«Wir sind keine Satanisten!»

Radio

«Wir alle haben noch immer Alpträume von unseren traumatischen Erlebnissen im libanesischen Bürgerkrieg. Wir sind aber auch fasziniert von Horrorfilmen und schauen sie rund um die Uhr». Der Gitarrist Garo Gdanian ist der Leader von Weeping Willow. Seine libanesische Metal-Band ist inspiriert von den New Yorker Death Metal Pioneerbands Death und Morbid Angel, sie verarbeitet aber auch Erinnerungen und Erfahrungen aus ihrem unmittelbaren Umfeld. Gemeinsam mit anderen Heavy-, Doom-, Black-Metal und Rockbands treibt sie an ihren Konzerten auch mal 2000 Jugendliche in Ekstase. Den politischen und religiösen Führern des Landes gefällt dies nur bedingt: Noch immer stehen einige Metal-CDs auf der schwarzen Liste der Zensurbehörden, und noch immer werden Musiker und Fans als Satanisten gebrandmarkt und auch mal ins Gefängnis gesteckt. Thomas Burkhalter schaut in seinem Feature genauer hin.

Die Sendung wurde ausgetrahlt auf SWR2 Dschungel.

Biography

Dr. Thomas Burkhalter is an anthropologist/ethnomusicologist, AV-artist, and writer from Bern (Switzerland). He is the founder and director of Norient and the Norient Festival (NF), co-directed AV-performances and documentary films (e.g. «Contradict», Berner Filmpreis 2020 + Al-Jazeera Witness), and is the author and co-editor of several books (e.g., «Local Music Scenes and Globalization: Transnational Platforms in Beirut», Routledge, «The Arab Avant Garde: Musical Innovation in the Middle East», Wesleyan University Press). He teaches regularly at universities, and runs workshops for arts institutions. Since 2022 he produces the Norient Mixtape for Swiss National Radio SRF3. Currently, he is working on his new music duo «Melodies In My Head», and on the podcast series «Long Take: Life as an Artist». Follow him on Instagram, Research Gate, Academia.edu, Bandcamp, Spotify, or Meta.

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Sonic Traces: From the Arab World

€16.00

Music, sounds and noises from the Arab World – Collected and mixed by the Norient collective. Vinyl and digital.

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Local Music Scenes and Globalization: Transnational Platforms in Beirut

This book offers the first in-depth study of experimental and popular music in Beirut. 2014 finally out as Paperback and Kindle Edition.

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The Arab Avant-Garde: Music, Politics, Modernity

The co-edited book is finally out! Ten articles about new musical positions in the Arab World.

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Golden Beirut: New Sounds from Lebanon

€18.00

The first CD release by Norient and Outhere Records focuses on a young generation of musicians from Beirut that is tired of war, fed up with politics, sick of religious madness, and angry about Euro-American exoticism.

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Published on July 20, 2010

Last updated on September 22, 2020

Topics

DIY

Music Production

Religion

Violence

War

All Topics

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Hermes Records: Der iranische Labelbesitzer Ramin Sadighi im Gespräch

Podcast

by Thomas Burkhalter

Der Iranische Musikproduzent Ramin Sadighi hat die ersten zwölf Jahre seines Lebens in Wien verbracht. Kurz vor der Islamischen Revolution 1979 ist er mit seiner Familie nach Teheran gezogen. 1999 gründete er dort sein eigenes Musiklabel Hermes Records: Er hat mittlerweile vierzig CDs mit Neuer Iranischer Musik und Weltmusik veröffentlicht. Im Beitrag spricht er über Musik und Musikproduktion im Iran.

Sprecher: Thomas Burkhalter

Mit den MusikerInnen: Soheil Nafissi, Hossein Alizadeh, Jivan Gasparyan, Nour Ensemble, Iranian Orchestra for New Music, Kayhan Kalhor, Erdal Erzincan, Arash Mitouee, Reza Asgarzadeh und Christophe Rezai.

Biography

Dr. Thomas Burkhalter is an anthropologist/ethnomusicologist, AV-artist, and writer from Bern (Switzerland). He is the founder and director of Norient and the Norient Festival (NF), co-directed AV-performances and documentary films (e.g. «Contradict», Berner Filmpreis 2020 + Al-Jazeera Witness), and is the author and co-editor of several books (e.g., «Local Music Scenes and Globalization: Transnational Platforms in Beirut», Routledge, «The Arab Avant Garde: Musical Innovation in the Middle East», Wesleyan University Press). He teaches regularly at universities, and runs workshops for arts institutions. Since 2022 he produces the Norient Mixtape for Swiss National Radio SRF3. Currently, he is working on his new music duo «Melodies In My Head», and on the podcast series «Long Take: Life as an Artist». Follow him on Instagram, Research Gate, Academia.edu, Bandcamp, Spotify, or Meta.

Published on July 26, 2010

Last updated on August 13, 2020

Topics

Censorship

Migration

Music Production

Religion

All Topics

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Soundscape scholars and composers on a «sound walk» on Mount Koli (photo: Thomas Burkhalter).

Ethical Questions on Working with Soundscapes

Blog Post

by Thomas Burkhalter

I attended a soundscape conference on Mount Koli in Finland, and I really enjoyed this keynote paper by Andra McCartney. She asked a lot of important questions concerning what some would call «Sonic Tourism».

Andra McCartney published her keynote paper on the Soundwalking Interactions blog. This is an excerpt:

When soundscape composers, documentarians, and artists work with soundscapes, they are expressing relationships to the place of work and its inhabitants and visitors, to the sounds listened to, recorded from or projected into the place, and to the audience of the work. Each time a soundscape composer designs a soundwalk or a theatre piece, an installation or broadcast work, relationships with the world are expressed through how the maker treats the place, the sounds and the audience.

Does the maker want to reveal particular sonic aspects of the place as it is, as it used to be, as it might be? Does the composer want to create an ideal place through sound and if so, what are the characteristics of this imaginary place and what ideas and values inform this utopic creation? How does the composer treat the sounds? How prominent are the composer’s treatments in relation to the sounds originally heard in that place, and what are the characteristics of this electroacoustic ecology? What are the dominant and masked sounds in the piece and how do they interact?

What connections are there in the work between what is heard in the piece and the place of recording? Does the maker imagine the audience as deafened into numbness and needing to be awakened to true listening by the composer or soundwalk leader’s approach to the soundscape? Do we imagine the listener is ignorant and needing enlightenment? Do we think of the listener as possessed of original and unusual ways of listening, contributing to an expanded awareness of how to work with soundscapes? What are the ethics of this expression, and how are these ethics informed by underlying ideologies of sound, of sound production, and of sound ecology?

Read the full article here.

List of References

Cary, John H. 1958. «France Looks to Pennsylvania: The Eastern Penitentiary as a Symbol of Reform». The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 82 (2): 168–203.

Devine, John. 2006. «Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller». ArtUS 15: 63.

Dickens, Charles. 1996. American Notes. New York: Modern Library.

Drott, Eric. 2009. The Politics of Presque Rien: Sound Commitments. Oxford Scholarship Online Monographs.

Ferrari, Luc. 1971. Presque Rien No. 1. Deutsche Gramoophon 2543 004, LP.

Frye, Northrop. 1971. The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination. Toronto: Anansi.

Rosz, James R. 1993. «Ecotone Hierarchies». Ecological Applications 3 (3): 369–76.

Keightley, Keir. 1996. «‹Turn It Down!› She Shrieked: Gender, Domestic Space, and High Fidelity, 1948–59». Popular Music 15 (2): 149–77.

Kuzniar, Alice. 1988. «The Vanishing Canvas: Notes on German Romantic Landscape Aesthetics». German Studies Review 11 (3): 359–76.

Manning, Peter. 1993. Electronic and Computer Music. 2nd Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

McGregor, Gail. 1985. The Wacousta Syndrome: Explorations in the Canadian Langscape. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Nicoletta, Julie. 2003. «The Architecture of Control: Shaker Dwelling Houses and the Reform Movement in Early- Nineteenth-Century America». Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 62 (3): 352–87.

«Empowering Place: Multilocality and Multivocality». 1992. American Anthropologist September: 640–56.

Schafer, Murray. 1977. The Tuning of the World. New York: Knopf.

Schmid, Muriel. 2003. «‹The Eye of God›: Religious Beliefs and Punishment in Early Nineteenth-Century Prison Reform». Theology Today 59 (4): 546. Academic Search Premier.

Thibault, Jacqueline. 1982. «‹To Pave the Way to Penitence›: Prisoners and Discipline at the Eastern State Penitentiary 1829–1835». The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 106 (2): 187–222.

Thompson, Emily. 2002. The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900–1933. Cambridge: MIT.

Tuan, Yi Fu. 1977. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.

Wilson, Alexander. 1998. The Culture of Nature: North American Landscape from Disney to the Exxon Valdez. Toronto: Between the Lines.

Wrightson, Kendall. 2000. «An Introduction to Acoustic Ecology». Soundscape: The Journal of Acoustic Ecology 1 (1).

Text by Dr. Andra McCarney from her keynote presentation at WFAE international conference Ideologies and Ethics in the Uses and Abuses of Sound, Koli, Finland, June 19, 2010.

Biography

Dr. Thomas Burkhalter is an anthropologist/ethnomusicologist, AV-artist, and writer from Bern (Switzerland). He is the founder and director of Norient and the Norient Festival (NF), co-directed AV-performances and documentary films (e.g. «Contradict», Berner Filmpreis 2020 + Al-Jazeera Witness), and is the author and co-editor of several books (e.g., «Local Music Scenes and Globalization: Transnational Platforms in Beirut», Routledge, «The Arab Avant Garde: Musical Innovation in the Middle East», Wesleyan University Press). He teaches regularly at universities, and runs workshops for arts institutions. Since 2022 he produces the Norient Mixtape for Swiss National Radio SRF3. Currently, he is working on his new music duo «Melodies In My Head», and on the podcast series «Long Take: Life as an Artist». Follow him on Instagram, Research Gate, Academia.edu, Bandcamp, Spotify, or Meta.

Published on July 05, 2010

Last updated on April 09, 2024

Topics

Ecology

Ethics

Ethnomusicology

Soundscape

Listening

All Topics

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