Sounding the Archipelago

The word archipelago [ἄρχι- -arkhi- ("chief")-and πέλαγος-pélagos ("sea")] was used in medieval Italy to refer to the Aegean Sea, and later referred to the Aegean islands. Currently, it refers to any island group or, in some instances, to a sea containing a large number of scattered islands. By considering archipelagic global spaces such as the Caribbean basin, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Pacific Ocean, "Sounding the Archipelago" is concerned with discursive and material networks of islands, oceans, and continents as they pertain to processes of music-making. Drawing from an interdisciplinary body of scholarship including texts in ethnomusicology, philosophy, geography, island studies, postcolonial studies, and comparative literature, this seminar examines the theoretical and thematic possibilities of an archipelagic framework of relation. Considering the material and theoretical tension between land and water, and between island and mainland (continental) relations, participants will investigate the types of connections that become visible and audible when island groups are regarded not exclusively as sites of cultural and musical production and circulation, but rather, as models. Specifically, what does it mean to think with a place instead of exclusively about it? How do we think and write about networks, connections, and mobility in ways that foreground in-between spaces and sounds alongside the discourses and epistemologies that constitute them? Where "sounding" refers to measuring the depth of a body of water, to preliminary steps before further action and, of course, to the presence of resonant sound, participants in "Sounding the Archipelago" will critically engage with the archipelagic as a new intellectual field and question its efficacy and suitability to the study of music.