Entangled Listening and Free Radio

Presenter: Jacob Saheb (Nottingham, UK)

Abstract

Entangled Listening builds on Édouard Glissant’s notion of entanglement (1997) and Pauline Oliveros’ quantum listening (2024) to consider postcolonial listening practices that arise from sonic encounters in the “contact zone.” (Pratt 1991) Drawing on research interviews with listeners of former free radio (“pirate”) station PCRL, I centre listening and sonic encounters within Birmingham’s Black and South Asian diasporas to consider how sound and listening are implicated as points of racial and/or cultural identification and play a crucial component in the construction of hybrid identities.