Aural (re)locations: Listening to place

Abstract

In recent research, we have sought to understand the reciprocal relationships between music, sound and place, and what this may mean for notions of belonging and community-making. Yet, to investigate this is difficult, because responses to sound – and sound itself – are personal, embodied, transient and difficult to articulate in words. Furthermore, the processes of hearing and listening are understood differently. How to research the sonic qualities of place? And, in our thinking about the interconnections between bodies, place and sound: what is it about the qualities of sound that enables us to inhabit space, to call a place home?