Listening with China Blue

What if music could reveal not only how our own minds work, but also how other species experience the world?

In this episode of Listening with China Blue, I speak with neuroscientist, musician, and author David Sulzer, also known as composer Dave Soldier, about the mysteries of musical perception and the surprising connections between human and animal minds.

From exploring how our brains recognize and respond to music before conscious awareness to creating music with elephants in the Thai Elephant Orchestra, David challenges us to reconsider what listening means across species.

Can elephants and birds experience music as we do? What does music reveal about intelligence, communication, and consciousness? And might listening help us recognize forms of awareness beyond our own?

If you've ever wondered what music reveals about the mind and whether other species experience sound as we do, this episode is for you.

What happens when we stop expecting other species to communicate on human terms?

What if listening isn't something we do only with our ears, but with our entire bodies—and with one another?

In this episode of Listening with China Blue, I speak with dancer and choreographer Andrea Nann about embodied listening: the ways we perceive through breath, movement, energy, sensation, space, and our awareness of other people. Andrea describes listening as the foundational capacity of improvisation: the practice that allows us to enter uncertainty without already knowing what comes next. We explore how movement can emerge from attention rather than instruction, how our bodies carry the archives of our lived experience, and how listening together can transform separate individuals into participants in something being created collectively.

If you've ever wondered what becomes possible when we listen with our whole bodies and allow our response to emerge from what is happening now, this episode is for you.

What happens when we stop expecting other species to communicate on human terms?

In this episode of Listening with China Blue, I talk with Jim Nollman, interspecies musician and creator of "Orcas Greatest Hits", about music, orcas, and listening across species.

We explore what happens when music becomes a meeting place between species: how Jim Nollman improvises with orcas, how he recognizes when an animal is responding, and what decades of listening have taught him about communication, intelligence, agency, and consciousness.

Our conversation asks us to consider whether meaningful communication with other species begins when we stop expecting them to communicate on human terms, and whether listening itself can become a form of relationship.

If you’re curious about what animals can teach us about listening, this episode is for you.

What if the world around us is a continuous symphony and listening is how we become part of it?

In this episode of Listening with China Blue, I sit down with pioneering acoustic ecology composer Hildegard Westerkamp, whose life's work has transformed the way we think about sound, place, and our relationship with the environment.

We explore what happens when we begin to hear the everyday world as music; the rhythms of cities, the voices of nature, the sounds we welcome and those we tune out. Hildegard shares how attentive listening can deepen our relationship with place and awaken us to the continuous symphony unfolding around us.

Our conversation asks us to consider listening not simply as something we do with our ears, but as a way of participating in the world.

If you've ever wondered what you might discover by slowing down and listening to the symphony already unfolding around you, this episode is for you.

What if listening doesn’t simply change what we hear, but determines how we understand and relate to the world around us?

In this episode of Listening with China Blue, I sit down with pioneering composer Annea Lockwood to explore her lifelong fascination with sound, the environment, and the visceral ways we experience listening through our bodies. We talk about her belief that listening determines everything, her decades of listening to and recording rivers, and her understanding of rivers not simply as landscapes or sources of sound, but as living systems with agency of their own.

Our conversation asks what becomes possible when we stop treating the natural world as something separate from ourselves and begin listening to it as an active participant in our shared existence.

If you’ve ever wondered how listening can transform your relationship with the natural world and what we might discover when we begin to hear rivers as having lives and agency of their own this episode is for you.

What if listening wasn't just something you do with your ears, but a way of connecting with the Earth, your ancestors, and every living thing?

In this episode of Listening with China Blue, I sit down with Singing Rain and Laughing Owl of the Association of Native Americans of the Mid-Hudson Valley about oral tradition, listening to birds, trees, rocks, and ancestors, and the belief that every living thing has a voice. This conversation is about listening as relationship, memory, and a way of belonging.

If you've ever wondered what the natural world might be saying and how listening can deepen your relationship with it this episode is for you.

Field recording, sound mapping, and soundscape storytelling are transforming how we experience the world. In this episode of Listening with China Blue, I speak with Stuart Fowkes, founder of Cities and Memory, one of the world's largest collaborative sound projects, bringing together more than 2,500 artists who remix the world one sound at a time.

Since 2014, Stuart has built an extraordinary global archive of field recordings and creative reinterpretations from more than 100 countries. What began as a simple idea—to pair an original environmental recording with an artistic remix—has evolved into an international community exploring memory, place, culture, and listening through sound.

Our conversation explores what makes a meaningful field recording, how sound mapping can preserve disappearing acoustic environments, and why listening deeply to everyday places can change how we understand our communities. We discuss the creative relationship between documentation and imagination, the ethics of recording public spaces, and the role of artists in building a shared sonic memory of the planet.

Whether you're interested in field recording, acoustic ecology, sound art, environmental storytelling, podcasting, or simply becoming a better listener, this conversation offers an inspiring look at how sound connects us across cultures and geography.

China Blue speaks with musician Vero Faye Kitsuné who goes by the name C Z A R I N A about how as an indigenous Filipino shamanism, the grandeur of nature and Spain's witches inspired listening for the Dark Wave.

Vero Faye Kitsuné is an American award-winning electronic artist, producer, and filmmaker based in Galicia, Spain, she is known for a darkwave/industrial sound inspired by cyberpunk and anime, she creates synth-heavy, cinematic music.

China Blue speaks with Timothy Blunk a former US political prisoner who served over 13 years in some of America’s most notorious prisons for his activism in resistance to racism, US support for apartheid in South Africa, and involvement in Central America during the 1980s. His prison term included 7 years in solitary confinement in USP Marion. Tim appeared on the television program “20/20” documenting the campaign against Marion’s use of solitary confinement as a form torture. His case was recognized and documented by both Amnesty International and US Human Rights Watch.

#listening

#podcasts

#Activism

#solitaryconfinment

Internationally recognized art critic Richard Vine, PhD is the former managing editor of Art in America who has taught throughout the world and has produced more than three hundred art articles.

His books Range from the career survey of "Odd Nerdrum: Paintings, Sketches, and Drawings" and "New China, New Art," which traces the emergence of avant-garde art in post-Mao China to the crime novel "SoHo Sins," set in the New York art world of the 1990s. He has also co-curated exhibitions at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing; the National Academy of Art in New Delhi, India, and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York.

China Blue speaks to Mr. Vine about his early life listening to his Welsh grandfather, being at the 1970 Kent State shooting and about acclaimed Chinese artists Gu Wenda and activist Ai Weiwei and the renown architect Zaha Hadid.