The Brown Canon: Non-Western Perspectives in Sound Studies (original) (raw)

In the arts and humanities, Sound Studies has rapidly established itself as a vibrant and productive academic field resulting in a profusion of scholarly writings on sound. Two consecutive compendia such as The Routledge Sound Studies Reader (2012) and The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies (2013) have been complemented with handy anthologies like Keywords in Sound (2015) and a number of peer-reviewed journals that are entirely dedicated to the studies of sound. These publications show that now sound studies indeed is a rewarding area of research receiving wider academic attention within and outside of the broader disciplines of music, film and media studies, performing arts, and musicology. Notwithstanding this rapidly growing body of work (Sterne 2003, 2006, 2012; Born 2013; Théberge, Devine & Everrett 2015; Dyson 2009, 2014; Demers 2010; Novak and Sakakeeny 2015; Blesser 2007; Bijsterveld and Pinch 2013), much of the attention has been invested in studying sound within an American and/or European media cultural context. Sounds in other Non-Western/Non-European contexts have largely remained underexplored and ignored. The above-mentioned works have been canonized in the global community of sound researchers by the sheer amount of citations and reviews but they have a negligible number of non-White and non-Western contributors. Furthermore, there is a serious lack of representation from the non-White, non-Western scholars, thinkers and researchers in the bibliographic resources and reference list of these works, which are now considered classics. One concerned with this problem of a serious lack of representation may lament that Sound Studies indeed is overwhelmingly white as well as Eurocentric, and the racial conservatism is limiting the fields’ research as well as social outreach. It is an act of complacent ignorance not to engage with African and Asian thinkers regarding their sonically rich cultures; while, many of their works are now available in translation. The proposed paper addresses this concern about an unfair social divide upheld in Sound Studies. The paper intends to fill this void by developing a comprehensive understanding of the unique sonic sensibility and sound aesthetics in a non-Western culture like India, through Extended Abstract 148 a literature review as well as the examination of historical developments of sound practice and the corresponding aesthetic shifts. By drawing attention to this ignored line of inquiry, the proposed paper confronts a number fundamental issue in the studies of sound, i.e. subjectivity.