Sound and Detention

Lucy Cathcart Frödén is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oslo, Norway. Her practice-based PhD at the University of Glasgow explored how creative collaboration can foster mutual solidarity. Her published work spans criminology, artistic research, sound studies and political science. Kate Herrity is Research Fellow in Punishment at Kings College, University of Cambridge, UK. A criminologist, her work seeks to unsettle boundaries between fields and ideas with a focus on music, sound and critical listening. Her monograph Sound, Order and Survival in Prison (2024) drew on aural ethnography in a local men’s prison. Áine Mangaoang is Associate Professor in Popular Music at the Department of Musicology, University of Oslo. Her books include Dangerous Mediations: Pop Music in a Philippine Prison Video (Bloomsbury, 2019) and Made in Ireland: Studies in Popular Music (2020).

• List of Figures List of ContributorsAcknowledgements Introduction: Listening NearbyLucy Cathcart Frödén, Kate Herrity and Áine MangaoangSection 1: Transcending the walls: Sound, music and agency during and beyond captivity1. Ear Training for Incarceration: Carceral Acoustemology within the Contemporary JailBenjamin Harbert, Joel Castón and Michael Woody2. Emotional Overdubbing: listening passports to sonic agency in the Fens Unit, HMP WhitemoorKate Herrity and Justin Wiggan3. Bhaichara Radio: The sound of hope in a juvenile remand facility in DelhiRijul Kataria, Puneeta Roy, and Bhanu Mehta 4. On Phil Collins’s (2020) Bring Down the WallsPhil Crockett Thomas5. A book group in prison: Talking about books, talking about ourselves Kirstin AndersonSection 2: Sounding Stories: Musical narratives in carceral spaces6. A Choir’s Journey: Belonging in a prison settingInHouse Harmony7. Mercy Sown, Mercy Reaped: Traveling Over and Under Prison Wires to Build Solidarity through Collaborative SongwritingMary L. Cohen, Naomi Davis, Michael Blackwell, and Anthony Rhodd8. Singing as CommoningAnna Papaeti9. Clandestine Musical Practices in the Women’s Prisons of Early FrancoismLara Quicler Moriarty and Cristina Palomares Toledano10. The Art of Choosing / The Choosing of ArtSayati Das Section 3: ‘An Ecology of Fear’: sound, torture and panacoustic surveillance in places of detention11. Years in SegregationAlim Braxton and Mark Katz12. From Shrapnel of Memory, A Liberated Time-Space Can Be Conjured. Parallel Time-Spaces of Detention and FreedomChristina Hazboun13. Us, Interrupted: Enduring the wounds of carceral communicationEmilie Amrein and André De Quadros14. The Silence of the Mandela RulesM.J. Grant and James E.K. ParkerSection 4: Bordering notations: sonic technologies and postcolonial penalities15. Mediterradio: An interlude on four wavelengthsTom Western16. My Story, Your Story: Towards Decolonial Digital Storytelling MethodsKeith Nyende, Josué Aganze Musoda, Atuhairwe Leocadious and Erin Cory17. where are you today André Dao18. PFFT Ensemble: chaos and commoning in the Scottish HighlandsHector MacInnesSection 5: Moving to stand still: charting movement and migration through music and sound19. Poetics of Music and Exile in Postliberation EritreaTesfalem Habte Yemane, Habtat Zerezghi and Hyab Teklehaimanot Yohannes 20. Listening After, Listening Otherwise: Sonic Pathways Through Forced (Im)Mobilities and Life in Legal LimboChrysi Kyratsou and Fiona Murphy21. The Kids of Klinikstraße 6: Mediating Isolation and Resistance Through Sound and Music among Young Syrian Refugees in GermanyGuilnard Moufarrej 22. Between Here and There: Sounds of AsylumAilbhe KennyIndex

For those who can hear and choose to listen, attending carefully to sound shapes our understandings of the social worlds we move through or inhabit. Yet the soundscapes of places of detention are often inaccessible to those on the outside. This diverse and fascinating collection—and crucially, its accompanying webpage, where readers can also become listeners—demonstrates not just how we can and why we should listen to these soundscapes, but also how much we learn when we do so. It is highly recommended reading and listening for anyone who wants to better understand carceral places and experiences.