“Listening In” is a column dedicated to sound, music, and listening practices in contemporary art and its spaces. This section focuses on how listening practices are being investigated and reconfigured by artists working across disciplines in the twenty-second century. The latest episode of "Listening In" is dedicated to C/D, an artistic duo comprising sound designer, installation artist, and Brown University PhD candidate Kamari Carter and artist, composer, and writer Julian Day. After meeting at Columbia University and having worked individually on audio dispersal, the two started to collaborate, focusing their practice and research around ambiguities of surveillance and sousveillance and the complex ethics of broadcasting and listening.
From the article "In soccer-crazed Argentina, ‘Muchachos’ carries the dreams of a country"
Argentina, one of the most soccer-obsessed countries in the world, has a long history of fans rewriting the lyrics of popular songs to cheer on their local teams. The practice can be traced at least to the 1950s, when working-class fans of the Boca Juniors sports club in Buenos Aires purloined an anthem of the country’s populist Peronist movement, said Luis Achondo, a postdoctoral fellow at the Catholic University of Chile in Santiago who is writing a book about songs at soccer games in Latin America.
“From there the culture has grown and grown, and in the Argentine stadiums you sing without stopping,” Achondo said.
A line of students that stretched across the Main Green filed into Sayles Hall on Halloween night, buzzing with excitement as they took in the decorative cobwebs adorning the building’s balcony. The decorations come every year to Sayles, a key part of University Organist Mark Steinbach’s annual Midnight Halloween Organ Recital. Halfway through his performance Steinbach answered a solemn knock on the Sayles Hall balcony door. To the astonishment of the nearly 500 students in attendance, President Christina Paxson P’19 emerged in a witch costume, marking her first time joining Steinbach for the event, according to Steinbach.
The Department of Music hosts an event on September 30, 2022 to celebrate Arlene, and a special website will be published this month where friends, family, alumni, and colleagues can share their memories. Details follow below.
Audio artist and PhD candidate in Music & Multimedia Composition Will Johnson has been busy in 2022. Johnson composed music and sound for the podcast "Love Thy Neighbor," and he is one of the artists collaborating on exhibitions at MoMA and the University of Johannesburg.
Visiting Lecturer in Music Ivan Tan discussed the relatively unknown cover of the Beatles’ “Abbey Road” by instrumental band Booker T. and the MG’s in a talk presented by the Department of Music at the Orwig Music Hall Monday. Titled “McLemore Avenue,” the album sought to tinker with the Beatles’ innovative style, bringing new flavors of blues and R&B to the music that defined a generation.
Luis Achondo receives appointment as Fondecyt Postdoctoral Fellow at Pontificia Universidad Católica. Also, an article by Achondo was recently published in the journal Soccer & Society.
Eric Nathan received a Midcareer Research Achievement Award from the Office of the Vice President for Research for his compositions for vocal and instrumental live performance.