Sounding Freedom and Liberation - Episode 7 with Brandon LaBelle

In this final episode of the podcast we present 'Unscripted: Notes Toward Freedom in Music' a selection of short reflections by Brandon LaBelle. This episode isn’t an interview, and it isn’t a lecture. It’s a free-flow response to everything we’ve been thinking and feeling together in this series. Think of it as a spoken score: fragments of theory, memory, and rhythm gathered into one last listening space. Let it wash over you. Take what you need; leave what you don’t.
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Biography
Brandon LaBelle is an artist, writer, theorist, and artistic director of The Listening Biennial and Listening Academy. His work focuses on questions of agency, community, pirate culture, and poetics, which results in a range of artistic presentations and extra-institutional initiatives, including Communities in Movement (2019-23), Oficina de Autonomia (2017-), The Living School (with South London Gallery, 2014-16), The Imaginary Republic (2014-19), Dirty Ear Forum (2013-22), Surface Tension (2003-2008), and Beyond Music Sound Festival (1998-2002). In 1995 he founded Errant Bodies Press, an independent publishing project supporting work in sound art and studies, performance and poetics, artistic research and contemporary political thought. His publications include Poetics of Listening (2025), Dreamtime X (2022), Acoustic Justice (2021), The Other Citizen (2020), Sonic Agency (2018), Lexicon of the Mouth (2014), Diary of an Imaginary Egyptian (2012), Acoustic Territories (2010), and Background Noise (2006).
Podcast hosts
Dr Férdia Stone-Davis: www.ferdiastonedavis.com
Dr Charissa Granger: https://sta.uwi.edu/fhe/dlcc/dr-charissa-granger
Podcast acknowledgements
The Sounding Freedom and Liberation music was composed by Samuel J. Wilson. Website: https://www.samueljwilson.com/profile
The Sounding Freedom and Liberation logo was designed by Pavlína Kašparová. Website: https://www.creativenun.com/bio
The Podcast was recorded at the Media Lab, the West Hub, Cambridge, and was edited by Mike Chivers