Sound Practices in the Global South

"Sound Practices in the Global South: Co-listening to Resounding Plurilogues presents a highly original and critically important collection of conversations with sound practitioners and thinkers working in and from the Global South. Chattopadhyay’s book makes a significant contribution to decolonising the field of Sound Studies by drawing attention to transcultural resonances across diverse practices while shifting attention away from what he calls the ‘exoticising… listening ear of canonised scholarship’. This book is an exciting and essential read for anyone interested in sound theory and practice beyond Eurocentric perspectives."

- Philippa Lovatt, University of St Andrews, UK



This book delves into the unique sound worlds of key regions in the Global South, by an auto-ethnographic method of self-reflexive conversations with prominent sound practitioners from South Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. The conversations navigate trajectories of sound practices, illuminating intricate processes of listening, thinking, exposing, and performing with sound. Through a practice-based approach to sound theory and production, the book builds a ground-up knowledge about aural cultures and sonic aesthetics, moving beyond the Eurocentric focus of contemporary sound studies. Instead of understanding sound practices via the lens of consumption and entertainment, they are explored as complex cultural and aesthetic systems, learning from the practitioners themselves and their sonic methodologies. The book reveals a tension between West’s predominant colonial-consumerist cultures, and the collective desires of the practitioners to resist colonial models of listening by expressing themselves in terms of their critical making.

Conversations with:

Clarence Barlow, Sandeep Bhagwati, Rajesh K. Mehta, Sharif Sehnaoui, Ximena Alarcón Díaz, Hardi Kurda, Mario de Vega, Luka Mukhavele,Khyam Allami, Cedrik Fermont, Khaled Kaddal, David Velez, Juan Duarte, Youmna Saba, Abdellah M. Hassak, Mariana Marcassa, Amanda Gutiérrez, Syma Tariq, Alma Laprida, Siamak Anvari, Mohamad Safa, Debashis Sinha, Zouheir Atbane, Constanza Bizraelli, Jatin Vidyarthi, Joseph Kamaru, Surabhi Saraf, Isuru Kumarasinghe, Hemant Sreekumar. 

Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Professor, Institute of Experimental Design and Media Cultures (IXDM), Academy of Art and Design, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland.