The Sounding History Podcast

Sounding History tracks the global history of people making music and sound over the past 500 years. Scientists call this era the Anthropocene: an epoch in which human societies have collided with one another, with the planet itself, and the West has colonized much of the “rest” of the world.

Your hosts Tom Irvine and Chris Smith are two music historians tired of stiff stories about composers and works. We want to talk about people and the soundworlds they lived in during centuries of upheaval and violence, in the shadow of colonialism and the global climate emergency that has emerged from it. 

As music historians we have access to the sounds people made, and how they listened. That’s our job! Sounding History asks: What have these 500 years sounded like? Whose voices are heard, and whose have been silenced? In each episode we’ll share unheard tales of innovation, resistance, resilience and, yes, great music of all stripes from the Delta Blues to revolutionary symphonies. We invite you to subscribe and listen to this history with us, so that together we can better understand where we are right now, and what we can do to create a more sustainable future.

 
 

Why “Sounding History”?

History that is sounding …

  • The history of sound: how sound has been made, by whom, for what purposes, and with what impact, across times and places

  • History through sound: how re-discovering and tuning in to global history through soundscape and sonic experience can transform and enrich historical understanding

Re-sounding lost voices …

  • Recovering voices that have been written-out, obliterated, muted, or erased, and

  • Holding space for them across 500 years of imperialism, colonialism, and extraction

Taking soundings of history …

  • Telling “history from below” the upper classes and the surfaces of conventional narratives

  • Plumbing experience by investigating the less obvious and more profound currents of “deep history”

 
 

Join the Conversation!

Subscribe to the Podcast

Listen in to Season 1 and please contact us to share you questions, comments and suggestions.

 

Goodreads

Check us out on Goodreads where you can find links to purchase all of the books mentioned on the show and join our Sounding History book discussion group.

 
 

YouTube

Visit our YouTube channel where there are unique playlists for each episode that you’re invited to add to yourself!

 
 

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