Category: Sound Studies and Aural Cultures

I am speaking from St. Michael the Archangel Church in Penhurst, East Sussex, in the United Kingdom of late 2024. So adjacent and outside the expansionist missionary world, this place is as innocent as it is ignorant. Among the tens of thousands of churches dotting the British landscape, making up the vestiges of a staging ground for international cultural domination.

The foundations of imposing colonial rule bring the people into a space designated for changing minds and hearts. The church is as much a ubiquitous building, whether wood, stone or daub, as it is a force, slow-moving and considered, and by extension the church organ has been central to wider cultural takeover. Faith unites, and to turn, to subsume a populace, they were to be united under faith. The Christian church, altar in front and organ behind, forms an enclosure.

This audio paper will explore the smothering cultural effect of missionaries’ introduction of the church organ as a tool in a wing of colonial measures, and its proponents’ efforts to multiply international influence and suppress indigenous sounding through its use.

‘The organ has always been considered, and rightly so, the king of musical instruments, because it takes up all the sounds of creation… The organ’s great range of timbre, from piano through to a thundering fortissimo, makes it an instrument superior to all others… The manifold possibilities of the organ in some way remind us of the immensity and the magnificence of God.’

So said Pope Benedict XVI at Alte Kapelle in Regensburg, Germany on 13^th of September  2006, blessing the installation of a new organ. Recurrent through histories of the church organ’s distribution through the Christianised world, and the ongoing collaborative processes uniting Christian conversion with colonisation, is the perceived supremacy imbued within the instrument. A superior belief system manifest through music, projected not just to Heaven, but to the indigenous peoples missionaries encountered. Thereby creating grounds to forcibly supersede those groups missionaries considered lost or heathen, enabled by song. Storch (2012, pp. 224) relays how Francisco Cabral, superstitious xenophobe and Portuguese Franciscan missionary, on his ‘first journey to India, where he arrived on 13 September 1500, was already accompanied by eight Franciscans; among them was the organ player Frei Matteu, who is said to have been able to play an organ on one of the ships.’

This organ music, the hymnals it accompanied, were not purely worshipful, but extensively functionalised music. Songs of convincing, modalities of control. Providing those scarred by the colonisers with a ritual security, in a cycle of violence and spiritual emancipation designed wholly by the coloniser. In this case, the organ’s reliability as an export is conveyed, on long voyages and in foreign climates, its robustness ensured its longevity of use. For Cabral and the Franciscans, prolific missionaries active in widespread colonisation in the Americas and Asia, the organ’s vibrational resonance provided a strong footing to gather the unconverted in union.

An eminent interlocutor enabling the church organ as a colonial tool was Christian Ignatius Latrobe, active in the nineteenth century Moravian Church. Latrobe worked to construct a self-replicating network of Christian colonial missions, encouraging indigenous dependence on settler missionaries, where the natives’ survival depended on the assimilation conversion brought. Dodds (2023, pp. 77) observes: ‘At the different stations, the policy increasingly became to train local members of the congregation according to Latrobe’s advice, so that the instrument, the canon of tunes and the performance conventions were exported uniformly from Europe, embodied in the organ and the organist. Crucially, this uniform and standardised imposition of music-although always resisted and never fully achieved-required the violent outlawing of existing musical practices and styles.’

Latrobe’s didactic, standardised organ arrangement and performance modes furthered his envisioned homophonic uniformity of congregational control. Materially, his export of a European organ was crucial to furthering colonial aims. Independent of local resources and means of instrument manufacture, not only would the organ gain wider influence as the congregation inevitably grew, but also expedite the dying out of local instrument-making skills and song. Marrying with the coercive brutality of the colonialist practice of suppression, was the church’s conscious imbuing of the organ with a sacred character.

Christian colonists mythologised the organ as manifesting the voice of God in music, the physical sensations it could summon across its broad frequency range lending credence to their assertions. On the organ player’s control over a congregation, Latrobe’s son, John Antes (1831, pp. 366) colourfully illustrated; ‘According to the tenor of his performance, their minds may be solemnized or dissipated, their devotion elevated or repressed, their thoughts sublimed or secularized. He holds over them an enchanter’s wand, powerful as the lightning, and almost equally destructive.’ This empirical, mythic characterisation harkens back to the organ’s history framed as a theophanic force, a catalyst for religious subjugation. Aligning with this, Jasen (2016, pp. 99) writes how ‘it would have also confronted non-participants and non-believers – those not in the church but in its proximity, permeated by modulations – with a striking, perceptual encounter combined with the promise/threat of something altogether more transformative ‘inside’.’  From a marginalised, native perspective, how could this new, purportedly sacred building be resisted when it resonated with the very voice of a God? A scale and formation of sounds fundamentally unheard of, or felt, prior to the arrival of the missionaries.

However, outright assumption that indigenous assimilation was corollary to the organ and church sound culture applying purely duress would be too simplistic. Eyerly (2020, pp. 11) states, ‘Although Moravian hymn singing and the soundscapes of mission communities were a form of colonialism, on an individual and community level, people were modifying hymns and adapting them. Native Moravians were not passive actors enmeshed in colonial processes.’ Assessing the impact of the church sound culture on an individual basis is complex. Native populaces’ lexicon was adaptive, in their interval merging with Christianity. Yet is this not the success of the self-replicating model Latrobe sought to instil? The natural progression in conducting cultural change on the scale Latrobe envisioned, lead to the enlistment of the local populace through training to play the organ. Irrespective of whether missionaries were subject to external threats of their own, or the organic adoption and adaptation of hymnals by native congregations, the placement and use of the church organ in these territories represents an act of orchestrated, colonial erasure of pre-existing culture.

Colonial missionaries like the Franciscans and Latrobe of the Moravians expressly denoted their own supremacy and requirement of expansion and replication in order to leverage influence, and the export of the church organ provided them with a unifier; a sonic monolith under which non-believers could be aligned and transformed to their will. This deliberate enmeshing of the organ’s theosophic, magnificently resonant character ascribed to it throughout Christian history with colonialist suppression of indigenous language, song and worship practices left native populaces with little choice but assimilation.

Engaging with the organ’s hymn became an act of survival; those from the Cherokee in Pennsylvania, the Mi’kmaq in Labrador or the Khoisan of South Africa for instance, were shepherded into conversion in the pursuit of a land grab. Organ music accompanied their shedding of instruments, songs, performance conventions, ways of life, violently discouraged and destructively replaced in the ancient, now-transformed, sacred sonic landscape; supplanted by the church organ.

Bibliography:

Montagu, J. (1979) The World of Baroque & Classical Musical Instruments. Great Britain: David & Charles Limited.

Pope Benedict XVI (2006) Apostolic Journey of his Holiness Benedict XVI to München, Altötting and Regensburg (September 9-14, 2006) Blessing of the New Organ, Greetings of the Holy Father [speech]. Available at: https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060913_alte-kapelle-regensburg.html (Accessed: 16 November 2024).

Storch, C. (2012) ‘How the Pagans Became ‘Convinced’ About Christianity: Four Conclusions on the Relationship Between Music and the Missions in Early Colonialism’, in M. d. R. G. Santos and E. M. Lessa (eds) Música Discurso Poder. Minho, Portugal: Universidade do Minho Centro de Estudos Humanísticos.

Dodds, P. (2023) Music and the Cultural Production of Scale. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36283-5 (Accessed: 17 October 2024)

Latrobe, J. A. (1831) The Music of the Church Considered in its Various Branches, Congregational and Choral: An Historical and Practical Treatise for the General Reader. London: R.B. Seeley and W. Burnside.

Bergland, B. A. (2010) Competing Kingdoms: Women, Mission, Nation and the American Protestant Empire, 1812-1960. Edited by B. Reeves-Ellington, K. K. Sklar and C. A. Shemo.

Jasen, P. C. (2016) Low End Theory: Bass, Bodies and the Materiality of Sonic Experience. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

In creating the music and sound design aspects for my audio paper, I decided that recording a real church organ was imperative in informing the meaning of the text. Thankfully, I have access to my local church and the key for its organ due to my employment history. During quarantine, I spent a lot of time playing the organ there alone, and in light of this project, I thought it should return to it.

St. Michael the Archangel, in Penhurst, East Sussex was built in 1390, far before the period of history that I focus on. That fact, combined with its rural isolation makes it less connected to active colonisation. I think in my text I will frame it as more of a precursor, part of the culture of the church; a staging ground.

In the church, long reverb tails are created from the organ positioned at the back. Alongside the organ, I recorded room tones in the space, to accompany the narration. I had considered for a long time recording the narration itself in the church, to further situate the audio paper within the culture of its making. However, due to transport concerns and being able to closely monitor recording, I settled on constructing it. Rendering the appearance of speaking in the church instead. The building is not solely mine, people are free to enter and pray, I did not want to dominate the space. Ontologically, also, I felt uneasy about reciting a diatribe about the cruelties of the church in a church. Less for any kind of religious reasoning, but more to avoid a sneering, puerile shock value quality. To do that alone would feel uncomfortable and weird.

Unlike the organs I discuss in the audio paper, Penhurst’s is electric. But with the diffusion of a few speakers, the emulation of pipes is very convincing. Listening to the recordings, I am reminded how it’s an instrument that is almost impossible to replicate through a sound file or physical media. It should primarily be experienced within the spaces they occupy. This brings me to the theoretical studies of Paul C. Jasen’s 2016 book, Low End Theory: Bass, Bodies and the Materiality of Sonic Experience.

In the book, there is a distinctly pertinent section referring to the church organ and its frequencies in manipulating sacred sonic space. He writes about listener perceptions of the organ, how it ‘would have also confronted non-participants and non-believers – those not in the church but in its proximity, permeated by modulations – with a striking, perceptual encounter combined with the promise/threat of something altogether more transformative ‘inside’.’ I believe this will prove useful in critically examining the organ’s affect when situated within the church, how that affects the community surrounding it. The symbiotic relationship between the organ, the church and the requirement of people to bodily experience it.

I used the Zoom H1n to record the organ, piano and room tones in the church. Previous experiences with recording this particular organ proved frustrating; I had used an AKG C451b, but the microphone placement became critical to the quality of sound. In the case of this project, extended time spent reworking inadequate recordings, especially when I am recording on-site with limited time, I saw fit to use the simpler Zoom to capture the larger picture.

I also created a number of recordings using the church piano. Unrelated to my organ thesis, yet closely related to the history of worship song, I felt it fitting to record this instrument as I was adopting the entire building and everything it contained as an instrument, in a sense.

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Bibliography:

Jasen, P. C. (2016) Low End Theory: Bass, Bodies and the Materiality of Sonic Experience. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

In this post, I detail an instance of chasing valuable research material. In my key text, Phil Dodds’ 2023 book Music and the Cultural Production of Scale, a text by the son of Christian Ignatius Latrobe, John Antes is referenced. I sensed that this could provide a unique opportunity for counterpoint in my audio paper, to contrast the colonial father with the son, revealing a critical point about the mythologic language surrounding the church organ enabling its domineering presence.

I searched Google Scholar for John Antes Latrobe, first finding mention of him in Anna Peak’s 2010 dissertation, The Music of the Spheres: Music and the Gendered Mind in Nineteenth-Century Britain. However, it was only a reference in the footer. Still, this gave me more complete details surrounding the title and work of J. A. Latrobe that could enhance my search.

Quite miraculously, I found a scan of the very text I was seeking to reference, rather than an adjacent source: The Music of the Church Considered in its Various Branches, Congregational and Choral: An Historical and Practical Treatise for the General Reader, from 1831. I will assert that it is not for the general reader. It is for the most avowed enthusiast. Yet, a very specific section about the organ’s player’s power over a congregation was referenced in Dodds’ work, perhaps I could expand on that here.

The irony being that the exact page referenced, that I had hoped to expand upon and read further context of, had the only scanning error in the document across it. Finally finding a pdf of the complete book, I was able to read and cite the book in my audio paper’s bibliography.

Ultimately, I managed to verify the publishers through a portrait of them in the archives of the National Portrait Gallery. All this is to say, I am struck by the relative difficulty in referencing truly historical works. Online resources are often inaccessible, and it demonstrates to me the survival rate for information is often uncertain. Thankfully, in this case I was able to extrapolate upon the key text, which provided me with a core critical point of examination in my audio paper.

This was a heavy lecture. Rarely are we presented with artmaking borne out of mortal necessity. In Dr. Helen Anahita Wilson’s lecture she discussed sonic ways of being and knowing the human body, uniting the fields of sound studies, music and health. As she stated, “my body always takes the lead and shows me the way”, her work explores corporeal acoustemology.

Her PhD piece, TCH-P, was inspired by the cocktail prescribed to her for breast cancer treatment, iatrogenic experience as the enabling element in a challenge of the illness narrative. The South Indian konnakol, recited while gesturally expressing with a hand that clearly showed an IV drip inserted. She clarified that it was made retrospectively, after her treatment had ended, but it was still starkly convincing. It was a very moving piece. A quiet moment of solitude and positivity amid chaos and a health nightmare. The chant itself was very grounding, slowly morphing, fragmenting. Changing in tone, pitch and speed.

I recognised the rhythm from the wonderfully unfunny Tim Heidecker, Fred Armisen and John C. Reilly comedy show Moonbase 8, that no-one has watched or cares about. I feel ashamed, taking a sidebar about this delightful, mediocre fluff show during a blog post about cancer and life or death. Yet, personal context helped align me with the work itself.

In the other major project she showed, Linea Naturalis, Wilson affirms that we are all bioelectrical beings. Alongside Dr Sandra Knapp, President of the Linnean Society, she studied plants forming the basis for chemotherapy drugs. I think with time, I had lost the conception that plants were still so critical to medicine manufacturing. I found that mild realisation reassuring, much like those visiting the oncology gardens Wilson referenced. A grounding of the often synthetic-feeling medical world in the earthen reality is stabilising in a way. My fiancé was diagnosed in 2022 with Type 1 diabetes, and through GP visits, varying hardcore medications, and finally regular insulin injections, the nature of the human body as an ecosystem became apparent to me. Both how resilient, adaptable, yet fragile it is. A switch can unknowingly flip, and your body decides to try and kill you. From collecting data in the Chelsea Physics Garden, to creating the music, Wilson collated bioelectricity, biosignals, contact mic recordings, and then genetic data and biological analysis. She interpreted drones from genetic data, and frequency readings sent through tape echo. The Madagascan periwinkle as a harp, the devil’s trumpet compared to the brass of Amos Miller. I found the reinterpretation of plants used for chemotherapy treatment as music to be played to those undergoing that treatment to be poetic and meaningful.

It’s very very hard for me to comment on artworks informed by, drawn out by, manifested by near-death experiences. They change the way the brain sees the world, and to discuss taste feels tasteless. I have often found the artistic interpretation of sonification dubious, but I think that has more to do with perceptions of authentic sound. What I appreciated about Wilson’s work and presentation, was her expressed emphasis of the creative intervention occurring in the handoff between initial data and final music.

This also relates to her study of the Krankenhausfunk, or hospital radio. She described the absurdity of hearing the Bee Gees’ ‘Staying Alive’ during her treatment in the production of TCH-P, perhaps Linea Naturalis seeks to amend that, or enhance the experience. Soothing, plant-derived tones to calm the patient.

In the production phase of my audio paper, I have been drawn away from abstraction as an aesthetic device. I love abstraction in art, but I’m wary of deploying it intentionally in a work intended to convey a thesis. My mind is having trouble distinguishing the professorial and the artful, and my immediate instinct is to set a spoken essay to sound, rather than assemble an argument out of sound. I’m concerned that this appears facile, or not as aurally dimensional as something more dynamic.

Ken Burns is a documentary filmmaker famous for his lengthy works largely focusing on American history. His first, and most significant project, The Civil War from 1990, connected with me as I formulated how to proceed with developing this audio paper.

The now-iconic, classic example of television documentary miniseries concerns the American Civil War, comprised of much contemporary photography to illustrate the events. It’s a very immersive, early example of styles of documentary filmmaking that quickly became the standard, yet this series is so distinct. In some respects, I envision my audio paper functioning in a similar sense; like a documentary film with the screen off. However, the academic validity of a film like The Civil War, or the nostalgic tone that Burns often is guilty of indulging in, gives me pause. As David Harlan (2003, pp. 170) astutely states;

‘And then there is the matter of his presentism: Burns is not really interested in the past at all – or rather, he is interested in the past only insofar as he can make it reflect and dramatize his own interior emotional life (and, as it turns out, the interior emotional lives of tens of millions of other Americans). But we academic historians are interested in the past, if not ‘in and for itself’ than certainly as something more substantial than a reflecting device in which we can meditate upon our own sensibilities.’

In many ways, I feel this is the immediate danger of the audio paper medium. The urge to acknowledge the self and our partial relationship to what we choose to present, how we present it, is unavoidable. Once that academic rigour borrows some of formatting of art while distinguishing itself from it, what is the result? Is history truly solid? My instinct tells me no. Salomé Voeglin described it to us as the listener is ‘invited to reach meaning’. I believe striking this balance will be critical in my paper.

By chance, I happened to catch myself watching Dan Snow’s BBC documentary How the Celts Saved Britain, and feeling uncomfortable. I usually avoid this kind of BBC programming, but the imagery of the island of Iona and talk of ancient Ireland (an ancestral home of mine) immobilised me in that after dinner stupor.

However, as the narrative progressed I increasingly detected the colouring of history by dominant narratives. I have always felt it thorny and cringeworthy to prod Christianity as a culturally destructive force, so it’s odd to find myself working on a project concerning that. I reject the angry atheistic archetype, I’ve spent a lot of close time with the Christian faith, and I consider myself a fearful, believing agnostic. What discomfited me in the documentary was the way Snow, the writers and production designers continually presented the original pagan cultures of the British Isles as evil, dark and creepy, like a cheap episode of Ghost Adventures. Bias is such a difficult thing to navigate while making political works, especially when dealing with history. I want to approach the subject matter of my audio paper with little emotion, examining critically and unguardedly, and this stray colouring of cultures is something I would hope to avoid somewhat. That’s why I now feel reassured, as I look retrospectively on Seismograf’s Audio Paper Manifesto, where it states, ‘the audio paper is situated and partial’. In a sense, there’s no real escaping bias and partiality in the thesis format. What is more significant is the thoroughness and depth of research I must go to in order to fully understand how to discuss my chosen subject at length.

Bibliography:

Harlan, D. (2003) ‘Ken Burns and the Coming Crisis of Academic History’, Rethinking History, 7(2), pp. 170

I have been keeping a working document of references as I research sources relating to my interest. A tentative early title is ‘Music as Coercion: The Church Organ as an Enabling Tool for Christian Colonialism’. For a subject like this, the possibility of losing focus in such a wide historical field, is very real. In this case, I have had to do quite in-depth research, narrowing into a specific window of time. Often, I have found my research locating itself closer and closer to one individual; Christian Ignatius Latrobe, a key figure in the expansion and export of Christian music, especially the organ throughout the 19th century.

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‘The musically most active missionaries before the establishment of the Society of Jesus in 1540 were the Franciscans. Cabral’s first journey to India, where he arrived on 13 September 1500, was already accompanied by eight Franciscans; among them was the organ player Frei Matteu, who is said to have been able to play an organ on one of the ships. On their arrival in India, the Franciscans immediately began their missionary work.’ (pp. 224)

‘Summarizing the hitherto presented letters, reports, and researches, which are only the few tips of a much larger iceberg, some key characteristics of the function and the functionalisation of music in missionary work can be deduced, however. The benefits of (Christian) education, particularly of children, and including many orphans, has to be set against a political backdrop in which the local people had no other choice were they not to be enslaved by the colonial rulers. Many of the children were orphans only by dint of the acts of the colonisers and their military powers.’ (pp. 228)

‘Music did function as a key to intercultural understanding, but in many cases it became a mere key to cultural occupation, domination, and eventually cultural genocide as well. To reconsider the three keywords of the conference, a discourse on how best to utilise music in order to ‘convince’ the pagans of the merits of Christianity was first accompanied, later partly, replaced by an extensive wielding of colonial power, finally leading into the intensified imperialism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.’ (pp. 230)

Storch, C. (2012) ‘How the Pagans Became ‘Convinced’ About Christianity: Four Conclusions on the Relationship Between Music and the Missions in Early Colonialism’, in M. d. R. G. Santos and E. M. Lessa (eds) Música Discurso Poder. Minho, Portugal: Universidade do Minho Centro de Estudos Humanísticos.

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‘Latrobe sent standardised Christian hymn books, in English and German but also translated into indigenous languages, to mission stations around the world, from Suriname to Jamaica to Labrador to Greenland to Siberia to South Africa. He also sent musical instruments to accompany the hymn-singing, favouring the organ both aesthetically and for its ability to function in different climates. He also circulated specific instructions for training organists, with firm recommendations for a simple accompaniment style and learning hymns by heart.’ (pp. 77)

‘At the different stations, the policy increasingly became to train local members of the congregation according to Latrobe’s advice, so that the instrument, the canon of tunes and the performance conventions were exported uniformly from Europe, embodied in the organ and the organist. Crucially, this uniform and standardised imposition of music-although always resisted and never fully achieved-required the remaking of the cultural landscapes on which they were to be imposed, including through the violent outlawing of existing musical practices and styles.’ (pp. 77)

‘For hymns he favoured a homophonic melody with a separate note for each syllable to increase clarity, and he strongly advocated a restrained and sober accompaniment style, ideally on an organ. He criticised flourishes and unnecessary ornaments in the musical accompaniment, as they would distract from the words and their meaning’ (pp. 84)

‘But there was also an issue of practicality and, indeed, scalability. Latrobe received several letters from the Labrador missionaries complaining that the various instruments he had sent previously, especially the wind instruments, would freeze and become unplayable in the colder months, so an organ, however small and cheap, would be gratefully received.’ (pp. 97)

‘Elsewhere in the Moravian world, missionaries tried to construct their own organs. A small, home-made organ was debuted at the 1806 Christmas hymns at the Cherokee mission, for example, and it still ‘accompanied the voices’ in autumn 1808.’ (pp. 97)

‘The choice to export and/or construct a European instrument, rather than adapt instruments already used by and widely available among the indigenous congregations, is another element of the pixel-like scalability that the Moravians aimed for. Many instruments in the African context, for example, reflected local metallurgical engineering skills and resource availability, but they had cosmological, spiritual or other cultural significance that meant the missionaries were inclined to suppress or replace them.’ (pp. 97)

John Antes Latrobe (1831, 366) emphasised ‘the astonishing power reposed in the hands of the organist’, the tenor of whose performance would ensure the religious enrichment or the regrettable dissipation of the congregation: ‘He holds over them an enchanter’s wand, powerful as the lightning, and almost equally destructive.’ (pp. 98)

‘As early as 1835 the missionaries in South Africa were boasting that a young African man names Ezekiel Pfeiffer had ‘begun to play the organ at the church, and is thus, in all probability, the first Hottentot organist in the world’ (PA XIII 1834-6, 340). Here the racial term refers not specifically to a southern African group but rather reflects the fact that, by the eighteenth century, the word was a generic epithet for those considered barbarian or primitive, and as such the successful musical training of Pfeiffer represented the feasibility of employing indigenous musicians to accompany the singing at all the mission stations across the world.’ (pp. 98)

Dodds, P. (2023) Music and the Cultural Production of Scale. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36283-5 (Accessed: 17 October 2024)

For a class exercise, we recorded a select quote that we had chosen, along with a sound that could represent an initial stimulus for our research subject. I found a YouTube clip uploaded four months ago by Jermaine Cain, of the St. Vincent Basilica in Latrobe, Pennsylvania (named after Christian Ignatius’ brother, Benjamin Henry) Significantly, it prominently features the church organ, and could inform how I create the spatial sense of the church building in my audio paper.

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The first lecture of the year was delivered by Imani Mason Jordan, a writer and performance artist focussing on the vocality, language and orality of the spoken poem. They search for the inherent song in a piece of text, and displayed an unwavering understanding of what that can mean. In one illuminating moment, she played several different versions of Frederic Rzewski’s 1974 composition, Coming Together, denoting which performances they did not like. Eloquently expressing why, be it the faint weakness of tone, or affected delivery, they displayed an inherent and articulate knowledge of something I may not have noticed.

Initially, I balked at their empirical view of “reading a poem the wrong way”. Part of me recognises and sympathises with the observation; universally, I think we have all experienced that, or could envisage through cultural osmosis what that could look like. However, I have always felt that introducing the idea of correctness to be damaging and peremptory. Taste is taste, but who are any of us to suggest that there are standards? Especially in the markedly insular, soupy world of avant-garde performance poetry. Yet, with every poor example Imani Mason Jordan persuasively demonstrated and noted, I could not help but agree.

It is precisely this persuasive quality that Imani Mason Jordan imbues her work with, finding the register of oration used when trying to warn or convince. To persuade you to feel the weight of her chosen text, exploring the intentionality of discordance. Their inspirations include James Baldwin and his protest speeches, Abbey Lincoln, Dionne Brand and Elaine Mitchener. As a writer, Imani Mason Jordan draws from literature a great deal.

The principal piece they showed was TREAD/MILL, from 2021. A work-in-progress performance combining reciting elements from Rzewski’s Coming Together while running on a treadmill, backed by a soundscape by Felix Taylor. It gestures towards the penal connotation the treadmill carries; historically used as a method of punishment in British prisons and colonies. In its current form, it seemed a very stark, rawly affecting work that engages with the performative qualities found at the very authentic fringes of exhaustion.

Seeking clarity and a knowing perspective on the subject of audio papers, I read Spectrograf’s article Audio Papers – a manifesto, by Sanne Krogh Groth and Kristine Samson. It comprises eight tenets or directives that suggest pathways for the production of an audio paper. A manifesto as a tool for artistic creation is something I treat as an artwork in and of itself, a subjective case for making a particular work. I think it touches on a larger issue I find with sound art as a field, which is its core relativity.

How is it possible to convey a clear thesis, if the epistemological frameworks are so elastic? I am not advocating for intensely rigid rules, but wrestling with the age-old contradiction; artists love to debate and establish forms of work and outcome, thereby defining boundaries, yet discourage adherence to dogma. An audio paper is this, an audio paper is that. An audio paper could be this, but it probably isn’t that. An audio paper must be this, but also do whatever you want. How to validate the abstract versus the concrete? I do not profess to know.

In detailing or connecting to a finer point, I know I wished to engage with a work more materially concrete, dense and rigorous than avant-garde. On Seismograf, I listened to Sonic Worlds Collide – Sounds from Ukraine by Milena Droumeva and Svitlana Matviyenko. Comprised of personal anecdotal observations and a larger reflective analysis of the dynamics of media and user attention as sensitive information is disseminated, debated, often treated with a collective ownership of a ‘correct’ understanding of the facts.

I hate to use the word ‘trend’, but it reflects the temporality of the mass media cycle, alongside the broader undercurrent of social media user observers. Stories wax and wane in relevance, in exposure. The finer details filtered out and larger events only bob up for a moment. A fascinating point this audio paper notes is the role of the consumer of information, the observer. Predominantly American males, armchair experts in the ‘fun’ of fighting in war.

Some extracted quotes that struck me as significant:

‘[to] cope with both the horror of war and confronting a lack of conventional and familiar frameworks… Postpose my urge for sense-making so I could dwell in these moments of nonsense and illogic a little longer, because they are what the war is. They are what I cannot explain in my TV and radio interviews.’

‘This rehearsed response [to sounds of Ukraine] gave me pause, what is an ethical way to listen here? What is my responsibility to ethically engage with recordings of precarious times and places. Geography, as Anderson and Rennie argue, is a ‘speech act, a web of narratives and conversations’, and I would add to that, a map of affect.’

Writing this, I realise that my own selection of this audio paper is likely coloured by the same gawking, masculine, war touristic curiosity Droumeva and Matviyenko describe. I seek it out to hear stories of unbelievable, derealised, horrific world events accessible from my bedroom. The light is dim, I am warm and the WiFi works.

I recorded a (somewhat) brief reflection on this particular audio paper:

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References:

Groth, S. K. and Samson, K. (2016) Audio Papers – a manifesto. Available at: https://seismograf.org/fokus/fluid-sounds/audio_paper_manifesto (Accessed: 5 October 2024).

Droumeva, M. and Matviyenko, S. (2023) Sonic Worlds Collide – Sounds from Ukraine [Audio Paper]. 23 August. Available at: https://seismograf.org/node/20093 (Accessed: 5 October 2024)

Anderson, I., and Rennie, T. (2016) Thoughts in the Field: ‘Self-Reflexive Narrative’ in Field Recording. Organised Sound, 21(03), pp. 222–32. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355771816000194.