Resonant Frequencies: Radio, Race, and Diasporic Listening in Britain, 1945 - 1981

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ContextThis project will deliver the first historical examination of the listening practices - the socially and historically instituted ways of listening and engaging with sound - of diasporic listeners in Britain from the end of the Second World War to 1981, a year when racist policing across England sparked unrest. Postwar migration changed the social fabric of Britain, but limited attention has been given to experiences of listening or being listened to as a racial Other in this period. Considering radio's importance during this period, the lack of scholarship on diasporic engagements with radio during this period is a significant elision. Taking radio as a nexus of postwar listening culture, I will use Stoever (2016)'s notion of the 'sonic color line,' the idea that race is constructed and experienced via sound, as a starting point. In transposing Stoever's US focus to Britain, I will build upon British sound studies scholarship including Mansell (2017) and Guida (2022), while taking up Steingo and Sykes (2019)'s challenge to rethink sound studies from the perspective of the global south and its diasporas. Examining these underexplored perspectives in British radio and sound studies, this project will answer thequestions: how was radio implicated in reinforcing racialised notions of sonic Britishness/Otherness, and, how did radio provide multimodal arenas for diasporic communities to respond to race, migration, and nationality?MethodsI will analyse archival records detailing encounters with radio and listening by South Asian and West Indian communities throughout Britain, with key case studies in the Midlands. Alongside written sources, I will consult sound collections to engage with recorded broadcasts from the period and gain insights into the recordings deemed worthy of retention. Drawing on radio scholarship, I will adapt Lacey (2013)'s theory of 'alternative listening practices', as scaffolding for historical analysis. Building on Potter (2012) and Scales (2018), but decentring their institutional/metropolitan focus, I will prioritise how diasporic listeners encountered radio, formed new types of auditory expression, and imagined themselves as part of the (post-colonial) nation.ImpactThis project's unique academic contribution is its analyses of race and diaspora vis-à-vis listening and radio engagement within a British context. Beyond the circumscribed domain of music, similar research is limited. Inspired by Brecht's enthusiasm (1932) that radio may function as a communicative apparatus, I will use knowledge generated by my research and my experience as a sound artist to create an extension of my academic work in the form of a public sound installation created using recorded recollections of radio listening from South Asian and West Indian communities in the Midlands. I aim to partner with East Midlands Oral History Archive and Nottingham Black Archive to garner interest and participation in both my research and the artistic extension. For public presentation of the work, I aim to collaborate with Nottingham Contemporary as part of their 'Sonic Continuum' programme, thus contributing to a social environment where diasporic listening - in its communicative, historical, artistic, and political senses - is given greater consideration by public audiences and creative practitioners.