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Just in time for Black History Month, we share an episode we’ve been excitedly working on for a number of months now. Ethnomusicologist Maya Cunningham brings us “The Sound World of Harriet Tubman.” Maya Cunningham is an activist and jazz singer currently completing a Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in Afro-American studies with a concentration in ethnomusicology. 

Maya Cunningham

We first came across Maya’s work last year as part of The Harriet Tubman Bicentennial Project, an online initiative from Ms. magazine honoring the 200th anniversary of Harriet Tubman’s birth in 1822. It’s a remarkable package that adds many dimensions of understanding of the underground railroad conductor and feminist icon: Her experience of disability due to a blow to the head by a white overseer; her creation of a home for the aged; her love of the natural world; and much more. And to us, the richest of these essays was Maya’s the “Sound World of Harriet Tubman,” which used field recordings, historical research, and ethnomusicological research to explore the roles of sound and music, and voice in Tubman’s life and leadership. The piece included a Spotify playlist so you could listen as you read. 

Today, we’re thrilled to bring you what we hope will be an even more immersive experience: Maya Cunningham reading her essay, and thanks to the editing and mixing skills of Phantom Power producer Ravi Krishnaswami, her field recordings and playlist selections are mixed into the story. 

And just a quick note, you’re going to hear about the American Christian revival known as the Second Great Awakening, which stirred both Black and white people from the late 1700s to the mid-1800s. You’ll also hear about the Invisible Church, where enslaved African Americans were able to worship secretly and autonomously and through the singing of folk spirituals, which differed greatly from white religious music at the time, but would go on to influence not only gospel music but pretty much every form of popular music we know today. If you want to learn more about this history, a great place to start is a book edited by two professors Mack studied with at Indiana University, Drs. Mellonee V. Burnim and Portia K. Maultsby. It’s called African American Music: An Introduction. 

And today, we share our Patrons-only segment, “What’s Good,” in our main feed. Maya will recommend something good to read, listen to, and do. 

Today’s musical selections and soundscapes are by Maya Cunningham. The show was mixed and edited by Ravi Krishnaswami. The Harriet Tubman image was created by Maddie Haynes.

The sounds and music from today’s show (many of which which can be heard on Maya’s Spotify playlist):

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Today we speak to Hildegard Westerkamp, the pioneering composer, radio artist and sound ecologist. The centerpiece of all of her work is a close attention to the sonic environment and its relation to culture. We will listen to excerpts of six soundscape compositions made between 1975 and 2005, all of which reward the close listener–conceptually and aesthetically–with a deeper relationship to the sonic environment. 

Mack Hagood interviewed Westerkamp shortly after the death of R. Murray Schafer in late 2021. Westerkamp worked closely with Schafer in the early 1970s and she graciously agreed to talk about him despite the grief being fresh. They also discussed her own amazing career and that’s the part of the tape we are sharing in this episode. They talk about her formative years as a 20-something working with Schafer and his World Soundscape Project and then we jump into a number of her compositions, ending with the piece “Breaking News” from 2012. 

Incredibly, she said Mack was the first person to ever ask her about that piece, even though it is one of her favorites. And sure enough, not long after this interview she released a retrospective album on Earsay Music called Breaking News, which features that piece and a number of others created between 1988 and 2012. 

For our Patreon members we have the full, unedited interview for those who want to hear all her thoughts on R. Murray Schafer and her career. Join at Patreon.com/phantompower. 

And a quick correction: Hildegard wanted me to clarify that the sentence “When there is no sound, hearing is most alert,” which she uses in “Whisper Study,” is a quote from the Indian mystic Kirphal Singh in his book Naam (or Word).

Pieces featured in this episode: 

“Gently Penetrating beneath the Sounding Surfaces of Another Place” (1997)

“Whisper Study” (1975)

“Fantasie for Horns” (1978)

“A Walk through the City” (1981)

“Für Dich – For You” (2005)

“Breaking News” (2002)

Today’s show was written and edited by Mack Hagood.

Transcript

4:46 Snippet from Part 1 of R. Murray Schafer Episode

8:42 Interview with Hildegard Westerkamp

36:00 Breaking News by Hildegard Westerkamp 

Ethereal Voice: This is Phantom Power.

[Bells Ringing]

Hildegard Westerkamp: Every sound says something together with the environment in which it occurs

[Man Screaming]

And we, as listeners, do our interpreting.

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Today we feature an excerpt from our nearly 2-hour bonus episode for Patrons. In the full interview from last season’s episode “Dork-o-Phonics,” Jonathan Sterne discusses topics such as the early days of sound studies, how his upbringing and a music school rejection led him to sound, his illness and vocal impairment, and a lot of fascinating ideas about voice, media, disability, and more. To hear the full episode, join our Patreon!

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Today we talk to Dallas Taylor, host of the most popular sound podcast on the planet, Twenty Thousand Hertz. I like to think our show sounds pretty good, but Twenty Thousand Hertz is next-level audio production, some of the very best in the podcasting business. And Dallas prides himself on making a podcast for absolutely everyone. As he told me, he tries to make a show that’s just as mainstream and approachable as a true crime show. 

We start off with a chat about Dallas’s background in music, how he entered the world of sound design, what inspired him to start the podcast, and how he was discovered by Roman Mars of the legendary design podcast 99% Invisible. 

Then we jump into the nuts and bolts of how he and his team make Twenty Thousand Hertz. Dallas was kind enough to share the stems for my favorite episode, titled “Space,” so we will do a Song Exploder-like anatomy of that episode before listening to the full episode in the second half of the show.

Today’s show was edited by Craig Eley with additional help from Ravi Krishnaswami. Our Production Coordinator and transcriber is Jason Meggyesy.

Transcript

[4:45 Start of Dallas Taylor Interview]

[28:10 Start of Space by Twenty Thousand Hertz]

Ethereal Voice: This is Phantom Power.

[Birds Chirping]

Dallas Taylor: Now we’re at home here on Earth. We’re not gonna stay here for long, but it’s worth mentioning the amazing diversity of sound on our planet. 

The Sandy deserts. Lush forests. 

[Birds Chirping]

The sound of the ocean.

[Waves Crashing]

both on the surface 

and below.

[Waves Crashing]

Mack Hagood: Hey, and welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, where scholars and creators talk about sound. I’m Mack Hagood, and I think a lot of you recognize the voice that I just played. That’s Dallas Taylor, host of the most popular sound podcast on the planet Twenty Thousand Hertz. You know, I’ve had the good fortune to not only host this podcast for five years, but to make appearances on a number of other people’s podcasts. 

Some very niche. Some with huge audiences, but I think the biggest thrill that I’ve gotten as a podcast guest is when I heard my own voice bathed in the gorgeous production values of Dallas’s show. 

Dallas: In the story, Jason and the Argonauts are sailing to the edge of the world. 

Mack: Jason and the Argonauts encountered the sirens who were these bird-like women with these amazing voices, hypnotizing voices that would lure people into danger and death. 

[Sirens Singing]

And so when they encountered the sirens, Orpheus protected himself and his fellow Argonauts by singing his own counter song.

[Orpheus Singing]

Dallas: Orpheus created a kind of sonic shield. He drowned out the song of the Sirens, which allowed his fellow Argonauts to safely pass by

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If you walk into David Cecchetto ‘s classroom, you might find people wearing audio devices that simulate hearing with a thousand-foot wide head. Or gadgets that swap their ears so that the left ear hears what the right should and vice versa. David is a media theorist who draws on his background as an artist/musician, to create what he calls “engagements,” strange sonic experiments that help him—and his students—understand the nature of our computer-driven lives. 

In this episode, we feature an extended chat with David about his recent book, Listening in the Afterlife of Data (Duke University Press). It’s a book about the eternal impossibility of communication and the texture of that impossibility in our current computer-mediated age. David says we live in the afterlife of data, by which he means we know that our data-driven representations of the world don’t really capture the reality of our inner or outer lives, and we know that algorithms perpetuate injustices of all sorts—and yet, we still live our lives as if we do believe in the data. And this is where his engagements come in, the sonic experiments that confront the distortions and fallacies and textures of a data-driven life. 

David Cecchetto is Professor of Critical Digital Theory in the Department of Humanities at York University in Toronto, Director of the Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought, he’s President of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. He wrote the book Humanesis: Sound and Technological Posthumanism (2013) and he’s co-authored and edited several others. 

For patrons, there’s an extended version of our interview, complete with some outstanding recommendations for reading, listening, and doing. You can get access to that at patreon.com/phantompower.

Transcript

Ethereal Voice: This is Phantom Power.

[Robotic Music]

David Cecchetto: The world is not coherent with itself. 

There’s no single world. 

Any theorizing needs, I think, to start by acknowledging that

[Robotic Music]

Mack: And welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, where scholars and artists and musicians tell stories about sound. I’m Mack Hagood and my guest today is David Cecchetto, someone who qualifies as a scholar and an artist and a musician, but he draws on his musical and artistic skills in a very unusual way, creating what he calls engagements, these strange sonic experiments that help him and his students understand the nature of our computer driven lives.

David Ceccheto is Professor of Digital Critical Theory in the Department of Humanities at York University in Toronto. He’s also the director of the Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought there. He’s President of the Society for Literature Science and the Arts or S.A.L.S.A. He wrote the book, Humanesis: Sound and Technological Posthumanism back in 2013, and he’s co-authored and edited several other books.

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The Shortwave Collective describe themselves as “an international feminist group using the radio spectrum as artistic material.” I was first intrigued by their piece Receive-Transmit-Receive, an exquisite corpse of audio, in which members each contributed their own recordings of sounds from across the radio spectrum. But what really affected me was their ongoing public education project of teaching people to make their own no-power, low-budget radios called open-wave receivers. They’ve held radio-making workshops in Portugal, France, and the UK and they’ve published a how-to in Make magazine.

I wanted to talk to the Shortwave Collective because they are presenting a radically different vision of what radio is and can be. Radio’s history can be thought of as an extended expression of military, political, commercial, and cultural dominance. But the Collective embraces play, experimentation, failure, community, and open listening in their feminist radio practice. So, let’s talk to the Shortwave Collective and see if we can rethink radio–what it’s for and what it can do.  

And in the second half of the show, we’ll hear an audio documentary in which the Shortwave Collective teaches you how to make your own open-wave receiver.

Special thanks for appearing on the show to Shortwave Collective members Lisa Hall, ​Alyssa Moxley, Georgia Muenster, and Maria Papadomanolaki. The other Collective members are Sally A. Applin, Kate Donovan, Brigitte Hart, and Hannah Kemp-Welch. Today’s show was written and edited by Mack Hagood with technical assistance from Craig Eley. Today’s music is by Graeme Gibson with additional sound design elements by Cris Cheek and Shortwave Collective. Phantom Power’s production team includes Craig Eley, Ravi Krishnaswami, and Amy Skjerseth. Our Production Coordinator and transcriber is Jason Meggyesy.

Transcript

[33:47 For Tools Needed to Build Open Wave Receiver]

[34:47 For Start of Tutorial]

Mack Hagood: Before we get started, I have three URLs for your consideration. 

If you’re new to the show, welcome! If you enjoy what you hear today, please subscribe at phantompod.org/subscribe. 

If you’re already a fan of the show, consider joining our new Patreon. You’ll be supporting our mission of creating entertaining audio scholarship for the people, and you’ll get access to our exclusive patrons-only feed, where you’ll get recommendations for reading and listening and things to do straight from our guests, and you’ll also get bonus episodes in other perks Options start at just $3 a month, and until October 31st, new patrons get a killer Phantom Power sticker. That URL is patreon.com/phantompower. 

And finally, please give us a five-star rating or even write a review at ratethispodcast.com/phantom. 

All right, let’s get to it. 

On today’s show, we address a performer’s nightmare—the nightmare of not being able to hear yourself onstage. My guest is ethnomusicologist Jacob Danson Faraday, who takes us behind the scenes of the famed Cirque du Soleil to learn how even Cirque’s world-class musicians struggle with technology when they want to hear themselves. 

Building on his international career as a touring sound technician, ethnomusicologist Jacob Danson Faraday researches the working communities and hidden labor of live sound technicians on large-scale touring productions. He is a recent graduate of the PhD program in ethnomusicology at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Today Jake takes us behind the scenes of Cirque du Soleil, sharing his dissertation research on how sound engineers and musicians negotiate the power to hear oneself. 

Stage monitoring, the technology that allows musicians to hear the performance as they play, is a topic we rarely hear about, but it’s absolutely essential to performers. Faraday suggests that, while new in-ear monitors are marketed as a godsend for performers, they are more of a mixed blessing, “homogenizing listening” and creating new kinds of issues and anxieties for musicians.  

Today’s show was edited and mixed by Jacob Danson Faraday, with additional editing by Mack Hagood. 

The song “Sail Away” by Colton Benjamin (2017) was obtained from the Free Multitrack Download Library on the Cambridge Music Technology website by Mike Senior, author of the excellent book Mixing Secrets For The Small Studio. 

Read the dissertation: Buried in the mix: touring sound technicians, sonic control, and emotional labour on Cirque du Soleil’s Corteo by Jacob Danson Faraday (2021). 

Join Our Patreon! Receive Bonus Material from this episode and more at Patreon.com/phantompower. 

Transcript

[00:00:00]

 Ethereal Voice: This is Phantom power.

[Crowd Noise]

Mack Hagood: You’re waiting in the wings of a large Las Vegas hotel nightclub wearing a powder blue tuxedo. You tentatively touch the bow tie at your throat. You don’t remember taking this gig. A hand pushes you from behind and you stumble out onto the stage. A spotlight fixes you in its gaze. And the music begins. 

[Music Plays]

Thank God.

You know, this one, it’s an old bossa nova tune. You take a breath and start to sing, but you can’t hear yourself. You can feel vibrations in your chest and neck. But your voice, it’s not there, but it is there. They can hear it, the crowd, and whatever you’re doing, it must be terrible. 

They start to laugh.

[Laughing]

They boo. 

[Booing]

But how can you sing if you can’t hear yourself?

[Music Continues]

Mack: Hey, and welcome to another episode and another season of Phantom Power, a podcast about sound in the arts music, and humanities, I’m Mack Hagood, and on today’s show,

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Get ready for Season Four of Phantom Power, where we study sound in the arts, music, and culture!

On Phantom Power, we’ve got an ear to the ground—listening to the subterranean rats of New York… 

We’ve got an ear on the streets—with the rattling car trunks of Houston hip hop…

And we’ve got an ear for culture—analyzing the politics of Yoko Ono’s voice…

And in every episode, we hear from the world’s great experts on these topics—the fascinating scholars, sound artists, and musicians who tap the phantom power of sound. 

I’m sound professor Mack Hagood, host of Phantom Power. Our fourth season starts September 15th.

We’ll meet a scholar who embedded with the Cirque D’ Soleil to find out why musicians always seem to keep one of their in-ear monitors hanging out of their ear. (Have you noticed that?)

We’ll find out how Kate Bush made the glorious sounds of “Running Up That Hill” with an early digital synthesizer.

We’re going back in history to hear the sound world of Harriet Tubman.

We’ll also talk to cultural critic Karen Tongson from the podcast Waiting to X-hale about the power of karaoke.

And host Dallas Taylor will tell us how his team makes their hit sound podcast 20,000 hertz.

Follow and listen in Apple Podcasts or at phantompod.org.

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This month, we are preparing for the launch of Season Four of the podcast in September. Lots of fascinating topics on deck, as we double our output with a semi-monthly format. We are also about to officially launch a Patreon page, but you can get on board early at www.patreon.com/phantompower.

This summer, sound artist and “guerrilla academic” Ben Coleman got in touch to say how much he enjoys Phantom Power. He also suggested we check out another podcast he’s into called Love is the Message. 

We’re glad we did! Love is the Message: Music, Dance & Counterculture is a fantastic show from Tim Lawrence and Jeremy Gilbert, both of them authors, academics, DJs and audiophile dance party organisers. I recognized Tim Lawrence’s name from his great book on Arthur Russell. Jeremy Gilbert is Professor of Cultural and Political Theory at the University of East London and a prolific author. Tim and Jeremy have been longtime collaborators and when the clubs closed and universities cut faculty hours due to covid, they started podcasting. 

The way I’d describe their show is, imagine the amazing college class you never got to take where you learn about the intersections of global dance music and radical politics, from the 1960s to today. They do shows on disco, Motown, reggae, tropicalia, funk, you name it with a strong cultural studies perspective. And I think the episode we’re going to hear today is a perfect example of their approach—it’s ostensibly an episode about Fela Kuti, but it’s also terrific seminar on the Black Atlantic and the political history of Nigeria. 

So thanks, Ben, for the recommendation. Thanks, Tim and Jem for sharing the pod with me and doing this episode swap. And thanks everyone for listening. Talk next month!

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It’s summer and we are busy working on episodes for our fourth season. We’ve also rebuilt our website–check out the the fabulous new phantompod.org. There’s other great stuff in store for the podcast, so stay tuned!

But today, I want to share one of my favorite podcasts with you: Will Robin’s Sound Expertise. For those of you into musicology or popular music studies, there’s a great chance you’re already a subscribe. That’s because Will’s show is fantastic and I personally know many music scholars who are devoted fans of this show that features conversations with established and up-and-coming music scholars. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Dr. Robin, you might remember that I quoted his New York Times obituary of R. Murray Schafer in our first episode on Schafer. He has written about music for the Times for at least a decade. He’s also an assistant professor of Musicology at the University of Maryland and the author of the book Industry: Bang on a Can and New Music. Sound Expertise will be dropping its third season in the fall.

The episode you are about to hear is one that I love as a media scholar. Will Robin interviews Dr. Paula Harper about her work on viral music videos and taste, specifically that terrible Rebecca Black video “Friday” that’s probably still rattling around in some dark recess of your brain. Dr. Harper digs into the awful virality of that video and all of its cover versions, discerning what this case study can tell us about genre, gender, and how and why sound travels on the internet. It’s a great discussion and I hope you enjoy it. And by the way, since this interview happened, Paula Harper has joined the faculty of the University of Chicago as an assistant professor of music. So, who says YouTube rots your brain?

Transcript

Sound Expertise – Season 2, Episode 7Rebecca Black’s Friday and Viral Music with Paula Harper

TRANSCRIPT prepared by Andrew Dell’Antonio

Paula Harper 00:00One of the reasons that I do the work that I do, which is writing about music and sound on the internet, is in part because I am fascinated and delighted by objects that are frequently obnoxious. So a lot of the things that I’m engaging with are things that occupy this weird, liminal or ambivalent space between something that gives people delight and something that makes people want to throw their computer off of a tall building. So just like right in the middle space between those two emotions, or having those two emotions at the same time, is how I’ve engaged with a lot of stuff on the internet, including, but certainly not limited to, the Rebecca Black Friday video.

[intro music]

Will Robin 01:05Welcome back to Sound Expertise. I’m your host, Will Robin, and I’m a musicologist. And this is a podcast where I talk with my fellow music scholars about their research and why it matters.

You probably remember Rebecca Black’s Friday, and if not, you almost certainly heard it. It was absolutely ubiquitous about a decade ago, a music video by an amateur teen musician, which went viral because it was widely trashed as one of the Worst Songs of All Time. Friday went from YouTube to Tosh.0 to parodies and covers on late night TV, racking up tens of millions of views in the process. It was 2011, it was a more innocent time, when our expectations for what kinds of internet content would go viral we...

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