Sonic Entanglements Podcast

This is the second episode of a two-part interview with Dr. Nadja Wallaszkowits, the Head Sound Engineer of the Phonogram Archive of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. This episode focuses on Nadja’s and my reflection on how the development of audio recording and technology shifted the questions we ask about sound, and how they shaped our listening aesthetics. I asked Nadja, how does the knowledge in the science of sound recording and engineering shape the questions that we ask about sound? How did it change our listening aesthetics? The microscope enabled us to see things that we could not see before. How did sound recording technologies allow us to hear things that we would not have been able to hear before, and how did this change how we understand our world? 

Dr. Nadja Wallaszkovits managed the audio department as a specialist for audio restoration, re-recording and digital archiving and is consultant for archival technology for various institutions internationally. Dr. Wallaszkovits is Audio Engineering Society (AES) President Elect, Vice Chair of the Technical Committee of the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA), and a member of the IASA Training & Education Committee. Since 2020, she was appointed Professor of Conservation and Restoration of New Media and Digital Information at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design. 

Sonic Entanglements is hosted and produced by meLê yamomo. Thijs van den Geest is our sound engineer and sound editor, and Jean Barcena is our publicity manager. Our theme music is created by Markus Hoogervorst. 

For more information, visit www.sonic-entanglements.com. 

In 2018, I interviewed Dr. Nadja Wallaszkowits, head of the audio department at the Sound Archive of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. Nadja is responsible for developing customized audio technologies for field recordings, as well as in audio restoration, re-recording and digital archiving. Her customized equipment and operation procedures became the standard in many other sound archives in the world. In this first segment of a two-part episode, Nadja lucidly elaborates on the specific role that a scientific sound archive plays for the scholarly community. She also explains the technological support that her institute provides for researchers. 

Dr. Nadja Wallaszkovits managed the audio department as a specialist for audio restoration, re-recording and digital archiving and is consultant for archival technology for various institutions internationally. Dr. Wallaszkovits is Audio Engineering Society (AES) President Elect, Vice Chair of the Technical Committee of the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA), and a member of the IASA Training & Education Committee. Since 2020, she was appointed Professor of Conservation and Restoration of New Media and Digital Information at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design.  

Sonic Entanglements is hosted and produced by meLê yamomo. Thijs van den Geest is our sound engineer and sound editor, and Jean Barcena is our publicity manager. Our theme music is created by Markus Hoogervorst. 

For more information, visit www.sonic-entanglements.com. 

I talked with Harry van Biessum, about the history of the Netherlands Institute of Sound and Vision – the country’s broadcasting and media archive. The institute also houses some rare historical sound and music recordings from the early twentieth century and we uncovered some materials from the Dutch colonial history. We spoke about the role of such an archive in the age of the internet.  

Harry van Biessum is media manager at the Netherlands Institute of Sound and Vision. He is a project partner at the Sonic Entanglements research project. 

As the oldest audio archive in the world, what is the role of the Vienna Phonogram Archive in the history of sound research? What recordings about Southeast Asia are stored in the institute? In this episode, meLê yamomo speaks with Gerda Lechleitner – former archivist and researcher at the Sound Archive of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. Gerda tells about her career in the intersection of sound archiving and sound scholarship. She also reflected on the ethics behind audio documents made during the colonial period and the idea of sound heritage repatriation. 

Gerda Lechleitner is co-chair of the Study Group on Historical Sources and a member of the RILM Commission Mixte of the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM). From 1996 until 2020 Gerda worked at the Phonogram Archive of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. She had been curator of the historical collections, and together with Christian Liebl, she had been editor of the CD-edition “Sound Documents from the Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The Complete Historical Collections 1899-1950” and the Yearbook of the Phonogrammarchiv “International Forum on Audio-Visual Research”.

Sonic Entanglements is hosted and produced by meLê yamomo. Thijs van den Geest is our sound engineer and sound editor, and Jean Barcena is our publicity manager. Our theme music is created by Markus Hoogervorst. Many thanks to the Phonogram Archive of the Austrian Academy of Sciences for the permission to use the archival audio materials. This podcast is funded by the Dutch Research Organization. For more information, visit www.sonic-entanglements.com 

In the previous episode, I interviewed Prof. Elizabeth “Betsy” Enriquez about her research on the history of colonial radio broadcasting in the Philippines. This episode is a continuation of our dialogue, and this time we talk about what she discovered while researching in the archives in the Philippines and the US. We also reflect on the relationship of archives with colonial history. The previous episode is not a requisite to be able to follow our discussion in this episode, but if you haven’t heard it yet, please give it a listen to understand some of the contexts of our conversation.

Elizabeth L. Enriquez is a Professor at the College of Mass Communication, University of the Philippines Diliman (UP). She is the author of the book Appropriation of Colonial Broadcasting: A History of Early Radio in the Philippines, 1922-1946 (UP Press 2008) and the monograph with video documentary Radyo: An Essay on Philippine Radio (CCP 2003), both pioneering and still the only extensive works on Philippine broadcast history. Before teaching at the UP, she worked in radio and television for almost 18 years, mostly as a broadcast journalist.  In 2015, she returned to the air by hosting programs on UP’s official radio station DZUP.

Sonic Entanglements is hosted and produced by meLê yamomo. Thijs van den Geest is our sound engineer and sound editor, and Jean Barcena is our publicity manager. Our theme music is created by Markus Hoogervorst. Additional sound engineering by Luis Olid and James Zipangan. This podcast is funded by the Dutch Research Organization. This episode is supported by Deutschlandfunk Kultur. Special thanks to Marcus Gammel, director of Deutschlandfunk Radio Art department.

For more information, visit www.sonic-entanglements.com. 

In this first part of a two-episode interview, I spoke to Elizabeth “Betsy” Enriquez about her pioneering research on the history of the radio media in the Philippines. We listened to extant recordings of music and audio programs created by the front-runners of the Filipino radio broadcasting industry. Betsy talked about the historical context of mass media culture in the US-occupied Philippines between the 1920s and 1940s. And she explained the anti-colonial strategies of the first Filipino radio programmers, hosts, musicians, and performers.

Elizabeth L. Enriquez is a Professor at the College of Mass Communication, University of the Philippines Diliman (UP). She is the author of the book Appropriation of Colonial Broadcasting: A History of Early Radio in the Philippines, 1922-1946 (UP Press 2008) and the monograph with video documentary Radyo: An Essay on Philippine Radio (CCP 2003), both pioneering and still the only extensive works on Philippine broadcast history. Before teaching at the UP, she worked in radio and television for almost 18 years, mostly as a broadcast journalist.  In 2015, she returned to the air by hosting programs on UP’s official radio station DZUP.

Sonic Entanglements is hosted and produced by meLê yamomo. Thijs van den Geest is our sound engineer and sound editor, and Jean Barcena is our publicity manager. Our theme music is created by Markus Hoogervorst. Additional sound engineering by Luis Olid and James Zipangan. This podcast is funded by the Dutch Research Organization. This episode is supported by Deutschlandfunk Kultur. Special thanks to Marcus Gammel, director of Deutschlandfunk Radio Art department. For more information, visit www.sonic-entanglements.com. 

In the second episode of the Sonic Entanglements podcast, I speak with Vincent Kuitenbrouwer about the history of early radio broadcasting in colonial Indonesia. We listen to recordings of some of the first radio transmissions from the Netherlands to what was then called the “Dutch East Indies”. Vincent talks about how the Dutch used radio as a tool of imperialism, and how this project failed. 

Vincent Kuitenbrouwer is Senior Lecturer History of International Relations. Vincent’s research focuses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century imperial history and has a special interest in colonial media, particularly radio broadcasting. He currently coordinates the project 'Media War' on propaganda in Dutch-language media during the Second World War at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. 

Sonic Entanglements is hosted and produced by meLê yamomo. Thijs van den Geest is our sound engineer and sound editor, and Jean Barcena is our publicity manager. Our theme music is created by Markus Hoogervorst. Special thanks to Harry van Biessum, Erik Lucassen, and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision for the archival recordings. This podcast is funded by the Dutch Research Organization. For more information, visit www.sonic-entanglements.com 

In this pilot episode of the Sonic Entanglements podcast, I spoke to Barbara about some of the earliest sound and music recordings made in colonial Indonesia by Jaap Kunst in the early 1900s. Barbara talks about the history of how these recordings would eventually form the Jaap Kunst Ethnomusicology Archive at the University of Amsterdam. As the curator of the archive, we discussed the future of this collection and how they can be disclosed to the community from which they were recorded. 

Barbara Titus is an associate professor of Cultural Musicology and is the curator of the Jaap Kunst Sound Collection at the University of Amsterdam. In this capacity, she is the Project Leader and First Principal Investigator of the JPICH-funded project Decolonizing Southeast Asian Sound Archives (DeCoSEAS) that renegotiates established understandings of heritage curation. 

Sonic Entanglements is hosted and produced by meLê yamomo. Thijs van den Geest is our sound engineer and sound editor, and Jean Barcena is our publicity manager. Our theme music is created by Markus Hoogervorst. This podcast is funded by the Dutch Research Organization. For more information, visit www.sonic-entanglements.com 

Sonic Entanglements Podcast examines the history of sound in Southeast Asia, through conversations with sound experts: historians, archivists, sound engineers, artists, and scholars. The podcast is hosted by meLê yamomo.