Sound Knowledge: Alternative Epistemologies of Music in the Western Pacific Island World

Project Information

SoundKnowledge

Grant agreement ID: 862367

DOI

10.3030/862367

EC signature date 26 March 2020

Start date 1 April 2020

End date 30 September 2026

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 964 136,00

EU contribution

€ 1 964 136,00

Coordinated by

GEORG-AUGUST-UNIVERSITAT GOTTINGEN STIFTUNG OFFENTLICHEN RECHTS
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - SoundKnowledge (Sound Knowledge: Alternative Epistemologies of Music in the Western Pacific Island World)

Reporting period: 2023-04-01 to 2024-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

SoundKnowledge aims to rethink music in terms of the procedural knowledge inherent in and specific to music-making by exploring the latter as knowledge practices in Micronesia. This knowledge, formed in the performance of musical practice, may prove to be key to survival in the complex postcolonial predicament of Micronesia. To make this knowledge operable, the project (a) develops a conceptual framework and an analytic capable of better understanding sonic epistemological practices and (b) addresses climate change, social alienation and postcolonial trauma in specific parts of Micronesia by fleshing out the nature and dynamics of that knowledge conceptually and ethnographically.
The project’s systematic analysis of music-making as a knowledge practice identifies strategies that foster resilience in the face of these urgent crises. At the same time, it also offers a first-of-its-kind theorization of the intrinsic procedural knowledge unique to music-making. The underlying hypothesis is that knowledge of music is self-referential and forms multilayered connections and ruptures with pasts, presents and futures, surrounding orders of knowledge and other sensory registers in addition to the auditory. SoundKnowledge asks what Western Pacific musical practices know and how they know it, how music-making makes this knowledge operable and how humans use this knowledge in coping with their life-world through music. The project, therefore, explores how music functions as an epistemic form that is distinct yet imbricated within its environment, often referred to as the proverbial power of music.
This research is of immediate relevance to the local island level, to the entire Micronesian region, and to global human welfare for three reasons. First, it addresses pressing local issues and their potential solutions in their entanglement with subaltern knowledge practices. Second, it analyzes these local matters within the framework of regional Micronesian epistemological, social and political configurations, fostering resilience and problem-solving strategies in the face of urgent crises across Micronesia. And third, it makes a truly innovative contribution to opening up postcolonial studies’ much-lamented, but nonetheless persistent, heavy textual bias toward a more encompassing consideration of cultural practices. This intellectual project is pivotal to current postcolonial thinking, decolonial epistemology, and musicology alike.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The launch of SoundKnowledge in April 2020 coincided with unprecedented mobility restrictions in international mobility caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that SoundKnowledge is an ethnography-based research project, the pandemic and its aftermath posed challenges to the original project design because fieldwork became extremely difficult and, at times, impossible. Nonetheless, with a few adjustments to the workflow, SoundKnowledge has been implemented successfully so far. Fieldwork is underway, and it is nearly complete for one of the case studies. In addition, in the period covered by this report, we were able to present substantial groundwork for the two analytical concepts of musical meaningfulness and sound knowledge. These efforts culminated in the publication of the project’s first monograph, Music Worlding in Palau: Chanting, Atmospheres, and Meaningfulness, and four articles by the project’s principal investigator (PI). Also, to engage productively with the situation, the project team hosted an international and well-received two-day conference in May 2022 on the methodological implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for music ethnography. The conference results are currently being prepared for publication as a themed journal issue. In addition to its substantial intellectual benefits, the conference allowed us to intensify our collaboration with local and regional institutional partners. In this manner, it has further strengthened the dialogical research design on which, in keeping with its decolonial spirit, the project was built from the beginning. Furthermore, seven conference presentations and lectures, as well as one podcast episode and TV report, have helped build the project’s academic and community networks, disseminate its ongoing results and foster collaborative partnerships on all levels that are required for the project’s success.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

On the basis of the ethnographic fieldwork research and analytical work already conducted, SoundKnowledge has formulated a theory of musical meaningfulness as a formative force in the efficacy of sonic knowledge practices. We have demonstrated, against academia’s Cartesian bias, how knowledge practices are also atmospherically driven. This finding is replete with implications for epistemology. Furthermore, we have specifically traced the ways in which the sonic dimension of music-making defies the scholarly language with which traditional analytics attempts to describe it: because the nature of sound knowledge thrives on the specifics of its medium sound, language will never be able to provide a complete understanding of the meaningfulness of music-making and its epistemological dimension. This finding also implies that to understand music-making as an alternative knowledge practice, we need to devise novel analytical tools for understanding it. SoundKnowledge has been successful in formulating a theory of music-making practices as alternative epistemologies and making it operable for the project’s case studies.
While it may seem surprising, the COVID-19 pandemic, with its massive disruption of academic life as we knew it, has had major productive effects on the SoundKnowledge project. Restrictions on on-site fieldwork aside, the pandemic allowed us to further the critical academic reassessment of largely unquestioned issues. It forced us to rethink issues related to fieldwork ethics and on-the-ground fieldwork versus online ethnography. It also made us reconsider methodological questions that are deeply intertwined with the epistemological questions SoundKnowledge is so programmatic in exploring. This reexamination of the project’s methodological framework, forced upon us by the pandemic, has heightened our analytical sensitivity toward the relationality of SoundKnowledge’s conceptual approach. We will pursue this line of thinking further, and while we did not originally anticipate that this dimension of our research would gain such relevance, we look forward to its assistance in further expanding the project’s expected research results.

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