Intention:

We have separated ourselves from nature in a number of social and energy transitions. They include:

- An energy leap leading to social stratification & hierarchies via agriculture(2).
- Colonialism, with its forced acquisition of land, resources, slavery and oppression of indigenous communities.
- Fossil fuel extraction & the Industrial Revolution - ambition, extraction and mass production.
- Capitalism, the ownership of the means of mass production.
- The Great Acceleration, accelerating growth on almost all frontiers including energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and population growth, thrusting the planet into an unprecedented uncontrolled experiment.


We’ve extracted from our environment, and our fellow humans, to the extent that we are now in polycrisis - environmental crises that include global warming, biodiversity loss and water scarcity, and social crises that include poverty, inequality, discrimination and authoritarianism(3). To reflect this, there have been a number of new names suggested for our current epoch - most common of which is the Anthropocene and most recently the Capitalocene(4).

There is an opaque understanding that we have lost our way, but with no pathway to change, even as it gets harder to survive in increasingly volatile times. This condition is no accident, as dominant narratives impede any progression from an extractive way of life to an ecological one(5). One could suggest that the Great Acceleration is also the Great Hijacking of the Human Psyche, where relationships with place, each other and ecology diminish, in favour of a trauma bond with hierarchy, colonialism, consumption and growth. As Graeber and Wengrow wrote “We know now, that we are in the presence of myths”(6), and they are destroying us.

What are the ways in which we can start to undo this process? How do we even understand the extent to which we’ve been conditioned? It is one thing to understand the need to deconstruct and rebuild, but another thing entirely to understand the depths to which our reality is shaped by colonial impositions. From money, to culture, to education, to aesthetics, to religion, to gender norms, even the language I’m using to write this - they are all conditioned by colonial legacy.

Decolonising Listening is an effort to understand and rewire this effect on the level of sound. Sound is universal to all of us, it pre-dates not just colonialism but all organized societies, reflecting our deep evolutionary and cultural connections to soundscapes shaped by nature(7). We journey beneath language, form and separation, into a sonic realm where there is no “other” and we are listening as, not listening to. This is not a new concept, but one that is found in traditions across the world, almost all of them using sound to understand interconnectedness, non-duality, and animistic perspectives(8). Understanding sound as a universal primer for connection may lead us to new vocabulary beyond the limits of language.

As children, when we first discovered our favourite songs - the way we then listened to music was with our bodies. We weren't listening consciously; we became the music, the boundaries between self and sound dissolved, allowing us to inhabit a space of pure being and active becoming(9). The same thing can be said for the way we listen to the birds, the forest, the oceans, the voices of people, in fact, any sound at all.

When we experience a sound we are nature witnessing itself. We understand that listening is something that can be deconstructed, rebuilt with decolonised perspective, and that it can be our guide for shared ecology and challenging myths in the Capitolocene. Lastly and most importantly, it feels good. Our bodies know the difference, the joy in being part of nature as opposed to something outside it(10). We realise we were never apart in the first place, and once our bodies know this they will never go back. We are nature through sound.

Note:

When we speak about decolonising listening, it's important to acknowledge that the specificity of what decolonisation means for first nation peoples is the return of stolen lands and the dismantling of the colonial infrastructure”. It means this for second nation peoples too, but there are steps to getting there; first we need to become aware of the extent of our colonisation. It’s important not to fall into the trap of settler innocence occurs when people rely too heavily on the notion to ‘decolonize your mind,’ thinking, or knowledge. The end goal is to act to decolonize, that means giving back Indigenous ancestral lands, and in general undoing practice or policy of control by one people or power over other people / area.

Decolonisation is firstly:

- the undoing of colonialism / neocolonialism

Then:

- an ongoing critique of worldviews learned from historical Western power structures

- challenging norms that stem from colonial impositions of religion, language, economics & culture

References:
1. Colonial Mentality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_mentality
2. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. Scott
3. Welcome to the Great Unraveling: Navigating the Polycrisis of Environmental and Social Breakdown by Richard Heinberg and Asher Miller
4. The Capitalocene, Part I: on the nature and origins of our ecological crisis by Jason W. Moore
5. Inspired by Ann Stoler’s Colonial Aphasia: Race and Disabled Histories in France. “It is not a matter of ignorance or absence,” writes Stoler. “Aphasia is a dismembering, a difficulty speaking, a difficulty generating a vocabulary that associates appropriate words and concepts with appropriate things.”
6. “We know now, that we are in the presence of myths” David Graeber & David Wengrow on the conventional account of human history as a saga of material progress. From The Dawn of Everything
7. Bernie Krause - The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World’s Wild Places
8. Traditional sound practices that facilitate interconnectedness with nature include Nāda Yoga (India), Shamanic Traditions (Various Indigenous Cultures), Sufism (Islamic Mysticism), Bon Tradition (Tibet), Indigenous Australian Traditions (Australia), Native American Traditions (North America), African Griot Traditions (West Africa), Maori Haka and Waiata (Aotearoa/New Zealand), Balinese Gamelan (Indonesia), Sami Joik (Northern Europe), Vodou Ritual Music (Haiti and West Africa), Inuit Throat Singing (Arctic Regions), Zulu Isicathamiya (Southern Africa), Celtic Spirituality (Ireland, Scotland, Wales), and Norse Animism (Scandinavia), Saami Spirituality (Northern Europe). 
9. Susanne Langer - Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art (1942).
10. Learning the Grammar of Animacy, Braiding Sweetgrass - Robin Wall Kimmerer