Phantom Power

Today host Mack Hagood is joined by three remarkable scholars whose work sits at the intersection of African music, technology, and culture. Dr. Louise Meintjes is Marcello Lotti Professor at Duke University. She's a distinguished ethnomusicologist whose groundbreaking research on South African music has transformed how we understand the recording studio as a site of cultural negotiation and creative production. Media anthropologist Dr. Reginold Royston is an Associate Professor jointly-appointed in the School of Information (formerly SLIS) and the Department of African Cultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He examines a range of African and African diasporic media and technology, from Black Atlantic audiobooks to African podcasting to viral dance videos emanating from Ghana and Chicago's footwork scene. And Kingsley Okyere is graduate student at Penn whose work on African and Afro-diasporic musical circulation and genres is bringing fresh perspectives on the sounds shaping the continent today. In this episode, we explore the evolution of Afrobeats and Amapiano, two genres that have captured global attention in recent years. We also discuss how technology and diaspora networks have shaped African popular music, examine questions of genre, identity, and global circulation, and consider the social and political contexts that inform music production and reception across the continent and beyond. Chapters: 3:21 Meet the Guests: African Music Scholars 6:03 What Are Afrobeats and Amapiano? 7:56 Afrobeats vs. Afrobeat: History & Identity 11:49 Branding, World Music, and South African Context 14:29 Recording Studios as Sites of Negotiation 17:42 Digital Networks and Diaspora Influence 23:23 Listening Practices: Streaming, Social Media, and Algorithms 29:00 Dance, Timelines, and Global Rhythms 33:13 Economic Realities and Global Music Industry For full transcript visit https://www.mackhagood.com/podcast/african-music-technology-branding-identity-and-the-global-music-market-w-kingsley-kwadwo-okyere-louise-meintjes-and-reginold-royston/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How did we humans become so dependent on white noise machines, noise-canceling headphones, lo-fi girl and other technologies that help us privatize and individualize our soundscape? An important character in that cultural history is Irv Teibel, whose environments series helped change how we listen. These records were the first to use recorded natural soundscapes as technologies to change how we feel and function.  My guests this episode are Joel Stern and James Parker, two thirds of the art and research collective known as Machine Listening—a group that shares my fascination with Teibel. With their partner Sean Dockray, James and Joel have released a vinyl record called Environments 12: New Concepts in Acoustic Enrichment. This album reimagines Irv Teibel’s 1970s Environments albums—those “relaxation records” made for stressed-out people—as a set of soundscapes made for the stressed-out environment itself.  The project mixes archival nature recordings, synthetic atmospheres, and AI-generated voices into strange new habitats. Narrators—some human, some machine—tell fables about seashores, reefs, and animal enclosures, where the line between the natural and the artificial dissolves. The result is a haunting, witty, and thought-provoking album that asks what it means to listen when both humans and environments are under pressure.  Machine Listening’s art and research practice is deeply engaged with the politics of datasets, algorithmic systems, surveillance, and the shifting dynamics of power in “listening” technologies. Among other things, they interrogate how voice assistants, smart speakers, and algorithmic audio systems mediate — and often extract data from — human sound.  Their installations and performances have been shown in institutions worldwide, including the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw Museum of Modern Art, and at festivals like Unsound.  In short, Machine Listening blends creative and critical strategies to explore and expose the hidden infrastructures of acoustic power. James Parker and Joel Stern are both based in Melbourne Australia, where Parker is Associate Professor at Melbourne Law School and Stern is Research Fellow at RMIT School of Media and Communication. In this conversation we go deep on environments, AI, and recent innovations that surveil and remediate the environment in order to save it--for example playing recordings of healthy ocean reefs to sick ones to improve their vitality. It's some pretty wild shit.  As always, you can join to get the extra long version of this conversation, including our guests recommendations on things to read, listen and do. Just go to mackhagood.com to join.  That's also where you should go to get our free monthly newsletter with all kinds of great links and resources for people obsessed with sound. We just dropped the first edition and I'm telling you, it's brimming with sonic content that I can't squeeze into the podcast. Chapters: 0:00 The Origins of Environments: Irv Teibel’s Ocean Recording 7:14 Introducing Machine Listening: Art, Technology, and Sound 13:08 The Environments Series: Cultural Impact and Reception 18:58 Avant-Garde Meets Commerce: Teibel’s Methods and Influence 24:51 Bell Labs, IBM, and the Birth of Machine Listening 30:53 Simulation, Emulation, and the Legacy of Environments 36:53 Environments 12: Reimagining Soundscapes for the Environment 42:45 Technologies of the Self and Environmentality 47:55 Sound Design for Zoos: From Field Recordings to Animal Welfare 53:39 Closing Thoughts and Future Directions For full transcript visit irv-teibels-environments-ai-audio-and-the-future-of-listening-w-machine-listening Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Graham Reznick is a multifaceted sound designer, screenwriter, director, and musician, best known for his work on indie horror films like Ti West's X and the critically acclaimed video game Until Dawn. In this episode, Reznick discusses Rabbit Trap, a film based on Welsh folklore blending analog synthesis with supernatural soundscapes.  Host Mack Hagood and Reznick begin talking about horror sound design as a technical and creative process, examining how he crafted specific uncanny soundscapes in the film. The conversation then expands to the evolving relationship between sound design and musical scores in horror films, Reznick's limited series on Shudder called "Dead Wax: A Vinyl Hunter's Tale" and a discussion of haunted media, sensory deprivation, brainwave entrainment, self-improvement tapes from the 1970s, and other Halloween-appropriate topics!  Members of Phantom Power can hear our ad-free, extended version, which includes Reznick's world-record breaking work as a writer on the  video game Until Dawn. Last but not least, we find ‘What’s Good?’ according to Graham, where he recommends things to read, do, and listen to!  Join us at phantompod.org or mackhagood.com]! That’s also where you can also sign up for our free Phantom Power newsletter, which will drop on the second Friday of every month and feature news, reviews, and interviews not found on the podcast. Chapters:  00:00 Introduction to Phantom Power 01:19 Meet Graham Reznick: Sound Designer Extraordinaire 01:59 Rabbit Trap: A Sound-Centric Horror Film 02:29 Graham Reznick's Career Highlights 04:00 Phantom Power Membership and Newsletter 04:52 Interview with Graham Reznick Begins 05:00 Rabbit Trap: Plot and Sound Design Insights 10:40 Creating the Uncanny Soundscape 14:11 The Evolution of Sound Design in Horror 20:56 Sound Design Techniques and Tools 26:33 Exploring the Fairy Circle Scene 35:48 Dead Wax: A Vinyl Hunter's Tale 39:58 The Allure of Forbidden Media 43:31 The Evolution of Online Culture 44:34 Magic, Dark Arts, and Haunted Media 46:54 Sensory Deprivation and Inner Worlds 49:25 The Power of Sound and Music 52:45 The Impact of Individualized Media For the full transcript visit: https://www.mackhagood.com/podcast/inside-the-sound-of-the-uncanny-rabbit-trap-sound-design-and-haunted-media-w-graham-reznick/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With movie star looks and a raucous piano style, Maurice Rocco made a splash in the 1940’s, influencing future rock and rollers Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. By the 60s, however, he was a has-been in the U.S., playing lounges in Bangkok, Thailand until his grisly murder by a pair of male sex workers. In his deeply insightful book ⁠Bangkok After Dark, ethnomusicologist Benjamin Tausig reclaims Rocco’s forgotten story and reveals its broader context, exploring the intersection of race, queerness, and transnational music cultures during the cold war era.   Benjamin Tausig is a scholar of music, sound and politics in Southeast Asia teaching at Stony Brook University, New York. Working between music, sound studies, Asian studies, and anthropology, his publications cover topics such as the soundscape of political procest in Thauland, Luk thung and mor lam, and the impact of American military presence on Southeast Asian culture.   In this episode we discuss his two books, Bangkok is Ringing, which provides a lucid and in-depth ethnography of the Thailand’s Red Shirt anti-government protest movement, and Bangkok After Dark. In a wide-ranging conversation, we cover everything from Mack and Ben’s early days in sound studies to the proto-music videos known as “soundies” to the psychedelic roots of Thai music genres like luk thung.   Our Patreons get an extended cut of this interview, including our ‘what’s good?’ section, revealing Ben’s top picks for things to read, do, and listen to! Sign up to listen at Patreon.com/phantompower. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction: Maurice Rocco and the Forgotten Soundies 03:57 Welcome & Meet Benjamin Taussig 08:15 Sound Studies, Graduate School, and Early Interests 13:15 Fieldwork in Thailand: Urban Sound and Space 18:15 Learning Thai and Immersing in Bangkok 22:45 Language, Tonality, and Sonic Culture 27:45 The Red Shirt Movement and Thai Political Soundscapes 36:29 Protest, Democracy, and the Limits of Sound 44:10 Thai Music Genres: Luk Thung, Mor Lam, and Protest 51:00 Sonic Niches, Censorship, and Speaking Out 54:49 Maurice Rocco: From American Jazz Star to Bangkok 1:02:58 The Vietnam War, American Influence, and Thai Psychedelia 1:09:38 Race, Queerness, and Identity in 1960s-70s Thailand 1:14:05 Rocco’s Final Years, Legacy, and Reflections For the full transcript visit https://phantompod.org/benjamin-tausig-bangkok-after-dark/. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sound is an invisible force that most people rarely notice and barely understand. Dr. Mack Hagood explores the world of sound studies with the world's most amazing sound researchers, artists, and designers, as well as musicians, writers, voice actors and others. We've broken down how computers learned to talk, Yoko Ono's scream, John Cage's silence, chopped and screwed cassette tapes, the politics of EDM, film soundtracks, field recording, and audio ink blot tests for blind people. Phantom Power is the podcast that both newcomers and experts in sound studies, sound art, and acoustic ecology listen to--combining intellectual rigor and great audio. Mack Hagood is a professor of media and communication who studies audio technologies. His work and words have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Washington Post, the BBC, Freakonomics Radio, Pitchfork, and many other venues. He is the author of Hush: Media and Sonic Self-Control and is currently writing a book about sound for Penguin Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices