Acoustigraphy: Soundscape as Ethnographic Field

Ghanaian highlife sound recordings of the 1970s: the legacy of Francis Kwakye and the Ghana Film Studio

“…According to Kwakye, the shift in ratio aided in the projection of dance rhythmic elements in highlife music which were somewhat overlooked in earlier highlife recordings 34 . This coincides with Kheshti's (2009, p. 15) assertion that ‘aural positionality enables us to deconstruct the means by which the perspective and position of the recordist and recording equipment construct knowledge about sites and subjects’.…”

“…Explicitly, he matched the sound of Western maracas to local rattle, Latin American clave to local castanet/bells and Western congas to local drums and engineered them from a Ghanaian interpretation of sound. Thus therefore supports Roshanak Kheshti's (2009, p. 15) claim that ‘sonic representations of culture nonetheless include an imposed layer of meaning mediated by the body and ears of the ethnographer, recordist, editor and producer’.…”

“…Kheshti (2009, p. 15) asserts that ‘problematizing the positionality from which sound recordings are produced, and the aural perspectives that recordings attempt to elicit, enables us to ask: what kind of sonorous body is being materialized through these production techniques and what kind of listener is being produced through these representational practices?’ She said this in an attempt to emphasise the importance of ecological considerations in sound recording and she coined the term ‘acoustigraphy’ (a merger of ‘acoustic’ and ‘ethnography’) to explain the cultural acoustics at specific locations in San Francisco, USA. Similarly, Owsinski (2006) opines that sound crafting methods vary geographically based on his study of popular music sound representations within specific cities such as Los Angeles, New York and London.…”

Sonic Autoethnographies: Personal listening as compositional context

“…The use of the term auditory subject-position here draws on Eric Clarke’s discussion of ‘subject-position’ (with reference to recorded music) as corresponding to ‘the way in which characteristics of the musical material shape the general character of the listener’s response or engagement’ (Clarke 2005: 91–2). It also relates to Roshanak Kheshti’s notion of ‘aural positionality’, meaning the ‘aural “point of view”, the physical position that a researcher identifies with in aural ethnography’ (Kheshti 2009: 15). For my purposes, auditory subject-position refers both to the character of the listener’s engagement with their aural environment and to the listener’s sense of proximity and situation in relation to their aural environment.…”