On April 23, Staff Writer Shyla Upadhyay attended a talk hosted by the Columbia Climate School on how various academics view “sounding the ocean” concerning their fields of music, oceanography, and anthropology. 

In a small yet cozy conference room at Columbia’s Manhattanville Campus, oceanographers, marine geophysicists, musicians, and anthropologists came together to discuss what lies at the intersection of sound and the largest dynamic body of water known to mankind—the ocean. Four panelists from all walks of life discussed their interpretation of “sounding the ocean” with hopes of creating research projects that respect and preserve the species and cultures associated with our oceans. 

Dr. Jessica Schwartz, an Associate Professor of Musicology and Music Industry (Punk and DIY) at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, began the discussion by presenting her work on experimenting with aural currency, that is, “how the sea is sounded.” She described her experience with Euro-American misinterpretations of Pacific literacies. In Marshallese (the language used by the people of the Marshall Islands), “Aelõñ” refers to a culmination of land, heaven, and ocean. However, the anglicized “island” reduces this idea to a unidimensional geographic entity. Dr. Schwartz shed light on how the United States’ Nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll, within the Marshall Islands, between 1946 and 1958 led to large-scale radiation exposure. This made the atoll inhabitable, and the Marshallese people developed thyroid-related issues and consequently lost the ability to sing. Their history, their pain, is embedded in “radiation songs,” which help us understand excavation, drilling, and mining of sea beds at a cultural level. Dr. Schwartz ended her presentation with a question for science: “What processes of demilitarization and decolonization of bodies and voices are currently being worked on as we delve further into research?”

Dr. Patrick Nason, an environmental anthropologist currently serving as Program Director at Brooklyn Boatworks and Assistant Professor at Barnard College’s Anthropology Department, illustrated his experience of “sounding the ocean” while working with a community in Papua New Guinea that spoke to sharks. He shared that the community was concerned about recent sea-bed mining projects as the sounds produced within the ocean drove the sharks away. Dr. Nason defines sound as “an audible expression of social relation.” The most fascinating part of the presentation was when he shared a clip of some of the community members “calling out” to the sharks by creating the sound of a drum solely using the waves of the ocean. Dr. Nason proposes creating a sound archive for communities facing climate displacement, and he believes that these sounds can help rebuild relationships that have been lost as we move further away from our connection with nature.

The panel discussion took a more technical turn when Dr. Anne Bécel, a marine geophysicist studying the processes that lead to the greatest geohazards (earthquakes and tsunamis) at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, shared her current work with the group. She showed us how she uses marine active-source seismology to analyze subduction zones (tectonic plate boundaries where two plates overlap with one another) as they are at higher risk of generating large earthquakes and tsunamis. Dr. Bécel shared clips of her expedition, and the videos helped us visualize the different types of machinery sent to the ocean floor. Interestingly, seismic sources generate and detect acoustic waves, which can be interpreted as a geophysicist’s version of “sounding the ocean.”

We were able to get a musician’s take on the entire discussion through Dr. Kevin A. Fellezs’ presentation of “empathetic listening to the more-than-human.” Dr. Fellezs is an Associate Professor of Music/Ethnomusicology at Columbia University. He believes that we must redefine the ocean as “an idea, a discourse, and a place of constant movement.” This is in sharp contrast to popular literary texts that describe the ocean as a place of stagnancy that induces tranquility. In addition, Dr. Fellezs calls for us to participate in reparative listening and embrace the idea that “the land is not broken…our relationship to it is.” He concludes that for humans to “empathetically listen” to the more-than-human, we must forgo the idea that language is exclusive to us—we must abandon our own superiority complex. 

There were many moments during this talk when I was struck by how far removed humans are from nature today. Dr. Fellezs shared an experiment where nineteen different animal species fled a site immediately upon hearing human voices talking about the most mundane things. There was no audible hint of violence in their voices, but a human voice is a threat in of itself. 

Today, we have gratitude journals that force us to make lists because our inner thankfulness somehow got lost. But in the past, people could find reasons to feel grateful for every meal they received from their ecosystem because they realized each species had a voice. So, maybe “sounding the ocean” is a space for the humans we have become today to finally “shut up” and let nature speak. 

Header via Bwarchives