missionaries, for example, tried to control indigenous bodies and to ›fix‹ them not only to the country and to an exact location, but also by fixing attention and fixed listening.10 Children were taken to schools and forced with bells into a rhythmic organisation according to the ideas of the colonial settlers – in this way, the children were also estranged from their family contexts in terms of sound and time. In our last correspondence, and with the references to Michael Fuhr’s and Matthias Lewy’s contribution, I seemed to fall into the characteristic style of an editor. I certainly didn’t want to try and offer something like a framing here to make all contributions legible according to a single pattern or perspective. Then you quickly wrote a few lines about the cover picture and responded to the contribution by Henrique Souza Lima, which had not been mentioned in our correspondence thus far. So, you acted like a typical editor, too… It’s difficult for me to end our dialogue because I feel that the ten contributions we are allowed to publish are like a drop in the ocean. This certainly has nothing to do with the solidity or soundness of the texts, which have inspired me deeply. The difficulty lies in the much too promising title of the book: »Postcolonial Repercussions« – that should actually – and unfortunately – be the title for an endlessly continuing book series. And at the same time, I would feel uneasy about wanting to uphold a culture of ›fixation‹. The sentiment might seem melodramatic, but I would like to take this opportunity to express the spirit of our preliminary conversations about this anthology, my situation and intention as a person in the »editor’s« role of a volume in the Sound Studies series. In the words of Philip A. Ewell: »But I am now conflicted. For to feed, sustain, and promulgate a system based on racialized structures and institutions is unacceptable in 2020. The white frame was never the answer – it is simply more apparent now than ever. It is my intention to continue to move towards deframing and reframing the white racial frame, and it is my hope that I can convince others to join me.«11 @Philip A. Ewell, you can count us in. Sincerely, Johannes

10 Robinson 2020, 54-57. 11 Ewell 2020, 22.

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Sources Aubry, Gilles (2017): Towards decolonized listening, in: Proceedings of the Sonologia International Conference on Sound Studies, São Paulo. Cox, Christoph (2011): Beyond representation and signification: toward a sonic materialism, in: Journal of Visual Culture, 10(2), 145-161. Ewell, Phillip A. (2020): Music Theory and the White Racial Frame, in: Society for Music Theory, 26(2), Bloomington. Goodman, Steve (2010): Sonic warfare. Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear, Cambridge, MA / London. Kohn, Eduardo / Stevenson, Lisa: Leviathan, an ethnographic dream, in: Visual Anthropology Review, 31(1), 49-53. Pelleter, Malte (2018): Funkologicalienatimepistomachinistics. Sensorisches Engineering und maschinische Heterochronizität bei Shuggie Otis, in: Fabian, Alan / Ismaiel-Wendt, Johannes Salim (eds.), Musikformulare und Presets. Musikkulturalisierung und Technik/Technologie, Hildesheim, 149-166. Robinson, Dylan (2020): Hungry Listening. Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies, Minneapolis. Rocha de Souza Lima, Henrique (2018): The sound beyond hylomorphism: sonic philosophy towards aural specificity, in: Interference: A Journal of Audio Cultures, 6, 46-61. Szendy, Peter (2001): Écoute: une histoire de nos oreilles, Paris. Thompson, Marie (2017): Whiteness and the ontological turn in sound studies, in: Parallax 23(3), 266-282. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo (2014): Cannibal Metaphysics, translated by Peter Skafish, Minneapolis.

Translated from the original German by M. Lane Peterson.

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Salam Godzilla Unsounding the 1960 Agadir Earthquake Gilles Aubry

Introduction On February 29th 1960 at 23:41, the port city of Agadir in the South-West region of Morocco was struck by a massive earthquake, reaching an intensity of 5.7 on the Richter scale. The seism killed an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 people of a population of 48,000 and destroyed about 70% of the city buildings.1 Orchestrated by King Mohamed V and his son, Prince Moulay Hassan, the reconstruction of the city went on swiftly, inaugurating a new era of modern postwar urbanism. In his recent article on the reconstruction process, the historian Daniel Williford argues that the countless reports produced by scientific experts and bureaucrats following the earthquake led to a re-writing of Agadir as a »vulnerable space«.2 The experts, he writes, fashioned a notion of »seismic risk« in order to interpret the earthquake and damages through a combination of »human, natural and technological« factors.3 This ultimately had significant consequences for the Agadir population, resulting in mass-expropriations of inhabitants, environmental pollution and a dramatical growth of the city’s slums over the two decades following the earthquake.4 With its high number of victims and considerable destruction, the 1960 earthquake remains as a traumatic event in the memory of the Agadir population even today, and is commemorated every year in an official ceremony. In this chapter, I return to the 1960 Agadir earthquake in order to study the multiple sonic dimensions of this event and its aftermaths, as part of my research project on sound and listening histories in Morocco. Infrasonic seismic waves are indeed relevant to my study, as they operate in a range covering the low end of audible frequencies

1 Williford 2017. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid.



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(about 20 hertz) and the very low oscillations of the whole Earth,5 with the potential to equally affect bodies and environments. In search for local sources about the earthquake, I was able to identify an aural poem composed in 1960 by Ibn Ighil, a wellknown minstrel-poet (anddam), living in the south of Agadir. Tape-recorded by Kenneth L. Brown in 1970, Ibn Ighil’s »Tale of Agadir«6 describes the 1960 Agadir earthquake and searches for its meaning. Based on a commented transcript and English translation of the poem by Brown & Lakhsassi (1980), I approach it here as a locally situated account of the disaster, allowing for comparison with the official seismic reports described in Williford’s article. For both parts, I argue, facing the earthquake and its consequences had a significant sonic dimension, in particular in terms of »who« and »what« was heard in order to deliver their respective interpretation of the event. I focus on the sound and listening concepts that can be identified in each case with a particular attention to social and material aspects. Numerous academic contributions about histories of (Western) modern listening have emerged over the past 20 years, which are useful for analysing the sonic aspects relevant to the scientific work of the international experts in Agadir. This is far less the case for locally situated sonic knowledges in North-Africa, hence my interest in studying Ibn Ighil‘s poem. Indeed, most existing contributions on Berber-Amazigh sound worlds address performative, poetic-linguistic and formal aspects of music practices, often in rural contexts. Although some authors have commented on the ›intrusion‹ of modernity in Berber poetry with elements such as the car, the airplane, electricity, visas and immigration,7 I haven’t been able to identify contributions on modern Berber »listening histories« ,8 even less on listening outside of musical contexts. Material, technological and especially environmental listening remains thus a largely unexplored area of North-African (sound and media) Studies, which makes the 1960 Agadir earthquake particularly relevant to my own research.

Acoustemology, sonic virtuality and unsound Earthquakes are usually referred to as environmental phenomena, or rather as ›natural disasters‹. Williford brilliantly shows in his article that such events are better to be approached as a complex combination of natural, social and technological factors,

5 The dominant frequency range of small to moderate earthquakes extends in waves from about 1 to 0.1 hertz, while the lowest waves can reach a period of 54 minutes (Bolt 2020, https://www.britannica.com/science/earthquake-geology/Properties-of-seismic-waves) 6 Brown / Lakhsassi 1980. 7 Cf. Peyron 2010. 8 Cf. Feld 2017.

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Salam Godzilla. Unsounding the 1960 Agadir Earthquake

which need to be historicised in order to reveal their political dimensions.9 Ibn Ighil responded instead to the earthquake with an analogical re-creation of its destructive and affective impact, as I will argue, so that a »reconfiguration process«10 ultimately became possible for the listeners. The 1960 Agadir earthquake provides thus a case of a modern, techno-environmental crisis from which to examine how sound and listening practices participated in the ways realities were constructed from very distinct positions. Feld’s notion of »acoustemology« constitutes an important reference when it is about describing sound worlds and experiences emerging from »embodied« and »relational« knowledge practices.11 I refer to this notion in order to situate Ibn Ighil’s poem in a local field of sonic knowledge, able to generate its own instance of sonic materiality. Although materiality in Ibn Ighil’s poem can perhaps be best described in virtual terms, its effects are no less real than those produced by Western scientific discourses on sound, as I will argue. With the notion of »risk« – and the associated techniques of statistical prediction – modern science itself has long entered the field of virtuality, as Williford importantly reminds us in his analysis of the experts‘ and bureaucrats‘ practices that followed the Agadir earthquake. I suggest that this equally applies to the field of technological sound and listening. In order to address that which cannot yet be heard – future earthquakes in this case – I refer to Steve Goodman‘s notion of »unsound«.12 As another name for the »not yet audible« and »future sound«,13 Goodman coins the term unsound in order to denote the potential of »sonic virtuality, the nexus of imperceptible vibration«.14 Starting from »the peripheries of human audition, of infrasound and ultrasound, both of which modulate the affective sensorium in ways we still do not fully comprehend«,15 the unsound becomes a way to question the limits of sound itself. This importantly comes with a deconstruction of the sharp distinction between the physical, the phenomenological and the affective dimensions of sound. The relation between these terms is re-conceptualised as a continuum between vibration (sonic materialism) and vibe (ambience, mood and affect).16 In contrast to the scientific definition of sound as a phenomenon of material vibration within the range of human audition (approximately 20-20,000 Hz), which can be technically measured, recorded, reproduced and commodified, the unsound also includes the inaudible, virtual and simply »possible sound worlds«.17 As such, it is open to alternative, often 9 Cf. Williford 2017. 10 Cf. Moutu 2007. 11 Cf. Feld 2017. 12 Cf. Goodman 2010. 13 Ibid., 192. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 Cf. ibid. 17 Cf. Voegelin 2014.

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marginalised sound histories and acoustemologies. It can help to bring them into conversation with existing scientific discourses, while at the same time highlighting the situatedness and particular ideological agenda of every discourse about sound and matter in general.

Salam Godzilla Next to Williford‘s article and Ibn Ighil‘s poem on the 1960 Agadir earthquake, my study equally draws on my own artistic-ethnographic research in Agadir. Conducted in 2017 and 2018, the research led to the realisation of an audiovisual essay, Salam Godzilla,18 to which I frequently refer here. The film is available online;19 therefore, it is highly recommended to watch it in regard to this text. »Salam Godzilla« emerged from the felt necessity to engage with the earthquake in the present. It is not simply a documentary about the disaster, but rather a tentative reconstitution of it on a sound-conceptual level. The main elements in the film were chosen for their potential to embody – and arguably not just represent – particular sound worlds, knowledges, practices and affects, which I further interpret here in terms of particular unsounds. These elements include diverse locations, institutions, footages and protagonists, including myself, that were brought into new relations for the film through direct encounters, staging, performance and subsequently through montage. I collaborated with the Agadiri singer Ali Faiq in order to produce a new sung version of Ibn Ighil’s oral poem, performed in the original Berber-Tashelhit language. The main location of the film is the »Salam« movie theater in the centre of Agadir, a modernist construction built in 1946 by the architect Boubker Fakih Tetouani. The building survived the earthquake while most of the area was destroyed. Aside from its remarkable design and history, the theatre became important for my film because of an anecdote reported by several local sources: the film projected inside on the very night of the earthquake in 1960 was »Godzilla, King of the Monsters«20. Famous for being the first Japanese science-fiction movie, it features a giant, reptilian monster and includes several scenes of extensive destruction of Tokyo city. The film is also often brought into relation with the collectively repressed trauma of the 1945 nuclear bombings in Hiroshima and Nagazaki. The title of my own film was inspired not only by the anecdote of the 1960 earthquake at the »Salam«, but also by the 1956 film’s content, opening a field of possibilities for the treatment of the environmental dimension of the earthquake, together with the question of extra-human agency and monstrous representations. 18 Aubry 2019. 19 The film Salam Godzilla (41’) can be accessed online via the following link https://archive.org/details/salamgodzilla 20 Honda / Morse 1956.

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Salam Godzilla. Unsounding the 1960 Agadir Earthquake

In the course of my research, I became particularly interested in the possibility to engage with extra-human voices. In this case, the question was whether the Earth itself should be considered as a being, possibly with her own voice, of which the earthquake would be a particularly violent manifestation. As Pettman suggests, listening to the sounds of nature can potentially become »a way of attuning ourselves to a more radical alterity than our own species«, which in turn »afford new forms of being together«.21 He also suggests that »expanding the conceptual spectrum of what counts as a voice is one way to better understand – and thus challenge – the technical foundation and legacy of taxonomy (gender, class, race, species)«.22 As I will elaborate later, various human and extra-human voices come to matter in Salam Godzilla. This includes the Berber-Tashelhit poet Ibn Ighil, the Rwais dancers Lahcen Aattar and Ali Bazegra, the Agadiri artists Dounia Fikri and Abderrahim Nidalha, as well as the Earth, Godzilla, the group of anonymous dinosaurs who left their footprints on a beach near Agadir about 100 millions years ago, and the keeper of this site, Samir Benteyane. In the following sections, I describe how some of these protagonists were brought into relation with each other in my film, often in opposition to the dominant voices of scientific experts, media reporters, bureaucrats and authorities. I come to identify several instances of »unsound«, each of them particularly »situated«,23 in an attempt to listen beyond cochlear perception to »a-audible«24 voices and future sounds. I finally return to my own, privileged position in the film, via a reflection on »white aurality«,25 and on my efforts to challenge and trouble such a position.

Technocratic unsound: Expert and bureaucrat listening after the 1960 Agadir earthquake On the days following the 1960 Agadir earthquake, international teams of experts in geology, seismology and town planning were invited by King Mohamed V in order to study the feasibility of rebuilding the city on the same site. According to Williford, these teams produced countless scientific reports on the catastrophe and its possible causes over the next couple of months.26 Through seismic data and other techniques, they were able to measure the intensity of the seismic (sound) waves and to territorialise them in the form of »isoseismal maps«.27 By mapping the site into »four zones of 21 Cf. Pettman 2017. 22 Ibid. 23 Cf. Haraway 1988. 24 Cf. Henare / Holbraad / Wastell 2007. 25 Cf. Thompson 2017. 26 Cf. Williford 2017. 27 Ibid., 983.

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decreasing danger«, the experts also created a »transition from intensity to risk – from past to future«.28 They introduced the notion of »seismic risk« in an attempt to »stabilize the relationship between nature, technology, and politics«.29 As a »heterogeneous product of expert and bureaucratic practices«, Williford adds, seismic risk became a way »to distribute both blame and authority«.30 This meant the possibility for the local administration to expropriate people living in the city centre and seize their land in the name of »public interest«. With such practices, Williford argues, the authorities perpetuated the forms of systemic violence of the French protectorate.31 As a result, he concludes, »the city’s slums grew dramatically following the official end of the reconstruction in 1966, and would house over a quarter of the city’s population by 1978«.32 Considered on the level of sound and listening practices, the approach taken by the teams of international experts in charge of the reconstruction of Agadir had much in common with modern ways of listening and thinking about sound. As Emily Thompson notes, the development of new technological instruments in the 1920s allowed for electrical representations and measurements of acoustical phenomena as »soundsignals«.33 »This new sound was modern«, she writes, because it was »efficient«, and because »it was perceived to demonstrate man’s technical mastery over his physical environment«.34 The experts in Agadir similarly re-sounded the earthquake as an abstraction constructed from sound signals, models and maps. The seismograph, while allowing for the visual recording of infrasonic seismic waves, quickly became a dispositive for silencing the multi-sensory, local, collective and affective dimensions of the earthquake. Moreover, the experts engaged into a process of sonic prediction, policing the distribution and potential of future vibrations through seismic risk management. This was not simply modern listening any more, but rather a late modern version of it, which I propose to call technocratic listening. Although technocratic listening may appear as a mere logical and statistical process of vibration management, it was carried in complete alignment with the Moroccan authorities’ agenda of modern urban development and consolidation of the state’s presence in the south,35 thus being highly political. As part of a transition process between the colonial violence of the French Protectorate and new forms of structural violence implemented by the Moroccan state, technocratic listening was equally deaf to the claims of the population. By condemning »traditional construction methods as the root cause of inordinate levels of death and destruction«,36 28 Ibid., 993. 29 Ibid., 985. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid., 1006. 32 Ibid., 1008. 33 Thompson 2012, 118. 34 Cf. ibid. 35 Williford 2017, 987. 36 Ibid., 988.

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Salam Godzilla. Unsounding the 1960 Agadir Earthquake

engineers in Agadir »obscured the role of material inequalities between European and Moroccan neighborhoods of the formerly colonial city in shaping the distribution of fatalities«.37 Peaceful protests by »expropriated citizens« were met by the authorities first by detainment, followed by absurd administrative requirements, ending with their expulsion of their temporary homes back to their »cities of origin«.38 Other attempts by survivors to join into victim’s organisations in order to participate in decision-making on matters related to the reconstruction were also shut out of the planning process.39 Technocratic listening can be further described using Goodman’s notion of »unsound«,40 introduced in the beginning of this chapter. By encompassing the virtual and the affective potential of particular sound and listening practices, the unsound allows us to engage with the predictive dimension of technocratic listening, beyond the directly audible manifestations of physical sound phenomena. The »not yet audible«41 does not only stand for future earthquakes, or the promise of seismic safety. The technocratic unsound is more so the dark side of »future sound«, I argue, preemptively policing any future attempt by the population to interfere with the reconstruction process, or to become involved in seismic risk management. As such, the technocratic unsound can be traced back to the colonial urban politics of French occupation, reformulated later by the Moroccan authorities into a »positive technocracy nationalized and Islamicized«.42 Almost 60 years after the disaster, the Moroccan technocratic regime is still in place, together with its unsound. While most of the Agadir population today is concentrated in peripheral areas of the city and in the adjacent towns of Inezgane and Dcheira, the reconstructed city centre mainly hosts administrative buildings and touristic infrastructures. The low sound intensity in this area is striking in comparison to other large Moroccan cities, and the run-down aspect of the 1960s modernist buildings accentuate the impression of an almost ghost-like city. This impression culminates on top of the Oufella hill, the site of the former city kasbah (citadel) which was entirely destroyed by the 1960 earthquake, now a flat wasteland, with only its external walls rebuilt since the catastrophe. During my field research in Agadir in 2018, I visited a local non-governmental organisation (association ASVTS), created in 2002, and dedicated to seismic risk prevention. Without any support from the state, this organisation provides basic information to the population on seismic activity and teaches life-saving behaviours for emergency situations. I had the chance to film images of a modern seismometer acquired by this organisation in 2012 for the real-time monitoring of seismic activity in the area. Although modest in size and impact, this initiative attests of the efforts of Agadiri 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid., 1007. 39 Ibid., 1010. 40 Cf. Goodman 2010. 41 Ibid., 192. 42 Ibid.

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citizens to appropriate seismic expertise for the benefit of the community. In my film Salam Godzilla, the images shot at the association ASVTS enter into a dialogue with other sources, referring to the technocratic unsound. This includes excerpts of European newsreels footages showing the destruction of Agadir with testimonies by some of the survivors of the earthquake, close-ups of damaged concrete structures as well as images of the newly reconstructed Agadir. Together, these images suggest a certain continuity in sound practices between the 1960s and the present, while highlighting the increasing importance of non-governmental organisations in the Moroccan society since the 2000s.

Figure 1: Room of the organisation ASVTS for seismic prevention in Agadir. Still from Salam Godzilla (Aubry 2019).

Ibn Ighil‘s Tale of Agadir The news of the Agadir earthquake quickly propagated throughout the country in 1960, as did survivors’ accounts in the years following. Ibn Ighil, a well-known minstrel-poet (anddam) living in the oasis of Touzounine, south of Agadir, composed a chanted poem in the Berber-Tashelhit language about the earthquake from what he had heard shortly after the catastrophe. The poem was turned into a song for Salam Godzilla in collaboration with the singer Ali Faiq, based on the following transcription by Brown and Lakhsassi (1980)43:

43 Brown / Lakhsassi 1980.

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Salam Godzilla. Unsounding the 1960 Agadir Earthquake

THE TALE OF AGADIR Praise be to God, The Exalted. Destruction is like a wadi. Whenever you come, O Time, it gets up and leaves. I. Agadir has been destroyed. Buried in it someone‘s thousands. Woe! They died, all the people, none escaped. All those who were there, the tribe, totally obliterated. They hadn‘t accomplished their ambitions, nothing was finished, Arab and Berber, no one escaped it. Whoever had entered it, never again would get out. Jews died, and Christians, too, on that day, And Muslims, with a curse, and those who were righteous. Children died, and women, too, on that day. II. Gold was buried, carpets buried; Those shops Of goods, all gone, nothing in them but wind; The quarter of Ihshash destroyed in an instant, nothing in it but dirt. There‘s Talborjt, tiles and marble completely hidden; Pillars of reinforced cement, here they are, no longer supporting a thing; Abattoir and Ville Nouvelle, little remained of them; There they were, cracked through, not yet having fallen on that day; Founti and the Great Citadel became powder, powder. Praise be yours, O God, it happened in a minute; At midnight, just like a dream. III. Some wretches were pulled out, their soul hadn‘t left them. Ready to rise, they were, to become conscious. Some were pulled out, to be taken to that which is everlasting. They didn‘t inform their companions, they saw no one; They abandoned friends and children simply passed on. Some carried on, their time hadn‘t ended; They still make use of worldly possessions. Not all Muslims were the same in that catastrophe. Orphans and children were quite lost, Their parents died, leaving them only sorrows. IV. Where are those who were strong, Whose money wasn‘t small? Praise be yours, O God, they are begging with their hands for something small. Whoever saw them became saddened; O God, why is it like that ? Divine omnipotence, who will oppose it? A creature can do nothing, for it‘s God who does as he wishes: He is the Powerful and the Punisher. Those who want to be happy

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Will avoid, let‘s hope, the forbidden, if they want to be saved. Mighty God has sworn his oath that those who do not return To walk along the path of the Prophet of the Pegasus Alborak Will be struck by Him with starvation, until they experience awareness. V. Where is that place of the righteous men, Of the carpets, of the trays and tea? God has destroyed it with fate. There is nothing in it but wind, Children of Adam, listen: You‘ve no common sense, Those who have seen all of their grandparents pass away, Have sent off their parents and their children, too, While they remained behind them, occupied with the pleasures of this world. One who has faith, if he truly sees what happens, One who is owed debts will forgive in order to be happy; And he will continue to pray and fast. Let‘s hope he can be saved, Leaves words to those who want them, so that they not disturb him. Because this world is not everlasting; in it there is nothing but sorrow. For those who occupy themselves with it, until their hearts become filled with remorse. The moral of these words, truly, I am going to summarize them: I finish my words with God, may he have mercy on our parents; May he have mercy on my Master Muhammad, and the Companions and upon us. May Our Lord forgive our sins when we pass before him. O Messenger of God, our intercessor, guarantee all of us. The remembrance of God‘s name is good: it indeed provides courage; For those who say it, the horrors of this world are resolved; God places them in his paradise when they descend into the earth. There it is (the story of) Agadir! The poem contains »facts about the earthquake«, Brown and Lakhsassi comment, as well as »a moral and a warning«, alluding to the possibility that »God destroyed Agadir as a punishment for the iniquities of its inhabitants«.44 Ibn Ighil’s poem can also be approached as a kind of oral re-enactment of the earthquake, allowing for a comparison with the »technocratic unsound« described above. I situate my interpretation of the poem within the onto-epistemological configuration of traditional Berber societies in Morocco. This configuration is described by Simenel in terms of »analogism«,45 which comes close to Feld’s notion of »relational ontology«.46 Within such a scheme, 44 Ibid., 129. 45 Cf. Simenel 2016. 46 Cf. Feld 2017.

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meaning emerges by bringing things and facts into relation with known analogies.47 Knowledge, therefore, is not »acquired«, but shaped through an »ongoing cumulative and interactive process of participation and reflection«.48

Figure 2: Performance by Ali Faiq. Still from Salam Godzilla (Aubry 2019).

In his poem, Ibn Ighil uses the analogy of a »flooding river« (asif) in order to explain the earthquake and its consequences.49 As a common metaphor for total destruction and death in Tashelhit poetry, the word is also associated with disasters caused by »evil spirits (jnoun)«, with »dreadful noise«, sometimes even with »war and other catastrophes of human origins (siba)«.50 I suggest that the destruction of the city of Agadir is rendered by the poet as a list, or rather as a »collection«51 of people, goods, neighbourhoods, construction materials, moral values and other continuities, that were affected, killed, obliterated, wounded, buried, covered, cracked trough or disintegrated. The poet, it seems, proceeds through the construction of a virtual Agadir, guiding the listener through various places and spaces, materialising them at the same time as they are destroyed through his detailed descriptions. In order to reinforce this impression, or rather the affect caused by destruction, the poet uses expressions and analogies borrowed from various sources, including the Quran and 47 Moutu 2007, 93. 48 Feld 2017, 93. 49 Cf. Brown / Lakhsassi 1980. 50 Ibid., 129. 51 Cf. Moutu 2007.

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the French technical vocabulary of construction.52 By bringing these elements into new relations with each other, the poet manages to re-enact the catastrophe on an affective level. At a certain point, the feeling of loss reaches its climax and the »reconfiguration process«53 can start for the listeners, individually and collectively. As Moutu notes, time is an important aspect of the »ontological work of collections«.54 In them, he writes, »we encounter momentary loss, a returning and a projection towards the future«.55

Analogical listening and the Berber-Tashelhit unsound Ibn Ighil‘s oral sounding and listening practices are part of a larger »acoustemology«,56 that is a way of knowing-through sound, particular to the members of the BerberTashelhit community. Because the Berber-Tashelhit acoustemology heavily relies on analogies in order to make sense of the world, I also propose to describe their listening as analogical listening. Analogical listening generates its own instance of sonic materiality, I argue, which is not necessarily related to »physical« properties of sound. Rather, materiality »discloses itself« as it is created through oral sounding and listening.57 If Ibn Ighil’s sound world cannot be heard in a »cochlear« sense, it can perhaps be better apprehended as »a-audible« (etymologically meaning »toward audible« or, »not heard yet«).58 Next to the »technocratic unsound« of the Agadir experts, I suggest that Ibn Ighil’s analogical listening further figures a different unsound. Like its technocratic counterpart, the poet’s unsound equally relies on the virtual, the not-audible-yet, the possible and the future in order to respond to desires and anxieties in the present. The Berber-Tashelhit unsound therefore is figured as a particular becoming-in-sound of the community. It does so not by relying on scientific concepts, but by establishing analogies between what is experienced and what is already known. As such, the Berber-Tashelhit unsound is »dialogical and polyphonic«,59 as well as »always experiential, contextual, fallible, changeable, contingent, emergent, opportune, subjective, constructed, and selective«.60

52 Ibid. 53 Ibid., 97. 54 Ibid., 104. 55 Ibid. 56 Cf. Feld 2017. 57 Henare / Holbraad / Wastell 2007, 14. 58 Cf. Ibid. 59 Feld 2017, 13. 60 Ibid., 14.

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Salam Godzilla. Unsounding the 1960 Agadir Earthquake

Throughout the film Salam Godzilla, the technocratic unsound and the Berber-Tashelhit unsound enter into a dialogue. Embodied by the voice of Ali Faiq, Ibn Ighil’s »Tale of Agadir« provides a counterpoint to the visible achievements of the city’s experts in seismology and urban planning. At first, the song may appear as a mere tribute to the victims of the earthquake amongst the Agadir population, and to the city itself as it existed before its destruction. »With the reconstruction, the city has lost its soul«, as I was often told by local people during my stay in Agadir. In my understanding, the song can also be heard as the affirmation of a particular Berber-Tashelhit affect about the city and its possible becoming. If the reconstruction cannot be changed back, the desire for a future Agadir can still be expressed, different than the one already realised under the command of the technocratic regime since 1960. The unsound in Ibn Ighil’s poem provides thus a starting point for attuning to new affective futures of the city, more in line with the present aspirations of its people, and thus resisting the policing power of the current technocratic unsound. This approach is further complicated in the film through the introduction of additional unsounds, which I briefly review below. Together, these instances create a local unsound field which is not unified, emerging rather as an accumulation of heterogeneous sonic ontologies, processes, actions and affects.61

The »French Speech Archives« and the colonial unsound In addition to his vocal re-interpretation of Ibn Ighil‘s poem, the Agadiri singer Ali Faiq was essential to my film by contributing his own research on a set of colonial music recordings, excavated from the »French Speech Archives« (Archives de la Parole). Documenting songs from a handful of minstrel-poets (Rwais) from the Agadir region in the 1920s, these recordings were made in Morocco by engineers of the French Pathé record company, and donated later to the Speech Archives. Following their digitisation in 2013, Ali Faiq started studying these lesser-known songs in order to share them with the community of Berber-Ishlhin listeners. By attending to the effects of colonial misrepresentation and dislocation on Rwais music, he was able to familiarise himself with colonial epistemology. He made a point to show that the recordings were incorrectly described in the archive metadata, reclaiming them at the same time from the colonial noise map for his own community. My film Salam Godzilla features one brief sequence alluding to Ali Faiq’s research on colonial sound archives. In that sequence, he sits in front of his computer and presents a song by Raissa Abouche Tamassit from the Pathé recordings, audible later in the film. As a product of colonial epistemology, the recorded voice of Abouche Tamassit is a »virtual sound-being«62 that belongs to 61 Cf. Steingo / Sykes 2019. 62 Cf. Hoffmann 2015.

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a colonial unsound, I suggest, characterised by racist ideas on natives. The »colonial unsound« is materialised in Salam Godzilla first through the online music archive on Ali Faiq’s computer, and again in the next sequence through a facsimile reproduction of a Pathé shellac record.

Performing onto-epistemological resistance Central to the film Salam Godzilla, the Rwais dance sequence comes as an attempt to stage an ›onto-epistemological battle‹, between a record player and two Rwais dancers. By this, I mean a redistribution of the sensible63 and of the possible, via a particular material configuration of things and bodies. This approach relies on the transformative power of performance, rather than on the representational or symbolic dimension of images. The unsound is central to the re-negotiation of who gets to feel what in a particular situation, I argue. It is the nexus of sound material and affective capacities that can be enacted through performance in order to achieve a transformation of the subject. As such, the unsound can be brought into relation with the notion of agency, the individual or collective capacity to enact social change. With the unsound, change is enacted at an experiential and affective level, a necessary condition for change on a social-political level. The Rwais dance scene in my film includes elements from three different sources, brought into ambiguous relationships via mixing and editing. The first source is the audiovisual documentation of a performance staged within complicity from Ali Faiq and the artist Abderrahim Nidalha. Two dancers from the region, Lahcen Aattar and Ali Bazegra, were invited to perform »traditional« Rwais dance steps next to a turntable placed on the ground. Rwais dancers are well-known for the heavy stomping in their choreographies, which we thought could be regarded as a bodily form of conversation with the Earth itself, in reference to the earthquake. We pushed the idea further by adding the presentation of the record player in order to visually capture the jumps of the needle following each of the dancer’s steps. This created a disruption in the colonial unsound of the Pathé record playing on it. The second source is an Earth drone recording, borrowed from a documentary on seismic activity, and representing the continuous »voice« of the Earth in the film sequence. The third source is a close-up video capture of a »vibrating suitcase«, a device used by the local organisation ASVTS for visualising the effects of seismic waves as part of their program of earthquake prevention. Edited together, these elements follow a simple dramaturgy in which the dancers appear at first to be in a conversation with the droning Earth, progressively entering a »battle« against the record player, shaking the ground with increasing intensity, and ultimately

63 Cf. Rancière 2005.

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Salam Godzilla. Unsounding the 1960 Agadir Earthquake

making the colonial record playback ineffective. Despite its obvious mise-en-scène, the sequence participates in an attempt to redistribute agency to the Rwais dancers and possibly to the Earth itself. The redistribution happens through a disruption of the colonial unsound at its most vulnerable level, that is the material fragility of the record and its playback device. As a result, the Berber-Tashelhit unsound, embodied here by the two dancers, is allowed to become the driving force in this configuration, through a re-enforcement of affective and sensory capacities. It can easily be argued that this redistribution only happens on a symbolic level with montage, and through the mediation of my own, exterior position. The basic principle of the sequence, however, emerged from my conversations with the protagonists beforehand, and was supported by them. This principle is clearly »performative« in Judith Butler’s sense (1990), as it is as an »act« through which the subject »comes into being« as a new »I«.64 In this case, the performance creates a break in the colonial representation of the protagonists as »native« and »subaltern« subjects, turning their dance movement into a powerful means for reclaiming agency and self-sovereignty. This effect can be visibly apprehended and potentially reiterated as part of new performances. The scene therefore informs the production of empowering forms of embodied, postcolonial knowledge and subjectivity, I argue, encouraging also future discussions and experiments beyond the film.

Figure 3: Rwais dance sequence. Still from Salam Godzilla (Aubry 2019).

64 Butler 1990, 2.

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Interspecies Unsound As part of my research on the 1960 earthquake in Agadir, I wanted to find additional examples that could be considered as an expression of the »voice of the Earth«. This brought me to a beach in the town of Anza near Agadir, containing about 300 footprints left by several dinosaurs species on the Cretaceous ground layer, approximatively 100 million ago.65 I visited the site for the first time in 2017 and met Samir Benteyane, the keeper of the dinosaur tracks. I recorded some video of him, interacting with the site and the dinosaur footprints, which later became part of my film Salam Godzilla. One can see Samir Benteyane indicating the position of the dinosaur footprints, sometimes cleaning them from sand with water, and explaining their specificity. He also performs a kind of choreography in order for visitors like myself to better visualise the dinosaur paths, thus re-enacting the walk of several dinosaur species. Samir’s guided tour of the site ends with a series of sand drawings on the beach representing dinosaurs, an exercise complicated by the encroaching presence of sea waves. While watching the shots a bit later, I was struck by Samir Benteyane‘s care and attention for the footprints, and by his affective way of relating to dinosaurs across geological time. I decided to invite him to do another sand drawing session outside of his work activities, while interviewing him also about his interest in dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are »important«, he declares in a shot, because »the traces they left us can help us live, and survive«. Researching about them can also »make you feel what life is about«, he adds. By affectively engaging with »extra-human« traces at an existential level, Samir Benteyane managed therefore to enter into a kind of horizontal relationship with them. This way of relating also has also an important sonic dimension, I suggest, albeit a silent one. By expressing his desire »to speak with dinosaurs in order to know what they think«, Samir Benteyane recognises the possibility of an »extra-human« voice in them, which I suggest represents a particular form of unsound. This kind of unsound is of a truly interspecies kind, attesting to »the enmeshments of human existence and responsibility with various co-species«,66 and even with extinct ones, I should add. More pragmatically, as a man, who grew up in a slum in Agadir and later found himself unemployed, Samir Benteyane was able to turn the dinosaur site in Anza into a source of regular income for himself through visitors’ financial contributions. The relation that I describe here in terms of interspecies unsound emerged thus from the necessity for him to subsist economically, as part of the region’s touristic economy. However, I argue that this doesn’t seem to alter the sincerity of his interest and affective engagement with dinosaurs. It perhaps rather characterises the current human awareness of existence in a time of global ecological crisis, where individual economic survival and global species’ survival appear more entangled than ever.

65 Cf. Masrour / Lkebir / Pérez-Lorente 2017. 66 Tiainen 2017, 360.

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Figure 4: Samir Benteyane at the dinosaur traces site in Anza beach. Still from Salam Godzilla (Aubry 2019).

A few years ago, when a team of palaeontologists led by Professor Moussa Masrour from the Agadir Ibn Zhor University came to study the traces, Samir Benteyane was also present and assisted them. He is therefore well aware of the basic methods and discourses applied in the scientific field, as his posts on his Facebook page also demonstrate. This didn‘t fundamentally change the nature of his own relation with the site. Quite in the contrary: I argue that researching dinosaurs perhaps not only helped him »feel what life is about«, but also what else it could be about. With its potential to facilitate »trans-species flows of becoming«,67 Samir Benteyane’s unsound and possibly other, similar interspecies ones, might come as a necessary condition for a future shared planetary survival. This is the reason why I decided that Samir should be the only protagonist in Salam Godzilla, whose speech needed to be heard without any ambiguity. His declarations are featured in the closing scene of the film, hopefully opening new perspectives in »unsound studies«.

67 Ibid., 363.

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Performing »troubled« white aurality Before sharing my conclusions on Salam Godzilla and the unsound in this chapter, I want to return briefly to my own presence in the film, and to the situatedness of my own practice as a sound researcher and field recorder. A major part of the Salam Godzilla film’s soundtrack was composed from my own recorded sound improvisations inside the »Salam« movie theatre in Agadir. The recordings were produced in the course of several sessions, using a performative approach based on controlled acoustic feedback. Equipped with my field recording microphone and recorder, a portable loudspeaker, and a couple of FX pedals, I continuously fed the mic sound into the loudspeaker while recording. This generated a feedback tone, which was further modulated by slowly changing my position in the space, as well as the orientation of the mic and the equalisation of the audio signal. The mic also picked up the traffic sound from the outside, highlighting the building’s position in a somewhat busier part of the centre of Agadir. Later on, I introduced additional sounds in the feedback loop, by playing back audio files from my computer via headphones and amplifying them with my microphone. These files included documentary films on the earthquake, some of my own field recordings, music recordings made in the region by Paul Bowles in 1959, as well as excerpts from the 1956 Godzilla film soundtrack. Parts of these sessions have been video documented by the cameraman Abdelah Elmoukadem, and are featured in the film, turning myself into a protagonist. These images might be ambiguous, as it is perhaps not clear that I am not simply recording the space. Feedback improvisation has been part of my practice as a sound artist for a long time, as a means to enter into a relationship with places. The decision to appear in the film emerged from the felt necessity to disclose myself in the context of my research in Agadir. As a white European male subject, my position is clearly marked by privilege, situated also within a long, racialised history of Western research in North Africa. On the level of sound recording, this history relates to »white aurality«,68 that is a conscious intention by Western sound artists to focus on »sound-in-itself« as a phenomenon »distinct from, or preceding sociality, discourse, meaning and power«.69 By appearing in the film with my sound recording apparatus, I therefore become vulnerable to critique, which is at the same time an occasion to reflect on my own position. My performance inside the »Salam« movie theatre is therefore an attempt to stay with the ›trouble‹ of white aurality, while engaging with the place through sound and listening on a bodily and affective level. De-linking oneself from hegemonic apparatuses is arguably a delicate process, requiring to unlearn certain practices and discourses in order to allow for minor affects to emerge and grow within oneself. The particular sociality and history of the »Salam« movie theatre is progressively revealed in the film through a series of visual shots made on location, and via historical documents, 68 Cf. Thompson 2017. 69 Ibid.

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which are brought into dialogue with my own presence and sounds. A particular affect emerges from the juxtaposition of these elements, I suggest, attesting to a process through which cultural differences are made »visible and negotiated«.70

Figure 5: Sound performance by Gilles Aubry inside the »Salam« movie theatre. Still from Salam Godzilla (Aubry 2019).

Additional perspectives on Salam Godzilla Several options could be considered in order to situate my film Salam Godzilla within the field of art practice and knowledge production: is it a »technoecological« film?71 An ethnographic film? An interspecies artwork? A »transcultural montage«?72 Or – to propose a new term – an »unsoundscape«? Each of these terms come with particular connotations regarding the status of the sounds and images within the film. This status is fluid, I suggest, oscillating between an audiovisual composition, a discursive essay and a documentation of »real« performative situations. This is clearly the case with the vocal performance of Ali Faiq, with my own sound performance inside the »Salam« movie theatre, and with the Rwais dance performance. In the latter case, however, the original dance performance has been re-articulated through editing and the introduc70 Cf. Suhr / Willerslev 2013. 71 Cf. Tiainen 2017. 72 Cf. Suhr / Willerslev 2013.

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tion of additional images, blurring once more the borders between the documentary and the fictional. The film, finally, raises questions about the onto-epistemological propositions embedded with in it, and about the various modes of positionality, agency and accountability it evokes. I have attempted to derive various instances of unsound from the social position of particular groups or individuals. These positions may remain at times too vague, or too general. As an example, the category of »scientific, technical and bureaucratic« experts, from which I derived the notion »technocratic unsound«, was certainly not a homogenous group. It included people from different origins (European, North-American and Moroccan), and from different socio-economical groups, although most of them were male. What matters today, I argue, is the troubling continuity in technocratic management from the colonial context of French occupation, to the postcolonial one of Moroccan Independence, and the present one of globalisation and biopolitical power. The »colonial unsound« and the »technocratic unsound« are thus historically and ideologically linked together. They anticipated the present »methods of abstraction that neoliberal markets and biopolitical managers use to measure and organize society«.73 The link here is arguably the predominant racialised and patriarchal ideology of neoliberal capitalism, currently supported by more or less »soft« authoritarian regimes, of which contemporary Morocco offers a perfect example. As Robin James argues, neoliberal ideology has been increasingly naturalised in recent philosophical discourses using the sonic model of »acoustic resonance«.74 It therefore becomes urgent to propose other sound models, she claims,75 which I attempted here by troubling and diversifying the »unsound«. Regarding agency and accountability in the film, I already mentioned that I am the only one accountable for the film in itself. Some of the participants have been credited for their own ideas and contributions, namely Ali Faiq, Samir Benteyane, Abderrahim Nidalha, the Rwais dancers Lahcen Aattar and Ali Bazegra. I need to add to the list the artist Dounia Fikri, featured in the »Tibetan bowl« scene near the end of the film. Her sound performance was not merely staged under my direction, but rather adapted from her own sound-based meditation and self-help practice. Additional »extrahuman« entities were also tentatively given agency in the film: the droning Earth, dinosaurs, the seismograph, the record player and Godzilla herself. Easy to say from the privileged position of a film director, which is why I am not suggesting that the film should be apprehended as an actual alternative ecology, powerful enough to radically de-hierarchise the relations between its various participant beings. Like the concept of »acoustic resonance«, the film is just a model, an abstraction for apprehending the possibility of »different worlds«,76 expressing also my desire to engage with such 73 Cf. James 2019. 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid. 76 Cf. Henare / Holbraad / Wastell 2007.

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worlds. The real engagement took place during my research and making of the film in Morocco, through a series of situations, encounters and exchanges, whereby differences in positions were addressed. In that sense, Salam Godzilla contributes to a »pluriversal dialogue« that is neither embedded in culturalism nor absolute particularism, but in the realisation that multiple loci of enunciation coexist and are entangled through the coloniality of knowledge, being and power.77

Towards a politics of the unsound I have identified several modes of sounding and listening, further describing them in terms of »unsound«, in an attempt to denote their specific virtuality, affect, becoming and situatedness. The potential offered by the notion of unsound to engage on the level of theory with the inaudible, the not-yet-audible, the virtual, and simply the possible, was one good enough reason for me to introduce it in my study in Morocco. Although it is in itself an abstract concept, the unsound refers to aspects of experience, which are far from abstract, I argue, but rather they are clearly embodied, lived and felt. By refusing to clearly distinguish between the material and the affective dimensions of sound and listening, the unsound is therefore open to alternative, often marginalised sound histories. These histories are related to ways of knowing and being in sound, that often cannot be accounted for using theories about sound itself, like in the case of Ibn Ighil’s poem about the Agadir earthquake. As a result, sound itself, as an autonomous physical object and as a phenomenon participating in sensory perception, loses its significance in my study and becomes de-centred. Listening, to the contrary, is particularly relevant to it as an embodied experience, and as a voluntary act of »registering« (human and extra-human) voices that give »an account of themselves«.78 Sounding, finally, is perhaps the most crucial aspect in my study. As I have attempted to demonstrate with Ibn Ighil’s poem and Samir Benteyane’s interspecies interactions, sounding is indeed not limited to the production of physical sound, and can consist as well in generating virtual sound worlds via affective, poetic and bodily engagement. Because the effects of virtual sound worlds come to matter in the lives of particular groups of people, these worlds should be taken into account when registering sound histories, I argue. The unsound, as a name, is also relevant to me because it seems to directly refer to that part of felt experience that refuses to be recorded, measured, quantified or domesticated. The politics of a hypothetical field of unsound studies have, therefore, a lot to do with the de-centring of scientific factuality, privileging instead the affirmation of the possible. Because embodiment and affect are central to such a politics, it certainly also 77 Cf. Mignolo 2011. 78 Cf. Farinati / Firth 2017.

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comes close to certain feminist discourses on sound and listening,79 albeit perhaps with less emphasis on vocality and a greater interest in »attunement« and »opacity«. While »attunement« perhaps particularly resonates with the preoccupations of political ecology,80 »opacity« allows for additional alliances with Black Sound Studies. In his account on sonic Afro-Modernity,81 Alexander G. Weheliye shares thoughts on sound and »opacity«, which I find helpful in order to better situate the unsound and its affordances. »Opacity is not enclosure within an impenetrable autarchy«, he notes, »but subsistence within an irreducible singularity«.82 »Thinking sonically«, he suggests, »adduces a mode of divining the world that sounds its multitude of opacities without drowning their singularities in the noise of transparency«.83 »The sonic opens up possibilities for thinking, hearing, seeing, apprehending the subject in a number of different arenas«, he continues, clarifying also that it is by no way »preconscious«, or in »strict opposition to the visual or the language«.84 If white aurality is perhaps characterised by its desire to disappear within »the noise of transparency« while still keeping its privileges, »black aurality« finds an important way of subsisting in sonic opacity. The sonic provides a new analytic framework »that does not posit meaning and/or intelligibility as its teleological end point«, Weheliye finally notes, but focusses rather on »texture« and »interwovenness«.85 To conclude, I suggest that the politics of the unsound is perhaps fundamentally a politics of subsistence in opacity, to which sound provides the means. Like Ibn Ighil’s poetic response to the 1960 Agadir earthquake, the unsound allows us to affectively survive catastrophes by creating virtualmaterial worlds, despite apparent »rational« impossibilities. As such, the unsound perhaps comes as a claim for the possibility of being and experiencing despite scientific evidence, enacting thus a form of »epistemic disobedience«,86 and therefore also a form of resistance.

79 Ibid. 80 Cf. Kohn 2013. 81 Cf. Weheliye 2005. 82 Ibid., 104. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid. 85 Cf. Ibid. 86 Mignolo 2011, 46.

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Sources Aubry, Gilles (2019): Salam Godzilla, Switzerland, https://archive.org/details/salamgodzilla, 13.06.2020. Bolt, Bruce (2020): Earthquake, in: Encyclopaedia Britannica, https://www.britannica. com/science/earthquake-geology/Properties-of-seismic-waves, 30.10.2019. Brown, Kenneth. L. / Lakhsassi, Abderrahman (1980): Every Man’s Disaster. The Earthquake of Agadir: A Berber (Tashelhit) Poem, in: Magreb Review, 5, 125-133. Butler, Judith (1990): Gender Trouble, New York. Farinati, Lucia / Firth, Claudia (2017): The Force of Listening, Berlin. Feld, Steven (2017): On post-ethnomusiclogy alternatives: Acoustemology, in: Giannattasio, Francesco / Giuriati, Giovanni (eds.), Perspectives on a 21st century comparative musicology, Udine, 82-99. Goodman, Steve (2010): Sonic warfare. Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear. Cambridge, MA / London. Haraway, Donna. (1988): Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective, in: Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575-599. Henare, Amiria / Holbraad, Martin / Wastell, Sari (eds.) (2007): Thinking through Things, New York. Hoffmann, Annette (2015): Introduction: Listening to sound archives, in: Social Dyna­ mics, 41(1), 73-83. Honda, Ishirˉo / Morse, Terry O. (1956): Godzilla, King of the Monsters, Embassy Pictures, Japan/USA. James, Robin (2019): The Sonic Episteme, Durham, NC. Kohn, Eduardo (2013): How Forrests Think: Toward an Anthropology beyond the Human, Oakland, CA. Masrour, Moussa / Lkebir, Noura / Pérez-Lorente, Felix (2017): Anza palaeoichnological site. Late Cretaceous. Morocco. Part II. Problems of large dinosaur trackways and the first African Macropodosaurus trackway, in: Journal of African Earth Sciences, 2017, 1-18. Mignolo, Walter (2011): The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options, Durham, NC. Moutu, Andrew (2007): Collection as a Way of Being, in: Henare, Amiria / Holbraad, Martin / Wastell, Sari (eds.), Thinking through Things, New York, 93-112. Pettman, Dominic (2017): Sonic Intimacy: Voices, Species, Techniques, Stanford, CA. Peyron, Michael (2010): The Changing Scene in Amazigh Poetry, in: Asinag 4-5, 79-92. Rancière, Jaques (2005): The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, London. Simenel, Romain (2016): Cairn, borne ou belvédère? Quand le naturalisme et l‘analogisme négocient la limite entre espace cultivé et forêt au Maroc, in: Anthropologica, 58(1), 60-76. Suhr, Christian / Willerslev, Rane (eds.) (2013): Transcultural Montage, Oxford.

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Steingo, Gavin / Sykes, Jim (eds.) (2019): Remapping sound studies, Durham, NC / London. Tiainen, Milla (2017): Sonic Technoecology: Voice and Non-anthropocentric Survival in The Algae Opera, in: Australian Feminist Studies, 32(94), 359-376. Thompson, Emily (2012): Sound, Modernity and History, in: Sterne, Jonathan (ed.), The Sound Studies Reader, London / New York. Thompson, Marie (2017): Whiteness and the ontological turn in sound studies, in: Pa­ rallax 23(3), 266-282. Voegelin, Salomé (2014): Sonic Possible Worlds, London. Weheliye, Alexander G. (2005): Phonographies. Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity, Durham, NC / London. Williford, Daniel (2017): Seismic Politics: Risk and Reconstruction after the 1960 Earthquake in Agadir, Morocco, in: Technology and Culture, 58(4), 982-1016.

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A Conversation on Race, Sound, and the Im/possibility of Decolonised Listening Peggy Kyoungwon Lee, Pedro Oliveira, Shanti Suki Osman and Marie Thompson

This piece is based around a discussion between Peggy Kyoungwon Lee, Pedro Oliveira, Shanti Suki Osman and Marie Thompson that took place in the summer of 2019. Peggy Kyoungwon Lee is a scholar, writer, and postdoctoral fellow at Emory University. Pedro Oliveira is a researcher and sound artist working with the colonial articulations of sonic violence. Shanti Suki Osman is an artist and educator working in song, sound and radio. She lives in Berlin, Germany and is currently research associate and doctoral candidate for Music Pedagogy at Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg in Germany, where her current research investigates the experiences of women* of colour studying popular music in German Musikhochschulen. Marie Thompson is a researcher living in Nottingham, UK. She a Lecturer in Popular Music at The Open University. Shanti Suki and Marie have previously worked together as part of the Sonic Cyberfeminisms project, which Marie co-leads with Annie Goh. Revisiting this piece in December 2021, this conversation feels rather outdated, not least because of the publication of important texts in the field such as Dylan Robinson’s Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies (2020), which addresses many of the issues discussed here. Yet it also highlights the historic repetition of the issues and injustices discussed.

MT: What do we mean when we say that listening is in need of decolonisation, and what do we mean when we say that listening is colonial? I’m mindful here that listening is multiple: there are different ways of listening and there are different ways of doing listening. And coloniality is multiple as well: there are different means and modalities of colonialism. So, in many ways, we’re asking an impossible question if we are talking about listening and colonisation in the singular. Nonetheless, what do you think it means when we say that listening is a product of colonisation or something that is colonial?



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SSO: When I think about this idea, that listening needs decolonising, I come up with very simple answers that, well, it’s about who is heard, who was heard and who is speaking. It’s about access to what’s being heard and what’s being talked about. You know, it’s about who gets to take that space when they want to and also, what kind of information is being told. My initial perspective was, that we need to decolonise it, we need to make things broader. We need to work to make people heard more. But before we do that, we have to address the question of why listening is colonial in the first place. MT: I wonder how it also goes beyond this question of who is heard and who is silenced. If colonialism is about structure – relations of occupation, extraction, labour, ownership, domination – how does that also shape listening beyond who and what is heard? SSO, we’ve talked before [as part of the Sonic Cyberfeminisms project] about how technologies that are used within and underlie many contemporary auditory cultures are themselves predicated on extractive colonialism or neocolonialism. I’m thinking, for example, here of the mining of coltan in central Africa, for use in computing and electrical devices – including mobile phones, hard drives, Playstations and DVD players. So we can also trace the coloniality of listening in the broader environments, infrastructures and means through which listening takes place. PKL: Yes, in the examples you gave, MT, I think you’re getting at the necessity of thinking or listening comparatively – across regions, racial and colonial formations, raw materials, etc. And I think, SSO, this question of being heard is a very complex strategy for decolonial and racial justice; I think you’re getting at the fact that on the ground in organising work, there are dire urgencies on not being heard and not being heard fast enough; for instance, we could consider the recent surge of international shock for the burning Amazon, when in fact, President Jair Bolsonaro has long campaigned for and after his election, administered an incredibly aggressive deterritorialisation of indigeneous land for national development interests. This familiar narrative, premised on a settler-colonial imaginary of empty, ripe land, as many indigenous studies scholars have theorised, has historically entailed a process of violent racialisation and incorporation. There are scholars who can better speak to these histories of racialisation and indigeneity in Brazil, however, as a scholar studying race and labor particularly in the US-Pacific, I recognise this violence ultimately as a form of liberal inclusion that goes hand in hand with national sovereign interests. Maybe it’s here, from these positions of narrow modes of incorporation that entail distinct histories and processes of racialisation, that listening is a product of colonisation, which MT, I think is an interesting proposition. So then this question of being heard or who is speaking becomes vexing positions with ambivalent ends, because we would then need to ask, included into what? Heard by whom? Spaces made where? I think we’re all familiar with these big questions.

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PO: I think of processes capturing, recording, ranking, cataloging, archiving of sounds as colonial practices closely related to extractivism. These acts of preservation, firstly performed as scholarly concern and scientific curiosity set themselves to keep things in their »raw« state, that is, free from »noises« generated by encounters and exchanges. On the other hand, this assumes that exchanges and encounters did not exist prior to colonisation. This is the insidious mechanism of coloniality that is repeated by the extraction and archiving of sounds: that the »point zero« of time is the violent encounter of colonialism and that anything prior to it needs to be »preserved« and »encapsulated« so that it can be removed from places and cultures which will be inevitably destroyed by colonialism itself. So, there is little interest in mutation, transformation, relation; listening in this case implies removing »code« from »culture« so that it can be rendered transparent enough for »expert listeners« to theorise about them. MT: PO, your comments make me think of Roshanak Kheshti’s Modernity’s Ear, which points to how white femininity becomes the mediator through which the racialised and colonised »Other« is heard. Kheshti’s talking about white women comparative musicologists who sought to »capture« (and »extract«? the »disappearing« sounds of Native Americans in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century. White women also become the paradigmatic listener of both the phonograph, and of »world music«. There’s something about white femininity’s proximity to mediation – its positioning as mediator between settler nation and colonised, between whiteness and racialised Other, but also the innocence it is afforded in listening that I find really striking and resonant today – particularly as someone who benefits socially from white femininity! I’m thinking here of a white woman DJ whose characterised as a ›crate digger‹ and has recently been finding success playing »eclectic« music »from around the world«. For me, she exemplifies how white femininity can continue to reproduce and be reproduced through this sonic legacy. I’m not naming her here because I don’t think this is an issue relating to an individual; I think this is a tendency that has many manifestations in DJ culture and beyond. However, her celebrated capacity to move seamlessly between different geopolitical and musical contexts in her practice, seemingly without being troubled by questions about appropriation or standpoint, makes me think again about Kheshti’s book; and how white women were often posited as an imagined and idealised listener, mediator and consumer of »world music«… SSO: …Yes! And what really stood out for me in Modernity’s Ear was the example of the radio show and host. The male president of the record company (the so-called »global pop record company«, discussed in pseudonym throughout the book), talking about their latest release on a segment of a national radio show. He talks about the record of an Amsterdam based band with a Brazilian vocalist, and the middle-aged white female radio host kind of play-acts her ignorance, suggesting she doesn’t know anything about it, but is sure she can hear »African Rhythms«. There is also a second part of the radio show, where he plays a piece with Kora and trombone, stating it has

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»African feel«, only for the host to say she imagines all African music to be beat driven. This all made me cringe to read, and it reminded me of my work as a music educator in schools and in other workshop contexts. For instance, when I’ve turned up to run a songwriting group and teachers get excited that I’ve come to teach Bollywood dancing and songs, or created listening sessions based on contemporary music and sound art coming out of Bangalore and Mumbai, only for people to be shocked by how »non Indian« it sounds. In the first instance, it’s perhaps like when Kheshti says: »The listener’s desire will hear what the listener desires«. Based on my appearance, or how I am read, there is an expectation about what I do as an arts educator, or what the radio host understands as world music/ global pop. In the second instance, there is an expectation of how a certain thing should be heard. It’s perhaps different aspects of racialised hearing – expecting a certain kind of sound or music based on how something, an »Othered« something has been presented by the dominant culture, but they are also erasing any difference within. There is diversity within diversity! I think we need to address this bias when thinking of a decolonised listening so that we can start listening for and accepting nuance, even if it confuses us. I know there is some important work on shifting or acknowledging bias coming from the arts education context: Nora Sternfeld (Verlernen Vermitteln) has written and talked about unlearning the knowledge and powers that we have learned to be better and more worthy of being listened to. Through this »unlearning«, an element of the unexpected is created and I think it’s within these elements that we can listen to and listen for nuance. It’s a challenge to do all of this, but maybe attempts to learn to listen to nuance by unlearning a listening bias could get us closer to a possible decolonised listening… The German word that is increasingly used for education work with exhibitions and arts is »Kunstvermittlung« – literally translated as »art mediation«, or communicating art. Carmen Mörsch’s research into educating the Other through art (Die Bildung der A_N_D_E_R_E_N durch Kunst) brings us back to the white (middle class) woman as mediator. She talks about middle-class white women and early feminists in London in the late 19th century and how their influence on education and social reform projects afforded them a social standing or a sense of being included as a citizen that they otherwise wouldn’t get, since they couldn’t even vote. It meant that working-class women and colonial migrants were categorised in the same group as children: those that needed to be educated and educated through the beauty of dominant art cultures! It also meant that any self-organised efforts by working class women, for example, were ignored, not heard and disqualified by the dominant mediators, if you like. And here we also experience the white femininity of the mediator. But for me, this is a classic example of attempts to make the dominant culture more accessible to people from marginalised communities, without considering or listening to what these communities might need…

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PKL: Cultural appropriation and fetishisation are always such terrible encounters and yes, cringe-worthy! I find your citing of Kheshti’s »desirous listener« very appropriate here, since the listener is indeed so full of wants and needs. And this kind of desiring of alterity, of the Other, which Kheshti argues is constitutive of the modern subject and moreover mediated by white femininity/ womanhood, is really quite disturbing because it historically affords this subject the ease and oversee of the Archive. I’m not familiar with the white woman DJ that MT is mentioning, but it reminds me of the lot of white cultural producers who are celebrated for their artistic mastery of cultural forms and styles that were once foreign to them. In the midst of this celebration, artists and musicians of colour are regularly asked to perform authenticity and to make their »Asianness«, for instance, knowable/ consumable. In other words, racial difference becomes an ethnographic assignment for the (white) listener to master. I’m not a sound practitioner, but I pay attention to and listen for sound a lot in literature, art and performance, and study it. I think my sonic interests emerge from my own locations, growing up in the US as a child of immigrants, Korean American, queer and feminine/ femme identified. As a girl, I was aware of a kind of sonic disciplining around my gendered racialisation – as quiet or a good listener, which was projected onto me in the classroom or ascribed to me by family friends. Even if I wasn’t listening, it was easy for me to appear like I was, which I began to eventually connect to the few and narrow modes of incorporation afforded by white supremacy: as the good immigrant/ Asian subject in comparison to, let’s say, the loud/ criminalised Black subject. So, soundings of Asian femininity are of interest to me, since it’s a charged site of political ambivalence and possibility. For instance, I’ve looked closely at reviews of Lisa Park’s Eunoia performances, and even with the central role of unwieldy noise produced by the artist, reviewers regularly emphasise her calmness, the peacefulness of the setting and fetishise her »Koreanness«; one reviewer even went so far as to describing how the speaker set-up reminded him of seeing a museum exhibit on ancient Korean ceramics! I think your demand for nuances, SSO, is an important one. There’s a lot to say, not of the desirous listener, but of a listener with humility. I think the libidinal economies of listening Kheshti assesses, only work with the unmitigated desire to know, capture and categorise, or what PO ascribed earlier to an extractivism. This goes back to MT’s side note and concern of white femininity’s proximity to mediation. SSO: Do you think the current focus on women in music, women in tech, women on stage, women behind the decks is shadowing the other problematics, such as white femininity being the mediator for how the racialised and colonised are heard, as you said earlier? PKL: Yes, I do think liberal multiculturalism – the »hey, you’re here, too, and that’s great« mentality is really not enough. It acts counter to the project of decolonial and

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racial justice, or decolonisation. Liberal multiculturalism, racism, colonialism and empire are just scary, past events that must be overcome of their badness with sincere efforts striving towards Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Sara Ahmed has written extensively on these harms from a queer, feminist of colour perspective. I’m looking forward to her forthcoming work on the complaint, because multiculturalism and it’s logics don’t like complaints, especially when it’s saying it’s doing the thing it’s not supposed to be doing. It looks bad for liberal institutions. So following Ahmed, I guess here is another avenue for understanding colonial listening: looking at the structure, circulation or muting of the complaint in institutional life. I think another way I want to answer your question is also by looking at the emergence of K-pop, or Korean pop. In my own encounters with it, I get surprised when I’m, like, buying soap at Target in Michigan, and I hear a Korean-language pop song come on in the store. It’s a little moment of disidentification, I think, when I remember that despite the growing popularity, fandom and obsession of Korean music or culture, Korean subjects are often never registered as colonial subjects. Actually, this history seems to easily disappear. If we take seriously this feeling of colonialism as a structure, what is unseen is the history of the ongoing War, a forced division of a country or the 15 US military bases in the southern peninsula of Korea – a Pacific proxy of US occupation. And prior to that, 35 years of Japanese colonial rule. It’s a complicated form of »soft power«, and one that has aided the rise of Pacific capital and emerging neocolonial ventures. I guess I bring all this up to make the point that empire and colonialism are constantly in flux, recalibrating, and this notion of the colonised »being heard« and the medium of their soundings also follow such shifts, in maybe surprising or unrecognisable ways. MT: To also respond to your question, SSO, about »women in tech« as to whether gender overshadows other issues such as colonialism, I think, that’s probably the case within the UK. I think there remains a persistent reliance on the liberal models of inclusion that PL mentions. I mean, I’d say from personal experience of educational institutions that histories of coloniality and empire were notably absent from a lot of my learning. As part of my undergraduate degree in music, for example, I took really formative classes on gender and sexuality but colonialism was rarely mentioned, if I recall correctly. We certainly didn’t address the ways in which the histories of coloniality shape and are shaped by histories of gender and sexuality. And I’d say in general that in the UK there has and continues to be a reluctance to discuss the histories and legacies of British colonialism. What do you think? I’d also be interested to know what you think about how these issues operate and circulate within a German context. SSO: So, just to be clear: I moved to Germany 12 years ago as a 23-year-old ›adult‹, and like yourself was socialised in the UK. I was not a brown child in Germany. But

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yeah, the German context is super interesting. There are a lot of white, Black and PoC artists, scholars and activists, who are well versed in Germany’s colonial histories and their continuation – my knowledge compared to theirs is superficial (which is maybe telling in itself). The context that I am more directly connected to – mainly through my work in education – involves the histories of the Arbeitsmigrant*innen communities (the groups of workers from countries, including Turkey, Greece and Italy, who were invited to West Germany to rebuild it after WWII) and particularly the second and third generations, who were born in Germany and the racism they experience. It’s their stories I am mostly confronted with, for example, their experience in schools but also their representation in media and popular culture and music. PO: This brings an interesting articulation of accents within German language – or perhaps even within the Berliner German accent itself – which plays around with notions of identity and belonging, vis-à-vis cultural appropriation. It is not uncommon to hear white German teens mimicking or forcing a Turkish/ German-laden accent in their articulation of speech in order to sound »real«. Meaning that these are predicated on seeing »Turkish-Germanness«, if you will, as an always-already coded body, belonging to a specific type of bodily and sonic engagement with the city itself. Changing your accent grants access to certain spaces in the city, but also to certain musics and ways of presenting oneself. These specific voicings negotiate and are informed by performing proximity to non-whiteness, but all the while staying safely within the confines and privileges of whiteness itself. In other words, the articulation and performance of a »Turkish« accent in German becomes an access point that can be turned on-and-off at will by white Germans, but not by Turkish-Germans themselves. SSO: So, we used the example of DJs earlier and in Berlin over the past five years or so there has been so much hype around traditional Turkish rock music from the 1960s, and this became a product at some point. You hear this 60s, 70s psychedelic Turkish rock music being played in sweaty, smokey late night Berlin bars. It’s celebrated, it’s danced to, but it feels a bit strange when I then think of the disregard often given to the people belonging to these communities in Berlin and other parts of Germany. In 2018 the artist Cana Bilir-Meier was a guest on a panel led by a celebrated curator and museum director, and had to listen to his racist comments about Turkish people in Kreuzberg, apparently calling them »aggressive« and »assholes«! According to her Facebook posts, he also told her on the phone that she only won an art prize because her name sounds »exotic«. It’s disgusting behaviour, and highlights a painful and frustrating contradiction – I feel like there is a push from one side to open artistic spaces and ears to marginalised voices and stories, particularly second and third generation Arbeitsmigrant*innen, but this push comes up against stubborn, stereotyped beliefs, which are propagated by white men with microphones!

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But then I have to think, what is it I think I am doing with my practice? What is decolonising – being anti-racist or being inclusive? We’re there already… MT: We’re there already! This term decolonisation is used a lot in UK contexts to refer to a lot of different things – different struggles, goals, ambitions, institutional agendas, some radical, some liberal. Is it being used in German contexts too? SSO: Yeah it is, it’s kind of worrying, frustrating and great at the same time. How wonderful that otherwise mainstream areas and arenas are engaging with the topic. But are they engaging or are they just using the word? Who are the people defending the word? I would be one of them, but I get confused about what I am defending… Decolonisation is a super hype word these days… MT: I guess part of the difficulty of thinking about how decolonisation is being used in artistic communities and sonic communities at the moment is contextual, right? Going back to the idea that colonialism is not just one thing… The UK and Germany were (and are) involved in both extractive and settler colonial projects but neither the UK nor Germany straightforwardly exits as settler colonial territories – at least in terms of the »metropole«… I’m worried about phrasing it like that because it risks sounding like they’re somehow less colonial than, for example, North America but that’s definitely not my point! And the obvious but complex exception vis à vis the UK is Northern Ireland. Nonetheless, for the most part, the relationship between Indigenous and Colonial occupier is somewhat different in these contexts – it’s decentred by empire, or mediated by the distinction between ›metropole‹ and occupied territory. This complicates and becomes complicated by the argument made by Tuck and Yang – which I nonetheless think is correct. They suggest [in »Decolonisation is not a Metaphor«] that decolonisation involves – and should involve – the repatriation of indigenous land and life. PO: In a way, yes. But I think it might be productive to think of colonisation as a material practice that shapes imaginaries. Coloniality, that is, the continuation of colonisation in political, economic and ontological terms, gives form to the material conditions of the world within and outside the colonies. So, while one can argue that places like Germany or the UK are not in themselves occupied or stolen indigenous land – although they did occupy and steal land elsewhere – the material practices at play in these places are continuations of the colonial project in its core imaginary. We can think of the imaginary of nation-states and practices of bordering as perhaps the key points of this. For instance, temporary architecture – a strategy against settling – materialised in concentration camps and detention centres; repellent weaponry from barbed wire to Long Range Acoustic Devices; but also in the realm of voice and listening with language tests, accent evaluation (via machine listening or otherwise), voice extraction, speaker identification. Not to mention the concentration of knowledges in Europe versus the free circulation of goods and wealth across borders. These are all contem-

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porary articulations of coloniality, transported/ transposed from the colonial imaginary, happening here in Europe, now. SSO: So how does decolonisation work then? How should it work? PKL: I find Tuck and Yang’s call for an »ethics of incommensurability« both an incredibly difficult and provocative reflection for social justice movements and leftist organising projects. Solidarity, or the insistence on the connection and relationship of all struggles, is a core principle and value, however symbolic, that can drive activist action, education, writing or art. And Tuck and Yang invoke the incommensurable among struggles and movements as a way to denaturalise the repetitious logic of connection that ultimately erases indigenous struggle and land repatriation. They make an important distinction between decolonisation and de-colonial struggle; though not equivocal, they can learn from one another. The incommensurable invites different imaginaries and felt realities for struggle against what PO described as the continuing material and imaginative practices of nation-states and bordering. I like the incommensurable as a political orientation because it shakes up easy paradigms and equivocations of liberation, settlers, metropole, etc. It demands our analyses to remain supple. For instance, I’m reminded of Gayatri Spivak’s »Can the Subaltern Speak?« and the project of Subaltern Studies, which attempts to work through these political questions of knowledge production and consciousness of positionality. The shape of Post-colonial and Subaltern Studies is particularly indebted to South Asian Studies scholarship and critiques of the occupations of the British Commonwealth. However, right now, in light of India’s siege of Jammu and Kashmir after stripping their autonomous status and in anticipation of protests, enforced by a media blockade of seven million of its Muslim majority inhabitants since early August, colleagues in South Asian studies are challenging and calling into question the centrality of the British-India colonial axis for subaltern politics, given India’s own machinations as a colonial metropole. Writing about this long, complex conflict, I like what Nishita Trisal calls for »resisting statist manipulations of our suffering« in her article »India must stop weaponizing the pain of Kashmiri Pandits«. I think this question of amplifying suffering, loss and pain is a fundamental question to grapple with in decolonisation, if we are to indeed strategise a grounded politics for a decolonised listening. I also wonder, given the suspension of phone and internet services in Kashmir by India, and also thinking about Gaza and the West Bank, if decolonising listening in practice is an infrastructural one? And how can we conceptualise technological infrastructure and communication media with land rights, autonomy and access? One example I can think of here is Meryem Kamil’s forthcoming work in Social Text on examining media projects, which imagines Palestinian decolonisation through, for instance, a 360 degree video tour with audio recording of al-Aqsa compound in East Jerusalem, or 3-D reconstructions of a destroyed Palestinian village.

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MT: I guess because decolonisation would require a wholesale transformation of social, economic and geopolitical relations, it’s kind of an impossible demand – or it certainly can feel like that! But just because it is an impossible demand doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t struggle for it – this isn’t me trying to assert some »there is no alternative« endpoint. It’s impossible to struggle for a decolonised listening without struggling for decolonisation in total, because we cannot have a decolonised listening without having decolonisation, full stop. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try and fight for it anyway. And perhaps one of the first steps is to think precisely about how listening in its different modalities is indebted to whiteness, how is it indebted to a colonial standpoint and how the assumed objectivity of certain modes of listening hides the historical, social and economic relations on which it is predicated. Thinking back to Tuck and Yang’s piece: when decolonisation is being talked about in sonic cultures – especially within formal institutions – are we actually usually talking about anti-racism, are we talking inclusion or are we talking about other social justice struggles? I think we need to be careful conflating these struggles with the struggle for decolonisation. It’s not to dismiss these topics as unimportant…but in the same way that we have talked before about gender in sonic cultures, it’s the question of what’s missing. What gets left outside of the frame. SSO: A lot of people here use the word diskriminierungsfrei, or free of discrimination, to discuss anti-racist and inclusive approaches. But nothing can really be free of discrimination, so I prefer the word diskriminierungskritisch, which is used in more critical contexts. The translation, critical of discrimination, sounds a bit clunky, but it is about trying to be more aware of the conditions surrounding the discrimination – what caused it to arise, who or what is responsible and what roles do various factors play. This nuance is really important and hopes to prevent people from being complacent by urging them to scrutinise their positionality and subsequent responsibility. Maybe it’s not decolonial listening but rather… intersectional discrimination-critical approaches to listening?! What are people doing when they are decolonising listening? You were talking about technologies/ extractive colonialism – so it’s about finding new listening technologies…? MT: Picking up on your question of »what are people doing«, I think we also need to ask »who is doing?« So, speaking from my position – as someone, who is informed by British whiteness – I think it’s important to try to recognise how whiteness and the colonial benefits that come with whiteness act as a filter: or at least to recognise how certain habits of listening are cultivated in relation to whiteness. You ask about finding different listening technologies – I might be stretching it a bit but if we can think of race as a kind of technology – I’m echoing Beth Coleman’s »Race as Technology« here – then we might also think of race as functioning as a kind of listening technology as well. Speaking from my own standpoint, we can think about how white femininity – as

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a kind of listening technology – produces and reproduces a particular aurality within different spaces. To my mind (and thinking back to Kheshti’s book again), this has something to do with white femininity’s simultaneous vulnerability and ability to move through structures of power (and, of course, all of this is contingent on other factors, such as class and sexuality). A good example of how white femininity functions as a kind of listening technology might be the various policing campaigns that have taken place around street harassment in Nottingham, in collaboration with feminist and community organisations. Street harassment includes but is not limited to verbal harassment, such as cat-calling. And obviously, verbal harassment can be horrible and upsetting and should not happen. But I think the regulation of this through carceral structures is revealing: there are lots of reasons why Black, Asian and migrant subjects might not be able to or at very least feel uncomfortable about working with an institution like the police – particularly in light of the UK’s »hostile environment« mode of governance. So, I think we might be able to say that hearing cat-calling or verbal harassment as »a crime« is partly predicated on the listening technology of white femininity: with its simultaneous vulnerability and proximity to institutions of racial power. I think trying to unlearn the habits of listening that are facilitated by white femininity – or whiteness more generally – is an extremely difficult but important collective step to take. SSO: Exactly! Maybe it’s ok for us to demand a bit of unlearning… One thing that I liked about the Tuck and Yang essay is the reminder that just because you aren’t white doesn’t mean you are not complicit. I’m recalling an article, I read by the artist Moshtari Hilal: »Of Colour ist nicht gleich Of Colour« (»Being of Colour Is Not the Same as Being of Colour«). It uses examples of people of colour moving to Berlin as adults and experiencing discrimination and compares it to people who grew up in Berlin, either were born here or came here as a refugee at a young age, like the artist herself. The focus is on access to cultural capital and actual capital (the architect from Tehran considering quitting their job because of racism clashes with the reality that many German people of colour would have no choice but to stay). It critiques the lack of intersectionality and asks how appropriate it is for people to align themselves with various communities and their struggles. Or rather, she says it’s not appropriate! Like me, I’m from the UK and there is no way i could compare my experience to any woman of colour who grew up here. Though, because of how I look and the contexts I work in and how my names are interpreted, I am read as belonging to certain racialised groups… There’s not a lot of nuance, and the privileged non-white person also needs to be aware… As a privileged person of colour living in Berlin, there is real danger of complicity through not acknowledging my non-innocence and passively associating myself with racialised categories.

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From 2016 to 2018 I made a radio show/ podcast called Hidden Stories on a free radio station in Berlin. The idea was to research and tell stories of lesser known peoples, events or objects from the worlds of arts, politics, activism and music world histories. I included stories about the first Black female politician in Brazil, anti-fracking protests in Romania, ancient female figures in religion, non-Western superheroes and trade unions, even about weaving in Palestine… It was fun finding the stories and the music and sounds that I put with it, influenced by the stories. I tried to be careful not to speak for communities but rather create the space for the story. As the shows and the stories went on, I became more and more reluctant to discuss other people’s experiences. Now when creating new sound works, I don’t even like to do field recordings, just in case I catch something in the recording that doesn’t align with the story I want to tell. That’s perhaps a bit extreme but it’s a reflex to ensure I am not aligning myself with or appropriating stories and struggles that aren’t mine, but also that anything I create and call »decolonial« is very personal. But rather than fear this complicity, it might be better to actually confront it and begin to struggle for a decolonial approach, as you said before, MT. PKL: I think the reflex you share, SSO, in your field recording practice, and the growing reluctance in sharing the stories of other people’s experiences, is one that I identify with in my own political consciousness as a teacher. In the classroom, I’m often teaching fiction and non-fiction writing by authors affected by the immense pain and violence of colonialism, war, displacement, genocide, etc., and this question in pedagogy of empathetic identification and to what end, is a regular existential question I grapple with as a teacher. If we were to make this parallel between the listener/ speaker and reader/ book, I think celebrating empathetic identification as the best outcome of literature is a very slippery slope, with ambivalent outcomes. In liberal educational models, I’m wondering about repetition of narratives (in all kinds of ways this can work productively or unproductively, i.e. something on repeat, preaching to the choir, etc.), and how this sort of reception is an objectification of listening. This repetition, in effect, may incur a kind of psychic cost, lethargy, a pessimism in doing. Whiteness/ non-native as property has yet to be delegitimated/ dismantled (actually, continues to be insisted upon and celebrated in these times), and continues to exclude. I wonder if decolonising listening, if there is a political possibility in it, is an act that is actually speculative listening, one that begins in imagining relationality and living beyond property? What would it mean to teach speculative listening in classrooms? What would that necessitate? PO: I think this opens up a really nice thread on the role of practice. These questions often emerge particularly in the privileged spaces we often navigate, right? Academia, artistic spaces, these matters of »making space« or »making community«, versus not telling other people’s stories, is such an important one. In our sketch notes for this piece, PKL commented on the necessity of »reimagining relationality« and practices of

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speculative listening, and I think these are the kinds of minor gestures we are in desperate need of to think of listening as a decolonising practice. This, for me, relates back a lot to Glissant’s idea of »donner-avec«, or »giving-on-and-with«, as it is translated. If we think of listening as a situated act (as Annie Goh writes), then listening practices must necessarily engage in a process of Relation insofar as notions of »taking in« or »making meaning of« are, within our current imaginary of listening, incapable of accommodating relationality as the place of enunciation of the listening act itself. Or to put it in less convoluted terms: a decolonising practice of listening should dwell in constant re-orientations and new forms of relation that would seek to de-establish power imbalances, even if momentarily. But we also have to be careful to think of these structural relations as a series of minor gestures, otherwise we become overwhelmed by the insurmountability of a »decolonising listening«. And that requires listening to be reimagined as a practice of weaving stories without erasing or filling the gaps, but instead politicizing them, first and foremost, as a practice of care.

Sources Ahmed, Sara. On Being Included (2012): Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life, Durham. Coleman, Beth (2009): Race as technology, in: Camera Obscura, 24(1), 177-207. Glissant, Édouard (1997): Poetics of Relation, Ann Arbor. Goh, Annie (2017): Sounding Situated Knowledges: Echo in Archaeoacoustics, in: Parallax, 23, 283-304. Hilal, Moshtari  (03.08.2018): Of Color ist nicht gleich of Color – oder: die Entdeckung von Klasse und Habitus in den eigenen Reihen, in: dis:orient,        https://www.disorient.de/blog/color-ist-nicht-gleich-color-oder-die-entdeckungvon-klasse-und-habitus-den-eigenen-reihen, 30.08.2020.   Kamil, Meryem (2019): Towards Decolonial Futures: New Media, Digital Infrastructures, and Imagined Geographies of Palestine, Ann Arbor. Karich, Swantje (2018): Also macht man neue Fehler, in: Die Welt, https://www.welt.de/print/die_welt/kultur/article185320256/Also-macht-man-neueFehler.html, 30.08.2020. Kheshti, Roshanak (2015): Modernity’s Ear, New York. Mörsch, Carmen (2019): Die Bildung der A_n_d_e_r_e_n durch Kunst, Zaglossus. Nottingham SOLFED (2015): Street harassment in Nottingham: the problems with policing, https://nottinghamsolfed.wordpress.com/2015/11/06/street-harassment-innottingham-the-problems-with-policing/, 30.08.2020. Park, Lisa (2013): Eunoia, https://www.thelisapark.com/work/eunoia, 30.08.2020. Park, Lisa (2014): Eunoia II, https://www.thelisapark.com/work/eunoia2, 30.08.2020. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1988): Can the Subaltern Speak?, in: Grossberg, Lawrence / Nelson, Cary (eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture,Basingstoke, 271-313.

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Sternfeld, Nora (2014): Verlernen Vermitteln, Kunstpädagogische Positionen 30. Trisal, Nishita (2019): Opinion | India Must Stop Weaponizing the Pain of Kashmiri Pandits. in: Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/08/22/ i-am-kashmiri-pandit-india-must-stop-weaponizing-pain-our-past/, 30.08.2020. Tuck, Eve / Yang, K. Wayne (2012): Decolonization is not a metaphor, in: Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society, 1(1), 1-40.

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Playing it Back Critical Reflections on Curating Sound Bhavisha Panchia

Over the last twenty years, museums and galleries have slowly opened their hearts, doors, walls and websites to the reverberation of sound works, musical performances and immersive installations. Finding microphones, musical instruments, vinyl records, turntables, amplifiers, musical scores, mixers, cassettes, recorders, headphones, wires, speakers and voices is not the rare occurrence that it once used to be. Exhibition halls are no longer the quiet, austere, sanctified spaces for contemplation either; codes of conduct such as measured silence and regulated movement have in many ways loosened. Winning the 2010 Turner Prize for her sound installation Lowlands, Susan Philipsz flung sound art into the mainstream focus: it was the first time the award went to an artist working with sound.1 Three years later, Soundings: A Contemporary Score would take place at MOMA in New York, the first large-scale exhibition focused on sound art to take place at an internationally renowned museum.2 2012 marked the centenary year of the birth of John Cage, which inspired a number of exhibitions and festival showcasing sound art in Western Europe and North America. In the UK and in Germany, for example, expansive exhibitions such as Soundworks (2012) at ICA London that included the work of over 100 artists3 and Sound Art. Sound as Medium of Art (2013) at Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) in Karlsruhe were held. Across the Atlantic Ocean at MOMA PS1, the Brooklyn band The National performed their single, Sorrow, repeatedly for six hours as part of their Sunday

1 Weibel 2019, 52. 2 MoMA’s first major exhibition of sound art presented the work of 16 contemporary artists working with sound from a variety of disciplinary angles from the visual arts, architecture, performance, computer programming and music. 3 As an online platform, Soundworks sought to create an interactive space that is internationally accessible. Despite the dead link to the official platform, the works are still available for listening on SoundCloud.



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Sessions program.4 Titled A Lot of Sorrow, this durational performance was conceptualised by Ragnar Kjartansson to explore the potential of repetitive performance and its relationship to sculptural presence within sound.5 A couple years later, The Vinyl Factory opened up Store X in London as an exhibition space to present spectacular, immersive audio-visual exhibitions such as The Infinite Mix (2016). In 2017, Ari Benjamin Meyers initiated the itinerant institution, Kunsthalle for Music, dedicated to the presentation of music within visual arts environments.6 An exhibition preceding the above mentioned was The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl (2011). Curated by Trevor Schoonmaker at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, this research-based exhibition turned to the vinyl record as the object of aesthetic and conceptual interest, and importantly located the politics of sound within the geographic and economic schemas of the Global South. The exhibition explored the culture of vinyl records, and its transformative power as a means of expression within the history of contemporary art from 1965 to 2010, showcasing the work of 41 international artists. Through this exhibition, Schoonmaker worked to broaden and expand the scope of artistic approaches, taking a more global, diverse approach by exhibiting work from North America, South America, Europe, Africa and Asia.7 The exhibition demonstrated »how vinyl – conceptually, metaphorically and physically – had been used to investigate ideas and issues far beyond the confines of the medium.«8 The scope and premise of The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl demonstrated a critical expansion of existing limits placed on exhibitions focused on sonic media. The exhibition’s geographic diversification was coupled with a direct curatorial focus that did not universalise the effect and impact of the vinyl record and its sound on art. It brought into conversation the socio-cultural manifestations of the vinyl record as a protagonist not only in contemporary art, but also in shaping individual and collective identities. Set against the surge of exhibitions during this period, it becomes clear that, despite working with a diverse group of artists, the curatorial focus of exhibitions such 4 Sunday Sessions is a weekly presentation of performance, moving images, dance, music and discursive programs. Its mission is to embrace live arts as an integral aspect of contemporary practice and ask how art forms produce specific ways of thinking and useful means to engage with the broader world. 5 Kjartansson 2013. 6 The relationship between sound, music and art has long been an intertwined one. Experimental music, sound and art have had a relationship that extends back to the early twentieth century. The overlaps, parallels and connections between art and experimental music movements such as Dada, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism and Fluxus, have often been referenced with connections drawn between and amongst composers and artists such as John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, Merce Cunningham and Robert Rauschenberg. See Cf. Nyman, 1976. 7 Schoonmaker 2010, 17. 8 Ibid.

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as Soundings: A Contemporary Score, Soundworks and Sound Art. Sound as Medium of Art remained within a Euro-Western-centric grip. This is not only the case with curatorial practice, but it is also glaringly evident in the disciplines of Sound Studies and Art History. While there are a number of essays and books expanding on the role of the radio in Africa, or ethnomusicological studies on African music and traditions, I have found very few that argued for creative practices such as art, sound art or electronic music. As I surveyed existing literature, it became apparent that this ›neglect‹ was rooted in broader disciplinary and epistemological questions, motivating me to move my research into more focused readings on ideas relating to the auditory and arts that lie outside of North America and Western Europe, particularly within contemporary art and curatorial practice.9 A poignant example is the case of Egyptian composer and performer Halim El-Dabh (1921-2017). El-Dabh, who had studied agricultural engineering in Cairo, is considered one of the earliest composers of electronic music today. He used recorded samples of the Egyptian practice zaar using a borrowed wire recorder from the offices of Middle East Radio. The resulting electroacoustic sound piece Expressions of Zaar (1944), often referred to as Wire Recorder Piece, was exhibited at a gallery in Cairo, and has now become a seminal work in the history of electronic music compositions. Curatorial endeavours such as Dak’art 2018 biennial that hosted a retrospective of El-Dabh’s work as a composer, electronic music pioneer, ethnomusicologist and researcher, introduced his influential practice into an African context. His recognition of producing one of the earliest pieces of electronic music came late, however, and is a stark reminder of how experimental sound art practice from outside the geopolitical North has been, at best, neglected and, at worst, dismissed from the canon of sound studies and art historical discourses. Cases such as El-Dabh demonstrate the narrow, often biased determinations of who gets included into scholarship, curricula, art history books, exhibitions and sound studies readers. David Novak and Matt Sakakeeny, the editors of Keywords in Sound (2015), point to this limited reach, maintaining that while interdisciplinary breadth has expanded, the field as a whole has remained deeply committed to Western intellectual lineages and histories.10 A quick scan of sound studies literature has come to reinforce Western ideals of a normative subject that is placed within a universal and common frame 9 Exhibitions attending to sonic media in the 2010s took a universal approach to their curatorial undertaking. These exhibitions could be thought of as introductory exhibitions to sound and music in contemporary art. These exhibitions and their broad curatorial statements did, however, lay the ground work for subsequent curatorial projects, which would challenge said universal underpinnings and Western-centric focus. 10 Cf. Novak / Sakakeeny 2015.

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of listening. The presumed universal body has led scholars to treat sounds as stable objects that have »predictable, often technologically determined, effects on a generalized perceptual consciousness, which might even be reduced to an entire ›human condition‹«.11 Much of the work accomplished in sound studies has failed to recognise the constitutive differences that lie within these sonic objects of study as a multivalent field of sounds. While Novak and Sakakeeny do not explicitly foreground modalities of difference in Keywords in Sound, they do argue that the increased attention to sound in cultural studies, literary criticism and media studies has contributed to understanding the role that sound plays within formations and relations of difference.12 Following the steps taken by Novak and Sakakeeny, Gavin Steingo and Jim Sykes address these gaps in Remapping Sound Studies (2019), through a collection of essays aimed to develop a new cartography for sound studies, bringing Southern locales into sonic and auditory awareness, while also searching for navigational tools to see and listen differently.13 Taking the Global South as a set of global externalities, produced through colonialism and contemporary settler colonies in North America and Palestine, as well as neoliberalism and imperialist practices, Remapping Sound Studies proposes thinking about sound not as the South (or as analogous with the South), but »rather in and from the South«.14 They approach ethnography and archives in diverse languages, and situate sound as »diverse sonic ontologies, processes, and actions that cumulatively make up core components of the history of sound in global modernity.«15 In many ways, my curatorial practice has been oriented around sonic media that is constitutive of a ›southern-oriented politic,‹ as outlined above. My curatorial investment has been to expand ways of thinking through sound and music within exhibitionmaking, to offer focused readings and understandings of the individual and collective body in relation to the auditory. What follows is a discussion of three curatorial projects I have undertaken, what is left of what has left (2016), Buried in the Mix (2017) and For the Record (2018) that worked towards creating affective and conceptual exhibition environments for the reception of diverse practices utilising auditory media to investigate, recuperate and contest histories and structural legacies of slavery, colonialism, globalisation, migration and global capitalism.

11 Ibid., 7. 12 Ibid. 13 Cf. Steingo / Sykes 2019. 14 Ibid., 4 [sic]. 15 Ibid.

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what is left of what has left The vinyl record has come to represent nostalgic pleasures, or as many would argue, a romanticised resistance to digital consumerism. Importantly, as Schoonmaker has demonstrated in the exhibition, The Record, the vinyl record has been utilised as a site of publication and artistic practice.16 It continues to be a material index to the past and a conduit of culture. The vinyl record is a desirable material object. Its haptic quality, texture, weight and surface, together with liner notes, all contribute to the overall package of the record. Its physical and visual elements provide listeners with something to hold and read. The recent resurgence of vinyl has come with a force, with many reissues of once difficult to find albums released, while platforms such as Discogs have made it easy to find scarcer, out-of-print issues. The Vinyl Factory Press has also been at the forefront of working with contemporary artists such as William Kentridge, Neo Muyanga, Arthur Jafa, Theaster Gates and Jeremy Deller to press vinyl editions and signed limited editions. Constituting a meeting place of voices, ideas and propositions, what is left of what has left brought together audio works of various modalities of Black sonic and cultural formations from within the contemporary African diaspora. As an exhibition and vinyl record, the project foregrounded the effect of sound on the production and shaping of social and cultural identities of African diasporas, demonstrating how sonic phenomena figure into our sense of place, belonging and our relationship to the past and present.

Figure 6: what is left of what has left, 12 inch vinyl record, 2016. 16 Cf. Schoonmaker 2010.

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The 12-inch record album comprises works by John Akomfrah and Trevor Mathison, Tony Cokes, DJ/rupture (Jace Clayton), Em’kal Eyongakpa, Lamin Fofana and Val Jeanty that address cultural dislocations, migrations and transnational flows. The project’s title speaks to losses and gains of musical traditions and cultures, catalysed through diasporic events. The six tracks feature musical tracks, sound works and excerpts from DJ mixes and video works that speak particularly to the Black experience, both historical and contemporary, linking in particular the movement of African bodies across the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. Sonic lineages are expressed through vocoders, samplers and synthesizers to echo the complexity of subjectivities constructed by global, social, economic and cultural exchanges. To draw from Paul Gilroy’s description of the image of a ship in The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness as a spatio-temporal matrix, a »micro-cultural, micro-political system in motion«,17 what is left of what has left echoes this matrix as a mobile site through which different artistic and cultural practitioners converge. Extracted from the audio-visual work 1+! (a dubstep primer) (2015), Tony Cokes reconsiders the circulation of music by exploring the sonic lineage of U.K. dubstep that he discovered during the early 2000s. Since the late 1980s Cokes’ audio-visual works have creatively re-appropriated texts, lyrics and conversations to reflect on race, capitalism and pop culture. In 1+! (a dubstep primer), Cokes employs theoretical concepts such as Jacques Derrida’s notion of hauntology18 and Gilroy’s concept of the Black Atlantic to raise crucial questions concerning the writing, editing, sampling and circulation of (Black) sonic cultures. The excerpt featured on this record includes an audio clip from the short film How to Listen To… New Dimensions in Sound, originally produced in 1957 by The RCA Victor Corporation to introduce the wonders of stereo sound.19 Through quotation and sampling of musicians, theorists and writers such as DJ/rupture, Joe Nice, Jacques Derrida, David Toop and k-punk (Mark Fisher), Cokes demonstrates how Black pop cultural forms are consumed at great cultural distances, re-thought and re-deployed to produce hybrid interventions in today’s global contexts. Another track is Val Jeanty’s afro-electronica »Rezistans« (2015) that draws upon the sonic lineage of Haitian culture by bridging traditional musical forms with digital technologies. The track blends Vodou samples, chants and drumming to raise awareness of Vodou traditions and cultural heritages in Haiti. The track was previously featured on Radyo Shak, an independent broadcast radio station, organised in collaboration with Clock Tower Productions on the occasion of the 4th Ghetto Biennale in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, December 10-21, 2015. 17 Cf. Gilroy 1993. 18 Cf. Derrida 1993. 19 Handy (Jam) Organization 1957, https://archive.org/details/1099_How_to_Listen_To_New_Dimensions_in_Sound_M04056_15_24_44_00, 28.09.2020.

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In the same year, a high number of refugees and asylum seekers migrated across the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa, warranting creative responses from musicians and DJs. In 2015, over one million migrants reached Europe via the Mediterranean, while more than 3,700 people died or went missing while undertaking the journey, as reported by the International Organization for Migration.20 Berlin-based electronic music producer Lamin Fofana released the EP Another World, which was born out as a response to the mass migration being undertaken by Syrians and North Africans. The techno track »Lampedusa« (2015) directly references Italy’s southernmost island, just over 100 kilometers away from Tunisia, and one of the main points of entry for migrants and refugees entering Europe from Libya. Built on synthesizers and drum machines, while using field recordings and samples overlaid against the repetition of a bass drum, Fofana evokes the sounds of the ocean, the rise and fall of waves and sea-foam hitting the shorelines. The track evokes the liminal, and espouses a sense of foreboding and an un-rootedness coupled with an undercurrent of urgency. The title of the track »Lampedusa« is at once a European holiday destination, and also a place of refuge for migrants and asylum seekers, who manage not to fall victim to the unforgiving sea and European border restrictions. Drawing two migratory trajectories into conversation, what is left of what has left foregrounds these physical migrations and lineages of musical genres and traditions that are tied to the displacement of sound and bodies under distressing conditions and violence across the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. The record is both an exhibition and archive of recorded sound, a material object that is subject to time passing. Within the context of an exhibition space, the edition of 250 records were displayed in one of the galleries in the Hessel Museum of Art in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Listening stations were set up for visitors to listen to the album, while copies were also made available for visitors to take home allowing the ›record as exhibition‹ to travel in unexpected and uncontrollable ways.21

John Akomfrah & Trevor Mathison, »CATALLAXY« (2012), 9:34 Lamin Fofana, »Lampedusa« (2015), 5:38 DJ/rupture, »Uproot mix (excerpt featuring Ekkehard Ehlers and Stalker)« (2008), 4:32 Tony Cokes, »1!+ (excerpt)« (2015), 5:56 20 Cf. International Organization for Migration 2015, https://www.iom.int/news/two-years-lampedusatragedy-iom-reflects-mediterranean-deaths, 28.09.2020. 21 what is left of what has left was produced as part of my requirements for the Masters of Arts degree at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, May 8–29, 2016. The records were available for visitors to take a copy with them. Design: Jono Lewarne; Mastering: Jacob van der Westhuizen, Pressed by A to Z Media, New York, 2016.

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Val Jeanty »Rezistans« (2015), 5:16 Em’kal Eyongakpa, »dis sonic rituals« (2014), 5:51

Buried in the Mix »When you choose, as a listener, to focus on what’s buried deep in the layers of a recording instead of what’s been placed up front to catch your attention – then you’ve changed what is signal, and what is noise.«22 These words by Damon Krukowski encapsulated the curatorial propositioning of the exhibition Buried in the Mix as a provocation to listen deeper, and more attentively to the buried histories and narratives, including the hegemonic systems rendered invisible and inaudible. The exhibition Buried in the Mix took place at The MEWO Kunsthalle in Memmingen in 2017 and sought to raise the question: How do we hear power, histories, cultures and difference? Filling the two floors of the MEWO Kunsthalle, the exhibition showcased the work of artists, curators and musicians who brought to the surface a range of voices, sounds and sensibilities that included 1115, Fatima Al Qadiri, Chino Amobi, Sonia Boyce, Vivian Caccuri, Tony Cokes, Sofía Córdova, Christopher Kirkley, Los Jaichackers (Julio César Morales & Eamon Ore-Giron), Carlos Monroy, Nástio Mosquito, Andrew Pekler, Mario Pfeifer, Andrew Putter, Thibaut de Ruyter, Kemang Wa Lehulere and Samson Young. The exhibition was loosely separated into four areas: one, ethnological recordings and the reappropriation of archival materials; two, music’s relationship to identity, diasporic formations and transnational circulation; three, language as reflections and expressions of power; and four, sound as a medium for critique. Songs, ethnological recordings and musical compositions, genres and forms such as oratorio, cumbia, minimal techno and the Lambada (the song, dance and genre) became the sites through which stories of colonial encounters, (labour) migration and transnational crossovers are narrated and expressed. Buried in the Mix as a curatorial proposition sought to engage expanded forms of perception in the shape of listening to express, narrate and critique the often invisible structures of colonial actions, capitalist intentions and the suppression of knowledge and traditions. The ambience of Vivian Caccuri’s Oratorio (Tidal Waves) (2017) filled the ground floor of the Kunsthalle. The installation is comprised of a low-frequency sound system and lit candles which pulsated to the bass. Visitors heard a composition by Caccuri, rooted in the Ambrosian hymn Aeterne Rerum Conditor, one of the first forms of chanting in Western history practiced by Christian monks. By exploring musical forms in religion,

22 Krukowski 2019, 130.

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the artist expands connections and meanings to consider the cultural interrelations between bass and ritual. As religious Christian music has historically distanced itself from percussion, drums and deep pulses in order to privilege the voice, wind instruments and strings, Caccuri’s musical interpretation seeks sonic forms in which the bass becomes a vehicle for the mind through the body. Kemang Wa Lehulere’s installation One is too many, a thousand will never be enough (2016) is a poetic response to South Africa’s education system as an exertion of violence – historically under apartheid and within the current political dispensation. A suspended birdhouse, constructed from salvaged school desks, is home to an African grey parrot that faces a music stand holding cassettes tapes of English lessons that are played through speakers above. The parrot is staged to appear as if reciting these elocution lessons in American English, thus drawing our attention to the ways in which we are culturally colonised, and mimic, emulate and reproduce that which has been forced, normalised and accepted. His use of salvaged school desks is a reminder of the legacy of violence inherent in South Africa’s educational system – Apartheid that led to the 1976 Soweto Student Uprising and the death of over 700 students to the epistemological violence facing students today – from their language of instruction to the lack of material re- Figure 7: Installation view. Kemang Wa Lehulere, One is too many, a thousand will never be enough, 2016. sources. Echoes of violence could also be heard in Fatima Al Qadiri’s album Brute, included in the listening space within the exhibition. Speaking to the violence enforced upon Black bodies in the United States, the album consisting of 11 tracks, is a celebration of protest and a sonic reflection and response to the ever-increasing scale and force of police

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brutality against Black Americans. Written while protests in Ferguson and Baltimore were taking place, the album is a statement on the over-militarization of the United States police departments, and their ongoing abuses of power. Through her manipulation of samples and found sounds, Al Qadiri links virtual worlds with real public spaces. The track »ENDZONE«, featured in this exhibition, uses field recordings of protests and civil unrest in Ferguson – you can hear the sound of gunshots, walkie-talkie beeps, explosions, crowd screaming, Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) used by the police as a weapon to ›pacify‹ protestors.

Flatbush ZOMBiES, Blacktivist EP (2016), »BLACKTIVIST«, 05:00 XUXA Santamaria, Chucha Santamaria y Usted (2011), »Fiebre Tropical«, 02:39 Farben, Textstar (2002), »Beautone«, 07:19 Chino Amobi, Paradiso (2017), »Polizei«, 3:58 Andrew Pekler, Tristes Tropiques (2016), »Humidity Index/ Khao Sok (chopped and screwed)«, 05:47 1115, Post Europe (2017), »Calais 90210«, 03:02 Fatima Al Qadiri, Brute (2016), »ENDZONE«, 01:52 Mario Pfeifer, Kamran Sadeghi, Approximation (2015), »Approximation«, 04:01 Christopher Kirkley, Uchronia: Field Recordings from Alternate Realities (2015), »Bambara Affirmations, Relaxation cassette«, 02:28

For the Record My enquiry into the often unsounded and inaudible extended into the exhibition For the Record, and looked closely at the record as a capsule of sound, history, data and information. Taking place at ifa Galerie Berlin as a part of the transdisciplinary project »Untie to Tie«,23 the exhibition looked at various modes of listening to the dynamics of power that manifest in musical production and circulation, migrations and displacements of peoples, global financial systems and the hushing of voices under political regimes. The exhibition also turned to listening as an act of mindfulness, paying attention to neglected stories and experiences, while also creating spaces in which re-imagination can occur. Works by Jace Clayton, Geraldine Juárez, Christine Sun Kim, Vivian Caccuri and Julio César Morales in their various conceptual trajectories offered visual and aural insights and responses to repercussions of modern coloniality and global capitalism. The

23 »Untie to Tie« (2017-20) is a trans-disciplinary project conceptualised by Alya Sebti that invited discussions around colonial legacies, movement, migration and the environment.

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exhibition dedicated space to discrete artworks and a listening space for visitors to listen to a selection of albums from an ongoing collection of vinyl records I am compiling through the research and publishing platform, Nothing to Commit Records.24

Figure 8: Listening space. For the Record, 2018. ifa Galerie Berlin.

One of the works on featured by Geraldine Juárez was the 7-inch reissue of Wealth Transfer (2013/2018). Tracing the patterns of stock market glitches onto transparency film, Juárez treated these patterns as musical waveforms. Using Renoise with some interpretation, Juárez turned these into digital sound data. Wealth Transfer playfully highlights the economies of high frequency trading and the abstraction of capital. The record contains three tracks made from the patterns of three stock market crashes, ti-

24 Nothing to Commit Records works alongside contemporary artists and musicians from within the global south to encourage inter-disciplinary dialogue and collaboration between practitioners and institutions. Operating at the intersection of art and music, the platform explores the signification of sound and rethinks social, spatial, ideological and geopolitical formations. These include the diaspora, national and cultural identities as well as the contact zones brought about by coloniality, modernity and globalisation. It hosts a collection of audio material, including artist produced vinyl records. The platform makes use of cultural artefacts to recuperate neglected histories and heritage while simultaneously offering a framework to challenge, critique and reimagine those trajectories. NTCR creates a tangible archive; a resource towards future consideration and exploration.

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tled, »010 Flash Crash«, »012 The Knightmare« and »The Tweet Crash«, with the cover art done by graphic illustrator Jaime Ruelas, who is well known for this flyer designs for Polymarchs sound systems in Mexico City.25 A significant part of the exhibition was dedicated to the work of Julio César Morales and his collaborative and interdisciplinary work with the record label Club Unicornio, highlighting the importance of record labels as experimental, collaborative spaces of practice. The back of the gallery featured watercolour and graphite drawings by Morales from the series Undocumented Interventions, (2010-17), Subterranean Homesick Cumbia (2014-18), a video installation he produced with Eamon Ore-Giron as part of the collective Los Jaichackers and his collaborative work with Club Unicornio. The label was founded in 2002 by Morales and musician Luis Illades as an urban intervention in San Francisco’s Mission District, in direct response to reclaim and bring back the ambient sounds of Latino–based music to the streets of the district. The club has since morphed into a record label called Discos Unicornio, a space for collaboration between visual artists, musicians and DJs. Named after the now defunct Tijuana strip club, Club Unicornio specialised in obscure and underground Spanish language music,

Figure 9: Club Unicornio and Julio Cesar Morales. Selection of Club Unicornio Releases, 2018. For the Record, ifa Galerie Berlin.

25 Cf. Wirz 2014.

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from Mexican dance punk and rare Latin breaks to the newest in electro cumbia and beyond. Such self-organised, independent spaces for art and music activate and infiltrate both art and music scenes and support local practices.26

DJ Lengua, EP (2008), Discos Unicornio, 12 inch vinyl DJ Roger, Mas Esqueletos (2009), Discos Unicornio, 7 inch vinyl Chicano Batman, Chicano Batman (2010), 12 inch vinyl Julio César Morales and Eamon Ore-Giron, Dilo! (2003), Peres Projects, 12 inch vinyl Julio César Morales and Eamon Ore-Giron/Moises Medina, The Year of The Diamond Dogs (2006), 12 inch vinyl DJ Lengua, Cruzando (2009), Discos Unicornio, 12 inch vinyl

For the Record also featured Sufi Plug Ins, an interdisciplinary project that is both an »art provocation and instrument«.27 Jace Clayton, together with developers, creatively challenged the presets of music software to intervene into existing Western bias of music production and create audio software based on non-Western musical concepts. Software embedded in music production tools play a crucial role in what types of sounds can be sounded. Arguably most music software is conceptualised and produced in the United States or Germany, and is accompanied by defaults that offer narrow concepts of what music can be. Sufi Plug Ins works with commonly used music production software such as Ableton Live, whose default setting of a Western time signature of 4/4 and 12-tone scale creates limits for diverse beats, notes and scales.28 By introducing Sufi Plug Ins, Clayton created alternate options for producing sound more aligned with an Eastern scale. Having worked with music software for more than ten years, he came to the understanding that Western (Berlin, Hamburg and Silicon Valley) music software developers had little to no interest in other groups or traditions that lie outside of the Eurocentric norm. This prompted Clayton to raise the question: What if you could make music software with different assumptions, limitations, and beliefs built into it? For example, if West African griots were to design mu26 Examples of exhibitions highlighting the work of record labels can be found in ECM – A Cultural Archaeology and Free Music Production/FMP: The Living Music at the Haus der Kunst brought to the fore the significance of these record labels of music and culture. Curated by Okwui Enwezor in late 2012 and Markus Müller in 2017, respectively, these two exhibitions presented visual, archival and recorded material, bringing together a range of formats including sound, music and film to showcase their impact on new jazz and experimental and avant-garde music within the respective cultural landscapes. 27 Clayton 2016, 187. 28 Ibid., 185.

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sic software, what concepts and functionalities would they be most concerned about translating into the digital? Or a Berber muezzin, who performs the callto-prayer beautifully but frowns upon music – could one make music software for him? 29 Projects like Sufi Plug Ins shed light onto systems and structures that determine what kind of music reaches our ears, highlighting the interrelation between software design, music tools, encoded spirituality, digital art and indigenous knowledge systems.

Outro What is the condition of possibility to listen beyond frameworks we are presented with? How can we listen to what is outside the monopoly of representation? How can we listen to those who haven’t had the right to talk from the modern locus of enunciation? The questions above are posed by sociologist and decolonial scholar Rolando Vázquez in response to modernity’s monopolisation of representation, which he argues has been grounded in the negation of listening.30 The question of who is speaking and who is listening is critical for understanding who is configuring and determining the world around us, from the art that we see, to the music we listen to. In privileging the auditory, without setting it against visuality, what is left of what has left, Buried in the Mix and For the Record sought to bring its visitors into relation with histories, systems and subjectivities, to act as an ›interlocutor‹ for how we perceive and attend to the world. As sound and music are able to shape our physical and collective experiences, we as participants of this world also transform spaces we occupy. Emily Thompson makes the acute observation that »[…] our senses most fundamental task is not simply to entertain or distract us, but to situate ourselves within our surroundings. By enabling each of us to understand where we are, our senses allow us to understand who we are, as individuals located within networks of physical and social connections.«31 Taking the perception of listening as »a shared, social and co-constitutive process that shapes and is shaped by knower and known, perceiver and perceived«,32 these curatorial projects foreground the entanglement of sound and social cultural bodies of knowledge that are fundamental to inform our relation to the world.

29 Cf. Clayton 2012. See also: https://beyond-digital.org/sufiplugins/, 28.09.2020. 30 Vázquez 2017, 43. 31 Thompson 2019, 23. 32 Thompson 2017, 273.

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Curatorial endeavours such as what is left of what has left, Buried in the Mix and For the Record extend the relational capabilities of sound into exhibition spaces to conceive of the museum as a place of reciprocal exchange. Listening is a practice that brings subjects into relation. In search for auditory perspectives, these exhibitions prefaced the importance of attentive listening as a means for sharing and exchange, and more importantly, as an opportunity to listen beyond established Western frameworks of knowledge and experience.

Sources 1115 (2017): Post Europe, Alien Transistor, Germany. Alya Sebti (2017-2020): Untie to Tie, http://www.untietotie.org/en/about/, 15.09.2020. Andrew Pekler (2016): Tristes Tropiques, Faitiche, Germany. Bhavisha Panchia (2016): what is left of what has left, USA. Chicano Batman (2010): Chicano Batman, Discos Unicornio, USA. Chino Amobi (2017): Paradiso, Ormolycka, USA. Christopher Kirkley (2015): Uchronia: Field Recordings from Alternate Realities, Sahel Sounds, USA. Clayton, Jace (2016): Uproot: Travels in 21st Century and Digital Culture, New York. Clayton, Jace (2012): Sufi Plug Ins, https://www.negrophonic.com/2012/sufi-plug-insare-real-demo-video-download/#comment-14843, 21.09.2020. Derrida, Jacques (1993): Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, London. DJ Lengua (2008): EP, Discos Unicornio, USA. DJ Lengua (2009): Cruzando, Discos Unicornio, USA. DJ Roger (2009): Mas Esqueletos, Discos Unicornio, USA. DJ/rupture (2008): Uproot mix (excerpt featuring Ekkehard Ehlers and Stalker), on: Bhavisha Panchia, what is left of what has left, USA. Em’kal Eyongakpa (2014): dis sonic rituals. Enwezor, Okwui (2012): ECM – A Cultural Archaeology, Haus der Kunst, Munich, https://hausderkunst.de/en/exhibitions/ecm-a-cultural-archaeology, 29.09.2020. Farben (2002): Textstar, Klang Elektronik, Germany. Fatima Al Qadiri (2016): Brute, Hyperdub, UK. Flatbush ZOMBiES (2016): Blacktivist EP, Germany. Geraldine Juárez (2013/2018): Wealth Transfer. Gilroy, Paul (1993): The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, Cambridge, MA. Halim El Dabh (1944): Expressions of Zaar.

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Handy (Jam) Organization (1957): RCA Victor Corporation, USA, https://archive.org/details/1099_How_to_Listen_To_New_Dimensions_in_ Sound_M04056_15_24_44_00, 28.09.2020. The Infinite Mix (2016): Store X, London, https://theinfinitemix.com/, 23.09.2020. John Akomfrah / Trevor Mathison (2012): CATALLAXY. Julio César Morales (2010-2017): Undocumented Interventions. Julio César Morales / Eamon Ore-Giron (2003): Dilo!, Peres Projects, USA. Julio César Morales / Eamon Ore-Giron / Moises Medina (2006): The Year of The Diamond Dogs, Mamborock Discos. Kemang Wa Lehulere (2016): One is too many, a thousand will never be enough. Kjartansson, Ragnar (2013): A Lot of Sorrow, MOMA PS1, New York, https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/3216, 29.09.2020. Krukowski, Damon (2019): Ways of Hearing, Cambridge, MA. Lamin Fofana (2015): Lampedusa. Los Jaichackers (Julio César Morales / Eamon Ore-Giron) (2014): Subterranean Homesick Cumbia, USA. Mario Pfeifer / Kamran Sadeghi (2015): Approximation, Sternberg Pres, Germany. Meyers, Ari Benjamin (2017): Kunsthalle for Music, http://www.kunsthalleformusic. org/, 29.09.2020. Müller, Markus (2017): Free Music Production/FMP: The Living Music. Haus der Kunst. Munich, https://hausderkunst.de/en/exhibitions/free-music-production, 29.09.2020. Nothing to Commit Records (n.d.): https://nothingtocommit.org/, 15.09.2020. Nyman, Michael (1976): Hearing/Seeing, in: Studio International, November/December, 233-243. Novak, David / Sakakeeny, Matt (2015): Keywords in Sound, Durham, NC. Panchia, Bhavisha (2016): what is left of what has left, Hessel Museum of Art, USA, https://nothingtocommit.org/what-is-left-of-what-has-left, 23.09.2020. Panchia, Bhavisha (2017): Buried in the Mix, MEWO Kunsthalle, Germany, https://nothingtocommit.org/Buried-in-the-Mix, 23.09.2020. Panchia, Bhavisha (2018): For the Record, ifa Galerie Berlin, Germany, https://nothingtocommit.org/For-the-Record, 23.09.2020. Schoonmaker, Trevor (2010): The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl, Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, NC, https://nasher.duke.edu/exhibitions/record-contemporary-artvinyl/, 29.09.2020. Sound Art. Sound as Medium of Art (2013): Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Germany, https://zkm.de/en/exhibition/2012/03/sound-art, 23.09.2020. Soundings: A Contemporary Score (2013): Museum of Modern Art, USA, https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1351, 23.09.2020. Soundworks (2012): ICA London, UK, https://soundcloud.com/icalondon/sets/soundworks, 23.09.2020. Steingo, Gavin / Sykes, Jim (2019): Remapping Sound Studies, Durham, NC.

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Susan Philipsz (2008): Lowlands. Thompson, Emily (2019): Interlude in: Krukowski, Damon, Ways of Hearing, Cambridge, MA, 21-26. Thompson, Marie (2017): Whiteness and the Ontological Turn in Sound Studies, in: Parallax 23(3), 262-282, https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2017.1339967, 15.09.2020. Tony Cokes (2015): 1!+ (excerpt), on: Bhavisha Panchia, what is left of what has left, USA. Val Jeanty (2015): Rezistans. Vázquez, Rolando (2017): Listening as Critique, in: Buried in the Mix, Memmingen. Vivian Caccuri (2017): Oratorio (Tidal Waves), Brazil, https://viviancaccuri.net/Oratorio, 28.09.2020. Weibel, Peter (2019): Sound Art. Sound as a Medium of Art, Cambridge, MA. Wirz, Mirjam (2014): The Panther Collection Vol.3, Zurich. XUXA Santamaria (2011): Chucha Santamaria y Usted, Young Cubs, USA.

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»offensichtlich unbegründet« a work-in-progress meditation on sonic biometry, migration and the archive Pedro J. S. Vieira de Oliveira

I. Come stranger, the gates are open

Personalbogen. Aufnahme PK744 Name: Joachim-Arnoud Vorname: François As he entered the room, what he thought was the windy end of winter was, in fact, the turning of heads to look at him. Pacing carefully, holding his papers close to his chest, he walked towards the designated table, which by now was surrounded by other men. Some of them he had maybe seen before, some were perhaps new faces. All of them, however, could have looked the same to him. The endless space of waiting messes up with your ability to discern one bureaucrat from another. He may have been offered the choice to refuse, but he, you, me, we all know that in certain cases being offered certain choices is the same as not having a choice at all. Any other option would just be unbearable, unfeasible or might simply lead to more periods of extended waiting. Inside that liminal space in which time seems to pass at a drunken, spiralling gait.

Welchem Volksstamm angehörig? Kreole Art der Aufnahme: Erzählung. (Der Verlorene Sohn). The training documents for dealing with the implementation of so-called »Sprachbiometrie«, or »dialect recognition software«, circulated amongst the staff of the Bundesamt für Migration and Flüchtlinge in June 2018, describe how case workers must dial the internal number seven two zero nine-nine, and then enter the case number, personal number and the field office number in the keypad of a telephone device. As he approached the table, he looked at the device – or devices? – placed on top of it. Strange yet familiar shapes, perhaps a bit too large for what it looked like it could



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have been, or perhaps it even came from a different time altogether. Whether it was future, past or an amalgamation of both remained to be reflected upon, he thought. Maybe he grinned as he read some of the words scattered atop the table, his misspelled name scratched over and corrected quickly. Maybe he sighed. Or maybe it did not even catch his attention. The other men were silent, adjusting rods, buttons, wires. Only one of them seemed to be taking notes. There was no chair, so he was requested to remain in a standing position. Maybe there was something placed in front of him: a telephone, a headset or was it a cone? Did he see a needle or a pointer? Whether the paper emitted or reflected light is perhaps irrelevant now. The message printed on it seemed to be, like him, long in standby mode. The first question came in German, a language he might have still been struggling with. The endless space of waiting messes up with your ability to think coherently. Perhaps stammering was a strategy or a reaction. Perhaps it was sleepiness, tiredness or just anxiety. A hand touched his back, and for a moment he may have thought of the feeling of kindness. A second question came in German again, and he understood that he was supposed to stand with his back as straight as possible, as he looked into the recording device. The asylum applicant shall then be requested by the case worker to describe, as accurately as possible and in their mother tongue, an image to the device. The approximately two-minute description will then be digitally sliced, and such recording shall function as the language test file, in the native language of the applicant. The file, stored in the servers of the Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge (BAMF), will be analysed by the accent recognition software and the results thereof, with the probable accents or dialects spoken by the applicant, shall be stored as a PDF-file. The worker will receive a link to the file, and use it as part of their final report on the asylum case.

II. A praxis of disbelief

Sprach- und Dialekterkennung (Wahrscheinlichkeit in %): Unbekannte Sprachen: 76,1% (LLR 0.56) Türkisch: 10,8% (-0.85 LLR) Französisch: 8% (-1.06 LLR) Andere Sprachen oder Dialekte: 5,1% Ergebnis: Ablehnung als »offensichtlich unbegründet« An application for asylum is, in particular, manifestly unfounded if it is obvious under the circumstances of the individual case that the foreigner is only in Germany for eco-

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nomic reasons or to escape a general emergency situation […] An unfounded application for asylum is to be rejected as manifestly unfounded, if the foreigner’s submissions are not substantiated with essential points or are contradictory, if the application obviously does not correspond to the facts or is based on forged or falsified evidence, if the foreigner deceives about his or her identity or nationality in the asylum procedure or refuses to provide such information […].1 You have one week to file an appeal against the decision of the Bundesamt. In addition, an expedite request must be filed within the same time period. If you do not file an expedite request or the court rejects it, you may be deported, even though the case on the appeal has not yet been decided.2

III. A gathering, a mixing I would like to invite Gloria Anzaldúa into the room. She reminds me of the necessity of inventing new stories to replace those crafted by the careful extraction and taxonomisation of that which seemed to be closer to a state of pure nature. She reminds me of the necessity of dismantling grand narratives, of fragmenting the idea of history into micro-stories, re-historicised from numerous perspectives in diverse, plural bodies, thus allowing for ambiguity, vulnerability, shapeshifting, uncertainty. In her, I look to find comfort in unsettlement, and I allow myself the space for these two to coexist. Our voices, our words have been defined somewhere else – in colonised countries, we all speak in an imported language that we struggled to make our own. »Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself.«3 These languages are the surplus of colonialism: the exceeding matter of voice once removed. Code extracted from culture, violently instrumentalised into treatises, catalogues, books, cabinets of so-called curiosities or wonders. Wunderkammer, Wundkammer. Archives oozing with ›the exotic‹, ripe for all forms of translation, rendered transparent enough through other invented grammars for classification. Packed as a body of knowledge, a corpus, and sold for the production of (temporary) truths, deployed as a congealment of identity, domesticated sonic matter, against those who will always and forever remain ungovernable, untamable.

1 Bundesministerium der Justiz und für Verbraucherschutz, Subsection 3, Paragraph 30, translation by M.L.Peterson. 2 Flüchtlingsrat Niedersachsen, translation by M.L.Peterson. 3 Anzaldúa 1987, 59.

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Anzaldúa reminds me that it is impossible to tame a wild tongue.4 I would like to invite Fred Moten into the room. The resistance of the object lies in the articulation of an »appositional encounter«, an improvised moment after speech and before word, preceding – and perhaps even prescribing – rhythm and melody.5 These recordings are improvisations of words, »troubled by the trace of the performance [told] and the performance of which that performance told.«6 It is there, in the cut, that we find what he names the »lyricism of the surplus«,7 in that twisted eroticism of mouth encountering headset encountering software, in the moments preceding and containing all possibilities of speech. Moten reminds me that listening is the anticipation of history, improvised in backwards motion.

Interlude: in backwards motion From 1915 to 1918, the appointed Preussische Phonographische Kommission, led by linguist Wilhelm Dögen, travelled across prisoner camps, recording, transcribing and cataloguing accents and dialects from prisoners of war, many of them colonial soldiers fighting a colonisers’ war. Capture – as imprisonment and as recording – is what creates the conditions for this archive of songs, religious texts, parables and speech, transcribed, numbered, listed, catalogued, stored in shellac discs and now also living as digital files in the Lautarchiv of the Humboldt University in Berlin. One hundred years later, the Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge (BAMF) deploys so-called »accent recognition software«, through which undocumented asylum seekers can supposedly be identified. Frantz Fanon reminds me of the role of the police station, and technologies such as barbed wire in bridging two worlds that shall only meet under specific conditions – the colonial difference, the ontological gap, the open wound.8 The endless spaces of waiting, architectural or otherwise, indeed mess up our ability to tell time, but ›capture‹ here, conceptually and bureaucratically, transcends it completely. Many of the current refugee camps, reception centres or field offices of the BAMF were former prisoner of war camps where Dögen and his team forced prisoners to have their voices recorded.9 4 Ibid., 53. 5 Moten 2003, 22. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., 26. 8 Fanon [1963] 2005, 37. 9 Cf. Vieira de Oliveira 2019a.

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A speech corpus is a collection of voice recordings constrained to a specific language, dialect, accent and/ or thematic nature. It is a congealment of a given language at a given time, a given space and a given geopolitical and historical condition. A speech corpus is a product of the material conditions of its genesis, done so by the devices of academia, research, corporate interests and technological development. A speech corpus is not a testimony of or for the identity of a people. A speech corpus is, like any other form of archive, ever ambiguous and incomplete. A speech corpus, for the Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, is a database. A speech corpus, for the Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, is a tool for deportation. I call it a weapon. The technique used by the software digitally slices incoming sound – from the archive as well as from the speaker being tested – into twenty-five millisecond snippets, then processes it through a bank of twenty-six filters, of which the first thirteen will be selected and submitted through a series of mathematical transformations in the frequency domain.10 These transformations will result in a series of vectors, which allegedly, mathematically represent the shape of the speaker’s vocal cords. This technique assumes that people who speak with the same accent will have vocal cords in a similar shape. We travel back and forth one hundred years in the history of war, imprisonment, the history of science, taxonomy, the history of language, rhythm, prosody, articulation, we travel back and forth in time, thousands of times, each time a new recording is input into the system. Yet we never listen to these recordings. The software, much like the migration industry, needs them to be rendered inaudible.

IV. A gathering, a (re-)mixing I would like to invite Saidiya Hartman into the room. She reminds me that to reconstruct the past, that is, to re-historicise it, is a way to describe and make sense of violences happening in the present, and the many ways in which death takes place: »in the name of freedom, security, civilization, God and the good«.11 We are faced with the limits of history, and the tools we have to reconstruct it. So how do we craft narratives »with and against the archive«?12

10 Cf. Fokoué / Ma 2014. 11 Hartman 2008, 13. 12 Ibid., 12.

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What is at stake when these archives become the site of and for intervention? Biometric technology dehumanises, and that dehumanisation is a desirable design feature of any system. In the case of sonic biometrics, the slicing, stretching and reproduction of voices in the frequency domain prevents the possibility of listening, and as such seeks to render them meaningless. What happens when these same archives are the subject of artistic and scholarly inquiry? There needs to be accountability in reproducing these sounds in any domain, any space. Every listening moment is a curating moment, for with every listening moment spaces are re-configured and re-sounded for new possibilities of listening to emerge. If these interventions are concerned with the apparent »inherent« characteristics of sound, they cannot do anything but to reenact the history of racism and its deep entanglement with the history of science. Hartman reminds me that some bodies are not allowed to exist in the first person. I would like to invite Édouard Glissant into the room. He reminds me of the need to attune to the timbral matter of sound in the spaces that exceed speech. Those are the gaps where the archive allows for a re-entering: »the continuous stream of language that makes speech into one impenetrable block of sound. If it is pitch that confers meaning on a word, rushed and fused sounds shape the meaning of speech.«13 Listening configures the body. Listening is also a negotiation between the embodied realities of the listener and the materiality of sound. What emerges from such a negotiation is an affective encounter, never abstracted but embedded in the spaces between and within bodies; »sound is living and lived phenomena.« Listening subjects – the listener and their others – are only constituted as such in »a given space, a given context, a given set of political, economic, cultural, social, material, spiritual, and ontological conditions.«14 Glissant reminds me to attune our ears to the »apparently meaningless texture of extreme noise«15 in the tensions and pulls that are present in the grit, in the scream, in that which our ears are trained to ignore, and thusly train our machinic ears to ignore too.

So how to dismantle the conceptual and institutional ethos of the archive? Who speaks with, through and within the archive? And how are we listening? Anzaldúa, Moten, Fanon, Hartman and Glissant: they all remind me that historicising is an act of undoing, an undoing of previous acts of de-historicisation and dehumanisation.16 13 Glissant 1992, 124. 14 Vieira de Oliveira 2020, 76. 15 Glissant 1992, 124. 16 Cf. Vieira de Oliveira 2019b.

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For this act to take place, the space of writing, of the word, is perhaps not enough; but neither is the space of listening just by itself. What is needed are novel forms of relational listenings, forms that reach toward without a desire to reveal. What is needed is an understanding that perhaps the archive is not meant to be understood, deciphered or translated, but rather dubbed, distorted, dragged, delayed, remixed and made other, listened to attentively, slowly, carefully, as a generous act of inquiry. Towards a world that is, indeed, manifestly unfounded; a world that refuses to be defined by that which it erases.

Sources Anzaldúa, Gloria E. (1987): Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, San Fransisco. Bundesministerium der Justiz und für Verbraucherschutz, n.d. Asylgesetz, in: Gesetze im Internet, http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/asylvfg_1992/BJNR111260992.html, 21.03.20. Fanon, Frantz (2005) [1963]: The Wretched of the Earth, New York. Fokoué, Ernest / Ma, Zichen (2014): A Comparison of Classifiers in Performing Speaker Accent Recognition Using MFCCs, in Open Journal of Statistics 04, 258, https:// doi.org/10.4236/ojs.2014.44025, 07.09.2020. Flüchtlingsrat Niedersachsen, n.d. Ablehnung als »offensichtlich unbegründet«, https:// www.nds-fluerat.org/leitfaden/4-der-bescheid-des-bundesamtes/4-7-ablehnungals-offensichtlich-unbegruendet/, 21.03.20. Glissant, Édouard, (1992): Caribbean Discourse, Charlottesville. Hartman, Saidiya, (2008): Venus in Two Acts, in Small Axe 12 (2), 1–14, Durham, N.C., https://doi.org/10.1215/-12-2-1, 07.09.2020. Moten, Fred (2003): In The Break: The Aesthetics Of The Black Radical Tradition, Minneapolis. Vieira de Oliveira, Pedro J.S. (2020): Dealing with Disaster: Notes towards a decolonizing, aesthetico-relational sound art, in: Groth, Susanne Krogh / Schulze, Holger (eds.), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Sound Art. New York, 71-88. Vieira de Oliveira, Pedro J. S. (2019a): A Series of Gaps Rather Than a Presence, in: Deutschlandfunk Kultur, https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/hoerstueck-ueberautomatische-akzenterkennung-a-series-of.3685.de.html?dram:article_ id=442750, 12.09.2020. Vieira de Oliveira, Pedro J. S. (2019b): The Timbral Matter of Voice and the Right to Opacity, in: Akademie Schloss Solitude, Schlosspost, https://schloss-post.com/thetimbral-matter-of-voice-and-the-right-to-opacity/, 12.09.2020.

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From a Postmodernist Sound to a Decolonized Dancefloor From Glitch to Deconstructed Club Music Nadine Schildhauer

Over the last decade, a lot has been written in music journalism about »genre-bending«, »hybrid« and »redefined« club music, often brought together under the umbrella term of deconstructed club music. The style is only now beginning to be analyzed in an academic context. Because of its name, it is often associated with postmodernist theorists. A closer examination shows that this association is misleading. A genre which does relate and refer to postmodernist theorists is glitch, which derives from an art practice that deconstructs the object fetish surrounding vinyl records and CDs. The focus is on the deconstruction of the tool and its authority and sound, embedded in a time when less than one percent of the world’s population had access to the internet. Glitch artists like Oval were not concerned with their sound’s signifying quality but instead focused on a materialist critique of the music-making tools in and of themselves in the form of a melodious sound design. In contrast, deconstructed club music uses the tool – in this case a CDJ – as a means to an end: to facilitate the cut-up technique, which is often what is being referred to as the »deconstructed« element of the music, that is meant to disrupt the listener. I will argue that the hybrid sound understood as deconstructed club music, with all its cultural references and signifiers, goes beyond deconstructivism and attempts to sonically decolonize the dancefloor.



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Crack, error, failure: What’s all this glitch? In its glitches and drones we could hear the digital world breaking down and re-assembling itself. Mark Richardson1

Glitch as a music genre emerged in the mid-1990s, reaching its peak in the early to mid-2000s.2 Glitch – according to Kim Cascone’s famous text »The Aesthetics of Failure« – is a »post-digital«3 genre and movement, and »an umbrella term for alternative, largely dance-based electronic music (including house, techno, electro, drum’n’bass, ambient)«.4 Cascone calls it »failure«,5 Caleb Kelly »cracked media«,6 and Stephen Gard »Error«,7 while Caleb Stuart names it »damaged sounds«.8 Alongside glitch it is also known as »microwave, DSP, sinecore, and microscopic music«.9 Glitch artists and bands include Carsten Nicolai (alias Alva Noto), Kim Cascone, and Oval with other important glitch artists’ work appearing on the compilations Clicks and Cuts 1 & 2.10 A notable label for glitch was the Frankfurt-based Mille Plateaux, run by Achim Szepanski between 1994 and 2004. Named after A Thousand Plateaus, the label applied Gilles Deleuze’s and Felix Guattari’s philosophical theory to their process of sound production and linked it to the concept of the rhizome.11 The historical foundation of glitch has been widely discussed (by Cascone, Demers, Kelly, Diefenbach, and Reynolds, for example); of key importance is Kelly’s Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction, which covers the concept and history of cracked media and how it is connected to the glitch movement and genre. According to Kelly and Cascone, by the beginning of the 1990s electronic dance music had become predictable, due to the increasingly standard use of a sampler/sequencer software, i.e. Cubase and others.12 Synthesizers and other sound machines have always had an existing set-up and structure; musicians can either operate and create music within the existing structure, or they can manipulate or

1 Cf. Richardson 2015. 2 Kelly 2009, 7. 3 Cascone 2000, 12. Cascone explains that he refers to glitch as »post-digital«, »because the revolutionary period of the digital information age has surely passed«. 4 Ibid., 15. 5 Ibid., 13. 6 Ibid., 13. 7 Gard 2004, 1. 8 Stuart 2003, 47. 9 Cascone 2000, 12. 10 Various Artists 2000. 11 Krapp 2011, 143. 12 Kelly 2009, 271; Cascone 2000, 15.

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intentionally, incorrectly use the machine. In »A Mille Plateaux Manifesto«, Szepanski states that »program standards CAN AND MUST be transformed«.13, 14

Theorizing Pop Music When interviewed by Spex magazine, Szepanski noted that »the music of the whole Occident builds a dispositif, creates a model that filters noise, electrical interference and flows of sound, and so controls what is audible and inaudible«.15 This dispositif16 leads to an economy which produces machines that serve the logic of what is considered audible music. The purpose of programs such as Cubase is to create what is considered perfect music: it can connect beats and make sounds fit perfectly together.17 Companies which sell music programs react to the demands of the composer.18 Glitch artists understand their approach to using those machines and creating sounds as a countermovement. Mille Plateaux emphasizes »the label’s output as the musical praxis to Deleuzian theory, fleshing out concepts such as the rhizome«.19 This theory can be applied in various ways; in one example, Szepanski argues that the instruments can be given the same status, thereby dismantling the hierarchization of instruments and demanding that they don’t lose their heterogeneity. Described as »rhizomatic« by Szepanski, the resulting music often sounds chaotic, with examples found in Krautrock, free jazz, or noise music.20 13 Szepanski 2001, 225. 14 While I am not criticizing the glitch scene, which would require a separate analysis, I still want to acknowledge that research has been done in this field: Oval’s »narrow focus on technology« and tools as well as their perception as heavily theory focused evoked by their interviews (Bosma 2016, 106) led to a mystified image by fans and music journalists. Their approach was directed towards the »de-mystification« (Cf. Richardson 2015) of any kind of machine-based music and turned into the opposite. Moreover, Hannah Bosmo criticized the glitch scene for mainly including labels, artists, and academics who were cis-male. Considering their »anti-authorial ethics [and] aesthetics or praxis« (Bosma 2016, 107) it seems inconsistent to pay no attention to gender politics and show that despite their political awareness they also had political blind spots. 15 Diefenbach 2017, 16-17. 16 Michel Foucault links the term »dispositif« to his concept of the apparatus, a »heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions« (Foucault 1980, 194), which exercise and structure power. 17 Kelly 2009, 271. 18 Diefenbach 2017, 22. 19 Reynolds 2017, 39. 20 Ibid.

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So, how can we describe the dispositifs of Western music? What are its signifiers and points of references? Dispositifs are structured by a disciplinary canon, historical discourse, and the music industry, a structure enforced by universities, state-funded institutions, and industry players. It is therefore relevant to consider the differences in the conception of the various dispositifs between the mid 90s to early 2000s (the era of glitch) – and now. The questions posed by this, relating to the history of the perception of music, however, are beyond the scope of this essay. I will give an example on how some avant-garde music practices are perceived as »estranging and ›unmusical‹« and their »deliberate push towards estrangement« and »towards treating the listener as if [they] were an object«, which is for Howard Slater »best exampled by noise music«.21 Slater considers noise not only as a genre, but rather as a style and musical practice. In the anthology Noise & Capitalism, Slater describes dispositifs as a practice of »seamless communication« and »the production of subjectivity« with »recognizable significations and symbolizations«22 – in other words, he means pop songs with recognizable structures and lyrics, such as a song with an intro, a bridge, and repeated refrains about relatable love themes. In contrast to what is expected from conventional definitions of music – characterized by »harmony, chord progression etc«, for Slater, noise refuses to communicate, rejects meaning, and neglects the importance of language.23 He goes on to say that »with noise there is a disruption of such repressing representations and an embracing of what Guattari has called ›a-signification‹«.24 Similarly, the Oval member Markus Popp questions the purpose of a MIDI set-up that allows various pieces of electronic gear to interact like a band. In an interview with Simon Reynolds, Popp says that music software depends on »traditional music syntax and semantics« and continues by saying that »MIDI is basically a music-metaphor in itself, one that’s so deplorably dated. It’s so constraining in every way, you have to go beyond these protocols«.25 In this view, electronic music gear is perceived as being a product of a structural system producing and enforcing that, which is considered audible to a majority of people. Oval is most known for their CD skips, although they were not the first artists to use the technique. Oval reached a broader audience with a relatively new approach. The reason they became so popular in the mid 90s was because they used the crack, clicks, and chatters of damaged CDs to form melodic tracks by sticking to the structure of pop, seamlessly integrating what would usually be considered a distortion but which was here seen as a valid and audible sound. Their music was simply accessible, but at

21 Slater 2009, 157. 22 Ibid., 158. 23 Ibid., 158-159. 24 Ibid., 158. 25 Reynolds 2017, 43.

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the same time interesting and new. Their experimentation with damaged CDs was later picked up by Aphex Twin, Autechre, Björk, and many others.

Oval’s Systemisch and Yasunao Tone’s »Wounded CDs« Oval’s output follows in the footsteps of musicians such as Christian Marclay, who placed items on vinyl records to make the needle skip, and Yasunao Tone, who placed tape on CDs to disturb the error-correction system and create glitches. Tone was part of the Japanese Fluxus movement, whose sole purpose in the 1980s was to create »a performance of a composition which is indeterminate of its performance«, meaning that each performance was unique.26 Marclay was one of first artists in the 1970s outside of hip-hop to incorporate turntables into his artistic practice27 and used music »as a form of readymade«.28 Tone and Marclay were interested in the art practice of subverting the object fetishization and cultural position of vinyls and CDs: the idea that they must be kept spotless so the music plays flawlessly. Both of them work with the sounds of damaged records caused by »breaking« the data.29 Marclay, Oval, and Tone all expand the function of the turntable and CD player by going beyond their standardized purposes. It is the defects or errors in both systems that are employed, those sounds that are not meant to be part of the listening experience. […] The seamless, highfidelity listening experience (the very reason the CD player and its digital audio mediation were developed) is broken by these composers who seek to find new sounds and expanded practices in the systems’ cracks and breaks.30 Whereas Oval created a planned environment and reproduced clicks and cracks during live sets to form pop tracks, Marclay and Tone weren’t interested in repetition or reproduction, instead focusing on damaged sounds that emerged by chance.31 By making pinholes on bits of tape and putting it on the CD’s readable surface, Tone created a change in the »pitch, timbre, rhythm, and speed of the original piece«.32

26 Cage 1973, 39. 27 Demers 2010, 55. 28 Ferguson 2003, 40. 29 Kelly 2009, 215; Stuart 2003, 48; Cascone 2000, 12. 30 Kelly 2009, 215-216. 31 Ibid., 218. 32 Ibid., 236.

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Tone, much like [David] Ranada, had devised a way to override the error-correction system, and the mechanism designed to allow seamless playback was forced to glitch. The idea of a playback technology that could play pure clean audio was displaced by Tone’s noisy, glitching CDs. The silence of digital audio was made to produce noise; the purity of the new medium was damaged, and this technical imperfection was exploited as a performance tool […].33 While Oval used a sound art practice similar to Tone’s described above, Tone’s »Wounded CDs« relied heavily on live performance, improvisation, and the uncertain results of how the CD player would process the damaged sections. Tone’s performances were meant to be disturbing.34 Oval’s album Systemisch can be placed at the intersection of pop and sound art. Released by Mille Plateux in 1994, the album manages to bridge a usually annoying skip sound with ambient-like electronica, and consists of carefully selected CD glitches from existing albums, which the band members had borrowed from the library. By using existent music and adding neither vocals nor instruments, Oval complicates the sound’s initial meaning. They put the technical aspect of the music in the forefront: everything is based on samples and the CDs are being fast-forwarded, looped, and pitched using a regular consumer CD player.35 Interestingly, through its unintended use, the CD player itself becomes the instrument here, what Cascone means when he says, »The medium is no longer the message in glitch music: the tool has become the message«.36 Popp explains that Oval’s approach is to »overcome the manufacturer’s distinction between ›features‹ and ›bugs‹«, with their interest being to mess with »standardization«.37 Popp stresses that »the important point was that the CD player has no distinction if it’s an error or a proper part of the recording, it’s just doing calculations, algorithms«.38 Oval doesn’t ironize the music – they ironize the machines. They remove the authority of the machine and take apart and rearrange the music being used – quite literally deconstructing it. Kelly describes their method as a »reflexive awareness«.39 Oval doesn’t understand their releases as being music with a »capital M«, but rather as »sound-design«40 or »file management«.41 Their approach looks at music on a meta level. Systemisch poses questions like: Who is the author/subject? What is music? Who writes the codes? How can we go beyond the binary coding of 0 and 1? Oval’s primary 33 Ibid., 239. 34 Ibid., 265. 35 Ibid., 56. 36 Cascone 2000, 17. 37 Reynolds 2017, 43-44. 38 Ibid. 39 Kelly 2009, 267. 40 Reynolds 2017, 43. 41 Cf. Iglis 2002.

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interest lies in »sound recording, storage, and reproduction«; they are interested in a »critique of the entire system of recorded music«.42 When looking at glitch, a genre which became big in the mid-1990s, it is important to consider the critical mood at the time. It is interesting to note that researchers such as Kim Cascone described glitch as being »post digital« despite mass digitization having yet to occur: technology and algorithms for data, processing massive amounts of data (big data), had not been developed. According to the World Bank, less than 1% of the world population used the internet in 1995; by 2017, that number was up almost 50%.43 Mark Richardson describes the spirit of the time accurately: »Large and ominous shifts were ahead, but we weren’t quite sure when or how they would occur; culture was oriented to the future«.44

Deconstructed Club Music [Working title] [W]e were all young, depressed, self-destructive, couldn‘t see an end to it, we were in debt from school or we had dreams that we couldn‘t afford to bring to life. You couldn‘t actually visualize your future, and what does that sound like? Pure fucking chaos. Venus X45

There are seemingly no direct links between glitch and deconstructed club music (henceforth DCM). So why compare them? For a start, while both styles are separate in origin, there are in fact similarities: both styles work with an archive and a palette of sounds that are being recontextualized. Glitch focuses on the tool, the sound of the tool, and sonically critiques the tool, while in DCM (when being created live by DJs) the tools – here CDJs – are seen »as musical instruments«,46 but instead of connecting two songs through »beat-matching, they’d use the cue buttons to loop and layer phrases manually«.47 Once again, it’s the unintended use of the machine that creates a new sound. DCM is not a definable musical genre – there is DCM as a DJing style, and then there is DCM as a genre-like style of music produced by a community of DJs, cultural activists, labels, and collectives. Nor is it tied to a specific place, as gqom is to Durban or grime to London. The sound is a composite of several, loosely defined genres, and a typical 42 Cf. Richardson 2015. 43 Cf. World Bank, n.d. 44 Cf. Richardson 2015. 45 Cf. Pearl 2017. 46 Cf. Lhooq 2017. 47 Cf. Pearl 2017.

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DCM set may combine Jersey club, ballroom, reggaeton, tribal, future bass, jungle, and dubstep. In threads on the social news aggregator Reddit, fans describe Jam City’s debut album Classical Curves (2012) as a starting point,48 although this is debatable considering that the seemingly distinctive characteristics detected by the music press come largely from Jersey club, which first emerged in the late 1990s. A common trope surrounding DCM is the reluctance among producers, DJs, and fans to define and name the sound, which is accompanied by the fear of stereotyping it. As of today, the notion of »deconstructed club music« is still considered a working title. Despite the fact that DCM as a DJing style began in 2008, the term has only appeared in an academic text once,49 and only a few individual releases have been reviewed academically. Among those referenced are Chino Amobi’s Airport Music for Black Folk (2016), in Marie Thompson’s essay about »Whiteness and the Ontological Turn«,50 and Elysia Crampton’s Demon City (2016) in David Bell’s work about utopias.51 Since there are only a few papers on DCM, I will now give a quick overview of the sound’s starting point, influential club nights, and key protagonists. Some of the early driving forces of the scene were Kingdom, Total Freedom, and Venus X. Kingdom put out releases on the London based Night Slugs52 label before launching the American spin-off label Fade To Mind in Los Angeles in 2011.53 From 2008 until 2010, Total Freedom hosted a club night called Wildness in cooperation with Fade To Mind in Los Angeles. In New York, DJ Venus X launched the queer party series GHE20G0TH1K in 2009, while Shayne Oliver, fashion label co-founder of Hood by Air, played a key role in shaping the fashion codes of the scene. A common theme in DCM is the importance of collectives and the lack of a clear geographical hub. In Mexico City, Mexican Jihad, Fausto Bahía, Lao, and Paul Marmota co-founded the collective N.A.A.F.I. and organized their first parties in 2010, later founding a label and also beginning a monthly radio show on NTS. In 2012, under the direction of Dan DeNorch and Michael Ladner, the club night and label Janus kicked off in Berlin. In Stockholm, the crew around Dinamarca and Ghazal founded the label Staycore in 2014, which also had a radio show on the now-defunct radio station Berlin Community Radio. Also important for the scene are the Bala Club collective 48 Cf. Sheepsaysmoo 2018. 49 Frankel 2019, 16. 50 Thompson 2017, 277. 51 Bell 2017, 118. 52 London DJs and producers Bok Bok and L-Vis 1990, from the Night Slugs collective, which started in 2008 as a club night and shortly after became a label, probably wouldn’t consider themselves DCM, but can be considered as affiliates because of their mix of musical influences, which range from »Baltimore breaks, Detroit ghetto-tech [to] the footwork/ghetto house hybrids« (Warren, redbullmusicacademy.com). They also regularly host a radio show on the community radio station Rinse FM. 53 Cf. Reynaldo 2019.

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founded in London in 2016, which comprises a party night, label and NTS radio show; the label Halcyon Veil founded by Rabit in 2015; and the collectives NON Worldwide and Club Chai.

The sound of hope and apocalypse What is today known as deconstructed club music has existed for roughly over a decade and is embedded in a technological sphere fundamentally different from 1995: if we return to the questions posed by glitch, such as »Who is the author?«, »What is music?«, and »Who writes the codes?«, it is clear that these questions derive from a different time. Computer-generated music, standardization, and the homogenization of sound no longer belong to a future which we have to be warned about: music no longer needs to be written by humans (see machine learning), and large platforms and labels profit from it and adapt their content to our habits. Welcome to platform capitalism, a term coined by Nick Srnicek.54 Music platforms such as Spotify are on the rise and not just as services which provide customers with music: Spotify is one of the driving forces behind machine-learned and AI music55 and already generates their own music, which they place in their biggest and most listened-to playlists.56 Nowadays, data is the biggest currency, and platforms such as Spotify, Amazon, and Netflix are not only adapting to our habits, but actively reinforcing and shaping our taste in music, books, and TV shows, all the while nonchalantly redefining ownership by rebranding it as »the sharing economy, the on-demand economy, the next industrial revolution«. Only a few years ago, people – predominantly white and wealthy – owned different media: word processors, mp3s or CDs and DVDs. Today everything is streamed, rented, and »shared« (with whom?); if these companies go bankrupt, our music libraries and playlists will vanish along with them. As previously mentioned before, the origins of DCM can be traced back to around 2008/2009 – the time of the financial crisis and the subsequent Great Recession of 2007-2009, which was followed by restrictive austerity politics and rising student debts. When interviewed, GHE20G0TH1K co-founder Venus X said of this period that »No one had jobs. [I]magine DJing from 2009 to 201257 it sounded like the apocalypse«.58 Not to mention that many of the key DCM artists came of age or were born after 9/11, which 54 Cf. Srnicek 2016. 55 »[F]or the album Hello World which was made by the Spotify-assembled collective called SKYGGE. [Francois] Pachet claims it is the ›first AI composed album of music‹, already using this sacredness of the new, and the magic of a ›judgement-free aesthetic‹ to help sell the work« (Frankel 2019, 90). 56 Ibid. 57 Srnicek 2016, 56. 58 Cf. Pearl 2017.

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had a formative effect on their lives – a world shaped by mass surveillance, heavily controlled borders, and a hostile environment for racialized people. DCM started as a DJing technique: beats and vocals are cut into pieces, sampled live, and then rearranged, but instead of smoothly connecting all of the parts, the songs that emerge are in staccato style, sounding like patches in the process of being sewn together. Sometimes, several tracks of different genres are being simultaneously layered, looped, and pitched, with effects thrown in on top. On top of this, the idea of beats and tempo needing to match is no longer a given.59 One of DCM’s distinctive features is the sudden cuts and breaks that are sometimes caused by pushing the cue button of the CDJ several times in quick succession. In an interview, Janus alumna Lotic states that her style is »a complete rejection of smoothness«.60 The specific splicing technique only plays tracks for a short time, strings samples together, raises, and lowers the BPM and is characterized by velocity and inventiveness – exemplified by Total Freedom and other DJs who play at GHE20G0TH1K. It’s supposed to be disruptive. CDJs provide immediate access to large sound archives stored on USB drives and allow the user to take tracks apart on the spot and mash them up with other vocal samples and beats: the specific sound emerging from this technique can also be found in tracks produced outside the club, which are also usually heavily fractured. These tracks are dissected, superimposed, and mixed with the artist’s own audio recordings and field recordings, and aren’t limited to one genre. Here, deconstruction is meant both literally and is in reference to poststructuralist analytical methods by »using the terminology of 20th century French philosophers«.61 However, the association with the theory is also misleading.

Decolonizing the dance floor Despite the DJ technique and recording practice being connected (at least in spirit) to Jacques Derrida’s method of deconstruction,62 the style is also closely linked to Postcolonial Studies: Chino Amobi and Angel Ho refer to »an experience of colonial and personal trauma«63 and to artists »using sound as their primary media, to articulate the visible and invisible structures that create binaries in society, and in turn distribute power« and »creating sound opposing contemporary canons«.64 On his album Paradiso (2016), Amobi depicts his soundscape as a fictional territory, and remarks that 59 Cf. Lhooq 2017. 60 Ibid. 61 Cf. Harper 2015. 62 Cf. Derrida 1967. 63 Cf. Lozano 2016. 64 Cf. NON 2020.

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»it’s interesting to think of sound itself as a territory. That way, you can appoint yourself as your own governing body creatively«.65 Writers such as Reynolds66 and Frankel67 perceive the militant sound aesthetic as being »dystopian« and »hostile«, but Amobi primarily sees hope in his music: »We’re protecting one another and looking out for one another, so it’s this symbol of unity. It’s like we’re our own troops. We are our own people, and we are together«.68 [J]ust because my music and art sounds / looks dark doesn’t mean its dystopic. And if it is »dark« I see a great amount of hope and new use in darkness. The idea that light or harmonious music/aesthetics is connected to optimism as an end doesn’t go far enough.69 In Paradiso, Amobi creates a fictional space that he wishes to exist in the material world, a characteristic often found in postcolonial theory. According to Johannes Ismaiel-Wendt, this reflects the »opposite tendency to topophilia«, closely linked to the experience of the diaspora and »motion-oriented« vocabulary70 reflected in notions such as the »third space«,71 treks,72 or routes,73 which exists in contrast to the idea of a static or pure culture. Pop culture cannot be understood as something »pure«, existing outside of Europe or America, but rather as embodying the aesthetic traditions and legacies of colonialism. Amobi’s territory is a non-place74 shaped by hope, fear, and violence. Marie Thompson compares Chino Amobi’s previous album Airport Music for Black Folk with Lawrence English’s Airport Symphony (2007),75 albeit noting that English’s aesthetic is primarily ambient in comparison to Chino Amobi’s more disruptive sound. Despite the stylistic difference, both works are characterized by »noise and electronic hums«.76 She describes Amobis’s tracks as »eerie«, »unnerving«, and »acerbic«, aim65 Cf. Electronic Beats 2016. 66 Cf. Reynolds 2017. 67 Frankel 2019, 129. 68 Chino Amobi 2016. 69 Chino Amobi 2019. 70 Ismaiel-Wendt 2011, 38. 71 Bhabha / Rutherford 1990, 211. 72 »Trek«, the exhausting journey, stands for the dynamics and central paradigms of postcolonialism: slavery, diaspora, and migration (translated by N. Schildhauer; Ismaiel-Wendt 2011, 53) 73 Gilroy 1993, 80. 74 »Non-place« is a concept that was developed by Marc Augé (Augé 1992, 122). »Nonplace« is also the name of the label founded by Bernd Friedman in 2000. 75 Thompson 2017, 275-276. 76 Ibid., 277.

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ing to present »alternative racialized experiences of airports«.77 In an OkayAfrica interview, Amobi says: »I was thinking a lot about what a black experience is in that space, how it feels to walk through the airport with confidence and not feel like Western culture has superiority over you«.78 In contrast, English’s Airport Symphony is a compilation of tracks from eighteen artists based on field recordings – a tribute to Brian Eno. Thompson describes the tracks as depersonalized soundscapes. She links English’s ambient aesthetic to a white aurality,79 which considers noise as something abstract, and »holds apart sound art’s abstract materiality from lived sociality«,80 an observation which applies in a very similar way to Oval’s output. Relatedly, Oval’s Systemisch, despite their criticism of standardization, has a pleasing ambient aesthetic. On Paradiso, Amobi makes reference to Elysia Crampton’s second album Demon City with both albums featuring different versions of the track »Children Of Hell«. Crampton centers her album around the brutal murder of Aymara indigenous revolutionary leader Bartolina Sisa by the Spanish colonial powers in Bolivia, creating a tangible narrative and bringing mythical history back to the present. Crampton, who identifies as Ayamara and trans, recounts in an interview that »the logic of colonialism pervades everything in the society of settlers - not just one world, but the whole universe, the past and the future«.81 One sound element she uses throughout the album is an undefined laughter, seemingly bodiless, with no given reason or cause for its presence, which has the effect of being both confusing and ambiguous as well as haunting. The mixture and distortion of folkloric genres such as Huayño, cumbia, and crunk, a drum-machineheavy, hip-hop genre, creates a flustered feeling in the listener, and it’s precisely the cut-up juxtaposition of samples, vocals, poems, and field recordings that run counter to the homogeneity of music industry sounds. Crampton’s Demon City doesn’t portray a consistent or pure picture of the Aymara, but instead develops a sonic aesthetic that attempts to make hybridity82 audible – recalling the »treks«83 through reference to her heritage and colonial history, like the track »After Woman (for Bartolina Sisa)« 77 Ibid. 78 Cf. Remi 2016. 79 Thompson 2017, 273. 80 Ibid., 278. 81 Schildhauer 2017, 91. 82 I understand the term »hybridity« as a reaction to Edwards Said‘s criticism of the Western understanding of a generic, exoticizing Orientalism that imagines the Orient geographically and culturally (Said 1978, 73). I refer to Homi K. Bhabha’s use of the term, since Elysia Crampton operates far from the world music and major label industry: »hybridity to me is the ›third space‹ which enables other positions to emerge. This third space displaces the histories that constitute it, and sets up new structures of authority, new political initiatives, which are inadequately understood through received wisdom. The process of cultural hybridity gives rise to something different, something new and unrecognizable, a new area of negotiation of meaning and representation« (Bhabha 1990, 211). 83 Cf. Ismaiel-Wendt 2011.

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while blending and layering them with immaterial voices, distorted sounds, electronic clatters, sound effects, and loops. In this mode, deconstructed club music references the aesthetic experience of diaspora and movement instead of tracing it back to one geographical determination. Through this, I understand Paradiso and Demon City as attempts to decolonize the notion of electronic dance music.

Conclusion: Hybridity in sound In this article, I have sought to establish the sociopolitical context in which glitch and deconstructed club music exist and show that – despite their common reference to postmodernism84 – both contexts constitute a different set of questions: there is a sonic shift from »Who is author?« and »What is music?« to »What does the apocalypse sound like« or »What does sonic hybridity mean?«. I have argued that deconstructed club music creates a fictional space shaped by experiences, desires, and hopes, which are made audible through DJ sets and tracks using real world sounds such as sirens, laughter, vocals, poems, and radio voices that work as signifiers and create meaning. This leads to an apparent contradiction: what Amobi describes as hopeful doesn’t necessarily appear enjoyable to the listener. As the name of his label (NON) reveals, Demon City and Paradiso may refer to geographies but are in fact non-places. I have sought to emphasize that hybridity – here an important reference towards postcolonialism – isn’t just defined by a mix of genres: instead, it’s the aforementioned signifiers that make the music ambiguous and layered. Genres only allude to potential geographies, but don’t appear as actual places, instead forming (for now) in the imaginary space.

Sources Appiah, Kwame Anthony (1991): Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?, in: Critical Inquiry, 17(2), 336-357. Augé, Marc (1992): Non-Places: An Introduction to Anthropology of Supermodernity, London. Bell, David M. (2017): Rethinking Utopia: Place, Power, Affect. London. Bhabha, Homi K. / Rutherford, Jonathan (1990): The Third Space. Interview with Homi Bhabha, in: Rutherford, Jonathan (ed.), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. London, 207-221.

84 The »post« in postmodernism and postcolonial isn’t same, which has been widely discussed, including by Kwame Anthony Appiah (Cf. Appiah 1991).

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Bosma, Hannah (2016): Gender and Technological Failures in Glitch Music, in: Contemporary Music Review, 35(1),102-114. Cage, John (1973): Indeterminacy, in: Silence, London. Cascone, Kim (2000): The Aesthetics of Failure: ›Post-Digital‹ Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music, in: Computer Music Journal, 24(4), 12-18. Chino Amobi (2016): Airport Music for Black Folk, NON, US. Chino Amobi (2017): Paradiso, NON, US. Chino Amobi (2019): https://www.instagram.com/chinoamobi/, 11.10.2019. Deleuze, Gilles / Guattari, Félix (1993): A Thousand Plateaus. Minneapolis. Derrida, Jacques (1967): Of Grammatology, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (trans.), London. Demers, Joanna (2010): Listening through the Noise: The Aesthetics of Experimental Electronic Music, Oxford. Diefenbach, Katja (2017): Making Sound Streams Quake, in: Anz, Philipp / Walder, Patrick (eds.) Technodeleuze and Mille Plateaux. Achim Szepanski’s Interviews (19941996), Reggio Emilia, 15-30. Electronic Beats (2016): Chino Amobi On The Development Of His Music-Making Process, https://www.electronicbeats.net/native-instruments-komplete-sketcheschino-amobi/, 29.09.2019. Elysia Crampton (2016): Elysia Crampton Presents: Demon City, Break World Records, US. Ferguson, Russell (2003): The variety of din, in: Ferguson, Russell (ed.) Christian Marclay, Los Angeles,19-51. Foucault, Michel (1980): Truth and Power, in: Gordon, Colin (ed.) Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977, Sussex, 109-133. Frankel, Emile (2019): Hearing the Cloud: Can music help reimagine the future?, Ropley. Gard, Stephen (2004): Nasty noises: »Error« as a compositional element in contemporary electroacoustic music, Sydney. Gilroy, Paul (1993): The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, London. Harper, Adam (2015): The Voices Disrupting White Supremacy Through Sound, https://www.thefader.com/2015/08/11/non-records-dog-food-music-groupscraaatch, 10.08.2018. Igles, Sam (2002): Markus Popp: Music As Software, www.soundonsound.com/people/ oval-markus-popp, 03.10.2019. Ismaiel-Wendt, Johannes (2011): tracks’n’treks. Populäre Musik und Postkoloniale Analyse, Münster. Jam City (2012): Classical Curves, Night Slugs, UK. Kelly, Caleb (2009): Cracked media: the sound of malfunction, Cambridge, MA. Krapp, Peter (2011): Noise Channels: Glitch and Error in Digital Culture. Minneapolis. Lhooq, Michelle (2017): The art of disruption: How CDJs are changing DJing, https:// www.residentadvisor.net/features/3087, 08.07.2018. Lozano, Kevin (2016): An Introduction to NON Worldwide, https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2016/05/non-worldwide-introduction, 04.10.2019.

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NON (2020): https://www.facebook.com/pg/NONWORLDWIDE/about/, 21.09.2020. Oval (1994): Systemisch, Mille Plateaux, Germany. Pearl, Max (2017): The art of DJing: Venus X, https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/2966, 26.09.2019. Remi (2016): Non Interview: Chino Amobi, http://www.okayafrica.com/audio/non-chino-amobi-interview, 26.08.2020. Reynaldo, Shawn (2019): Kingdom Launches Fade to Mind Label, Preps New EP from Nguzunguzu, https://xlr8r.com/news/kingdom-launches-fade-to-mind-label-prepsnew-ep-from-nguzunguzu/, 30.01.2019. Reynolds, Simon (2017): Low End Theory, in: Anz, Philipp / Walder, Patrick (eds.), Technodeleuze and Mille Plateaux. Achim Szepanski’s Interviews (1994-1996), Reggio Emilia, 31-46. Richardson, Mark (2015): A Glitch in Time: How Oval’s 1995 Ambient Masterpiece Predicted Our Digital Present, https://pitchfork.com/features/resonantfrequency/9730-a-glitch-in-time-how-ovals-1995-ambient-masterpiece-predicted-our-digital-present/, 27.09.2019. Schildhauer, Nadine (2017): ELYSIA CRAMPTON: Sprache ist Gewalt, Tanz unzerstörbar, in: Spex, 373, 91-93. Sheepsaysmoo (2018): What does ›deconstructed club/deconstructed electronic music‹ mean to you?, https://www.reddit.com/r/cxd/comments/aaxdbg/what_does_deconstructed_clubdeconstructed/, 26.01.2019. Slater, Howard (2009): Prisoners of the Earth Come Out! Notes Towards ›War at the Membrane‹, in: Iles, Anthony /Iles, Mattin (eds.) Noise and Capitalism, Gipuzkoako Foru Aldundia-Arteleku, 150-165. Said, Edward (1978): Orientalism. Western Conceptions of the Orient, London. Srnicek, Nick (2016): Platform Capitalism, Cambridge, UK. Stuart, Caleb (2003): Damaged Sound: Glitching and Skipping Compact Discs in the Audio of Yasunao Tone, Nicolas Collins and Oval, in: Leonardo Music Journal, 13, 47-52. Szepanski, Achim (2001): A Mille Plateaux manifesto, in: Organised Sound, 6, 225-228. Thompson, Marie (2017): Whiteness and the Ontological Turn in Sound Studies, in: Parallax, 23/3, 266-282. Various Artists (2000): Clicks and Cuts, Mille Plateaux, Germany. Warren, Emma (2013) https://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures/bok-bok, 04.11.2019. The World Bank (n.d.): Individuals using the Internet (% of population), https://data. worldbank.org/indicator/it.net.user.zs?end=2018&start=1995, 26.10.2019.

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Meandering Feuilleton Essay about two concerts that I did not see Or: About how I read Hall, Mignolo and Walsh instead because I want to write an article for an anthology on Decolonizing Arts and think about whether it is possible to decolonialize Popular Music Johannes Salim Ismaiel-Wendt

And to begin with the end of the title and the findings of this essay: The following contribution does not aim only to convey my uneasiness with an overly direct application of the concept »decolonizing« in the context of Popular Music. I would like to try – even while drifting from here to there and staging various half-baked positions throughout the text – to express my uncertainties in the application of the concept itself, precisely in my miming an attitude of being a »know-it-all«. In the end, it is essentially the way of verbalization itself which is questioned in the context of Popular Music. The text at hand is an overtly privileged appeal for dialogue with people, who ask themselves from within academia if and how arts are to be decolonized. From this point on in the article, I will write »decolonialize« instead of »decolonize«; not because I reject the latter term somehow, but rather in order to linguistically emphasize more that to »decolonialize« is to be understood as a practice of resistance in relationship to a coloniality, which is virtually pervasive in everything, and which should be thought more comprehensively, as than only to relate it to, for instance, territorial colonies. The question of whether the academic disciplines, which have to do with Popular Music, could be decolonialized is not dealt with in depth in this article. There is hardly anything so clearly Eurocentric as Musicology, Ethnomusicology, or Music Institutions with their canonical libraries, repertoires and exclusionary admission rituals. Even in the younger Popular Music Studies, there would not have to be just a little bit of decluttering: the standard idea of »ear training« itself would have to be de-centered. In the following, I will not concentrate on the academic disciplines but rather on Popular Music with its sound and rhythm textures, song lyrics, videos, concerts, and more. My uneasiness with the term »decolonialize« in the context of Popular Music in Europe, as I am writing about it from within Europe, stems from the fact that my academic contribution is clearly too far away from the needs of the people who are massively and daily, life-threateningly affected from colonial conditions. Despite all the uncertainties and open-ended meanings, which will be stressed on a number of occasions, it is not my intention to portray an arbitrary game. The positions taken should at least be considered seriously and strategically within academic contexts.



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You go ahead. I’ll stay a while longer. There are still so many »postcolonial remains«1 here Or: There never has been a precolonial world of Popular Music Popular Music probably cannot be decolonialized. Of course, Popular Music is somewhat epistemic – it is even somewhat violently epistemic because all of the twisted logic that goes along with colonialism is at its roots: racism, exoticism, sexism, imperialism, capitalism… The excess categorizing and segregating in colonialism could hardly find footing anywhere as unchallenged than on record shelves and in digital sound libraries. Popular Music probably can’t be decolonialized because if it were to be equal, democratic, and consistently organized, then it would be deadly boring or it would simply no longer exist. Popular Music probably can’t be decolonialized due to a much less fatal and cynical reason: »Pop Music is Postcolonial Music«.2 Postcolonial theory and its projects are just as constitutive for Popular Music as the logic of colonial rule. For one thing, there never has been a precolonial world of Popular Music populated by pop-indigenous peoples or pop-orginarios.3 For another, the idea of trying to understand Popular Music is something that has first found form while being played today • after the Second World War, in the so-called Cold War, • after the fights for decolonization and declarations of independence in the regions that were designated by Europeans as colonies • in relation to other movements (women’s movements, civil rights movements, student-led movements) • in relation to postmodern and also (Eurocentrically informed) postcolonial theories. The previously stated can be understood as an attempt to define »Popular Music«, which begins neither in the middle of the 19th century nor, for instance, in connection with mass music printing or phonographic reproduction, which would also be a possible and certainly meaningfully selected initial phase for an attempt at definition. Instead, this article will work with the following definition of Popular Music. The Popular Music I am writing about here is not simply one permeated by coloniality, to which decolonialization has been and can be a reaction. It had to wait, among other things, for movements of decolonization in the so-called European colonies as well as Postcolonialism in order to emerge.4 This postcolonial knowledgeableness makes up a not inconsiderable part of Popular Music – sometimes even intentionally.5 1 Young 2012, 19–42. 2 Ismaiel-Wendt 2011, 35. 3 The reference of a non-existing, precolonial world of music does not mean that any ethnic categories are fixed in the context of decoloniality. See Mignolo / Walsh 2018, 81. 4 Mignolo 2012, 78. 5 See Ismaiel-Wendt 2011, 71–183 for musical examples for concepts developing in parallel in Postcolonial Studies and Popular Music.

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If Popular Music was not already always postcolonially informed music, then it has long since certainly been incorporated into Postcolonial and other so-called Studies. When current journals for Electronic Dance Music feature interviews with DJs, where they speak about booking policies, questions regarding gender diversity, Critical Whiteness Studies and processes of canonization,6 then the effects of the (academic) discourse and its insights have arrived within and beyond its field. Today, DJing stands just as much for disc-jockeying as it does for »discourse jockeying«. As for the voracious Popular Music, it should not be even remotely difficult to imbibe the Hype of Decolonization just like it incorporated Postcolonial or Queer Studies. Engagement should not be ridiculed. This description makes it clear that a dynamic can easily be set in motion (or has already been set in motion) in order to test the imperative of decolonialization on the next level of colonialist language gentrification.7 »Decolonialize!«, then, is just a question of style. Popular Music is constantly asking questions: whom does what belong, where does what have its origins, who is (re)presenting what with which (gendered) (self-)identification? But this searching for origins and identifiers of who is speaking is performative and deliberately composed – which is not to imply that it is not necessarily smart or thought-through. It is nothing that can be understood as simple, binary, or sub-complex within the pattern of colonialization / decolonialization. Popular Music does not only arise from the struggle itself: from colonialization, efforts of decolonialization and attempts at recolonialization (borrowing from Do Mar Castro Varela and Dhawan, this is how I have often tried to define it),8 but above all from the simulation of these loops and the artificial / artistic reflections on them. Even if something sounds similar to »Celtic music«, it is not ›Celtic music‹ but rather a game of semiotics and an imagined culture, which more likely finds its origins in The Lord of the Rings adaptations than in 6 Groove Redaktion 2017, https://groove.de/2017/12/22/roundtable-technik-und-politik-machtkampf -auf-dem-dancefloor-sexismus-rassismus-homophobie/5/, 12.03.2019. 7 In his book, Erwachsenensprache. Über ihr Verschwinden aus Politik und Kultur (engl: Adult Language. About its Disappearance from Politics and Culture 2017, 37-39) the bestseller writer and philosopher Robert Pfaller writes in a simplified and hardly contextualized manner about the »Colonization through Decolonialization«. He criticizes that the demand to decolonize or that the general idea of a professor for Postcolonial Studies is being exported from the USA (Pfaller does not distinguish between »the USA« and »Black activists«, for instance) into other countries that never had colonies (ibid.). With it, he shows in a populistic, conspiracy-theoretical way that he neither understands the concept of Decolonialization in regard to its epistemic dimensions nor does he demonstrate his ability to differentiate between a Professor of Postcolonial Studies and Decolonialization itself. Additionally, it is obviously not clear to him that the states, which were never named to be official colonial powers, like, for instance, Switzerland, have profited and still profit economically and allegedly indirectly – especially from European Colonialism. Thus, such states are most certainly colonially entangled. [English translations by M.L.Peterson]. 8 Do Mar Castro Varela / Dhawan cited in Ismaiel-Wendt 2011, 33.

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the cultural heritage that preceded European music notation by several hundred years. In my opinion, these identitarian, semiotic games are not simply the same as direct world affairs. The music – I will call it the »sonic event« for a second – regardless of whether it is played in a concert hall or with headphones in the living room, always plays in its own parallel utopian space – elaborately and / or amateurishly produced. Even world affairs and realpolitik take place in imagined, created worlds, and Popular Music plays as if it were in an intentionally parallel, composed world of a second order. There may be techno tribes, bass culture, and hip hop nations, but Popular Music has yet to create a nation-state – not even Jamaica. Nevertheless: Popular Music is relevant in the world and in society. On the one hand, it has the effect of realpolitik just as the invention of parliament does, to name an example. On the other hand, something is constantly being functionalized using it and its contexts. As I tried to explain above, it is also there specifically for this purpose. Its aim is a serious game of origin stories, representations, identifications. Popular Music knows all the evils of the world and plays them off in the most various forms, often creating something even worse – think of the excessive glorification of drug use, rapes, and other forms of violence in some song lyrics. Of course, musicians must bear the responsibility for that which they stage in these other second-order spaces.9 Or, less morally but more stereotypically formulated: dancehall musicians, who poeticize homophobic lyrics, and rappers, who rhyme their rape-fantasies, must put up with the fact that some people in this world consider, devaluate, and disregard their contributions to be absolutely unproductive. Just as they do with more subtle, heteronormative, and nationalistically-hardened productions of many singer-songwriters. Popular Music writes its own history, which is why so many paradoxical situations are possible, as is sometimes the case of cultural appropriation without actual owners. The forms of the happenings in Popular Music also provide very important ideas about the experience of being-in-the-world, which can very well – one way or another – become quite effective. But in the context of Popular Music and particularly in the context of academic discourse about it, I prefer to stick to the concept of »postcolonial« instead of using the term »decolonial«. I do this to avoid a misplaced, trivializing, inflationary use of the term »decolonial«. It is to be understood in the radical, agitative sense, as Rolando Vásquez defines it:

9 It should be emphasized that with the background of (e.g.) the debate on a documentary film about the allegations of abuse against Michael Jackson the contentions discussed above are not about the potential circumstances of crimes like Forensic Services but about listening to sonic tracks. The example of ›Michael Jackson‹ shows very clearly that one should differentiate between Jackson’s acts and the music itself and that it is possible to sing about a different reality than the one actually lives in. Cf. Rehfeld 2019, http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/kino/michael-jackson-doku-leaving-neverlandso-ist-der-hbo-film-a-1256269.html, 12.03.2019.

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The Decolonial, as an ethical project, is committed to a historical justice that does not come from fantasy, but seeks to destroy colonialism. It is not a utopia and does not want to create a new world from a fantasy.10 The game of Popular Music does not have to meet such a direct obligation in the resistance to coloniality. What I would like to illustrate is that in Popular Music, »sliding signifier[s]«,11 actually known from this side of the world, can migrate into another parallel cosmos, and once there, as it were, produce trial discourses. The direct and non-isolated return of these metaphor-like discourses short circuit easily in temporal, tangible environments. The discourses originated in Popular Music might show themselves using familiar signs; however, they are not always directly readable, and often they are completely illegible. When we try to decode using a 1:1 ratio, we may ask ourselves irrational questions: What do the German rapper Haftbefehl and Rammstein singer Till Lindemann want to tell us with their last collaboration?12 Is it not a disastrous production between the Riefenstahl-Right and »Kanaka« gangsta rap or is it meant to be ironic? Is the incredibly rich, often scantily-clothed Beyoncé a feminist or a terrorist?13 And can these types of questions even be answered with ›yes‹ or ›no‹? The shift of Popular Music into extraterrestrial space, as I describe above, does not mean that real and important, self-effective and therefore perhaps also decolonializing experiences cannot transpire there. Popular Music offers exactly those spaces, »which go beyond our reference system of comprehensibility and our modern colonial sense of the real«.14 Among my favorite academic topics is the plea for advocacy in and for the entering of Afrofuturistic utopias15 and queer temporalities.16 In this article, however, I would like to approach the understanding of worlds in Popular Music from a completely different angle. In this text, I am interested in exploring a critique of a short-circuited and direct import of discourses of Popular Music-worlds in »the world as it is«, which is as pubescent as it is paternalistic, pedagogical or ›fascist‹17 – a critique, which I would like to exemplify by means of a trivial, personal anecdote.

10 Vázquez 2018, 33; 34. 11 Hall 2017, 108. 12 Lindemann Official 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YEZiDtnbdA, 12.03.2019. 13 bell hooks labels a performance from Beyoncé as antifeminist and terroristic in a panel discussion. FORA.tv 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS6LNpeJPbw, 12.03.2019. 14 Vázquez 2018, 36. 15 Cf. Eshun 1998. See also: Ismaiel-Wendt 2011, 169–181. 16 Cf. Halberstam 2005. 17 Regarding the definition of the term »Fascism« see Diederichsen 1993, 268: »Jemand der ohne primäre Not Identität verlangt, stiftet oder verehrt ist ein Faschist.« [engl: »Someone, who demands, endows, or worships identity without primary need, is a fascist.«, (M.L.Peterson.)]

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Is that ›D‹ in ›De-colonize!‹ the same one in »Dangerous Women« or ›D’Angelo‹? Or: I was not at the Ariana Grande concert in May 2017, but I will still write about it In the all too shallow comparison of discourses surrounding Popular Music-worlds with actual life-worlds, the sound of the music itself does not usually play a role. This explains why attacks like the massacre at the Bataclan in Paris on November 13, 2015 or the bombing at the Manchester concert on May 22, 2017 do not really have anything to do with the music of the Eagles of Death Metal performing at Bataclan or with Ariana Grande; the attacks are always misplaced. Even the people that attentively followed the news reports on the Paris attacks probably do not know that the Eagles of Death Metal and opener White Miles performed in Bataclan that evening, or how these bands sound and what they sing (and the attackers probably were not interested either). Neither this kind of Popular Music nor Ariana Grande’s18 quite different one is really set in the (real) world which the fundamentalists19 attacked because they wanted to take a stance against the dominance of the West. Please note, the last halfsentence reads like an idea of decolonialization; but it is not, as one domination of the West shall always be exchanged for another. Oh yeah Don’t need permission Made my decision to test my limits ‘Cause it’s my business God as my witness Start what I finished Don’t need no hold up Taking control of this kind of moment I’m locked and loaded Completely focused my mind is open All that you got, skin to skin, oh my God Don’t ya stop, boy 20 Are the lines above not a perfect example for the polysemy of pop song lyrics? The first stanza of the song »Dangerous Woman«, sung by Ariana Grande, could also be the text that the assassin chanted to himself in preparation for the bombing at the 18 Let it be stressed once more that I am consciously, and due to analytical strategies, differentiating between Ariana Grande and the musical happenings or, more specifically, Popular Music, although the persona ›Ariana Grande‹ is of course part of Popular Music. 19 Regarding use of term »Fundamentalism« see Hall 2017, 157. 20 Ariana Grande 2016.

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Ariana Grande concert in Manchester of May 2017: »God as my witness […] locked and loaded […] don’t ya stop boy«. There have been fundamentalist-motivated suicide attacks at the most disparate mega events – like at international sport championships and concerts – but there is no thematic reason for similar attacks at airports or subway stations; it was probably just about confronting large gatherings of people and creating fear in doing so. My juxtaposition of the »Dangerous Woman« song lyrics and the thoughts of a fundamentalistmotivated assassin will hopefully not be read by anyone as an obscure conspiracy theory. It is meant to illustrate what has been known about Popular Music for a long time. A song that (supposedly) wants to accentuate the sexual autonomy of a woman can easily become the inner mantra of someone, who is indignant, and who arms himself precisely because of said emancipatory idea before the backdrop of a patriarchally trimmed, religious notion. I quote a quote: Already Diederichsen had suspected the same at the beginning of the 1990s: »Explicitness«, i.e. the text, which aims to break taboo, […] was ambiguous and could therefore »in reality supply a left-wing protest with as much energy as a right-wing pogrom.«21 The lyrics from the song »Dangerous Woman« could have easily been the lyrics from the song »Skin« from Rag’n’Bone Man (2017)22 or from »Darkness and Light« from John Legend (2016)23 – the vocabulary is always very similar. Legend’s piece resembles »Dangerous Woman« in the sound and rhythmic texture in nearly every way. The lyrics could also have been the same from »How does it feel« by D’Angelo (2000).24 Some of you may not like reading this classification of D’Angelo among the aforementioned musicians because the singer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist is not regarded as just any other externally cast and produced pop starlet, but rather as a very selfaware performer, with his albums Voodoo (2000) and Black Messiah (2014).25 He has consciously situated himself in the history of Black music both stylistically as well as through his performance and collaborations. Even with a different reading of his positioning, D’Angelo’s lines from »How does it feel« can certainly be compared with those from Ariana Grande’s »Dangerous Woman«: »Girl it’s only you / Have it your way / … you can decide /[…] I wish you’d open up cause I want to take the walls down.«26

21 Schulze 2017, 262 [engl. translation by M.L.Peterson]. 22 Rag’n’Bone Man 2017. 23 John Legend 2016. 24 D’Angelo 2000. 25 Ibid.; D’Angelo and The Vanguard 2014. 26 D’Angelo 2000.

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Lana Del Rey: »hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have – but I have it«,27 Or: Flailing with Criticism »Dangerous Woman« could also have been a song written for Alicia Keys, Carrie Underwood, or Rihanna. At least that is what Ross Golan, one of the song’s writers, is said to have revealed – that the song was also offered to these three singers.28 That it irritated me that the song could have just as well been sung by Rhianna as by Carrie Underwood, the »white« singer with the naïve post-racial, hand-in-hand fantasies in »Love Wins« and »The Champion«, whose videos unceremoniously integrated Muhammad Ali and Martin Luther King Jr. into the same U.S.-American competition and success story as any »white« athlete,29 is probably an exact reference to my short-circuited, too identitarian reading of Popular Music and its shallow order of »white« and Black. It’s true that any of the above listed singers could have sung »Dangerous Woman«. And yes, even people, who are introduced as men, could have without a doubt successfully performed this song; for which there is at least two explanations. The first one understands that Popular Music wins by playing within its own discursive space, full of highly dynamic, sliding signifiers in all possible and impossible combinations. »Dangerous Woman« can be performed by women as well as men, just as the first stanza of the song could have been a message from Ariana Grande as well as from the suicide bomber at the Ariana Grande concert. Because the piece is a polysemous sauce – which is not to denigrate it per se, but rather to understand it as a quality of Popular Music. The second explanation introduces something, heard in the Popular Music-world, to this side of the world in a fixed and identitarian way, and equates the performers of the song with the first-person narrator in the lyrics. Even if this explanation is not necessarily correct or true, I can certainly substantiate it further: »Dangerous Woman« originates from male fantasies and could therefore be performed by men as well as women. The song is composed and produced by Johan Carlsson, Ross Golan, and Max Martin. The chart successes of these men have become innumerable with songs written and produced for Justin Bieber, P!nk, Nicki Minaj, Demi Lovato, Jason Derulo, Snoop Dogg, Leyla K, NSYNC, Take That, Katy Perry, Britney Spears, and many, many more. »Dangerous Woman« means as much or as little ›female empowerment‹

27 Lana Del Rey 2019: »hope is a dangerous thing for a woman to have – but I have it« [italics by JIW]. In February 2019 both Lana Del Rey and Ariana Grande released comparably long song titles (Ariana Grande: »Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I’m Bored« 2019). This mini-trend is the explanation, among others, for my titling. 28 Cf. Stern 2017, http://popcrush.com/ariana-grande-dangerous-woman-songwriter-carrie-underwood /, 12.03.2019. 29 Carrie Underwood (2018), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Py8OWAMkns, 12.03.2019; Carrie Underwood (2018a), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgknAaKNaMM, 12.03.2019.

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as P!nk’s song »So What«,30 which was also produced from a collaboration with Max Martin. These songs could also be heard as ones in which women emancipate themselves from men. However, the accompanying videos could just as well be seen as adcampaigns for lingerie or for bars, home-improvement stores, or music stores to attract female customers, in which binary categories and heteronormative notions of woman and man become even more confirmed. Not just the video, in which Ariana Grande is revealed by various frames of her body in lace lingerie, is a classic production of the »male gaze«, as Laura Mulvey has criticized: the woman is portrayed as an object for the active gaze of the man.31 The music similarly fulfills a formula-driven Sonic Pleasure narrative in a voyeuristic setting.32 During the intro, the singer uses the microphone to come very close to us. She sings softly and yet her voice is able to be heard, loud and clear, so that the work of her vocal chords can be perceived in their slight hoarseness. The intro functions in the tradition of the staging of a torch singer: with all its invocation of secretly granting insight or being breathed upon, as well as the cliché contradictions between wickedness and girlish, Christian innocence. The last impression described occurs to me not only because of the conjurations of »oh my god« but also because of the supporting gospel organ chords. In the video’s intro, Ariana Grande’s voice is literally ›unveiled‹ in an auditory manner bit by bit.33 After about 33 seconds, the filter opens itself up for a wide frequency spectrum, synching with the song’s line »My mind is open!« Later in the song, there is a religious, moral insecurity with one’s own sexual agency and autonomy, expressed in the lyrics. Jaclyn Griffith writes in her BA thesis, From Dreamers to Dangerous Women: A Shift from Abstinence and Hypersexuality to Sexuality with Shame in Pop Music Listened to by Tween Girls in 2006 and 2016, providing a very interesting overview about »Dangerous Woman« by Ariana Grande: She warns that ›somethin‹ ›bout‹ this ›boy‹ makes her ›feel like a dangerous woman‹ and ›want to do things that [she] shouldn’t.‹ Grande is condemning her own sexuality by referring to her desire as something she ›shouldn’t‹ feel because it makes her ›dangerous.‹ The guilt surrounding Grande’s sexuality is also evident in the lyrics of her song ›Side To Side.‹ She says, ›Tonight I’m making 30 P!NK (2009), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJfFZqTlWrQ, 12.03.2019. 31 Mulvey 1999, 843. 32 Müller 2018, 138. That »Dangerous Woman« is perceived as a voyeuristic game not only by myself, is shown during a live performance of Ariana Grande - Dangerous Woman (Live From The 2016 Radio Disney Music Awards), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iosDmTIG6o, 12.03.2019. At ca. 2’20” the background video-projection is showing an eye in close-up, looking through the camera lens. The game consists of the fact that it is not clear whether the eye is observing, for example, Ariana Grande or if the eye itself is being observed. It is made-up to be perceived as a conventional, female eye, perhaps even as Grande’s eye. 33 For more about Voyeurismus, relating to Mulvey 1999; Müller 2018, 80.

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deals with the devil and I know it’s gonna get me in trouble,‹ demonizing the sexual choices that seem pleasurable and positive in the song’s music video, and worrying that her sexual desires will lead to punishment.34 When Ariana Grande sings »Somethin’ ‘bout you, makes me wanna do things that I shouldn’t«, these are the sounds of transgressed, yet accepted moral notions. Continuing from this criticism of the apparent sexual autonomy of women and ›Female Empowerment‹ in the song, I would like to flail in another direction – to move from feminist criticism to postcolonial criticism, so to speak. The following short passage should boldly attempt to portray a typically colonialism-critical accusation. This will most likely show itself later to be an important, but also shaky position. Only two weeks after the bombing at the Ariana Granda concert, the benefit concert One Love Manchester took place. This is the second concert, which I did not attend and about which I will be writing a couple of lines of thought nonetheless. On June 4, 2017, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, Pharrell Williams, and Robbie Williams, among others, stood on stage with Ariana Grande. If I were to read this event only on a discursive level – in terms of the motivations verbalized and how a One Love Manchester was and will be discussed in conclusion – I am made aware of a typical colonialistic pattern. In the considerable number of publicized reactions from Ariana Grande, the participating musicians, and fans, as well as comments on the internet,35 a self-loving entity – a colorful, limitless »We« – is being constructed and celebrated in a justified rejection of the attack. At first glance, the »freedom«, »tolerance«, »autonomy in one’s sexual orientation«, and »individuality« of this »One Love« may appear to lie beyond a radicalized or ethnicized system of difference, but this Oneness cannot not do without the re-staging and construction of an outside: an Otherness. This differently conceived outside – even if it is seen in the suicide bomber (who is dead), as well as within his network and sympathizers – remains ultimately just as vague as those, who are counted among the Oneness. Brothers and so-called supporters of the attacker have been arrested. They bear similar names as my brothers and I do, and are often read to be Arabic.36 The staged Oneness results from a sequentiality that refers to an after-thefact confession of »something with Islam«, about which Robert JC Young wrote long ago: »Westerners tend to read all forms of radical Islam as the same, that is, as fun34 Griffith 2017, http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/honorscollege_theses/153 , 05.06.2019, 39, 40. 35 See, for example, Cf. Gibson 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/ wp/2017/05/30/ariana-grande-announces-one-love-manchester-benefit-with-katy-perry-justinbieber-and-more/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.70ee0e63d280, 12.03.2019). The article, or the announcement for One Love Manchester received comments on the internet website with the following, such as: »But she shows true human qualities. A true American spirit that soars with free mind and human compassion.« 36 Cf. Dearden 2018, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/ariana-grande-manchester-arenaterror-attack-salman-abedi-royal-navy-hashem-abedi-a8470636.html, 12.03.2019.

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damentalism, itself ironically a Western concept.«37 At the other end of the sequence chain is One Love Manchester, and there Young will find confirmation: »Tolerance is typically considered to be both a Western virtue and a Western invention.«38 I do not need these critical trains of thought on and circumambulation of connections around »Dangerous Woman« in order to reach a direct argumentation; but rather in order to visualize, at least for myself, these contradicting or illegible situations. Against the background of scenarios described, it should be made clear how difficult or impossible it can be to locate a point of entry, from which Popular Music is to be decolonialized.

»The Black Hawk War, Or, How To Demolish An Entire Civilization And Still Feel Good About Yourself In The Morning, Or, We Apologize For The Inconvenience But You’re Gonna Have To Leave Now, Or, ›I Have Fought The Big Knives And Will Continue To Fight Them Until They Are Off Our Lands!‹« is the name of an instrumental song by Sufjan Stevens, whose title makes it already quite decolonial.39 The previous critical hissing and hitting from various directions is only partially satisfying for me. My forms of criticism are similar to those that could be found in many other (you guessed it) Western Feuilletons that would not surprise anyone with any extended sense of knowledge. An introduction to the Theories of Postmodernism that were coined in Europe or common readings of Adorno’s or Horkheimer’s chapters on the Cultural Industry would suffice for argumentation. My explanations are in the one direction either fatalistic, arbitrary, or do not account for the fact that the Popular Music-worlds, although independent, exist only via real worlds. The explanations in the other directions must ignore, for example, the various possibilities of the three songwriter-producers’ sexual orientations or gender constructions. Moreover, I have not explained why thousands of girls cheer alongside Ariana Grande that »Dangerous Woman« is emancipatory, when the accompanying video only creates a product that makes women objects of desire for men.40 If I, as a man who acts as though he sees through capitalism, do not reflect on these aspects, then I will have condemned the female fans of an allegedly feminist, left apodictic perspective to being manipulated ›system servers‹ and quasi living Alexa-Amazons. Actually, many of the preceding explanatory approaches have only revealed that, in my seemingly critical thinking, I, too, come up with the usual, fixed categories quite quickly. 37 Young 2012, 29. 38 Young 2012, 35. 39 Sufian Stevens 2015. 40 Ariana Grande 2016a, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WbCfHutDSE, 12.03.2019.

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Is this the moment in which the Brave New Word »Decolonialize!« could serve us well? Maybe, but I do not know if the concept really helps us any further. In Stuart Hall’s posthumously published lectures, The Fateful Triangle: Race Ethnicity Nation,41 it becomes clear once again that the discussion around the question of the ›innocent reference‹ as being something pre-categorical, as it were, is an old one. It has actually already been answered negatively by him, for example, in relation to »race« and by Judith Butler in relation to the »biological sex«. Judith Butler explains that even the assumed non-constructed would also be structured through a signifying practice.42 Otherwise, we would not even be able to identify it as something non-constructed. She continues (and Hall quotes): To »refer« naively or directly to such an extra-discursive object will always require the prior delimitation of the extra-discursive. And insofar as the extra-discursive is delimited, it is formed by the very discourse from which it seeks to free itself.43 If the critical postcolonial perspectives emphasize the colonial condition of everything, and the concept ›decolonialize‹ essentially does the same, I cannot yet perceive the advantage of the one over the other. Furthermore, I find it misleading in terms of Popular Music, as the concept ›decolonialize‹ suggests – linguistically and as a verb – that there is an escape from or a beyond of the colonial condition, or even that an eradicating fight is possible. In conclusion, the central point to which I would like to draw attention – preferably in reference to a song like »Dangerous Woman« – aims itself in yet another direction. With my meandering Feuilleton essay through the back and forth of a song between discursive concepts – despite an allegedly clear criticism – I can only convey in a very limited and not even mediocre way what experience I could have had within Popular Music or at the concerts. With the probably all too indifferent call to »Decolonialize!«, for example, I do not want to knowingly disregard the particular forms of decolonialization, which have always been inherent in Popular Music. Now, I could be confronted with the question: »What is there to un/learn about the musical practice of Ariana Grande with regard to the question of decolonialization?« Of course, I am making a very conscious decision to write along the lines of Ariana Grande’s music, videos, and concerts. Ultimately, I want answers, so that the questions to be discussed regarding Ariana Grande’s persona and music can be just as easily and just as well discussed in terms of any other Popular Music. For Popular Music is always postcolonial music. And I would like to ask in return: how commerce-oriented, dressed, produced, and artificial can a singer be; how much weight, color, cockney, or what sexual orientation should a musician have in order to be perceived as »honestly« 41 Hall 2017, 50. 42 Butler 1993, 11. 43 Butler cited in Hall 2017, 50.

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working on or against the colonially entangled world, as M.I.A. did until perhaps 2017 and as Kae Tempest does currently? I would like to stress, that decolonialization strategies and decolonial knowledge are not only generated outside of Popular Music; for example, (again mainly) in discursive (in the sense of being verbalized) and theoretical or alleged institutional scholarly criticism. Decolonialization strategies and decolonial knowledge are generated inside of Popular Music too. In the course of this essay, I therefore not only problematize the im/possibilities of abolishing colonial conditions, but rather another track is playing parallel to this one: I problematize the question of who actually needs a translator of aesthetic practices, of the arts or, to be more precise, Popular Music, which have always already at least been aware of decolonialization strategies, into (scholarly) text? If it were then possible to decolonialize Popular Music, then academia is certainly not the way out. For one thing, musicologists and Popular Music Studies would have to deal with themselves first and would have much too much to deal with. For another, the question remains to be: from the grounds of which system of knowledge should that take place? Walter Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh formulate in an orderly manner: For example, if you apply to get grants or fellowships to engage in decolonial praxis, be sure that you will not get them. And to disguise it with the name of decolonial studies will be to keep decoloniality hostage of modern epistemology.44 I can well understand the activating dimension in the concept »Decolonize!« – and I do, as well with others in solidarity, to whom I have often and happily connected myself. Popular Music can always still be understood in its own happenings as an activist »political theory project«45 or »situated knowledge«,46 which can be executed in its own way and own spaces where feminist criticism, postcolonial analysis, and decolonializing movements are virulent. In order to be able to think like this, I found Queer and Postcolonial Studies to be very helpful – even in their own partially eurocentricallylimited radicalness. Until now, I cannot recognize any clear differences between Postcolonial Studies and the very academically coined calls to »Decolonialize!« Instead of giving Popular Music up as a hostage to the next concept, I am thinking: Why not first and finally listen again, more intensely, and enter these spaces of Popular Music? Maybe this listening and believing is not always something that happens opposite from marginalized people, whose spaces of living and creating action are brutally taken from them, but rather to listen and to believe that the pluralization of epistemologies could mean to have an enemy in one’s own house of coloniality. If you want to, you can find such

44 Mignolo / Walsh 2018, 106 [sic]. 45 Cf. Hall 2000. [engl. translation by M.L.Peterson]. 46 Haraway 1988, 575.

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»pluriverses«47 – maybe even in the current Critical so-called Studies’ already much too much celebrated cyborg-like voices in the last chorus of »Dangerous Woman«.

Sources Ariana Grande (2016): Dangerous Woman, on: Dangerous Woman, Republic Records, USA. Ariana Grande (2016a): Ariana Grande - Dangerous Woman (Live From The 2016 Radio Disney Music Awards), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iosDmTIG6o, 12.03.2019. Ariana Grande (2016a): Ariana Grande – Dangerous Woman, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=9WbCfHutDSE, 12. 03.2019. Ariana Grande (2019): Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I’m Bored, on: Thank U, Next, Republic Records, USA. Butler, Judith (1993): Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex, New York. Carrie Underwood (2018): Carrie Underwood – Love Wins (Official Music Video), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Py8OWAMkns, 12.03.2019. Carrie Underwood (2018a): Carrie Underwood The Champion (Official Music Video), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgknAaKNaMM, 12.03.2019. D’Angelo (2000): How Does it feel, on: Voodoo, Virgin, USA. D’Angelo and The Vanguard (2014): Black Messiah, RCA, USA. Dearden, Lizzie (2018): Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi was rescued by Royal Navy before he carried out attack, in: Independent, https://www.independent. co.uk/news/uk/crime/ariana-grande-manchester-arena-terror-attack-salman-abedi-royal-navy-hashem-abedi-a8470636.html, 12.03.2019. Diederichsen, Diedrich (1993): Freiheit macht arm. Das Leben nach Rock’n’Roll 199093, Cologne. Eshun, Kodwo (1998): More brilliant than the sun. Adventures in sonic fiction, London. FORA.tv (2014): bell hooks: Beyonce Is A Terrorist, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=FS6LNpeJPbw, 12.03.2019. Griffith, Jaclyn (2017): From Dreamers to Dangerous Women: A Shift from Abstinence and Hypersexuality to Sexuality with Shame in Pop Music Listened to by Tween Girls in 2006 and 2016, in: Honors College Theses, Bd.153, http://digitalcommons. pace.edu/honorscollege_theses/153 , 05.03.2019. Halberstam, J. (2005): In a Queer Time and Place. Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives, New York.

47 Cf. Mignolo 2013 http://waltermignolo.com/on-pluriversality/, 05.03.2019.

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Gibson, Caitlin (2017): Ariana Grande announces »One Love Manchester« benefit with Katy Perry, Justin Bieber and more, in: Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2017/05/30/ariana-grandeannounces-one-love-manchester-benefit-with-katy-perry-justin-bieber-andmore/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.70ee0e63d280, 12.03.2019. Groove Redaktion (2017): Roundtable über Technik und Politik. Machtkampf auf dem Dancefloor, in: groove.de, https://groove.de/2017/12/22/roundtable-technik-undpolitik-machtkampf-auf-dem-dancefloor-sexismus-rassismus-homophobie/5/, 12.03.2019. Hall, Stuart (2000): Cultural studies. Ein politisches Theorieprojekt. Ausgewählte Schriften 3, Hamburg. Hall, Stuart (2017): The Fateful Triangle. Race, Ethnicity, Nation, Cambridge. Haraway, Donna (1988): Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective, in: Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575–599. Ismaiel-Wendt, Johannes (2011): tracks’n’treks. Populäre Musik und postkoloniale Analyse, Münster. John Legend (2016): Darkness and Light, on: Darkness and Light, Columbia, USA. Lana Del Rey (2019): hope is a dangerous thing for a woman to have – but I have it, Polydor, USA. Lindemann Official (2018): Lindemann – Mathematik ft. Haftbefehl (Official Video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YEZiDtnbdA, 12.03.2019. Max Giesinger (2016): 80 Millionen, on: Der Junge, Der Rennt, BMG, Germany. Mignolo, Walter / Walsh, Catherine E. (2018): On decoloniality. Concepts, analytics, and praxis, Durham, NC. Mignolo, Walter (2013): On Pluriversality, http://waltermignolo.com/on-pluriversality/, 05.03.2019. Mignolo, Walter (2012): Die Erfindung Amerikas. Das koloniale Erbe der europäischen Diaspora, in: Charim, Isolde / Borea, Gertraud Auer (eds.), Lebensmodell Diaspora. Über moderne Nomaden, Bielefeld, 75–82. Müller, L. J. (2018): Sound und Sexismus. Geschlecht im Klang populärer Musik. Eine feministisch-musiktheoretische Annäherung, Hamburg. Mulvey, Laura (1999): Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, in: Braudy, Leo / Cohen, Marshall (eds.), Film Theory and Criticism. Introductory Readings, New York, 833–844. Pfaller, Robert (2017): Erwachsenensprache. Über ihr Verschwinden aus Politik und Kultur, Frankfurt am Main. P!NK (2009): P!nk – So What (Official Music Video), https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=FJfFZqTlWrQ, 12.03.2019. Rag’n’Bone Man (2017): Skin, on: Human, Sony Music, USA. Rehfeld, Nina (2019): Missbrauchs-Doku ›Leaving Neverland‹. Wie Michael Jackson Familien bezirzte, zerriss, wegwarf, in: Spiegel Online, http://www.spiegel.de/ kultur/kino/michael-jackson-doku-leaving-neverland-so-ist-der-hbo-film-a1256269.html, 12.03.2019.

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Schulze, Christoph (2017): Etikettenschwindel. Die Autonomen Nationalisten zwischen Pop und Antimoderne. Baden-Baden. Stern, Bradley (2017): »Dangerous Woman« Wasn’t Originally Intended for Ariana Grande, in: Pop Crush, http://popcrush.com/ariana-grande-dangerous-womansongwriter-carrie-underwood/, 12.03.2019. Sufian Stevens (2015): The Black Hawk War, Or, How To Demolish An Entire Civilization And Still Feel Good About Yourself In The Morning, Or, We Apologize For The Inconvenience But You’re Going To Have To Leave Now, Or, »I Have Fought The Big Knives And Will Continue To Fight Them Until They Are Off Our Lands!«, on: Sufjan Stevens Invites You To: Come On Feel The Illinoise, Asthmatic Kitty Records. Vázquez, Rolando (2018): Bhavisha Panchia im Gespräch mit Rolando Vázquez. Zuhören als Kritik, in: Panchia, Bhavisha (ed.), Buried in the Mix, Memmingen, 29–37. Young, Robert JC. (2012): Postcolonial Remains, in: New Literary History, 3(1), 19–42.

Translated from the original German by M. Lane Peterson.

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(Post) Colonial Streaming The Social Reproduction of Listening and Deafness in the Anthropocene Henrique Souza Lima

1. The regime of listening as a critical category In each model of the music industry, there is a discourse prescribing how to listen to music. The definitions of what is to be listened to and which criteria must operate in the listening activity vary according to different historical and geographical contexts. Also historically variable are the institutions that issue such discourses. They may be, for example, religious, political or mercantile institutions. Examples of these historical variations are presented in several instances of the Sound Studies literature, in which readings on modern capitalism feature diagnoses of systematic configurations of habits, values and criteria mediating the listening activity. Concepts such as »modern regime of listening«1 and »audile technique«2 put into question the fact that listening practices are historically, materially and symbolically constituted in relation to different media, rhetorical strategies, aesthetic criteria and moral guidelines. The concept of regime of listening is first elaborated as a critical category for thinking the activity of listening to music. However, as the case study in this article will make clear, this concept is directly related to a more general problem concerning listening as a socially distributed practice. In a book dedicated to analysing the historical emergence of values and habits associated with musical listening, consolidated between the late 18th century and the early 20th century Europe, Peter Szendy describes what he calls the »the modern regime of listening«.3 This analysis evidences the links between moral rules for listening to music and values operating in the fields of economics and law. The modern regime of listening correlates to the historical emergence of the notion of a musical work in European culture. A work has a particular mode of existence, which is characterised by an internal structure, qualified as the intellectual property of an author, and as such, as a legally protected object valued as a cultural commodity. 1 Cf. Szendy 2001. 2 Cf. Sterne 2003. 3 Ibid. 16; 110; 128.



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The intersection between legal, economic and artistic spheres forms the context for the emergence of a corpus of musicological discourse working as a theoretical mediation that legitimises an ideal of musical listening. The modern regime of listening is described by Szendy while borrowing Theodor Adorno’s expression »structural listening«, which is a synthetic and paradigmatic expression of this regime.4 Since a regime of listening is defined by the effective role played by a moral imperative, the »modern regime of structural listening «5 prescribes that the supposedly elevated musical listening activity is the one in which the listener deprives him/herself of the aural sensual pleasure in order to grasp the fundamental structure [Ursatz] of a musical work. In this framework, the ideal listening attitude performed by the listener should not be a distracted and fluctuating one, but a focused and determined one. In turn, by diagnosing this ideal attached to the listening activity, Szendy highlights the fact that what appears to be a neutral aesthetic criterion is actually a socially constructed imperative loaded with moral notions such as »great« and »elevated«, henceforth related to particular music repertoires and contexts.6 Moreover, what appears to be a neutral aesthetic criterion is organically linked to a whole economic field, once listening to a music piece’s structure equals listening to a musical work, and therefore, to a legal and economic entity. The modern regime of structural listening is a model of listening that mirrors the copyright economy. The economy of the modern European music industry produces its own correspondent ideal for listening. Besides textual evidence on this particular regime of listening, we can also find visual and iconic translations of the behaviours that characterise this aural economy. Albert Graefle’s painting, entitled Die Intimen bei Beethoven7 (»Beethoven and his intimate friends«), pictures the composer Ludwig van Beethoven accompanied by four aristocrats, namely Anton Schindler, Sigmund Anton Steiner, Abbé Stadler and Gottfried van Swieten. The latter, Gottfried van Switten, is featured as a key-character in Szendy’s critical analysis on the modern regime of listening, particularly with regard to the configuration of listening habits corresponding to a historical »genesis of musical genius« in the context of the aesthetics of German Romanticism.8 With regard to this 4 Szendy refers to the Introduction to Sociology of Music by Theodor Adorno throughout his argument in Listen: a history of our ears. In the later book titled All Ears: the aesthetics of espionage, Szendy (2017 [2007], 37) takes up this theme, situating the writings of the German conductor and composer Wilhelm Furtwängler as a major reference for Adorno’s concept of »structural listening«: »It appears that in the writings of the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler we can see for the first time the outlines of what would become the dominant model for listening to classical music in the twentieth century: structural listening, to use Adorno’s expression«. 5 Ibid., 110. 6 Ibid., 143. 7 See detailed information in https://da.beethoven.de/sixcms/detail.php?id=&template=opac_bibliothek_en&_opac=bild_en.pl&_dokid=bi:i254, 15.09.2020. 8 Ibid., 141-143.

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key-character, Szendy argues that the social codification of listening practiced in van Swieten’s private concerts were incorporated as a social convention regulating musical listening in concert halls in many different parts of Europe and, by extension, of the world.9 In the painting, the four men listen to Beethoven’s music while physically incarnating the idea of a primarily mental and focused musical listening. This is literally an iconic translation of the »modern regime of structural listening«:10

Figure 10: Albert Graefle. Die Intimen bei Beethoven, 1876.

9 At this point, Peter Szendy (2001, 142-143) quotes Ti DeNora’s Beethoven et la construction du génie to argue that »the emergence of the value of ›greatness‹ in music is indissociable from what DeNora calls the ›new conventions regulating musical listening in concert halls‹. And, in this matter too, Van Swieten was a ›pioneer‹ […] Silence, attention, greatness: all these characteristics – of great music and its great listening – were imported to Vienna at the end of the eighteenth century and consolidated around the figure of Beethoven in the beginning of the nineteenth. Now, this type of listening supposes, as I have said, an attitude of fidelity to the work [Werktreue], as much in the listener as in the interpreter: a loyalty or respect whose conditions seem to have been gathered together very early on in Berlin, before these values arrived in Vienna with Van Swieten«. 10 Ibid., 141-143.

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The image above illustrates the triad that forms the moral imperative diagnosed by Szendy: »Silence, attention, greatness: all these characteristics – of great music and its great listening«.11 All of the characters are figured in poses that illustrate concentration, some with an elusive look, others with closed eyes, and express an attitude of fidelity to the work as a moral value embedded in the listening activity.12 This painting illustrates the »historical necessity by which the notion of the work and a politics of listening that correspond to it are conjointly imposed«.13 Before concluding his comment on the historical emergence of »attention« and »fidelity to the work« as moral values involved in the activity of listening, Peter Szendy leaves an open question: »isn’t there also a share of deafness (perhaps greater than we might think) in the plenitude, even the totality, that structural listening summons?«.14 In other words, does this ideal of »hearing totally«15 leave no margin for deafness? When prescribing the ideal of listening, what does this ideal of listening leave unheard? This question opens the speculative horizon of Szendy’s thought about the immanent deafness that inhabits each regime of listening. This deafness, as we can read in the following books by this author, stems from an understanding of listening as punctuation.16 In other words, an understanding of the listening activity as an operation that inscribes elements of meaning into the sonic material. This punctuation, in turn, implies the listener’s responsibility. Thus, instead of adhering to an understanding of listening as an activity carried out from a moral background disguised as aesthetic criteria, Peter Szendy elaborates on listening as a performance that implies the listener’s responsibility. This responsibility, in turn, has epistemological, political and ontological resonances, that once, when listening, the listener distributes content that remains inside and outside the field of existence. The punctuation made through and inside the listening activity is a kind of ontological punctuation.

2. One or several regimes of listening? Considered as a critical category, the concept of regime of listening put into play a conjunctural standpoint. To what extent can this kind of conjunctural analysis help us understand other cultural contexts, shaping ideal listening habits? Fast forward in time, towards the mid-20th century, we can identify another historical variation on the institutional, scientific and marketing discourses on musical listening. Contrary to the 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., 143. 15 Ibid., 142. 16 Szendy 2007, 2013.

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musicological discourse that built the modern regime of listening through the 19th century, the advertising discourse of the phonographic business propelled an openly hedonistic discourse through the 20th century. Focusing on this particular set of advertising discourse, it should be noted that there is a significant discontinuity between the typical moral injunction that constitutes the modern regime of listening and the moral injunction that constitutes the regime of listening built within the phonographic economy around the mid-20th century. While the modern regime of structural listening prescribes the renunciation of sensory pleasure in favour of intellectual enjoyment, 20th century advertising discourse deliberately targets sensory pleasure while listening to music without having to interpret any supposedly hidden message in the musical content. The construction of a hedonistic ideal of listening can be seen in a wide variety of advertisements, as we can see in the advertisement below, which epitomises this discourse based on the »listening pleasure«. Notice that the »listening pleasure« does not correspond to the intellectual exercise of apprehending the fundamental structure of a musical piece. Instead, it is associated with enjoying a »high fidelity« phonographic reproduction: In addition to expressing this subtle variation in the social appreciation of a value related to the listening activity, the image above also epitomises the unequal way gender was treated in this advertising discourse. The pleasure in question is enjoyed by the white, adult man, while the housewife figure is featured outside the field of the »listening pleasure«. The image sets a gendered contrast while emphasising which gender is the target of this discourse. Through this trope of mid-20th century advertising rhetoric (white, adult male and housewife), the image intensifies the idea of the pleasure involved in listening to music as a pleasure so intense as to make the wife dispensable company, something expendable and out of the pleasure field. To account for this hedonistic turn in the corporate Figure 11: »Listening pleasure for market discourse on musical listening, a suitable you alone«, Philips advertisement author would be a psychoanalyst. Jacques Lacan 1970s. helps us on this point with the thesis he presents in his comparative criticism on the moral content featured in writings by Immanuel Kant and Marquis de Sade.17 Comparing two works loaded with moral philosophy by these two apparently otherwise unrelated authors, Lacan argues that even though the 17 Cf. Lacan 1963.

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moral content is expressly opposed, the same logical principle coexists.18 While Kant’s categorical imperative prescribes the renunciation of all individual pleasure in favour of a common good, Marquis de Sade prescribes to the exact opposite, as he speaks in favour of the renunciation of all collective interest in favour of individual pleasure. Lacan’s analysis states that even though the moral content varies from one author to another, there is one and the same logic at play: the pure form of a moral duty. From Lacan’s standpoint, despite the abyssal difference between the content of their writings, Kant is not so different from de Sade, once they share the same logical principle involving renunciation and fidelity to a particular set of values. Despite the difference in content, both authors operate with a pure logic form of a moral injunction. This perspective helps us to grasp at the same time a fundamental difference and a fundamental similarity between two different regimes of listening in two different historical moments: the so-called modern regime of listening consolidated through the 19th century, and the hedonistic regime of listening consolidated through the 20th century. If the regime of the structural listening overestimates the activity of listening to the fundamental structure of a work to the detriment of the sensory enjoyment it causes, the listening regime consolidated by the music market throughout the 20th century does the exact opposite. The pleasure capitalised by the advertising discourse for selling phonographic records and record players is key for creating emotional bonds with the target audience of pop music within the global and local markets in the mid20th century. The emotional bonds, in turn, are always produced through watchwords urging the purchase of a device, in which the basic (and oftentimes implicit) command is buy this item – be it a radio, a receiver, an amplifier or a record player, items without which there would be no phonographic industry around the mid-20th century.

3. Local variations Besides capitalising and capturing the »listening pleasure«, it should be noted, however, that such discourse varies contextually to suit local audiences. The difference between arguments, slang and figures, mobilised to produce identification with local audiences, allows us to identify another constant that is not of the order of content but of form. Through the different discourses, the rhetorical strategy of linking advertised items with a lifestyle remains as a formal principle. This strategy became so common that some pieces of advertisement began to introduce modes of enunciation that humourously articulate social stereotypes and clichés of enunciation. This kind of discourse is particularly evident in a commercial by the Brazilian company Gradiente,

18 In the text Kant avec Sade (1963), Jacques Lacan is comparing the texts Critique of Practical Reason by Immanuel Kant (1788) and Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795), by Marquis de Sade.

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which targeted the consumer featuring a stereotype of a left-wing, urban consumer, interested in protest songs against capitalism. The text of the poster reads as follows: TO LISTEN TO PROTEST SONGS AGAINST THE CONSUMER COMPANY, NOTHING BETTER THAN A 24 MONTH FINANCED GRADIENT. The best way to combat the system is to be inside it. Start your fight by buying a Gradiente® sound set. Gradiente® amplifiers, receivers, speakers, turntables and cassette deck recorders are produced by a group of extremely lucid capitalists, who know that demand is only great when supply is very good. That’s why they produce sound equipment that delivers the maximum fidelity a contestant can demand (you hear Dylan recorded live as if you were at the concert; Belchior studio recorded as if you were in the studio), and also offer a dealer network with the best payment plans in the Western world. Purchase a 12- or 24-month funded gradient sound set to perfectly hear the bass, midsize or treble complaints from your favorite protest singers. Maybe even you come to the conclusion that the consumer society is not that bad.19 If, on the one hand, the basic mid-20th century advertising performance is to establish a direct link between a particular lifestyle and the listening situation, on the other hand, the saturation of this discourse leads to the production of parodies and other humorous resources, as we saw in the example above. Although building a consistent emotional bond is an efficient mediation to convince a consumer to buy a record player, the use of parody and irony is a more efficient way to convey authenticity when the audience is overwhelmed with a particular kind of rhetoric. One way or another, captured by the seriousness of an audiophile or by the light-hearted humour of a dilettante consumer, the listener will be compelled to buy this item. By the mid-20th century, the advertising discourse in the phonographic industry targeted the selling of record-player devices. In order to do that, it must first construct a whole setting of desire scenarios involving the listening activity. The operational paradigm in play here is the one described by sociologist Maurizio Lazzarato regarding capitalism as a social machine whose main product is subjectivity.20 Fast forward to the late 2010s, we can observe another historical discontinuity regarding the systematic organisation of listening activities. Nowadays, the advertising discourse of the current record industry corporations is not based on the same material conditions of the mid-20th century. It is no longer necessary to convince consumers to buy media players when the majority of the population already walks around daily with a smartphone in their pockets. The smartphone is a widely used media player that is already in the pockets and hands of most of the urban population around the globe, so rather than convincing consumers to purchase a device for reproducing recordings, 19 Gradiente. Translation by author. 20 Cf. Lazzaroto 2014.

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Figure 12: Gradiente Advertisement. IstoÉ, 23.06.1977.

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one must convince the consumer to consume in a particular way. The task of discourse becomes to produce consumption through a constant modulation of desire.

4. The case study: a regime of listening for the online data streaming commerce A significant share of the contemporary global economy is currently based on online data streaming. In this context, the advertising discourse employed by major agents operating in the current phonographic business combines big data and audience profiling as means to produce consumption. A particular advertising campaign by the audio streaming company Spotify set in ten subway stations in São Paulo evidences the fact that, in the context of control societies, the paradigmatic discourse for building a regime of listening is one that understands listeners as »samples, data, markets, or ›banks‹«.21 The São Paulo metropolitan transport network is currently the largest urban rail system in Latin America, consisting of fifteen lines (subway plus trains) and carrying about 5,000,000 passengers a day.22 One of these lines – the Line 4: Yellow – was chosen to host an advertising campaign set as an exhibition featuring a chronology of Brazilian pop music through the 2010s. In December 2019, all stations of this subway line were occupied by a multimedia set of billboards, video animations and physical objects, imitating letters featuring song titles, iconic song excerpts, statistical data and photographs, all assembled with a humourous touch. The Line 4: Yellow currently consists of 10 operating stations, ranging from the Luz station at the east end of the line to the São Paulo – Morumbi station at the west end of the line.23 The campaign located data related to each year of the decade in each one of the ten stations of this line. The campaign named »From Luz to Morumbi: a time travel« transformed station corridors and escalators into rooms of a fragmented gallery, scattered across ten subway stations. At these particular transition points the advertising campaign capitalised pop-culture while targeting passers-by to enter a complex time experience, composed as a simultaneity of present (what is happening now in music), past (nostalgia), and future (the use of user-generated data for public communication).

21 Deleuze 1992, 180. 22 See the map and data relative to São Paulo Metropolitan Transport Network at http://www.metro.sp.gov.br/pdf/mapa-da-rede-metro.pdf and http://urbanrail.net/am/spau/sao-paulo.htm, 15.09.2020. 23 See the map of the subway Line 4-Yellow at http://www.viaquatro.com.br/linha-4-amarela/mapa-dalinha, 15.09.2020.

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This multimedia strategy is a deployment of the »Spotify Wrapped« service in both form and content.24 With regard to form, it engages the audience outside of the app’s environment; with regard to content, the displayed data does not concern individuals but groups, a whole multitude of listeners located in a particular geographical setting within the global context. This advertising campaign symptomatically expresses a paradigmatic situation of how the music industry operates in the age of media consumption based on online data streaming. The use of big data statistics and the over rationalisation of audience profiling, including data specifying location and site-associated behaviours, are symptomatic of a new material and intellectual context configuring listening practices on a massive scale. Through the use of statistical data as a rhetorical device, instead of propelling costumers to buy an object, the goal of this discourse is to produce a particular way of consuming music while telling costumers information about cultural and collective listening habits. The ubiquitous slogan featured in the billboards is structured as »the track x has been heard x times since year x«, as you can see in the following picture: We must observe the physical placement of the advertisement as well. The campaign is located in transitional spaces (platforms, corridors and escalators) where they are easily visible for most of the subway users. The campaign capitalises on this particular transitional moment in the daily life of a large number of individuals, who are, for the most part, using their smartphones for a wide range of professional (checking emails, texting) and personal uses (playing video games, watching audiovisual content, listening to podcasts and music). Therefore, most subway users are streaming data in these transitional spaces. A significant share of mobile internet data commerce is consumed in spaces like these, so these platforms, corridors, escalators and train cars are marketing battlefields for streaming entertainment companies. In these battlefields, the goal is to produce the optimal consumption for a given company. To produce consumption is the symbolic efficacy behind these slogans, which are loaded with audience statistical data.25 Considered from an organological standpoint, we must highlight the fact that the listeners targeted by this advertising campaign are ones using headphones as a significant mediation. The headphoned listener subject experiments a particular acoustic sphere where money from the »culture economy« circulates. In turn, the stream of audio going through the headphones masks a plethora of local sounds. These masked sounds are the local sounds of humans and machines inhabiting the underground, walking, working, buying speaking and moving at high speed. These soundscape of humans feeding the transport economy on underground platforms, corridors and escalators constitute a particular situation of dispute for aural attention, in which a whole acoustic landscape 24 See https://www.spotify.com/us/wrapped/, 15.09.2020. 25 For an anthropological appreciation of the concept of symbolic efficacy, see cf. Lévi-Strauss 1963.

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Figure 13: »›Balada‹ was heard more than 67 million times since 2011«. Spotify advertising campaign »Da Luz ao Morumbi: uma viagem no tempo«, São Paulo-Brazil, December 2019.

is masked by the sounds of the current phonographic industry streaming through the mobile internet data economy.26 These underground sounds – or more precisely these anthropocene sounds – are at the deaf spot of this headphoned consumer.

26 The critical approach on listening understood as a human practice performed in a social environment, characterised by conflicts of interest is made by Peter Szendy (2001) in terms of »Polomology of listening«. Szendy discusses a polemology of listening as a means for stating that our private thoughts as listeners are dependent on an environment of social conflicts (31). His thesis is that »a form of polemology always haunts our listenings« (33). Szendy (Ibid., 110-117) uses this approach to analyse the development of the claque as a systematic organisation of listening practices in 19th-century Parisian theatres and concert halls. Here I start from the same thesis, but with another object of study.

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5. The soundtrack of our lives, the punctum surdum of our lives In a particular chapter of the book All Ears: aesthetics of espionage, titled »The phantom of the opera«, Peter Szendy approaches listening in terms of punctuation, and states that there is a deaf spot (punctum surdum) in hearing, just as there is a blind spot (punctum caecum) in vision: The points of listening, these points that punctuate and mark by masking, are always deaf points: punctum surdum, like the punctum caecum located in the center of the retina. However, deafness in listening does not reside in the organ, but is constantly inscribed in its own object, is struck and imprinted repeatedly in the sound. The otographic cut, without which there is no listening, is always deafening […].27 Regimes of listening configure how the punctuation operated by the listening activity will operate. Thus it distributes both the audible and the inaudible for the listening activity. Furthermore, since »deafness in listening does not reside in the organ«, deaf spots are also socially produced and contextually variable. The dividing line between acoustic awareness and deafness is therefore not exclusively a biological fact of hearing, but a dynamic and variable threshold of aurality. Through this critical framework, we can consider that the regime of listening produced by the streaming-based phonographic industry organises aurality so that the local soundscape is always in the deaf spot. The local soundscape is a content that remains unheard by a mode of listening that is obstinate with the consumption of phonographic items made available via audio streaming. When aural artefacts, formatted as musical works or podcasts, are the only sonic material valued as worthy of auditory attention, something is systematically set in the deaf spot. This makes extremely noisy environments such as subway stations, for example, unnoticed for their intensity and sound density. And this for two main reasons: 1) because it is not a content valued as worthy of auditory attention, and 2) because it can be masked by another acoustic stream, one accessed via online data streaming. Listeners should not be attentive to one acoustic sphere when money is flowing in other acoustic sphere. Just as it happens, with the modern regime of listening that emerged throughout the 19th century, the listening activity nowadays is ideally attached to the sonic flow that corresponds to the »creative economy«. The music industry always builds the listening activity that better fits its economic goals. The fact that Spotify’s advertising campaign is geographically located on subway stations symptomatises paradigmatic coordinates of a regime of listening that is organically related to the music industry based on audio streaming.

27 Szendy 2007, 122-123.

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As I walk through one of these stations in the São Paulo subway Line 4: Yellow, I receive a sponsored advertisement on my mobile phone, which exemplifies this attention-saving factor and propels a particular economy of listening. The advertisement on the smartphone screen reads as follows: Not listening to your playlist is bad enough. And hearing that turbine noise is even worse. By subscribing to Spotify, you listen to your playlist in offline mode and still get 3 months free. Sign in! BETTER THAN HEARING THE AIRPLANE TURBINE IS HEARING YOUR PLAYLIST. Unlike the discourse employed by major players acting in the phonographic business in the mid-20th century, the ideal effect produced by this discourse is no longer the encouragement to experience pleasure, but mostly to take sides within an attention economy. In turn, unlike the modern regime of listening, symptomatised in musicological discourses, the ideal listening behaviour featured in current phonographic business discourses does not emphasise what is to be heard, but what sonic context is to be ignored in order to listen. Avoiding listening to the extremely uncomfortable and overwhelming soundscape of the wagons sliding fast on the tracks, the sound of them braking, accelerating, the watchwords emitted from the loudspeakers Figure 14: Spotify advertisement. Source: (each preceded by sonic branded items), Facebook print screen. the sounds of the crowd passing through the underground. In short, while engaged with musical commodities streaming online, people should keep themselves far from listening to a particular set of anthropocene sounds. While listening to the »soundtrack of our lives«, we are simultaneously deaf to the soundscape of our lives. From the 18th to 21st century, the material and immaterial reality that involves human and non-human life has changed significantly, but for human life, the principle of an economy of listening remains.

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Conclusion This article intended to articulate some topics for a critical discussion on the experience of listening in the anthropocene. I argued that the experience of listening is conditioned by the social production of regimes of listening, which rationally distribute the spheres of audibility and inaudibility through institutional discourses. My thesis is that one of the key dimensions of the anthropocene is the production of regimes of listening, specifically the social production and reproduction of deafness in relation to particular sonic materials. I tried to illustrate this point with a case study. With this, this text tried to contribute to the debate on the relationship between listening and colonisation, especially with the debates that discuss possibilities of decolonisation of listening practices. In this regard, the contribution presented by this article aims to remember that the practices of decolonisation of listening are always established in tension with some regime of listening. After all, even philosophical productions that are knee-deep in ontology consider that »before Being, there is politics«.28 There is no listening outside of history and the material and immaterial conditions that it puts at stake. Discussions about audile techniques and regimes of listening might help us to understand that the anthropocene is also the name for the systematic production of large-scale listening behaviours.

Sources Deleuze, Gilles (1992): Negotiations, 1972-1990, translated by Martin Joughin, New York. Deleuze, Gilles / Guattari, Félix (1972): L’Anti-Oedipe: capitalisme et schizophrénie 1, Paris. Deleuze, Gilles / Guattari, Félix (1980): Mille Plateaux: capitalisme et schizophrénie 2, Paris. DeNora, Tia (1998): Beethoven et la construction du génie, Paris. Kant, Immanuel ([1788] 2015): Critique of Practical Reason, translated by Mary Gregor, Cambridge, UK. Lacan, Jacques (1966): Kant avec Sade. Écrits, Paris, 765-790. Lazzarato, Maurizio (2014): Signs and Machines: Capitalism and the Production of Subjectivity, Cambridge, MA. Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1963): »The Effectiveness of Symbols«. Structural Anthropology, translated by Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf, New York, 186-205.

28 Deleuze / Guattari 1980, 249.

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Massumi, Brian (2015): Ontopower: War, Powers, and the State of Perception, Durham, NC. Morton, Timothy (2013): Hyperobjects: philosophy and ecology after the end of the world, Minneapolis. Morton, Timothy (2014): »I’ve been kicked in the biosphere«. Extinct Sites: cataloguing the psychogeography of the anthropocene through species loss, natural resource depletion and the collapse of civilisations, http://extinct.ly/texts/#morton, 31.08.2020. de Sade, Marquis ([1975] 2012): La Philosophie dans le boudoir, Paris. Sterne, Jonathan (2002): The Audible Past: cultural origins of sound reproduction, Durham, NC. Szendy, Peter (2001): Écoute: une histoire de nos oreilles, Paris. Szendy, Peter (2008): Listen: a history of our ears. Translated by Charlotte Mandell, New York. Szendy, Peter (2007): Surécoute: esthétique de l’espionnage, Paris. Szendy, Peter (2017): All ears: the aesthetics of espionage, translated by Roland Végso, New York. Szendy, Peter (2013): À Coups de Points: la punctuation comme experience, Paris. Szendy, Peter (2018): Stigmatology: punctuation as experience, translated by Jan Plug, New York.

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Buried in the Colonial Graveyard? Indigenous Sound Ontologies, Repatriation and the Ethics of Curating Ethnographic Sounds Michael Fuhr and Matthias Lewy

1. Introduction: The devaluation of music, sound and listening as colonial heritage The point of departure for our discussion rests on a simple observation: Music and sounds are either widely absent in museums and exhibitions, or if they become a subject of interest, the aural dimension is mostly substituted for the visual and displayed as material objects (i.e. instruments, notations, manuscripts, sound carriers, photographs, etc.). Despite the ongoing transformation of the Western museum and the growing significance of (digital) sound archives and sound curation in everyday life, it is conspicuous that the world of sounds as a potential source for the creation of knowledge still remains marginalised in the world of museums.1 Europe’s colonial past lingers on in the ontological and epistemic regimes that shape, organise and regulate the conditions of knowledge production and dissemination in many of today’s ethnographic museums as well as their agendas and practices such as collecting, preserving, curating and educating. Ethnographic museums in Europe have long prioritised »seeing« over »hearing« while highlighting physical objects as representation of human cultural expression. Their investment in a set of Euro-centric ideologies, such as ocular-centrism, object-centrism and logo-centrism, has substantiated the notion of the museum as a locus of modernity and enlightenment, of national representation and cultural memory. At the same time, and by doing so, museums have legitimised the marginalisation and exclusion of deviant people, ideas and modes of perception (such as listening) from the dominant European discourse of modernity. Ethnographic exhibitions have largely constructed the Other as a tangible object and subordinated it under a Western, colonial, technological, male gaze, which views the Other from a safe distance.

1 In recent years, a few studies have addressed this issue of the ›silent museum‹ and reflected on the role, potential and challenges of music and sound in the museum space (Cf. Bubaris 2013; Cf. Lewy 2015; Cf. Levent / Pascual-Leone 2014; Cf. Lobley 2014; Cf. Meyer 2018).



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The way how musical instruments and sounding entities in music exhibitions are usually organised, classified and displayed follows such a principle. In arrays of segmented geographic, thematic or functional areas, the sounding exhibits lie unfolded in front of the visitor and more often than not reproduce the ›panoptic gaze‹. Michel Foucault’s analysis of the panopticon revealed the intricacies of Western ocular-centrism related to specific forms of spatial organisation and surveillance of the Other. »Visibility is a trap«, noted Foucault.2 The panoptic view exerts a form of political technology and establishes a system of power. He continues: »It is an important mechanism, for it automatizes and disindividualizes power. Power, has its principle not so much in a person as in a certain concerted distribution of bodies, surfaces, lights, gazes; in an arrangement whose internal mechanisms produce the relation in which individuals are caught up«.3 Not only individuals, but also entities, as will be discussed later. In anthropology, it was Johannes Fabian who most prominently argued that the discipline’s epistemology is deeply biased toward the perception through the ethnographer’s eye. What he called »visualism« characterises anthropology’s basic assumption that »the ability to ›visualize‹ a culture or society almost becomes synonymous for understanding it«.4 Apparent in its core methodologies, which largely draw on empirical sciences and highlight observation and ethnography, anthropological knowledge production rests upon the perception of the visual, spatial and tangible. The anthropological gaze thus produces a radical and multifold disjuncture: between the observer and the observed, the subject and the object of the research, the visible and the invisible, the tangible and the intangible, the ethnographer’s present and the studied culture’s past. Due to the inherent ideological ocular-centric tradition in the museum spaces, many curatorial practices are limited to the gestures of showing instead of sounding the musical and auditory phenomena. Fabian asks: »But what makes a (reported) sight more objective than a (reported) sound, smell, or taste?«5 In a similar vein, James Clifford asks, »But what of the anthropological ear?«.6 In the following, we discuss the ethical considerations, the potentials and challenges of dealing with and exhibiting the sounds and sound concepts of indigenous peoples and ask if and how ethnographically-informed sound curation can help ›decolonize‹ the museum.7 2 3 4 5 6 7

Foucault 1995, 200. Ibid., 202. Fabian 2002, 106. Ibid., 108. Clifford 1986, 12. The authors are aware that separating sensory perceptions is controversial. Jonathan Sterne (2003) speaks of a McLuhanesque/Ongian »litany«, referring to a »great divide« theory when separating in particular ›seeing‹ and ›hearing‹. For example, ›seeing‹ is related to the external, and ›hearing‹ to the internal. Other pairs of opposites are ›seeing/intellect vs. hearing/affect‹ and ›seeing/objectivity vs. hearing/subjectivity‹ (Sterne 2003, 16; Erlmann 2010, 14). However, the authors focus on sound as it is historically neglected in ethnographic museums.

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2. Repatriating the voices of the ancestors: Observations and ethical concerns Familial voices as colonial objects: Historical recordings of the Selk’nam and the Yagán In October 2019, the sixth edition of the Haizebegi Festival, a cultural festival dedicated to world music and social sciences, took place in the city of Bayonne, the capital of the French Basque country.8 It opened with a photo exhibition by Lauriane Lemasson, a doctoral student in ethnomusicology, who, for the past nine years, had been studying the complex relationships between the indigenous peoples of Southern Patagonia, their ancestral territories – today privatised and prohibited – and their false official ›extinction‹. Her photographs capture the impressive wildlife of the Patagonian steppe, a sparsely populated cold desert contrasted by seasonal rivers and snow-clad mountains. What appeared to be displayed in the monochrome photographs as highly aestheticised, visual representations of pristine nature – the exhibition’s title was Faceless Landscapes of Southern Patagonia – had been home to various groups of indigenous peoples in the past. The festival audience might have been informed through European sources that amongst others, the Selk’nam, the Haush and the Yagán populated these places in the past, but today are widely considered to be extinct groups due to the massive violence that colonial settlers brought about in the late 19th and early 20th century. In stark contrast to it, Lemasson reported that her photographs were taken during her first expedition to Tierra del Fuego in 2013, at the same time when she found out that the Selk’nam and Yagán had not been at all wiped out. What eventually came to the festival audience as surprising and unmistakable evidence of their existence, was the simple fact that they were ›here‹. Standing next to Lemasson were Mirtha Salamanca, Víctor Vargas Filgueira and José German González Calderón, three representatives of the Selk’nam and Yagán, alive and well.9 The three of them were living proof that European narratives and official reports, stating their extinction, are not only false but also serve as notable examples of an ongoing politics of the silencing, erasing and suppressing of minority identities within the Western and also national historical records of South America. Cultural anthropology 8 For more details about the Haizebegi Festival 2019 see the festival homepage (www.haizebegi.eu) and the related yearbook (Cf. Laborde 2019). 9 Since Lemasson had discovered the officially stated ›extinction‹ of these groups to be a lie, she had been working with several people from the Selk’nam and Yagán communities in order to make them visible and allow their stories to be heard through her publications and through conferences. Mirtha Salamanca, José German González Calderón, Víctor Vargas Filgueira and Lauriane Lemasson served as a team of co-curators for the Haizebegi Festival programme, during which they presented Patagonian indigenous cultural traditions through workshops, films, lectures and discussions. For more details on their work see Lemasson (2019a, 2019b, 2019c) and Vargas Filgueira (2017).

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plays a part in these politics, as can be seen in the ethnographic accounts of European missionaries and scholars, which aimed to document the lives and traditions of a ›dying-out‹ ethnic group thus preserving their memory from falling into oblivion. The Selk’nam and Yagán populations themselves were killed through massacres and diseases or dispelled, kidnapped, enslaved and shipped to Europe. They were exhibited in the ›human zoos‹ (›Völkerschau‹) of the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1889 and throughout Europe. The Selk’nam population is said to have decreased from about 4,000 members in 1880 to 279 in 1919.10 According to Anne Chapman, a French anthropologist, who conducted field research in Tierra del Fuego in the 1960s, the ›last Selk’nam‹ was a female shaman named ›Lola‹ Kiepja, who died in 1966.11 Chapman befriended Kiepja and recorded her chants, some of which have been published as a record album with the Smithsonian’s Folkways Recordings. The liner notes quote Anne Chapman as following: These records comprise 47 chants sung by the last true Indian of the Selk’nam (Ona) group, Lola Kiepja. The Selk’nam had no musical instruments. These chants are sung without any sort of accompaniment. The Selk’nam were the former inhabitants of the largest island of Tierra del Fuego which is located just south of the Straits of Magellan. When these recordings were taped in 1966, Lola was the only one of ten surviving people of Indian descent who was still a Selk’nam. She was the eldest of the ten. About ninety years old, she was born just before the aboriginal culture was shattered.12 A close-up photograph of Kiepja’s face taken by Anne Chapman decorates the album cover as well as one of Chapman›s photo books on the Selk’nam with the title End of a World, the Selk’nam of Tierra del Fuego, first published in 1989.13 Due to Chapman’s documentation, Kiepja’s face has since been popularised, circulating through Western media. It has become the iconic face not only of the Selk’nam’s tragic history, but also of the endangerment of indigenous peoples at large. At the Haizebegi festival in Bayonne, Mirtha Salamanca stated that Kiepja could impossibly have been the last Selk’nam, because Mirtha revealed herself as Kiepja’s granddaughter. Mirtha was invited to speak at the festival with two of her Yagán colleagues to bridge the existential knowledge gap by sharing their own histories and traditions with the European audience. Their presence made a compelling case, by which they reclaimed their own history on European ground – the continent itself, where the 10 Gusinde 1931, 147. 11 Cf. Chapman 1971. According to Lemasson (pers.comm.), Kiepja is her actual name, and her family fights for that name to appear in the historical documents. The name ›Lola‹ was imposed on her by the missionaries. 12 Chapman 1972, 1. 13 Cf. Chapman 2008.

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bones and skulls, the voices and images of their ancestors have been kept in the vaults of archives and museums. Ethnographers, such as Anne Chapman, may have had good intentions when they documented the Selk’nam, but the documents are stored in far-away institutions (e.g., in Europe), where they are mostly undisclosed and inaccessible to the descendants of the recorded person.14 Mirtha Salamanca and her daughter, Brenda Vilte, expressed their anger about the fact that the recorded songs and photos of their respective grandmother and great-grandmother, Kiepja, are widely disseminated, commercialised and utilised for various purposes, while being removed from the initial context of Selk’nam life and tradition. In the 2017 documentary Cantos del Hain (Songs of Hain) by filmmaker Federico Strate Pezdirc and choreographer and musician Pablo Esbert Lilienfeld, both of the women share their views on Kiepja in an interview, and they express their anger through the following statements: Brenda Vilte: It is an abuse. We are her descendants but we are ignored. When I see her portrait in an exhibition, when I see my great-grandmother in a photo, I get upset. That’s my family. Why do I have to see her there? Mirtha Salamanca: She’s everywhere, photos of her are exhibited worldwide. When we were young, we didn’t have the means to register her songs, her image. The lack of information is upsetting. There are CDs of my grandmother’s chants with a reggaeton base. That’s horrible, it’s very sad. My grandma sang to heal, she was the last ›shoon‹, the last shaman. I wish she hadn’t left any chant, any photograph, just her testimony, only my mum’s stories about her.15 Martin Gusinde, an Austrian missionary and anthropologist, who conducted field work in Patagonia from 1918 to 1924, created the most comprehensive account on the indigenous peoples in Tierra del Fuego to date. He portrayed individuals in numerous photographs and recorded the songs of the Selk’nam and Yagán on wax cylinders. These recordings have since been stored at the Berlin Phonogram-Archive. In 2017, a selection of Gusinde’s recordings was released as a CD compilation by the archive.16 In a ceremonial act during the Haizebegi festival in 2019, these historical sound recordings were ›restituted‹ to the Selk’nam and Yagán representatives. In fact, the representative of the archive gave them copies of the CD. It could be problematised that the restitution of a historical sound recording in this case meant giving the digitised 14 In 2018, parts of Anne Chapman‘s archives were transferred from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia to be integrated in the future Anne Chapman centre. 15 Strate Pezdirc / Lilienfeld 2017, 1:33:00–1:36:55; Cf. Strate Pezdirc 2015. 16 Cf. Koch / Kopal 2017.

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recordings in the curated format of the CD production and not, as could be assumed, returning the original sound carriers (or to be precise: the wax cylinder Galvano negatives, on which the sound information is inscribed). An even bigger problem is the fact that the CD has been produced without the knowledge or the consent of the respective source›s communities. This may have proven difficult on the archive’s part for various reasons, one of which was perhaps the producers’ false assumption that the group was extinct. Irregardless, the representatives of the indigenous communities apparently received the recordings with mixed feelings. Víctor Vargas Filgueira, the representative of the Yagán, revealed in his talk during the festival that he did not know that such sound recordings existed. Once he had searched and retrieved more details about the content of the recording, he eventually found out that one of the voices on the recordings belonged to his great-grandfather. Because Vargas had never thought it possible to hear his great-grandfather’s voice again, listening to this hundred-year old wax cylinder recording was a very powerful and overwhelming experience for him. On the one hand, he was emotionally affected by the immediacy of the recorded vocal sound that remembered his ancestor. He said that he was glad and grateful for having received the recordings. On the other hand, however, he was filled with grief and anger to know that his ancestor’s voice has been archived, published and circulated without him being informed beforehand and without being asked for consent. Sacred voices as colonial objects: Historical recordings of the Pemón and the circum-Roraima people Similar experiences have been reported about another compilation of historical recordings from the Berlin Phonogram-Archive. The CD Theodor Koch-Grünberg. Wax cylinder recordings from Brazil 1911-191317 was neither produced in agreement with the indigenous peoples, whose songs were recorded, nor were the published and unpublished wax cylinder recordings officially restituted to the indigenous communities. Local Venezuelan ethnomusicologists and ethnomusicologists on site were also excluded from the production process. Elsewhere, Matthias (Lewy), one of the co-authors of this article, describes his feelings of discomfort as a student in Berlin in the 1990s, having wondered why these recordings of indigenous communities are kept in a German archive and whether the recorded people or their descendants were aware of the fact that these recordings are stored there.18 Eventually, and as part of his doctoral research, he became motivated to ›individually‹ restitute Koch-Grünberg’s wax cylinder recordings in the mp3 format in 2006, as a response to the non-existent support from the archive. In order to receive the recordings, he had to sign a contract with the archive, stating that he would not pass any digital copy onto a ›third party‹. However, the urgent need to engage with the people on site stood in stark contrast to the ar17 Cf. Koch / Ziegler 2006. 18 Cf. Lewy 2017.

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chive’s ›paternalistic‹ interpretation of copyright law.19 In this case, the identification of a source’s indigenous community seemed to be concealed in the same way as the existence of the Selk’nam and Yagán. Even though the circum-Roraima people20 were not declared extinct, they are not identified as ›circum-Roraima‹ and are thus not properly acknowledged in the CD. The title of the CD (Theodor Koch-Grünberg. Wax Cylinder Recordings from Brazil 1911-1913) reflects the colonially biased politics of naming, as part of the “colonial matrix of power” (Mignolo and Walsh 2018), because it highlights the name of the European collector (Theodor Koch-Grünberg) and the nation-state, Brazil, in which the recordings were assumed to have taken place. The circum-Roraima people mainly include all Pemón groups and a variety of other indigenous groups. Audrey Butt Colson’s classification of »circum-Roraima people« follows the indigenous point of view, ignoring national state borders within indigenous territories. When studying Koch-Grünberg’s documentations, it can be noted that the geographical location of the indigenous community Koimelemong/Maloka do Mel was at the bifurcation of the rivers Miang and Surumú in northern Brazil. Today, the villages are called Surumú and Raposa Serra do Sol, and are still inhabited by the Makuxí indigenous people. However, Koch-Grünberg recorded parts of his wax cylinders during a dance festival, in which a large number of visitors from the north (Venezuela, former British Guyana) were dancing and singing. In his corresponding field-notes, Koch-Grünberg writes that a huge part of the recordings were made with »main singers from Roraima«.21 In his view, these »main singers from Roraima« were »Taulipáng« (or Pemón-Taurepán), who are attributed to the Pemón. He misinterpreted the designation »Arekuna« or »Yarikuna« as a self-designation of the »Taulipang«.22 Yet it needs to be underlined that the Pemón-Arekuna people see themselves as an independent group.23 Moreover, Koch-Grünberg’s misclassification is not understandable, since he published a collection of myths24 that contains information from the recollection of two pia’sán (shamans), who dictated their knowledge to him, even translating it into Portuguese. It is Mayuluaípu, whom Koch-Grünberg identifies as »Taulipáng«, and Akúli, who had insisted on being considered as an »Arekuna«. Erich Moritz von Hornbostel (1923) also uses the knowledge of Akúli when discussing all of the musical genres of Koch-Grünberg’s recordings. Therefore, it can be stated that Koch-Grünberg’s »main singers from Roraima« and the main parts of information on 19 Cf. Lewy [2010] 2018. 20 Audrey Butt Colson (1994, 5) identifies the Pemón (Carib speaker) together with the Kapón as »Circum Roraima People«. According to Colson, the Pemón groups include the Arekuna, Taurepán, Kamarakoto and Makuxí, whereas the Kapón are comprised of the Akawaio and Patamona peoples. 21 Cf. Lewy 2017. 22 Koch-Grünberg 1917, 36. 23 Cf. Lewy 2012. 24 Cf. Koch-Grünberg 1916.

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the recorded dance songs belong to Northern Pemón-Taurepán and Pemón-Arekuna, who are located in the nation-state of Venezuela, not Brazil. Furthermore, Koch-Grünberg, as a German guest, received permission for his recordings by those authorities whom he perceived and acknowledged as authorities. These being the capitán (political leader), who represented the community for non-indigenous interactions and politics. Koch-Grünberg also negotiated the details with several shamans, who were unlikely to have presumed that their ritual sound performances would one day be published for a world-wide audience. The most important point here is that the producers of the CD reiterate the colonial matrix as they focus foremost on the collector’s experiences while hiding the human and even non-human entitie25 of the recorded voices and their corresponding territories. The archival CD’s published title thus intensifies the misunderstanding of indigenous identities instead of clarifying them. Matthias conducted research and listening sessions on Koch-Grünberg’s material mainly in Venezuela on the border of Brazil. The process of joint listening sessions with a wide variety of local people has now been going on for 15 years and must be regarded as a never-ending process. Due to this long-term engagement with the local communities, a concern – even more fundamental than the inadequate labelling of the communities – must be raised with the aforementioned CD publication: The songs of pia’sán (shamans) were published on this CD, which today’s pia’sán do not even listen to, since playing the recordings alone would enact a trans-specific interaction26 with the dangerous mawariton (spirits) that every pia’sán handles differently. This becomes all the more understandable if you read Koch-Grünberg’s notes: The phonograph made them shyer, especially the magical doctor [shaman] Katúra, who, when I asked him to sing into the horn, asked me suspiciously why I wanted to take his voice with me.27 The information taken from the German ethnologist’s unpublished diary shows Katúra’s recording situation: [W]e closed all entrances and windows, and the magic goes on in the semi-dark back room; with his powerful nasal voice he sings three cylinders, three successive songs, which he accompanies, clapping with a bundle of branches; he 25 Following indigenous sound ontologies, recorded songs or voices can refer to nonhuman entities like spirits. 26 Trans-specific interactions or communications refer to an interaction or communication between humans (e.g. shamans) and non-humans (e.g. spirits, animal, plants). 27 Koch-Grünberg 1923, 119. Translated by authors. »Dem Phonographen brachten sie mehr Scheu entgegen, besonders der Zauberarzt Katúra, der mich, als ich ihn aufforderte, in den Schalltrichter zu singen, mißtrauisch fragte, warum ich seine Stimme mit mir nehmen wollte«.

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holds the branches in his right hand and claps them to the ground in time; in his left hand, he holds the cigar and smokes powerfully; just like yesterday at the healing session; I immediately reproduced the songs, of course only »in front of an invited audience«, Pajé, Tuschaua [chief], Pirokaí and me; they are recorded excellently, an important acquisition!28 The pia’sán Katúra was probably a shaman of the Pemón-Arekuna, since Koch-Grünberg (1911) referred to him as »Iarikúna-Pajé«.29 The closing of all windows and points of entry served the purpose of diminishing daylight for the interaction with the mawariton (spirits). In doing so, the non-specialists were to be protected from the mawariton. Above all, this includes the children. It also has to be mentioned that Katúra probably did not assume that his songs would one day be accessible to people around the world, who spend 15 Euros for a CD. Furthermore, he would certainly have not agreed if his interaction with the non-human world were to be freely accessible to all people via open source. Koch-Grünberg’s recordings of the oareba (warepan) genre are also published on the CD. These songs deal with the world of the anti-social30 or anti-human31 entities, named kanaimaton (dark shamans). These entities are usually human beings (Pemón), but when they enter the state of being kanaima, they kill other Pemón. This act is based on an ontology where killing is part of the reciprocity between the human and non-human world. However, these entities are feared and ostracised within their own group.32 Together with the Pemón specialist Florinda Hernandez, the indigenous expert Balbina (Lambos) and Matthias held a listening session in 2015, where this genre of oareba (warepan) was also heard. Balbina was not familiar with the name of this genre. When listening to wax cylinder number 13 of Koch-Grünberg’s collection labeled »oareba«, Florinda Hernandez burst into tears because the song reminded her of very painful events in her family due to the associated kanaima complex. Thus, Balbina and Matthias stopped the session immediately.33 28 Koch-Grünberg 1911, VK Mr B.I. 3, Heft 2. Translated by authors. »[…]wir schließen alle Zugänge und Fenster, und im halbdunklen hinteren Raum geht der Zauber vor sich; er singt mit seiner mächti[gen] näselnden Stimme drei Rollen voll, drei aufeinanderfolgende Gesänge, die er mit einem Bündel Zweige laut klatschend begleitet; die Zweige hält er in der rechten Hand und klatscht damit im Takt auf den Boden; in der Linken hält er die Zigarre und qualmt mächtig; genau wie gestern bei der Krankenkur; ich reproduzierte die Gesänge sofort, natürlich nur ›vor geladenem Publikum‹, Pajé, Tuschaua [Häuptling, authors’ note], Pirokaí und mir; sie sind ausgezeichnet aufgenommen, eine bedeutende Erwerbung!« 29 Koch-Grünberg uses the notion pajé only in his unpublished diary. Pajé is taken from the Tupi language and used as a general term for »shaman« in Brazil. The Pemón word is pia’sán (shaman). 30 Cf. Colson 1994. 31 Cf. Lewy 2018. 32 Ibid. 33 Cf. Lambos / Lewy 2018.

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But this was an emotional key experience. It needs to be underlined that there are recordings in European colonial archives that carry the uncertainty within them of what function they were performed, in particular when dealing with trans-specific (human/ nonhuman) interactions. Even indigenous specialists cannot know all of the ontologically biased performances, in particular from a so-called »past«, as the construction of historicity that is applied to indigenous thinking is a result of colonialism. But it can be stated that the reaction of Florinda Hernandez and the feedback of the indigenous specialists in relation to a non-consensual publishing of an oareba song (Cylinder 29) on a CD34 testify to the violation of all ethical codes of curation. In the context of the discussion about the aforementioned trans-specific communication, i.e. the form of interaction between human and non-human beings, it is important to point out the field of sound ontologies in order to take into account other aspects of curating sound in museum practices.

3. A turn to sound ontologies and collaborative curating with indigenous communities The recognition of sound ontologies refers to the acknowledgment of people, who firmly believe in the performance of non-human entities and that this performance influences their collective. The term »collective«35 is to be understood here as an alternative to the concept of ›culture‹, which usually refers only to human actors. Thus, reflecting on sound ontologies can be seen as a part of a paradigm shift caused by the ontological turn that takes non-human entities like plants, animals, spirits and/ or all taxonomically relevant entities of a collective as something that does exist. All entities of a collective are reflected in their interactions, communications and transformations. This is a discourse or a narrative that is still largely missing in the realm of European museums. As a response to this lack, Matthias developed the concept of indigenous sonorism,36 which resulted from a discussion surrounding indigenous perspectivism.37 The basis of the latter theory states that the different entities of a collective see each other differently due to predation.38 However, this different vision is defined by formalised sound. For example, a hungry jaguar sees a person as a prey,

34 Cf. Koch / Ziegler 2006. 35 Cf. Descola 2005. 36 Cf. Lewy 2017; Cf. Lambos / Lewy 2018. 37 Cf. Viveiros de Castro 1997. 38 Amerindian Perspectivism refers to a paradigm, saying that predator animals see humans and prey animals as prey, whereas prey animals see humans as spirits, spirits see humans as prey, humans see spirits as spirits, but everyone sees themselves as humans (Ibid.).

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but once someone has spoken a magic spell, the jaguar would see these people as fire. Thus, the sound event defines the transformation, that is, how the world is visually perceived.39 This described interaction between humans and animals must be expanded to all taxonomically relevant entities, which can also be tangible objects, the core business of ethnographic collections. They are often taken out of ritual contexts and therefore have a specific ontology that must be handled with great responsibility and attention. Several examples of interactions between indigenous specialists and objects in archives of ethnographic museums show that communication with the object is the core intention of the surrounding interaction. Therefore, singing and dancing are directed to an object receiver, which is often an anthropomorphised interiority of an object.40 A further example refers to the work of Balbina and Matthias in cooperation with the ethnographic museum in Berlin. Both scholars were invited to cooperate with the »sharing knowledge project«, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation and the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation in Germany) and headed by the Berlin-based anthropologist Andrea Scholz. The main project tool is a database. Indigenous researchers like Balbina and other selected scholars can access this database with a password.41 The site contains pictures and documentations of objects from the museum’s archive, mainly collections from expeditions to indigenous communities in South America that were made at the beginning of the 20th century. The basic concept of cooperation results from the idea that new and additional data will be added to the existing museum collections of indigenous people. The museums’ understanding of reciprocity usually follows the idea that the indigenous scholars themselves get an insight into the existing objects that are stored in the archive and thus can re-appropriate production processes of the possibly no longer existing concepts from the history of these objects. The data is then entered in cooperation with researchers and indigenous people, who can upload relevant, new data as well as comments or work on site onto the digital archives. The entire database primarily contains data on physical objects (of which a selection is planned for an upcoming exhibition at Berlin’s Humboldt Forum). Furthermore, the mentioned recordings of Theodor KochGrünberg can also be heard on this platform, which means that all indigenous people who have access to that database can hear these recordings. However, in the course of this project, Balbina and Matthias noticed that ontological indigenous thinking did not receive much relevance due to the archive’s colonial bias. Andrea Scholz was aware of this problem and enabled both of them to take part in a conference on »sharing knowledge« held at the same museum in 2018. Balbina was thus given the opportunity to present her work to other indigenous peoples, who have also participated in the 39 Cf. Lewy 2015; Cf. Lewy 2017; Cf. Lambos / Lewy 2018. 40 Cf. Haas, Muñoz, Muñoz 2018; Cf. Lewy 2018. 41 https://hldwtp.schedar.uberspace.de/, 20.05.2019.

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database project, as well as to a select audience of anthropologists and museum staff, such as restorers or cultural administrators.42 The pakara bag The ethical dilemma is based on the ontological gap between the colonial museum’s world and the indigenous epistemologies, which seems insurmountable. Balbina realised this ontological gap when she saw an image of a textile bag with a stone in the database during her work in Santa Elena de Uairén in 2017. The depicted object was a pakara bag with a stone inside, which has proven to be the property of a pia’sán (shaman) or even kanaima. The stone contains interiorities used not only for good but also malicious actions. It can be assumed that the contents of the bag and the interior of the stone are absolutely sacred and should neither be in the hands of another person nor in an archive of an ethnographic museum.43 In her conference lecture, Balbina referred to the danger of the bag and the stone. She did not want to take the stone or the bag home with her, as she did not want the spiritual owner to find her, and she suggested burying both in the museum’s archive. Therefore, she performed a ›locking‹ ritual. Since it was more than just a bag with a stone, all utensils were put in a box and protected with a written warning, prohibiting a person to open the box. The main part of the ›locking‹ ritual was singing. Balbina chose a genre aiming to contact the interiority of the stone. The interaction and song’s intonation put a heavy strain on her, causing her to burst into tears while singing. However, it was important for her to complete the ritual, because she directed her main message to the interiorities of the stone and explained to them that they shall only be used for good and never again for bad actions in the future.44 Finally, it needs to be underlined that these painful experiences are the results of colonisation, and that the risk of decolonisation involves the reproduction of a colonial matrix by provoking such experiences and associations.

4. From colonial objects to sounding entities: Challenges and questions Scholarship in and against the colonial matrix The ambivalences and problems briefly outlined in this text must be examined further. However, it is currently important to point out that decolonialisation requires the recognition, critical analysis and self-reflection of the (post)colonial matrix (shaped by colonial histories, practices, policies, etc.), which affects our work as music and sound scholars within institutionalised archival and museum spaces. This also requires 42 Cf. Lambos / Lewy 2018. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid.

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the recognition and acknowledgment of ontologies that are to be sought outside of European-based knowledge structures and thought patterns. This recognition and overcoming of one’s own colonial bias mostly has to be worked out through longterm interactions and cooperation with the respective representatives of the various indigenous communities. In order to take a first step in this direction, a few questions and challenges should be discussed, which primarily address the ethics of collaborative curating, but also the handling of historical and recent sound recordings in research and teaching. A main question refers to the existing power imbalances between the hierarchically organised museum, which itself best exemplifies the representation of the colonial bias, and the specialists of the source communities. As seen in the examples of the Selk’nam and Pemón people, it needs to be asked how and to what degree can power be given out of the hands of the European museums, or, asked in reverse, how can indigenous people effectively gain authority (i.e. discursive power) and agency when engaging with the entities located in the museums? Listening to ancestors, listening to violent histories through sounds The Selk’nam and Yagán cases, as discussed above, spawn a bundle of ethical issues regarding the use of historical images and recordings, on which family members have been identified by their descendants. Listening to their ancestors’ voices or seeing their portraits on colonial photographs can be a humiliating experience for the descendants. They can feel disempowered and be at worst (re-)traumatised, when they realise that gaining access to and control of what they consider significantly personal documents largely failed, and instead, they witness how their ancestors are again colonised and subjected to external rules of representation, appropriation, commodification and consumption. How can family members gain authority over such documents? How can their wounds be healed? How can they re-define their relationship to their ancestors and re-create their own personal memories and family histories, and how can it all be done beyond the standards and language set by the colonial matrix? What can legal proprietors (i.e. Western institutions) do to engage in restorative and humanist activities, which show serious responsibility and care toward the victims of colonialism and their families? »Imagine if members of your family were photographed against their will, and those photographs were publicly displayed and republished  and –  there was nothing you could do about it.«45 This note is taken from another case, which has spawned wider public attention in recent times, due to the renowned reputation of the involved institution. In 2019, Tamara Lanier, the descendant of Renty Taylor, who was kidnapped from Africa and enslaved in South Carolina, filed a lawsuit against Harvard University and the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology. Taylor was forced to pose for the daguerrotypes, which by law belong to the museum. They were used in multiple

45 See website of the Harvard Coalition to Free Renty (www.harvardfreerenty.com).

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ways to visualise the conditions of slavery, and by doing so, they also helped constitute a system, which granted access rights to white scholars who made them an object of their study (of science, anthropology, history, etc.). That, which is a historical document of public interest for the university, is for Lanier an image that embodies very personal imaginations, relationships, memories and familial identities. Acknowledging indigenous ontology A further example reflects on the (often implicit) colonialist narrative, as is pursued by those archives, which conceal their colonial bias behind pretended arguments related to politics and bureaucracies (for example when referring to safeguarding missions under the UNESCO conventions). The case of the Navajo wax cylinders recorded by Georg Herzog with the ritual specialist Hosteen Klah from 1929 to 1931 reveals the ontological gap between the Navajo’s modes of existence and the German institution’s stance. On the one hand, while cooperating, researching and collaborating over several years with the Navajo people, anthropologist Rainer Hatoum expresses the indigenous position clearly, when he writes: From this perspective, they are by no means »songs« in the conventional sense and of human origin (the premise that defines the subject of ethnology or the UNESCO Rescue Initiative), but rather concrete forms of manifestation of universal power or forces. These energy levels are a danger to those who are not trained in dealing with them (i.e., those who are not Navajo ritual specialist), and any carelessness endangers the universal balance.46 On the other hand, the former head of the archive constructs his narrative by defining a tangible/intangible divide as a legal problem of two parties. He notes: [t]he phonogram archive highlights the ownership of a specific material product and its specific content, supported by the logic of national and international copyright protection and copyright laws. Representatives of the Navajo raise general rights to the intangible cultural asset. This is where the contradictory views become very clear: for one party, the chants are an expression of human creativity and part of the world cultural heritage (public knowledge), whereas for the other, it is very private and potentially dangerous knowledge from supernatural sources that should have never been allowed to leave the community.47 46 Hatoum 2015, 231. 47 Koch 2019b, 331-332. Translated by authors. »Das Phonogramm-Archiv hebt den Besitz eines bestimmten materiellen Produkts und seiner spezifischen Inhalte hervor, gestützt von der Logik nationalen und internationalen Urheberschutzes und der Copyright-Gesetze. Vertreter der Navajo erheben allgemeine Rechte an dem immateriellen Kulturgut. Hier werden die gegensätzlichen Auffassungen sehr deutlich: Für die eine Partei sind die Gesänge Ausdruck menschlicher Kreativität

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When asking if source communities or ethnomusicologists have the right to forget, to conceal or even destroy cultural objects (extinction vs. preservation) and sound entities like the ontological unit of a physical object (wax cylinder) and the embedded recording (sound entity/Navaho singing), then it needs to be mentioned that this ontological unit was once generated by Herzog and Klah, and the decisions should not lie in the hands of an archive but of the people who are engaged with the songs and the nonhuman entities. Transferring ownership and defying public domain: Compromises for the moment? Regarding the issue of restitution, one popular misunderstanding around the idea of ›decolonisation‹ needs to be addressed. A blunt ›giving it all back‹ claim can be detrimental to a ›decolonising‹ approach, particularly in the case when restitution is not desirable and even unwelcome by the source community. The pakara bag complex can be seen as a case of ›legalised looting‹ due to a colonial bias, which is however constantly disguised by rationalist discourse and bureaucratic narratives. Therefore, what can serve as a compromise between archive and community is the ›colonial graveyard‹ in a particular sense: as it was practised with the pakara bag and the stone, as well as the recordings like the wax cylinders with the oareba and pia’sán songs of the Koch-Grünberg collection. It is a compromise, in which a very restricted access has been granted to experts (i.e. people who know how to engage respectfully with the respective songs and related entities). A large and quite unconsidered field is ownership: Who owns the sound objects (entity)? The discussion in relation to historical sound recordings is still unresolved as there is the bureaucratic, colonial position on the one side, ignoring the certainty about nonhuman entities on the other side. Another problem is how to deal with such forms of ›colonial graveyards‹ in the future. The objects will be locked, but who will have access in the future? Grace Koch (2019a) points to the dilemma in dealing with image and sound recordings of the Australian Aborigines. She describes that, in one case, solely the depositor had been granted exclusive rights to make decisions surrounding access to the recordings – a situation incomprehensible for indigenous representatives, who wish to access the materials at their own will. In contrast to this stance, she makes clear that subsequent open access to an archive, especially to collections of historical recordings, cannot be a solution either and can even bear disadvantages. She therefore suggests that it is necessary not only to clarify the handling and the legal situation with regard to the recording procedure, but also to clarify the handling of archiving itself. As a course of action, Koch suggests the following four points:

und Teil des Weltkulturerbes (öffentliches Wissen), für die andere hingegen ein sehr privates und potenziell gefährliches aus übernatürlichen Quellen stammendes Wissen, das die Gemeinschaft überhaupt nie hätte verlassen dürfen.«

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• • • •

identify all people and groups who should be consulted about access strategies agree on who holds the rights determine the level of community control, and where the originals may be lodged clarify which, if any, material should be restricted and how it should be managed 48

In the exemplary case of the pakara bag, the suggested ›graveyard‹ must then be controlled and managed in continual interactions with Pemón specialists. Collaborative curating and the archive as performance space Next to a full acceptance of ownership in the context of trans-specific interactions, ethnographic museums have to reorganise their collections and give space, time and a financial budget to ritual performances in the archive (e.g., to secure safety or to elicit healing processes), in particular when objects are considered living entities. As a next step, these performances and interactions have to be presented in display spaces. Therefore, ways and formats of collaborative curating and displaying of the ontological units have to be developed, which leads to the question of who has the right to speak, decide, curate and negotiate on behalf of whom? In the context of collaborative curating, the question of the source community is central. But there are several other questions such as: What is a ›source community‹? Who represents them? What kind of group is it? As is exemplified by the experiences of Matthias with the restitution of Koch-Grünberg’s recordings, there are no fixed groups of people who can be defined as a ›source community‹ because all interactions took place with human beings with different identities relating to several indigenous groups, who were experts on themselves. They practise and reflect on their practices and deal with the recordings in several circumstances according to their own experiences. That means that the restitution of sound recordings is an ongoing process of interaction, which always generates new and/or other sound ontologies and always develops very profound relationships. Further questions in this context are: What are the ethical implications of working with ethnographic sound entities (i.e. recordings)? What is the responsibility for ethnomusicologists and scholars in the context of archiving, curating and exhibiting these sound entities? A first answer of ethnographic museums is to focus on ›art‹ and ›activism‹ concepts, which deal with the object. On the one hand, these forms of confronting colonial history serve well to provoke and sensitise the audience. On the other hand, these practices often follow the colonial bias, as both practices (art, activism) are mostly defined by the museum and its related ontologies. A discussion that calls for reflections on possible compromises needs to challenge the idea of an expected »representation of culture«. The writing culture debate49 was just the initial point. The interaction and its results of collaborative curating in archives and exhibitions are not (any more) subject 48 Koch 2019a, 208. 49 Cf. Clifford / Marcus 1986.

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to the mode of representation; instead they always unfold their own performativity in often unpredictable ways. Therefore, it needs to be underlined that new and/or other ontologies with all included entities (human/nonhuman actors) are constantly being generated.

5. Concluding remarks In this article, we used selected examples to discuss some of the challenges and the potential in dealing with historical ethnographic sound recordings in contexts of archival cooperation, curation and repatriation. The ethical concerns with the ways of how European institutions handle these recordings are inextricably entwined with unresolved questions of who should possess authority and the power of representation over the recorded and archived sounds. The ›colonial graveyard‹, which we used as a metaphor for contemporary European archives, signifies the ultimate destination of colonial objects (according to the archives’ own policies and practices), though not without ambivalence. On the one hand, the indigenous sound performances are ›buried‹ in the archives while the communities are declared extinct or their existence is consciously or unconsciously obscured by violent acts of imposing European modern territorial and nation-state concepts on them (as we have seen with the Selk’nam, the Yagán and the Pemón). Indigenous people are thus silenced and rendered invisible and inexistent. On the other hand, an abundance of sound recordings ›sleeps‹ in the archives. That means that a number of communities are not even aware of their existence or if they are, they have to overcome many obstacles in order to gain access to those recordings. Furthermore, the experience from applied ethnomusicology shows how the unreflective handling of the recordings holds further potential for conflict. A revitalisation of the ›graveyard of sleeping recordings‹ by means of open access is not a solution either and must therefore be discouraged, for ethical and for ontological reasons. The example of the pakara bag complex even illustrates the need to set up at least temporary ›cemeteries‹ in order to clarify the questions of access and potential future interactions. Repatriation in this case meant ›not to give back‹ the object to the community, since the bag held the potential for ›evil powers‹, rather it meant to acknowledge indigenous ontology and give authority to the indigenous expert (who decided to contain the danger via sound performance and to ›bury‹ the object in the archive). We argue that any approach that seeks to ›decolonise‹ the relationship between the European institutions and indigenous communities needs to critically reflect upon the conditions and effects of the ›colonial matrix‹, which has historically shaped this relationship and still prevails today (e.g. ocularcentrism and the devaluation of sound). The important question is, how a decolonising process can be imagined and carried out, in particular, when it comes to power inequalities in relation to all entities. The

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main focus in contemporary discourses still lies on the human actors and their positions in unequal power relations. We, as music and sound scholars working in European institutions, have to self-critically reflect about and discuss with the recordings‘ indigenous stakeholders if and how the archived materials can be used for research, educational and curatorial purposes, especially if we know that their existence is inextricably tied to cruel colonial histories and might humiliate the persons and descendants affected. We should not show, view and listen to these materials for the sake of academic freedom and knowledge production without reflecting on the ideological premises of their existence and without reconfiguring and enforcing the archives to take indigenous ontologies seriously. Our work as (ethno)musicologists is changing as we have to leave the fields of representation and human-defined ›cultures‹ in order to work on collaborations and approaches to overcome the ontological gaps and the (post-)colonial repercussions in our very own thinking.

Sources Bubaris, Nikos (2013): Sound in Museums – Museums in Sound, in: Museum Management and Curatorship, 29(4), 391–402. Chapman, Anne (1971): Lola, in: Natural History, 80(3), 32-41. Chapman, Anne (1972): Liner Notes, in: Lola Kiepja (artist), Selk’nam (Ona) Chants of Tierra del Fuego, Argentina: 47 Shaman Chants and Laments, Folkways Records, USA, 1-12. Chapman, Anne (2008): End of a World, the Selknam of Tierra del Fuego, Zagier / Urruty. Clifford, James (1986): Introduction: Partial Truths, in: Clifford, James / Marcus, George E. (eds.), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, Berkeley, 1-26. Clifford, James, / Marcus, George E. (eds.) (1986): Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, Berkeley: University of California Press. Colson, Audrey Butt (1994): »God’s Folk«: The Evangelization of Amerindians in Western Guiana and the Enthusiastic Movement of 1765, in: Antropológica, 86: 3-111. Descola, Philippe (2005): Par-delà nature et culture, Paris. Erlmann, Veit (2010): Reason and Resonance: A History of Modern Aurality, New York. Fabian, Johannes (2002): Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object, New York. Foucault, Michel (1995): Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, New York. Gusinde, Martin (1931): Die Feuerland Indianer, Band I, in: Die Selk’nam, Mödling bei Wien. Haas, Richard / Muñoz, Gaudencio Moreno / Muñoz, María Morera (2018): Las colecciones del Alto Río Negro en el Ethnologisches Museum de Berlín: aproximaciones

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recientes a una colección antigua, in: Kraus, Michael / Halbmayer, Ernst / Kummels, Ingrid (eds.), Objetos como testigos del contacto cultural: perspectivas interculturales de la historia y del presente de las poblaciónes indígenas del Alto Río Negro (Brasil/Colombia), Estudios Indiana 11, Berlin, 135-54. Hatoum, Rainer (2015): Navajo-Zeremoniallieder im Mediensog: Herausforderungen eines kollaborativen Forschungsprojekts zwischen dem Ethnologischen Museum in Berlin und der Navajo Nation, in: Bender, Cora / Zillinger, Martin (eds.), Handbuch der Medienethnographie, Berlin, 223-40. Koch, Grace (2019a): »We want our voices back«: Ethical Dilemmas in the Repatriation of Recordings, in: Gunderson, Frank / Lancefield, Robert C. / Woods, Bret (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Musical Repatriation, Oxford, 195-213. Koch, Lars-Christian (2019b): Die Digitalisierung von Museumssammlungen, in: Edenhei­ser, Iris / Förster, Larissa (eds.), Museumsethnologie. Eine Einführung, Berlin, 326-341. Koch, Lars-Christian / Kopal, Ricarda (eds.) (2017): Charles W. Furlong, Wilhelm Koppers, Martin Gusinde: Walzenaufnahmen der Selk’nam, Yámana und Kawésqar aus Feuerland (1907-1923), BPhA-WA 12/13, Berlin. Koch, Lars Christian / Ziegler, Susanne (2006): Theodor Koch-Grünberg. Walzenaufnahmen aus Brasilien 1911-1913/Theodor Koch-Grünberg. Gravações em cilindros do Brasil 1911-1913, Bd. 3, Berlin. Koch-Grünberg, Theodor (1911): Nachlass Theodor Koch-Grünberg: B.I. 3 Tagebücher Expedition Koch 1911-1913, in: VK Mr, Völkerkundliche Sammlung der PhilippsUniversität Marburg [unpublished]. Koch-Grünberg, Theodor (1916): Vom Roroima zum Orinoco. Ergebnisse einer Reise in Nordbrasilien und Venezuela in den Jahren 1911-1913, 2, Berlin. Koch-Grünberg, Theodor (1917): Vom Roroima zum Orinoco. Ergebnisse einer Reise in Nordbrasilien und Venezuela in den Jahren 1911-1913, 1, Berlin. Koch-Grünberg, Theodor (1923): Vom Roroima zum Orinoco. Ergebnisse einer Reise in Nordbrasilien und Venezuela in den Jahren 1911-1913, 3, Berlin. Laborde, Denis (ed.) (2019): Haizebegi, Les Monde de la Musique: Revue annuelle d’Anthropologie de la Musique, Bayonne. Lambos, Balbina / Lewy, Matthias (2018): Theodor Koch-Grünberg’s Living Musical Archive and the »sharing knowledge« project. Reflections about an Engaged Ethnomusicological Project, in: V Jornada de Etnomusicologia E III Colóquio Amazônico de Etnomusicologia, Belém. Lemasson, Lauriane (2019a): Un itinéraire au sud de Hatitelen, in: Haizebegi #6, Revue Annuelle d’Anthropologie, Munduko Musiken Etxea and ARI Institute (CNRS), Bayonne. Lemasson, Lauriane (2019b): L’Environnement Sonore en tant que Ressource Culturelle pour les Selk‘nam et les Yahgan: de la Terre de Feu au Cap Horn: Une étude pluridisciplinaire des lieux, des espaces et des fonctions humaines et sociales des paysages sonores, in: Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, Utrecht, https://dev.clariah.nl/files/dh2019/boa/0133.html, 29.10.2020.

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Lemasson, Lauriane (2019c): When human deserts also testify: places and peoples after the colonization of Hatitelen, the South Magellan’s Strait, in: Music, Sound, Space and Place: Ethnomusicology and Sound Studies, Conference of the French Society of Ethnomusicology and the British Forum for Ethnomusicology, London. Lewy, Matthias (2012): Different »Seeing« – Similar »Hearing«, Ritual and Sound among the Pemón (Gran Sabana/Venezuela), in: Indiana 29, 53-71. Lewy, Matthias (2015): Objekte hören? Klang im ethnologischen Museum. Ein Beitrag zur angewandten auditiven Anthropologie, in: Kraus, Michael / Noack, Karoline (eds.), Quo vadis, Völkerkundemuseum? Aktuelle Debatten zu ethnologischen Sammlungen in Museen und Universitäten, Bielefeld, 297-320. Lewy, Matthias (2017): »Com o arquivo de volta ao campo.« A reinterpretação e recontextualização das gravações de Koch-Grünberg (1911) entre o povo Pemón, in: Música em Contexto XI: 251-88. Lewy, Matthias [2010] (2018): Die Rezeption der Wachswalzenaufnahmen Koch- Grünbergs (1911) bei den heutigen Pemón, in: Klebe, Dorit / Näumann, Klaus (eds.), Musik-Transfer XX, Berichte aus dem Nationalkomitee Deutschland im ICTM 2010-2013, Aachen, 31-44. Levent, Nina / Pascual-Leone, Alvaro (2014): The Multisensory Museum: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory, and Space, Lanham, MA. Lobley, Noel (2014): Sound Galleries: Curating the Experience of Sound and Music in and beyond Museums, in: Music in Art 39 (1-2): 243-55. Meyer, Andreas (ed.) (2018): Musikausstellungen. Intention, Realisierung, Interpretation. Ein interdisziplinäres Symposium, Hildesheim. Mignolo, Walter D. / Walsh, Catherine E. (2018): On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis, Durham and London: Duke University Press. Sterne, Jonathan (2003): The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction, Durham, NC / London. Strate Pezdirc, Federico Vladimir (2015): Cantos del Hain, in: Becas de creación artística en el extranjero 2015 (catálogo exposición), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Universidad de Chile, 151-224. Strate Pezdirc, Federico Vladimir / Lilienfeld, Pablo Esbert (2017): Cantos Del Hain (Songs of Hain), Spain. Vargas Filgueira, Víctor (2017): Mi Sangre Yagán, Ushuaia: Editora Cultural Tierra del Fuego. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo (1997): Die kosmologischen Pronomina und der indianische Perspektivismus, in: Société suisse des Américanistes, Schweizerische Amerikanisten-Gesellschaft 61, 99-114.

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Tangier 1999 In search of authenticity. Paul Bowles longs for something and insists on its existence Andi Schoon

When Dieter Ganske stepped on Moroccan soil, the flags were still flying at half-mast. King Hassan II had already been dead for two months. On the same day in July, Mohammed VI had ascended the throne and immediately addressed the people with a television speech. A turning point was imminent: he wanted to fight poverty and strengthen human rights. This was well received here in Tangier, because Hassan had deliberately allowed the city to deteriorate for decades. It had been repugnant to him, the once international zone with its knights of fortune, drug freaks and poets. His successor now seemed to take an interest in the poor fate of the dazzling port city. »Tangier, c’est magique«, called out a toothless old man on the quay when Dieter was still walking down the jetty. He didn’t have to be an anthropologist to recognise the service he was about to receive. Dieter decided to face the situation openly and pressed his suitcase into the man’s hand. »Rue de la plage 106?« That was not far. Right next to the promenade was a four-lane boulevard with formerly white hotels behind long, arid palm trees. The sidewalk was lined with merchants who had spread their goods out on blankets, in between adolescent boys with glue bags and glassy eyes. Dieter caught himself thinking that Marseille would look like this after a civil war, a Mediterranean disaster in glistening light. As they turned into the narrow alleys of the harbour district, he noticed a stern smell of spices, fresh blood and car exhaust fumes. He would remember this mixture. His suitcase carrier pointed to a four-storey corner house, splendid in its layout, but heavily damaged, as if an aristocratic ensemble had come under diffuse fire. Dieter thanked him, gave him a few coins and rang Antonio Pena Orellana’s bell, the former owner of this property. He was greeted by a lady in her fifties, with steel-blue eyes and a blow-dry hairstyle. Marty de Kooning, a Dutch documentary filmmaker. A colleague at Bochum University had put them in touch with one another. »Dear Dieter, welcome, that’s exactly how I imagined you«, she said, laughing. A little embarrassed, he followed her through the wooden door, at least three meters high and decorated with inlays, and up an imposing staircase into the apartment on the first floor. A long hallway lined with large etchings: Canals, merchants’ houses, depicting Amsterdam.



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»How long have you resided here?« the old-fashioned verb slipped out of Dieter, but it didn’t fit badly. She was only on site irregularly, she said, that depended entirely on her respective film projects. The apartment used to belong to a Spanish noble family who built and ran the theatre around the corner, the famous Gran Teatro Cervantes. In fact, this apartment with its gullwing doors and spacious salons could have just as well been in Madrid. And Marty fit well into its ambience. For Dieter, she was the typical representative of an expatriate class of educated citizens. He moved into his room with a balcony and a view of the bay and made himself ready for a first walk through the city. A grey shirt with cloth trousers and leather sandals seemed appropriate to him, so as not to attract too much attention in the swarm of locals. He then strolled towards Medina. Dieter loved to let the scenes have an undisturbed effect on him, although he always wanted to make his own perspective his subject. That was the core of his anthropological method: no statement without reflection on the speaker’s position. His second leitmotif was the search for the essence of a culture. In which places, in which actions and in which phenomena does the constant emerge unadulterated? For Dieter, it was as clear as day that the spirit of a city never revealed itself at the hotspots. With a lot of luck, its contours could be seen in side scenes. It was impossible to focus on this spirit, but at best it could only be photographed by those who pressed the shutter button indiscriminately. Just as, for a moment, he could hear a voice wandering aimlessly through the noise between the stations on the radio. It was a fleeting, transcendent happiness. »This way, brother!« He had caught the attention of a dealer who wanted to talk to him about carpets or blankets. That was ok, but the English irritated him: the man apparently thought he was a day tourist, who had taken the ferry from Andalusia. Dieter was offended. He hadn’t crammed twelve semesters of standard ethnological works to pass through the bazaar and be taken as a holidaymaker in Spain. He rejected the trader harshly, whereupon three more showed up and pressed him. Beginner’s mistake. In the Maghreb, the encounter had to be celebrated, because all socially relevant processes followed the principle of saving face. The sales talk was thus not a purely capitalist process, but an authentic aspect of living together. In the given situation, however, hops and malt had been lost. The three men didn’t let him speak and held candlesticks and hash pipes in front of his nose, and a little boy fiddled around with his trousers. Dieter panicked, wriggled free and ran away amid the laughter of the bystanders. Still running, someone at the next corner called out to him: »Where do you go, my friend, this road is closed.« Which is the cheapest trick to make naive visitors to the old town streets pause for a moment. Dieter remained on course and stood a moment later in front of the meat market. As an enthusiastic hobby chef, he was interested in special ingredients and cooking methods. He could not guess, however, to which animal the rind and intestines directly in front of him had belonged. In stately bundles they hung on hooks on both sides of the alleyway and left only a narrow trellis. The smell and the puddles of blood on the floor told the anthropologist that the usual western division

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of labour into slaughtering, refining and selling had not been introduced here yet. Everything happened on the spot. Dieter would have liked to turn around, but behind him the henchmen were still lurking. He felt watched, as if a spotlight was resting on him and moving with him. So he held his breath and ran through the middle of the battle corridor. He went on and on, with an approximate idea of danger, until he finally stood sweaty and half powerless again in front of the door plaque with the Spanish name. He leaned his forehead against the wooden inlays. For dinner, Marty prepared him a really good pasta, with olives that a friend from Bologna had recently brought her. The next morning Dieter set off on his journey. Because he wasn’t here for anthropological research (such a short stay wouldn’t have been suitable for that), but to visit the legendary writer Paul Bowles – at least as long as that was still possible, for he was now in his eighties. That Tangier was absurdly located on his way back from Romania for him had to do with Dieter’s main thematic concern: he was interested in indigenous music styles, much to the annoyance of the full-time music ethnologists who denied him any competence in this field. However, Dieter was of the opinion that music reflected the entire culture and thus fell within his sphere of responsibility. In this sense, he had examined certain tendencies in Eastern Europe and, to put it mildly, had encountered inconsistencies. Now Dieter was not quite sure himself: Did he need Paul Bowles’ expert advice, or did he rather want to confront him? Anyway, he had to speak to him. Bowles, the legend: As a musical prodigy, he had been an idolised member of the New York cultural chic set in the 1930s. A Debussy-style composer, with a distinguished three-piece and straight hair, at his side the no-less famous writer Jane Bowles, both of them surrounded by an aura of bisexual allure. In 1947, on one of their extended trips around the world, they had gotten stuck in Tangier and succumbed to the charm of the international zone. Under the influence of his wife, Paul transformed himself from a composer to a writer, in whose books European intellectuals went to the dogs in the desert. Jane and Paul mutated into a mythical force, made for projection. Beyond Moroccan independence in 1956, they acted as a North African bridgehead for artists and writers from the predominantly Anglophone world. Half the beat generation fulfilled their dream of freedom of movement and intoxication through the mediation of the spouses. Bowles’ reputation as a charismatic nerd had lasted to the present day, even if the signs of the times were different today. Tangier had long since ceased to be an international hangout and had become a state province.

Under a clear and cloudless sky, lies poor Tangier, high and dry. Gaily she lived, now watch her die, the city they vowed to kill. Bowles had nevertheless remained a lone advocate of post-colonial anti-modernism. From 1959, he had spent months travelling Morocco to document regional musical practices. After Jane’s death in 1973, the promotion of Moroccan authors took the

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place of dialogue with his wife. It was precisely for these »translations« that Bowles had to take harsh criticism time and again. Just recently, the respected author Mohammed Choukri had described him in a newspaper article as a vampire who feeds on the blood of young illiterates. Bowles’ apartment was in the modern building Immeuble Itesa, Apartment 33, overlooking the Spanish Embassy. Open daily to all who get pass his servant, Abdelouahid Boulaich. Dieter had written to register himself while in Bucharest, but was not sure whether the news had reached Bowles at such short notice. But Abdelouahid opened up and asked him in. In Dieter’s imagination, the poet-prince’s apartment had been inviting and feudal, but the mail, books and medicine were already piled up in the entrance area. One door further he was already standing in the living room – and entered a strange scene: Bowles, a little man in a traditional robe, leaned on his bed in the middle of a cushion landscape. At the foot end, sat a Moroccan man of about 60, his head buried in his hands. Another local stood at the window and smoked a pipe. There was an icy silence, apparently Dieter had broken into a break in conversation. No one noticed him until Bowles threw a defensive hand movement at his butler. Dieter was asked out, but Abdelouahid told him to come back the next day. So far, so good, he could not have expected more from a halfway spontaneous visit. But the situation he had found worried him. He hadn’t recognised the man’s face on the bed, and yet intuitively guessed that it had to be Mohammed Mrabet, now a prominent author himself, who didn’t know how to read or write. Bowles had written down and published his stories, allegedly whispered to him by a magical fish, for decades, with both names on the book titles. Had there been another dispute over rights, who was entitled to how much money? Dieter decided he would ask carefully the next day. In this area, Tangier had a completely different character than in the medieval Kasbah. The streets resembled rather those of a French city. In fact, the Rue de la Liberté, on which he was currently standing, led to a roundabout with the French Embassy and the Gran Café de Paris on its sides. Dieter opted for a peppermint tea in a protected environment. Because that was the advantage of all cafés in the world: one bought one’s eyes by buying a drink. In the comforting awareness of being able to stare at the environment from here, Dieter sat down on a deep leather armchair, in front of him a table with a brown, glass top and ashtray. Marble floor, mirrored rear wall, wood panelling, high stucco ceiling with fan. This was a time capsule from the 1950s, and he would not have been surprised if Jean-Paul Sartre had suddenly sat down at the next table. The café was mainly occupied by decently dressed older Moroccans. In the street scene in front of the panorama window, there were hardly any expats to be seen, instead Berbers with pointed hoods, Sub-Saharan refugees, young dealers in demolished hip-hop clothes and some Arab investors with women in burkas. It was really not easy to see something like a red thread or common theme in this maze of signs, let alone the essence of a culture. In other words: Dieter came from the frying pan into the fire, because he had had a similar fate in Romania last week.

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He had followed the tip of his friend Merle Barnes, who had told him about invented folklore traditions under Ceaus,escu. The documents would still be stored today in the archives of the state radio station. Dieter was so electrified by the fake folk story that he didn’t even go after his university for money, but paid for the trip out of his own pocket. He had to go where it hurts. Of course, he had a certain idea of Eastern European folk music, which would presumably shatter on the spot. Yes, Merle said, it was the same for him back then. He had fled as a drummer from the academic jazz of the North American universities in order to play ›the real stuff‹. And then he was disappointed several times. But one after the other. The radio archive was a real treasure trove. Dieter found countless recordings from the 1950s and 1960s, including detailed descriptions of how these were made. Among them were real gold pieces like the album »Bijuterii muzicale pentru toate varstele«, fervently performed by an emeritus Securitate officer named Dimitri Podasca. The couple Ceaus,escu had tackled the matter on a grand scale: whole styles were designed on the drawing board and filled with commissioned compositions. Suddenly, there were harmonica orchestras and ensembles with singing saws. Actually quite funny, if it hadn’t been for the nationalistic strategy of the dictatorship. At any rate, the intention was clear to see: The ultimately unpredictable music of the people was to be replaced by a cleaned-up version with content conforming to the regime. Dieter stumbled from one surprise to the next: Some of the ensembles apparently still existed a decade after the fall of the Despot. In the meantime, they toured all over Europe with their fantasy costumes. How could that be? When Dieter left the archive after a few days, he was dizzy. He went to the next phone booth and called Merle, who laughed out loud at the other end of the line. Of course the ensembles still exist, but today they no longer serve the regime – they satisfy the longings of the world music freaks. It was therefore a matter of retort music in two ways. The reality, of course, looks quite different once again, he learned that as a drummer of a Romanian wedding band. He had signed on to play authentic gypsy music, but the audience had always wished for current hits. And because folk is always what’s going to go down well, he played Madonna and Duran Duran with his toothless boys on their violins and accordions. »Relax, my dear«, Merle said, »I want to tell you one last story: On my first trip to Romania I met a beautiful woman. She took me to her village and I was introduced to her relatives. The next Sunday, we had to go to church. So that I wouldn’t stand out too much, they lent me traditional clothes and we trudged through the glistening snow towards the church. Halfway along the way an old VW bus stopped next to us. A photographer got off and said, ›Please, you look so beautiful… may I take a picture of you?‹ Then he got in again and drove out of the scene. Two years later, I was standing with my next girlfriend in a bookstore in Gdansk when she gave me a Polish travel guide about Romania in her hand. The photo was printed on the back.« After the phone call, Dieter decided that he had to go one step further, even if it was another step into the heart of darkness.

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That’s why he went to Tangier, another place of constant shifting, filled to the brim with historical material that gave no security – with an old protagonist at the centre, who always raised new questions. It was just like that. Why do we have to write meanings down at all? Dieter thought about how rich the fleeting makes us: the memory and the internalisation of sound, gaze, taste and touch. The so-called safe values were more transient, they were subject to the daily rate. This visit to the café, for example, would remain with him, the much too sweet mint tea, the anachronistic interior. But where was he himself in this ensemble, what made him tick, which voice was his own? At the bottom, at the back, he suspected it at all times, but it was distracted by other voices, mixed with them, covered by them. In complex situations, he heard a hysterical chattering that consisted to a lesser extent of real voices. He was sure that the greater part came from himself, for he was speaking his perceived impressions to himself. The image, the situation became the polyphonic text, the Babylonian talk that spread within him. By the way, not only metaphysical messages sounded: the body also spoke, for instance about a sudden throbbing or whistling in the ear. For example, right now. He also wanted to listen to these signs and draw the right conclusions from them. He still had a score to settle, he had to go back to the old town again. Once again past the merchants, along the wrong branches, after the smells, up to a completely different kind of café, with seats on the carpet, with water pipes and a small group of musicians next to the bar, who immediately asked for and received a donation. Some of the instruments he knew, the plucked ganbri and drums in the shape of hourglasses, called gwal. Dieter had hardly placed himself in a corner when a man around 40 stepped into the middle of the room. He was dressed in black and red cloths. The music began with a repetitive rhythm, the man closed his eyes and began to slowly turn around his own axis. After a few minutes, he lay down on the floor. The music stopped for a moment and then resumed, this time with a much faster beat. The man stood up and danced, pulled a long knife out of his pocket and began to inflict injuries to himself in the rhythm of the music, at regular intervals and in a formalised way, first on his arms, then on his legs. In between, he wiped his face with the cuts until he sunk and remained lying, covered in blood. The ganbri player stood up and spread a blanket over the dancer, who now stopped moving. The musicians took a break, drank tea and smoked a pipe. Dieter was in a state of shock. He knew such rituals from hearsay, but had not expected them here, in the middle of the city on an early evening. He tried to get his bearings and asked the man next to him, who, like all other café visitors, had been interested in the performance, but had looked at what had just happened with almost no reaction. He was told that the dancer was possessed by Aisha Qandisha, as can be seen from his red and black clothes. Dieter had already heard of the female spirit, to whom several thousand Northern Moroccans were supposedly married. He inquired about the details. Aisha Qandisha slipped into men and drove them crazy. The victims walked alone, sat silently in the café and talked to themselves. One could not get rid of the demon, but one could reconcile with her. In the bloody ritual, Aisha Qandisha would be satisfied and from then on would be a helper against

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the diseases she otherwise causes. So we had just experienced something very beautiful. The man smiled at Dieter. At this moment the music started a third time, now a little slower again. There was a small movement under the blanket. The dancer moaned, slowly stood up and moved through the room for a while. Then he walked radiantly towards the musicians, kissed them one after the other on the forehead, gave them money and left the café. No questions asked. Dieter had experienced what he had longed for. And now that he had seen it, he no longer knew if he liked it. This had undoubtedly been an authentic process. It was even a moment of salvation in play, someone had fought the inner voice before his eyes, and perhaps even successfully. He would tell Bowles about it, but for once it was good for today. After a restless sleep, Dieter made his way to the American Consulate the next morning. A truly magnificent Moorish-style building, in gratitude for Morocco’s recognition of the United States as the first country in the world. At the time of the International Zone, the American Legation was part of the High Society network. Today, it had largely lost its political function and served purely representative purposes. This also seemed to apply to the older consul Dieter met at the spot and whose field of activity was not quite clear to him. He was somehow left behind, just as the whole building was a remnant. Besides an ancestral gallery of former ambassadors, the main attraction was the toy collection of the multi-billionaire Malcolm Forbes, who had spent some nice years in the city together with Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton. More interesting was the meeting with Yassine, who was in charge of the house’s small scientific library. A likeable guy, perhaps 30 years old, who had returned to his hometown after studying in Paris, like some of his old friends. Asked about Bowles’ role in Tangier, he just waved it off. Bowles had always avoided the educated Moroccans, they did not fit into his concept. Here in the Legation, however, everything that somehow had to do with Bowles had been collected for years in order to build him a kind of shrine after his death. Yassine said that this seemed a little scary to him. But that Dieter should give Bowles his best regards and tell him that he could ignore the local intelligentsia if he likes, but that it would still unfold splendidly. When Dieter rang Apartment 33 for the second time, his feelings and thoughts were even more ambivalent than yesterday. But then a smiling Abdelouahid opened the door for him and told him that he was the only guest today. Mr. Bowles had received the mail from Bucharest and was looking forward to the conversation. Again or still, Bowles sat on his throne of pillows. When Dieter entered the room, he smiled and pointed to a bamboo chair opposite the bed. His servant immediately brought tea, Bowles was an experienced host. If Dieter liked it in Tangier, and what did he think about the brand new Art Nouveau-style street lamps? Bowles giggled, but didn’t seem to expect an answer. »Well, young man, what are you bringing me and what do we want to talk about? Frankly, you seem a little disoriented.« The master’s eyes sparkled

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attentively. Dieter pulled his doctoral thesis out of his pocket, a study on the relationship between fact and fiction in German documentary films of the 1960s. Bowles raised his eyebrows, nodded approvingly and placed the book on one of the piles next to his bed. »Mister Bowles, please forgive the ambush, but I’m on an odyssey and need your advice.« The poet seemed amused, so Dieter came straight to the point: I’m interested in the audio recordings of traditional Moroccan music you made between 1959 and 1961. These are fantastic documents, but I have a few questions about them. I have read your accompanying notes. Sometimes you had strange ways to get to the footage.

I wanted to preserve the music before it disappeared. I traveled all over the country for that. That’s all, actually. Let me give you two examples. There’s the Gnaoui solo song that you…

The gogo, a kind of shoe box with a single string. And with a horribly rattling steel nib. You asked the gogo player to remove the nib, which is an integral part of the instrument, for the recordings.

I didn’t actually ask him, I coerced him. But the recording is one of my best. Listen, the Gnaoua music in Marrakech was already the result of various blendings at the time. I see my intervention more as a natural development of the instrument. Another example: Reh dial Beni Bouhiya…

I can imagine what comes next. In Segangan you wanted to record a small ensemble of vocals, flute and a kind of snare drum. You didn’t appreciate the drum, but you liked the qsbah flute very much. The qsbah player, however, refused to play solo because this element did not occur in his music. You threatened him with the American government.

That’s right. But at least I didn’t make a secret of it. You recorded the flute solo against the will of the musicians and then wrote a text for it. May I read it out loud?

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Don’t, I know it by heart: In a landscape of immensity and desolation, it is a moving thing to come upon a lone camel driver, sitting beside his fire at night while the camels sleep, and listen for a long time to the querelous, hesitant cadences of the qsbah. The music, more than any other I know, most completely expresses the essence of solitude. But according to your notes, it was neither night nor lonely, nor were there camels in the area. You simply used the power of the government you despised to document something that didn’t exist.

But this recording has also become very beautiful. You know, back then I wasn’t just a microphone, but a living person with my own musical aesthetic. May I ask another question? Would you have thought that your texts would one day be translated into Arabic, that they would also have Moroccan readers?

No, I would also not advise any Moroccan to read my books. I ask this because you once wrote that you could easily confuse the locals with their luggage.

Really? Where did you find that? In »The Sheltering Sky« the protagonist enters a train compartment and describes her impression of chaos.

So what, have you ever taken a train in Morocco? Why don’t you give it a try? Why do cultivated Europeans always meet uneducated Moroccans in your books?

Because that’s realistic. As an unsuspecting visitor of Morocco, one does not meet an educated person, and if one did, one would not notice it, because educated people do not talk to tourists. Besides, this is the only way to get the action going. I need disparate elements that collide. I am a writer, you know, not a documentary filmmaker. You ignore the local high culture.

Because it doesn’t interest me. I’m interested in what’s different here than in the Western world. Those who have studied abroad do not appear in my books.

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You do not grant this country any progress.

I don’t want any progress. How can you want progress when the world is about to collapse? Just one step further and it’s over. You claim that Moroccan culture has suffered greatly since independence in 1956.

Since independence? No, since the 9th century. Since the Arabs ruined the country. That has nothing to do with 1956. Can you explain the criticism of your joint texts with Mohammed Mrabet?

No, I have always paid him his shares, often even more. I gave him a voice with which he could also criticize me. That is what he has now done. Was he here yesterday when I came in?

I no longer remember who was here yesterday. Why are these texts always about violence, about the raw, the uncivilised?

Because the boy knows which stories I like. Visit him, he lives in Souani. But do not ask for the famous author, because nobody knows him here. Ask for Mrabet, who prays in the Emsallah Mosque. And let them tell you the story about the writer, who is also a liar. It sounds almost the same in Arabic, and that is no coincidence, ka-da-ba means lie, ka-ta-ba means write. You draw a picture of Morocco that is wild, original and romantic at the same time. How you describe the medieval Fez…

I represent Fez romantically? I don’t really know what you mean by romance. I have always enjoyed being in Fez because there is a very good hotel there, the Palais Jamai, which I can recommend. I ask again differently: Is your representation of North Africa balanced and correct?

And I tell you once again: I am not responsible for correct and balanced representations. I am a writer, I write what I want. That is my only privilege. Now calm down and drink your tea. I received mail today.

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Dieter had been aroused in a way during the conversation that he rarely experienced. Bowles, on the other hand, had remained provocatively calm, he knew all these accusations, he didn’t care about them. Now he picked up a cassette, one of his old compositions from the 1930s, which had recently been recorded in France. He instructed Dieter to put it in the recorder, then they listened. Sounds like from a bygone era, a kind of American late Romanticism with cautiously modern elements. After the last note Dieter inquired when he had heard this piece for the last time. Bowles said it was the first time. But how could it be, when there were so many famous composers and musicians among his friends? Bowles replied: »What friends?« During the interview, the old man had giggled and twisted almost youthfully, but listening to the music, he had got tired and leaned his head back. He waved at Dieter, shook his hand and whispered something to him. Dieter wasn’t sure if he had understood it correctly, but Abdelouahid took care of his master now. He kissed Bowles on the forehead and closed his eyes. The visit was over. Dieter had understood: »I surrounded myself with silent figures.« Back on the street, he thought of all the failed encounters in Bowles’ books. The fact that the work with Mrabet had to end in a scandal was actually preordained. Strange that they wanted to set up a room of honour for this man in the consulate, as if he were a mediator for the host country. He was not. On the other hand, he did occasionally act as if he were. What was the writer’s freedom in his novels, became a problem in the so-called documents. Dieter didn’t help that. The following noon he stood at the railing and looked back at the port, which was slowly fading. How would it go on with this city, with its old poet and the new king? Bowles staged himself continually, he permanently represented his version of the story. It was said about Stockholm’s Strindberg that schizophrenia had forced him to make permanent statements about himself. With regard to his own person, Dieter thought that Copenhagen’s Kierkegaard fit much better, who wrote: »Praying does not mean speaking, but listening.« That’s right, the supermundane only came to light when one was silent. Transcendent impulses (or those he thought were) gave him peace and confidence. Those that brought him to hectic acts of fulfillment sprang only from the consciousness of guilt. Orders were always suspicious.

A slightly longer German version of this chapter was published as part of the novel Die schwache Stimme (Textem, 2018).

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Passageways of Knowing Music, Movement, Reconnection Birgit Abels

What does music do for us? At first, in their charming naivety, these six words seem oddly out of sync with the signification vs. New Ontology debate that this edited volume addresses.1 Slightly rephrased, »what is the sound work of music?«, the words begin to resonate with some of the fundamental issues at stake. More importantly, perhaps, they suggest a small but significant shift of focus away from questions centred around the (a)subjectivity of sound and on to the relational capacities of musicmaking. In inquiring into music as a relational force, as I do in this essay, I’m not exploring the ontological so much as I am interested in the ontogenetic. Music ›is‹ not; music is only ever becoming, and that becoming interlaces with our own becoming. In music’s evanescence lies its efficacy. Process-philosophically, then, the efficacy of music can never be categorical: a signified, a given or purely subjective (however defined). Instead, music affects, and interacts with, the felt-body as a continuous, amorphous stream of layered complexity. This complexity straddles the territorial boundaries of the material and the immaterial, of the referential and the essential. For the same reason, however, music can never be fully grasped as self-sufficiently sonic either. To make and to participate in music is to navigate this layered complexity, to know how to ride the waves of music’s becoming, to find something new on their cusps and to transform along the process. It is this transformative modality of knowledge that I am interested in: the sound knowledge of music. My goal with this is not to travel the middle road between the debate’s polarities, even though it is somewhere between Christoph Cox’s pre-signification and Marie Thompson’s fully qualified signification that I locate sound knowledge. Paraphrasing cultural geographer Edward Soja (1996), I posit that music

1 See e.g. cf. Cox 2009, 2011; cf. Thompson 2017; cf. Kane 2015. This project received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union‘s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 862367 – Sound Knowledge).



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is »both/and also.« It escapes an either/or logic, including the categorisation as either pre-reflective or fully signified. If, in this, the path I am looking for is more of a footpath than a road, then this is indeed a postcolonial repercussion, as the title of this edited volume suggests. In this case, the repercussion of a North Atlantic scholarly tradition that radically prioritises the specific, the sayable and that which meets the eye over the unspecific, the ineffable and that which meets the ear. But, music knows differently, and this I want to explore here. To begin this exploration with sound, I will specify what I mean by ›sound knowledge‹ and ›sound work.‹ Outlining music’s relational capacities through these two terms, I will quickly arrive at the atmospheric workings of sonic practices. We – this is a »we« in the inclusive sense – know through music not least atmospherically, and we act on that knowledge in ways that cannot possibly be pinned down to either the signified or the sonically essential. It is only through sound that we can make this particular type of sense of our lives, our surroundings and our doings. Making and partaking in music, then, is always an epistemological practice, and partaking in music is based on epistemological literacy, or more accurately perhaps, on layered epistemological literacies. In her exploration of ocean-based ways of knowing in the Pacific, Ingersoll regards literacy as key. For her, epistemological literacy involves »a knowledge situated in a specific place and space«.2 »[O]ceanic literacy,« she argues, »is an ancestral knowledge historically relevant in Kaˉnaka Maoli futures«.3 With a grain of salt, this holds true for a number of Pacific Island communities, not only with a view to oceanic, but also to sonic knowledge cultures. What sets musical literacies apart from the Oceanic literacies Ingersoll discusses is that »place and space« here is not at all geographically defined, but specifically sonic in nature. As such, it is more apt to think of musical literacies as involving a knowledge arising from specifically sonic practices of rendering time and space as experienceable.4 I will therefore sketch, conceptually, the notion of sonic literacy in the following text. This will be an exercise that enables me to more clearly distinguish the sound work music does from the sound knowledge involved in partaking in music. The sound work music does is the actual reworking of connection and relationship5. Sound knowledge is the prerequisite for sound work to happen: sound work is what takes place in a connection, but sound knowledge facilitates, and at the same time, comes about in, connection. Sound work, in many ways, is sound knowledge being put to use. In closing, I will share a number of thoughts on the implications of sound knowledge as an epistemic practice of reconnecting with, and relishing the experiencability of, one’s own relationality.

2 Ingersoll 2016, 18. 3 Ibid. 4 Cf. Abels 2019. 5 Cf. Guilbault 2007.

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Sound knowledge is all about the transductive qualities distinct to sonic practices,6 and it is these transductive qualities that open musical passageways of knowing that may, in the end, lead to fresh vistas on the question of signification vs. the New Ontology. If I am building my argument top-down rather than bottom-up from ethnographic material, this is to keep a tight focus on the possible relevance of sound knowledge to the issues this collection of essays addresses. Dedicated to the logic of sonic experience, this essay revolves around the notion of music-making as a passageway of knowing. The idea of the passageway is related to Tongan scholar Epeli Hau’ofa’s re-imagination from the 1990s of the Pacific Ocean as a highway that links rather than separates the Pacific Islands.7 Hau’ofa, rather than looking at the Pacific Island world as a set of »islands in a far sea« located in the global periphery, chooses a more holistic perspective, one that opts to see things »in the totality of their relationships,« and Oceania as a »sea of islands« rather than as a few disparate, resourceless islands separated by a vast and mighty ocean.8 Pacific epistemologies tend to seek out connection and contact rather than delimitation and borders, and this is the perspective Hau’ofa chooses. »Hau’ofa’s ›sea of islands‹ defies the barriers established by development ›experts‹, aid agencies, colonial governments, scientists, and select scholars,« writes Ingersoll.9 Drawing on traditional Pacific knowledge, the notion of a »sea of islands« articulates a counter-worldview and offers an alternative. Drafting her »seascape epistemology,« Ingersoll is, in some ways, embarking on a project similar to mine here: one that searches for alternative epistemologies, for ways of understanding based on the logic of other mediums than text and sensitive to both ancestral wisdom and the felt-body’s sensitivity and sensuality. The knowledge of music (and dance), too, is all this and more, I argue. It is certainly from Pacific Island perspectives, even though there is neither a dominant conceptualisation of what this mode of knowledge might be about across Pacific Islander communities, nor would all Pacific Islanders, or members of a specific Pacific Island community, subscribe to this idea. What is shared across Oceania, however, is the sense that what I call sound knowledge here is knowledge not about music, but about both sound as a medium and sonic practices as »an interconnected system that allows for successful navigation through them. It’s an approach to life and knowing through passageways.«10 Discussing alternative epistemologies, and the seascape epistemology in particular, Ingersoll claims that the Kaˉnaka Maoli [native Hawaiian] seascape epistemology

6 Cf. Simondon 1992 [1964]; cf. Helmreich 2015; cf. de Assis 2017. 7 Cf. Hau’ofa 1993; cf. Goldie / Sobecki 2016. 8 Hau’ofa 1993, 7. 9 Ingersoll 2016, 16. 10 Ibid., 6.

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organizes events and thoughts according to how they move and interact while emphasizing the importance of knowing one’s roots, one’s center, and where one is located inside this constant movement […] The power of seascape epistemology lies in its organic nature, its inability to be mapped absolutely, and its required interaction with the intangible sea.11 Similarly, sound-based epistemologies make sense by rendering experiential in sound the sound connection and its dynamics. They enable one to feel one’s relationality and trajectory socially and historically, but also within one’s life-worlds more generally. As an epistemic configuration, then, sound allows us to think and feel forward, to relish in sonic motion and to anticipate its future course and past itineraries all at the same time. This movement, not confined by linearity or direction in any way, is what enables the passage: from sonic event and neural impulse to affect, emotion, historical narrative and memory revisited. To think through music as a passageway is to follow the music. This is what this essay endeavours, and, guided by the specificities of the medium sound, its route will time and again meander back to the conceptual questions of signification and sonic essence raised programmatically by this volume.

Sound knowledge | Sound work Sound, in its very essence, is energetic movement: sound waves travelling through a medium. Outlining the core of his branch of ecomusicology, Jeff Todd Titon describes the medium-specific relational potential of music-making as follows: When we hear a sound, we’re connected through these sound waves with another vibrating body. Sound connects the two of us. We both vibrate to the same frequency. The metaphor for that connection is sympathy–sympathetic vibration. […] The »sound connection« […] is a […] powerful, lasting connection. Sound makes a connection between two beings […], and that connection leads to what I call »co-presence.« Sound is the most powerful means of co-presence. When we talk about two beings that are co-present, we’re talking about community: a sound connection.12 This capacity to create a tangible connection – not metaphorical but felt-bodily in nature – is distinct to the sonic.13 Sound knowledge, then, is a practice: a knowledge 11 Ibid. 12 Cf. Titon 2017. 13 Further on the relationship between the relational capacities of sound-based cultural practices, notions of resonance and the sound connection, see cf. Abels 2020.

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practice rendering this kind of connection experienceable. Its very possibility arises from the experience of sound, which through its material characteristics suggests an ethical attunement to one’s surroundings.14 Defying a Cartesian worldview in which the environment is a detached, external object, sound knowledge enables a heightened sensitivity to the interconnectedness of beings and things.15 As a detached object, the environment can easily be exploited; when imbricated with one’s own being and doing, it cannot.16 Similarly, in sound, there is no individual that is entirely detached from another. Sound knowledge thus gives rise to an ecological and ethical understanding that everyone and everything is connected, an insight that deeply resonates with Pacific Islander notions.17 This understanding arises across the various registers of the human experience: it is felt-bodily, it is emotional, it is affective, it is visceral, it is shared and hence social in nature. Both process-philosophically and acoustically speaking, sound knowledge is brought about in sonic movement: movement between bodies, stories, histories and truths. Musical conventions, seen in this light, are strategies to discipline and steer this movement in its incipiency; musical genres, strategies to tap into this energy the very moment the movement commences. Such engagement is always profoundly situational, and so, sound knowledge is something like the mercury of epistemology. It is restlessly moving, ever-transforming and always already the incipiency of something new. My preliminary working definition of sound knowledge takes Kramer’s understanding of aesthetic knowledge as one point of departure: [K]nowledge in its most robust form is never a matter of simply knowing what is true or false. Knowledge of the world, as opposed to knowledge of data, arises only in understandings that can neither be true nor false, that is, in understandings the epistemic form of which is the form of the aesthetic.18 But I would like to take this idea a significant step further. Sound knowledge as Kramer’s »knowledge of the world« is always already relational, a practical, transforming engagement with our environment. Sound knowledge is therefore not knowledge about the world as an object separate from myself. Rather, it is a way of reconfiguring the world as I live in it that arises from thinking, feeling, and traveling along with music as knowledge-unfolding. We follow the routes of sound knowledge by making, studying and learning, in short: by engaging in music. The knowledge of music unfolds itself through musical structures, textures and forms, as well as through the meaningfulness that arises from mak14 Ibid; cf. Feld 2017. 15 Cf. Ingold 2011; also see cf. Ismaiel-Wendt 2011. 16 Cf. Titon 2017. 17 See e.g. Yunkaporta 2019; cf. Hau’ofa 1993. 18 Kramer 2016, xiii-iv.

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ing music.19 This is how music ›makes sense‹: as an enactment and experience of a knowledge-as-discovery.20 If the ineffability inherent in a modality of knowledge that keeps charting new ground makes it notoriously difficult to frame sound knowledge in academic terms – and in many ways, the signification vs. New Ontology debates attests to that – then this is precisely the quality that also accounts for music-making’s impact and relevance in daily life. Here, the shift of focus away from what music might be on to what music might do is helpful. From a conceptual perspective, what is key here is the transductive process going on in the experience of sound: in the logic of sound experience, the felt and the thought are not necessarily separate categories. As a sound wave becomes an affect, an emotion or a shared feeling, one may instantaneously become the other. Sound knowledge emerges gradually, along musical form, layered discursive formations, emotional dispositions, historic memory and many other configurations.21 It therefore is always one step ahead of the reflective language that seeks to capture it in full. This is what has been described as the unsayable and ineffable, even as the power of music. But sound knowledge is a perpetuum mobile, and in trying to better understand its efficacy, it is essential to address its fleetingness. One analytic capable of exploring sonic procedurality and pushing us nearer toward the transduction at the heart of sound knowledge is the neo-phenomenology of atmospheres. To a considerable and often-neglected extent, we know through music atmospherically, and it is through the processual logic of atmospheres that we might be able to draw nearer to the heart of sound knowledge. Atmospheres, according to neo-phenomenologist Hermann Schmitz (2014), manifest as corporeal impressions. As sonic atmospheres seize the felt-body, their acoustic materiality transduces into a shared feeling that seems »poured out in space«.22 »Poured out in [time-]space« is, perhaps unintendedly, an almost poetical description of how relationality feels when experienced through sound: sonic sensation, for the fleeting moment the sound event lasts, renders space non-dimensional and time non-linear.23 ›Poured out‹ both spatially and temporally, their only coordinates are relative, marked solely by relational becoming. Through a sonic atmosphere, this relationality is experienced as affective, emotional, social, historical, interpretive, discursive and more in nature – ›more‹ in the double sense of additional categories and as something that goes way beyond all of these categories. But how does it ›go beyond‹? By establishing the sound connection between them that renders their relationship to one another tangible in music. The neo-phenomenological key term here is suggestions of motion (Bewegungssuggestionen).24 The mechanism through which atmospheres affect the felt body, suggestions of motion 19 Cf. Abels 2017. 20 Kramer 2016, xi. 21 Cf. Abels 2018a. 22 Böhme 1993, 263. 23 Cf. Abels 2019. 24 Cf. Schmitz 2014; also see Eisenlohr 2018, 92ff.

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give rise to resonance between divergent frames of making sense of the world, moulding the relational complexity of being-in-the-world. Because, for example, emotion is always only the other end of the spectrum from idea in musical experience, connected yet different, it is through the sound connection that the intrinsically ambivalent complexity of knowing through sound crystallises. In sound, we know not through emotion or idea but through the sound connection between them; we know not emotionally or reflectively, but how emotion and idea resonate with one another. The felt body is the site where this process is taking place, and to some extent, it is capable of transforming the suggestions of motion it experiences. Elsewhere I have argued that for this reason,25 the felt-body and suggestions of motion are »becoming-with« each other in Donna Haraway’s sense: they are mutually constitutive processes, a sympoietic assemblage.26 This also accounts for the interwovenness of sonic suggestions of motion with other sensory registers. This sensory complexity is crucial for an analysis of the transductive mechanics of sound knowledge in performance and most relevant in performance contexts in which the »[…] aesthetic emphasis is on the perfection of the performance rather than the creation of a lasting object. When perfection is achieved, the thrill of recognition in the audience fulfils local sensibilities, but translates poorly into academic discourse«.27 This is how atmospheres, thinking about sound in terms of Soja’s »both/and-also« is possible: Sonic practices are, by nature, both fully signified and sonic essence, but also more than that. So, sound knowledge facilitates, and at the same time, comes about in, connection. Sound work, on the other hand, is sound knowledge put to use, the actual reworking of connection and relationships through sound.28 If sound knowledge is the prerequisite for sound work to happen, then sound work is what takes place in a connection. The analytical potential of this idea lies in the fact that a sound-based epistemology allows for alternative approaches to the reconnection, re-creation and re-imagination that music enables. It speaks to an ethical experience of being alive through music.29 One could think of music as a gesture towards those co-present and about sound knowledge as knowledge about the potential of this gesture – a type of knowledge that is distinctly musical and speaks to relational situationality, not facticities. What makes sound knowledge unique is its distinct procedurality. It is its procedurality that allows music not only to become icon, index or symbol, but also to supply, and even become, a coercive force of transformation.30 To partake in music, then, is always also to potentially affect transformation. Again, this is an insight so well established in many Pacific Islander communities that Pacific Island activist and scholar Epeli Hau’ofa 25 Cf. Abels 2019a. 26 Cf. Haraway 2008. 27 Nero 1999, 257. 28 Cf. Guilbault 2007. 29 Cf. Titon 2017. 30 See Kramer 2016, xi.

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(2008) argued that music and dance are central to revitalising cultural ideologies and practices. However, it requires a specific set of skills to tap into and work with this transformative potential: epistemological literacy.

Sound literacy Literacy, generally speaking, is the often culture-specific ability to understand and act on something, or on the knowledge of something.31 Sound knowledge lies in the sound connection. The sound connection, in turn, sensitises for the interconnectedness of all being, fostering awareness for life’s fragility, but also for the ethical reciprocity it thrives on.32 Sound literacy puts one in touch with these ethics: materially in sound, and in a less material way in enabling passage. The passage becomes possible because of the transductive dynamics following the sonic event. By voicing through musical conventions and traditions, historic memory and spatial belonging, music moulds a sense of positionality across the various ways of relating to one’s surroundings. In chanting, therefore, there is sonic movement. But there is also a movement and repositioning vis-à-vis one’s lifeworld and its ethical frameworks. The latter are taking shape in sound, which renders them experienceable for the felt-body and enables reconnection and new routes. To many Pacific Islanders, this connection between ancestral repertoire, the land, the (felt-)body and value sets is both sacred and indicative of a holistic system based on reciprocity between people and natural environment.33 When metaphor through sound becomes a felt-body sensation, an epistemic transduction is taking place: a transduction that transforms the metaphorical into something else. As a cultural strategy to work with knowledge, literacy points to an important characteristic of alternative epistemologies: in the case of sound, sound knowledge is not primarily knowledge about sound. It is here that the notion of the passageway becomes helpful. To know sound and sound-based cultural practices such as music as a passageway is to know the sonic as that part of an interconnected system that allows for new connections, or the renewal of connections. By (re-)connection, here, I am referring to the ecology and relationality of the social world; I am also, however, referring to that capacity of music to make an affect and an idea coalesce in sound for a fleeting moment. The sound work that music does for those who are musically literate in a given cultural context is one that finds its beginnings in the material aspects of sound. As sonic suggestions of motion reverberate within the felt-body, the felt-body quite literally finds resonance. This resonance allows for the suggestions of motion to propagate and take a multiplicity of trajectories across the range of human responses. This is how 31 See Ingersoll 2016, 5ff. 32 Cf. Titon 2017. 33 Cf. Yunkaporta 2019.

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a Micronesian chant, as an enactment of sound knowledge, reconnects those literate. The transductive processes a chant enables are not confined to a linear trajectory. Rather, its trajectory is one that allows for flexibility in any direction, extending into the past and possible futures just like into all directions in space. This is what makes sound knowledge a passageway of knowing, and it is also that specifically sonic capacity of music that enables it to yield actual transformation by providing, in the Pacific Islander context, philosophical nourishment for visions of alternative and self-determined futures. Sound knowledge, like other alternative epistemologies of the region, privileges alternative political and ethical relationships with the surrounding physical and spiritual world. Literacy is the culture-specific ability to work with this. How do sound knowledge, sound work and literacy interrelate then? The answer to this question is of conceptual consequence in that it, in some ways, also begins to shed light on the possible role of the culturally specific vis-à-vis the atmospheric workings of music, a question generally sidelined by Hermann Schmitz. Sound knowledge, sound work and literacy are imbricated with one another, co-present in their ongoing transformation: as I know how to navigate the waves of becoming sonically, I can do the (sound) work it takes to render sound knowledge tangible.

Reconnecting sound knowledge To think with sound knowledge means to explore music as a resourceful epistemic configuration in the mechanics of human becoming, one that is systematically overlooked in ocularcentric North Atlantic traditions of studying human cultures. The North Atlantic humanities and social sciences are acutely sensitised to text, but still need to develop a similarly potent analytical awareness of other dimensions of human relating to the world. Here, sound knowledge and other alternative epistemologies have true potential to open new doors: Arising from the logic of the sound connection, which shifts perspective from objectivity to connectivity, to think with sound knowledge means to acknowledge and analyse the various epistemic configurations that make up the texture of postcolonial lifeworlds as part of the multiple realities human beings have with their environment. The emphasis, then, is on the intellectual and human value inherent in putting divergent ways of thinking into perspective with one another. Therefore, focussing on music as procedural knowledge allows for an exploration of the insights arising from in between epistemological configurations and confrontations. Again, it is the Pacific Island background with which I arrive at this point. Ethnographies of Pacific Island music-making often give detailed accounts of how Indigenous Pacific Island ideas about music and dance are incommensurate with the mind-body divide and other binary ontological categories still dominant in the North Atlantic academy. But resonating with both discursive and non-discursive frames, music-making transcends inside and outside by way of its primarily corporeal experiential quality and,

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at the same time, relates to both. A deeply relational, uniquely musical comprehension of the world34 that crosses the mind-body divide and emphasises movement over stasis and becoming over being,35 it forms a particular epistemic register. This register of knowledge significantly differs from standard North Atlantic accounts of the nature of knowing, according to which knowledge is primarily a mental state entailing truth.36 Sound knowledge, by contrast, actualises through the felt body’s encounter with sound. Transducing the impact sonic materiality has on the felt-body, it mediates between different experiential orders beyond the felt-bodily, operating in their in-between.37 It brings the various frames of the human condition into sound while fleeting connection with one another. At the beginning of this process of transduction is a sound wave, a physical vibration. Further into the process, resonance emerges both materially and metaphorically when, for instance, the sensation of a Micronesian dance shout coalesces with the intense historicity it resounds – for the Indigenous listener – cannot be separated from the listening sensation. This is the process through which sound knowledge derives its efficacy: through sonic transduction turning sound events into an encompassing experience of being-alive-to-the-world.38 Sound work makes this knowledge operable, and humans mobilise upon this knowledge in coping with their life-world through music. Music, here, functions as an epistemic form that is distinct yet imbricated within its environment. If the voice of this musical mode of knowledge has remained largely unheard in cultural and postcolonial studies, then this is both symptom and opportunity. Exploring music-making as musical epistemic configurations has the potential to open up postcolonial studies’ much lamented, but nonetheless persistent heavy textual bias in favour of a more encompassing consideration of cultural practices. Against the backdrop of recent developments in the fields of the theory of knowledge and phenomenology, this may well be one of the most urgent, yet theoretically and methodically one of the most challenging issues current music studies needs to tackle. If music is a sonorous space where a distinctly musical mode of knowledge is enacted, then analytical strategies need to sound out the epistemologies arising from its distinct medium-specific affordances without losing sight of the multi-sensorial framework of the overall sonic experience. Music-making, then, is not merely a representational technique »expressing« something extramusical or articulating an identity. Rather, it is a self-referential mode of knowledge forming multilayered connections and ruptures with pasts, presents and futures, affective responsiveness, surrounding sensory orders and discursive configurations including ideas about nationhood, belonging, community and social problems. This imbrication with lived realities is what enables music-making practices 34 Cf. Ingold 2013. 35 Cf. Ismaiel-Wendt 2011. 36 Cf. Nagel 2013; also see cf. McGlynn 2014. 37 Cf. Abels 2018. 38 Cf. Ingold 2011.

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to emerge not only as such crucial epistemologies, but also to offer potential coping strategies. They enable people to make sense of and transform their surroundings because they put discursive and non-discursive dimensions of knowing the world in conversation with one another. Sound knowledge is both/and-also. It is both/and-also vis-à-vis the New Ontology debate, because it is both sonic flux and fully signified. But it is also both/and-also programmatically and ideologically. With music, I know to know differently; I know to value the passage; I know knowledge is perspectival. To know with music, then, is to let go of the idea that any knowledge is, or can ever be, authoritative. Partaking in music, we dwell in the interstitial and the passage. And so, in-between sonic flux and signification, music-making turns out to be a knowledge practice that can teach us a lot about a postcolonial world where hegemonic and disenfranchised epistemologies compete. It invites us to set aside ontological questions in favour of ontogenic ones: The question is not so much what music is; the question is, where does it take us, and what do we learn along the way.

Sources Abels, Birgit (2020): Resonance. Co-Becoming with Sound in the South Pacific Island World, in: Scassiloo, Federica (ed.), Resounding Spaces: Music and Atmosphere, Mailand, 25-36. Abels, Birgit (2019a): Bodies in Motion, in: Riedel, Friedlind / Torvinen, Juha (eds.), Music as Atmosphere. Collective Feelings and Affective Sounds, London, 165-183. Abels, Birgit (2019): A Poetics of Dwelling with Music and Dance: Le hip hop as Homing Practice, in: the world of music (new series), 49-64.  Abels, Birgit (2018): Music, Affect and Atmospheres: Meaning and Meaningfulness in Palauan omengeredakl, in: International Journal of Traditional Arts, 2, http://tradartsjournal.org/index.php/ijta/article/view/16, 20.03.2020. Abels, Birgit (2018a): ›It’s Only the Water and the Rocks That Own the Land.‹ Sound Knowledge and Environmental Change in Palau, Western Micronesia, in: AsianEuropean Music Research Journal, 2:21-32, https://www.asian-european-musicresearch-ej.com/, 20.03.20. Böhme, Gernot (1993): Atmosphere as the Fundamental Concept of a New Aesthetics, in: Thesis Eleven, 36(1), 113-26. Cox, Christoph (2009): Sound Art and the Sonic Unconscious, in: Organized Sound, 14(1), 19-26. Cox, Christoph (2011): Beyond Representation and Signification: Toward a Sonic Materialism, in: Journal of Visual Culture, 10(2), 145-161.

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De Assis, Paulo (2017): Gilbert Simondon’s ›Transduction‹ as Radical Immanence in Performance, in: Performance Philosophy, 3(3), 69-716. Eisenlohr, Patrick (2018): Sounding Islam. Voice, Media, and Sonic Atmospheres in an Indian Ocean World, Oakland. Feld, Steven (2017): On Post-Ethnomusicology Alternatives: Acoustemology, in: Giannattasio, Francesco / Guiriati, Giovanni (eds.),  Ethnomusicology or Transcultural Musicology?, Udine, 82-98. Guilbault, Jocelyn (2007): Governing Sound: The Cultural Politics of Trinidad’s Carnival Musics, Chicago & London. Goldie, Matthew Boyd / Sobecki, Sebastian (2016): Our seas of islands, in: postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies, 7(4), 471-483. Haraway, Donna (2008): When Species Meet, Minneapolis. Hau’ofa, Epeli (1993): Our Sea of Islands, in: Waddell, Eric / Naidu, Vijay / Hau’ofa, Epeli (eds.), A New Oceania: Rediscovering Our Sea of Islands, Suva, Fiji, 2-16. Helmreich, Stefan (2015): Transduction, in: Novak, David / Sakakeeny, Matt (eds.), Keywords in Sound, Durham, NC, 222-231. Ingersoll, Karin Amimoto (2016): Waves of Knowing. A Seascape Epistemology, Durham, NC. Ingold, Tim (2011): Being Alive. Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description, New York. Ingold, Tim (2013): Knowing From the Inside: Anthropology, Art, Architecture and Design, https://www.abdn.ac.uk/research/kfi/, 09.03.2020. Ismaiel-Wendt, Johannes (2011): Tracks’n’treks. Populäre Musik und Postkoloniale Analyse, Münster. Kane, Brian (2015): Sound Studies Without Auditory Culture: A Critique of the Ontological Turn, in: Sound Studies, 1(1), DOI: 10.1080/20551940.2015.1079063, 06.11.2019. Kramer, Lawrence (2016): The Thought of Music, Oakland. McGlynn, Aiden (2014). Is Knowledge a Mental State?, in: Knowledge First, London. Nagel, Jennifer (2013): Knowledge as a Mental State, in: Oxford Studies in Epistemology 4, 275-310 Nero, Karen L. (1999). Missed Opportunities: American Anthropological Studies of Micronesian Arts, in: Kiste, Robert C. & Marshall, Mac (eds.), American Anthropology in Micronesia. An Assessment. Honolulu, 255-77. Schmitz, Hermann (2014): Atmosphären, Freiburg / München. Simondon, Gilbert 1992 [1964]: The Genesis of the Individual, translated by Cohen, Mark / Kwinter, Sanford, in: Crary, Jonathan / Kwinter, Sanford (eds.), Incorporations, New York, 296–319. Soja, Edward (1996): Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places, Hoboken. Thompson, Marie (2017): Whiteness and the Ontological Turn in Sound Studies, in: Parallax, 23(3), 266-282.

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Titon, Jeff Todd / Bock, Cherice (2017): [Interview with Jeff Todd Titon re ›The Sound of Climate Change‹], in: Whole Terrain, 22, https://www.academia.edu/37366485/ Interview_with_Jeff_Todd_Titon_re_The_Sound_of_Climate_Change_2017_, 17.10.2019. Yunkaporta, Tyson (2019): Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, Melbourne.

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Authors

Prof. Dr. Birgit Abels is professor of Cultural Musicology at Göttingen (Germany). With a long research history in the performing arts of the Western Pacific and Southeast Asian Island worlds, she has a deep interest in neo-phenomenological approaches to music and Indigenous epistemologies of sound-based cultural practices. She directs the European Research Council project Sound Knowledge. Alternative Epistemologies of Music in the Western Pacific Island World. Dr. Gilles Aubry is active at the intersection between sound and visual arts, experimental music and academic research. As an artist, he creates installations, films, performances and radio pieces exploring sonic materiality and listening processes in relation to affect, coloniality and power. As a researcher, he recently completed a PhD on “sonic pluralism, embodiment and ecological voices in Morocco”, engaging with aural histories and practices through artistic collaboration. www.earpolitics.net Dr. Michael Fuhr is an ethnomusicologist and the director of the Center for World Music at University of Hildesheim. He received his MA in musicology, philosophy and art history from University of Cologne and his PhD from Heidelberg University. He worked in music archiving and exhibition projects with ethnographic museums, and he recently finished a project on K-Pop fandom in Europe. His research interests include issues of identity, globalization, and migration, (Korean) popular music, aesthetics, cultural theory, and the histories of ethnomusicology. He is the author of Popular Music and Aesthetics (transcript, 2007), in German, and Globalization and Popular Music in South Korea: Sounding Out K-Pop (Routledge, 2015). Prof. Dr. Johannes Salim Ismaiel-Wendt studied cultural studies, sociology and musicology at the University of Bremen. He received his doctorate with the thesis “tracks’n’treks. Populäre Musik und Postkoloniale Analyse” (Münster: Unrast 2011). From 2010-2012 he worked as a research consultant and collaborator at the House of World Cultures in the projects Translating HipHop and Global Prayers. Since 2012, Johannes Ismaiel- Wendt is Professor for Musicology and Sociology of Music at the University of Hildesheim. His research focuses on music and the genesis of knowledge, popular music and postcolonial analysis.



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Dr. Peggy K. Lee is a scholar of race and gender in contemporary American literature, performance, sound, and media. She received her PhD in American Culture from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and MA in Performance Studies from New York University. She currently is a James Weldon Johnson Institute postdoctoral fellow at Emory University where she teaches in the Department of African American Studies. Dr. Matthias Lewy is a comparative musicologist, cultural and social anthropologist (Free University of Berlin). His PhD focused on music rituals of indigenous groups in the border region between Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana. In a subsequent post-doctoral research project at the University of Brasilia (UnB), he intensified his collaborative research on indigenous sound ontologies in the Guianas. Recently, he started as a senior research associate at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. Dr. Pedro J S Vieira de Oliveira is a researcher, sound artist and educator. His work advances a decolonizing inquiry of listening and the materiality of sound, focusing on racialized violence at the borders of the EU. Shanti Suki Osman is a Berlin-based artist and educator working with song, sound and radio, exploring the topics of identities, privilege, anti-racism and feminisms. She is research associate and doctoral candidate for Music Pedagogy at Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg focusing on women* of colour in higher music education. From 2019 - 2020 she was co-director of the critical race and school project DIE REMISE which was founded by Carmen Mörsch and part of the 11th Berlin Biennale. Bhavisha Panchia is a curator and researcher of visual and audio culture. Her works engage with artistic and cultural practices under shifting global conditions, focusing on anti/postcolonial discourses, imperial histories and networks of production and circulation of (digital) media. A significant part of her practice centres on auditory media’s relationship to geopolitical paradigms, particularly with respect to the social and ideological signification of sound and music in contemporary culture. Nadine Schildhauer is a researcher and music journalist based in Berlin. She is a PhD candidate at the University of the Arts Bern, researching transnationally organized music collectives that produce electronic music outside of the popular club canon. Before this she was part of the research training group “Knowledge in the Arts” at the Berlin University of the Arts. She has written for SPEX, Missy Magazine, Kaput Magazin, Groove, Juice, and others. Since 2018 she has worked as a member of the program team of the Berlin based DICE Conference + Festival. Prof. Dr. Andi Schoon is professor of Cultural and Media Studies at the University of the Arts Bern. He studied Musicology, German Literature and Sociology at the University of Hamburg. Selected publications: Die Ordnung der Klänge. Das Wechselspiel

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der Künste vom Bauhaus zum Black Mountain College (2006), Das geschulte Ohr. Eine Kulturgeschichte der Sonifikation (2012), sujet imaginaire (2014) and Die schwache Stimme (2018). Prof. Dr. Henrique Souza Lima received his Ph.D in Arts/Music from the University of São Paulo. He currently works as a Professor in the course of Music Production at the University Anhembi Morumbi in São Paulo-Brazil and develops research activities at the NuSom - Research Center on Sonology at the University of São Paulo. [email protected]  Dr. Marie Thompson is a Lecturer in Popular Music at the Open University. Prior to this, she held a position in the University of Lincoln’s School of Film and Media, where she taught on Sound and Music Production and Media Studies degree programmes. Her monograph Beyond Unwanted Sound: Noise, Affect and Aesthetic Moralism was published by Bloomsbury in 2017. She is also the co-founder (with Annie Goh) of Sonic Cyberfeminisms, an ongoing project that critically and creatively interrogates the relationship between gender, sound, technology and feminist practice. Marie is the Primary Investigator of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Project, Tinnitus, Auditory Knowledge and the Arts.

The editors would like to thank M. Lane Peterson for patiently proofreading, Holger Schulze for his willingness to include this volume in the Sound Studies series, Stiftung Universität Hildesheim, Priska Gisler and Institute Practices and Theories of the Arts, the Swiss National Science Foundation and – of course – all authors.

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List of Illustrations

Cover Rwais dance sequence. Still from Salam Godzilla (Aubry 2019) Gilles Aubry

28 Figure 1: Room of the organisation ASVTS for seismic prevention in Agadir. Still from Salam Godzilla (2019) Source: Salam Godzilla (2019) by Gilles Aubry 31 Figure 2: Performance by Ali Faiq. Still from Salam Godzilla (Aubry 2019) Source: Salam Godzilla (2019) by Gilles Aubry 35 Figure 3: Rwais dance sequence. Still from Salam Godzilla (Aubry 2019) Source: Salam Godzilla (2019) by Gilles Aubry 37 Figure 4: Samir Benteyane at the dinosaur traces site in Anza beach. Still from Salam Godzilla (Aubry 2019) Source: Salam Godzilla (2019) by Gilles Aubry 39 Figure 5: Sound performance by Gilles Aubry inside the »Salam« movie theatre. Still from Salam Godzilla (Aubry 2019) Source: Salam Godzilla (2019) by Gilles Aubry Bhavisha Panchia 63 Figure 6: what is left of what has left, 12 inch vinyl record, 2016. Source: Chris Kendall 67 Figure 7: Installation view. Kemang Wa Lehulere, One is too many, a thousand will never be enough, 2016. Courtesy of the artist, Stevenson, Cape Town and Johannesburg. Source: Carsten Eisfeld 69 Figure 8: Listening space. For the Record, 2018. ifa Galerie Berlin. Source: Victoria Tomaschko 70 Figure 9: Club Unicornio and Julio Cesar Morales. Selection of Club Unicornio Releases (2018). In For the Record, ifa Galerie Berlin Source: Victoria Tomaschko



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119 Figure 10: Albert Graefle. Die Intimen bei Beethoven, 1876



124 Figure 12: Gradiente Advertisement. IstoÉ, 23.06.1977

121 Figure 11: »Listening pleasure for you alone«, Philips advertisement 1970s. Source: »Philips Communications«, https://www.flickr.com/ photos/philips_newscenter/4909918827/in/photostream, 15.09.2020

127 Figure 13: »”Balada” was heard more than 67 million times since 2011«. Spotify advertising campaign »Da Luz ao Morumbi: uma viagem no tempo«, São Paulo-Brazil, December 2019 Source: Henrique Souza Lima

129 Figure 14: Spotify advertisement Source: Facebook print screen

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