
Right there in the front yard?
Poem from the Sonic South Issue.
Poem from the Sonic South Issue.
Like Black culture, soundscapes are not a monolith. In these personal essays, Black educators in North Carolina reflect on the intersections of their own identities and how they create and make meaning of soundscapes in their educational practice.
In this piece, a longtime Gram Parsons fan grows suspicious of the myths that surround the singer's life and music. A visit to Waycross, Georgia; interviews with people connected to Parsons's South Georgia childhood; and investigations of the area's musical, industrial, and socioeconomic histories reveal whose stories are heard and whose are silenced by such myths. The piece explores how one might hear the oppressive structures that echo in the music, such as the exploitation of Black laborers, the anti-Black violence of the region, the deforestation of South Georgia's longleaf grassland, and the impact of that ecological harm on Black and white family farmers.
This essay considers the specific qualities of underwater sound as a means of learning, for artwork, and for speculative listening. When certain sound waves move through water, for example, they move faster than through air.
This is a coming-of-age story of kids who play in southern marching bands and the teachers who mentor them. In the South, "show-style" bands are Black excellence personified.
This photo essay explores deafness, sound, language, and land through the author's personal story of five generations of deafness in her family. Due to their geographic isolation in the mountains of western North Carolina in the 1800s, her family members developed their own sign language to communicate between hearing and Deaf family members.
This article analyzes the covert racism concealed in the phrase "Ole Miss," a longstanding nickname for the University of Mississippi.
Introduction to the Sonic South Issue, guest edited by Regina N. Bradley.