Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2025!
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16 years in, we’re still here, listening hard for each thump, rasp, and rattle of the drum to amplify for our readers. Keep the pressure coming louder and louder for us to propagate, and look out for our print edition, Power in Listening: The Sounding Out! Reader to drop in August 2026 from NYU Press! –JS, Ed-in-Chief
Here, beginning with number 10, are our Top 10 posts released in 2025 (as of 12/13/25)!
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(10). The Sonic Rhetoric of Quincy Jones (feat. Nasir Jones)
By Jaquial Durham
“The passing of Quincy Jones has left a silence that feels almost impossible to fill. Every time I play Thriller at home now, it’s no longer just a celebration of his unparalleled artistry. It’s a ritual to sit with his legacy, listen more closely, and honor how his music shaped the sound of memory itself. With each spin of the record, my family and I find ourselves inside his arrangements, held by their richness, precision, and sense of story as though the music is breathing with us, speaking back across time. Jones’s work was never just production; it was communication. A language of sound connected us to melody and beat and the fuller spectrum of emotion, culture, and memory that lives in Black music.. .”
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(9). The Techno-Woman Warrior: K-pop and the Sound of Asian Futurism
By Hoon Lee
“As a ’90s kid, I remember too well us school kids singing and dancing to the songs at the top of the charts on music shows such as Ingigayo (인기가요) and Music Bank (뮤직뱅크). It was what one might call the “pre-K-pop” era: there were a lot of solo artists performing in various genres, and the notion of idol culture as we know it now was only fledgling. Without the mass production system or the global distribution that has come to be the norm in today’s K-pop, first generation idol groups around the new millennium—H.O.T., Fin.K.L, god, Sechs Kies, S.E.S.—not only set up these business models and standards, but also inspired the music and aesthetics of later generations. The group aespa’s cover of “Dreams Come True” by S.E.S. is an exemplar case, and NewJeans, with their unflinching Y2K aesthetics and sound, take us back to the millennial through and through. . .”
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(8).Finding Resonance, Finding María Lugones
By Daimys García
“I am always listening for María: I find her most in the traces of words.
Trained as a literary scholar, I relish in the contours of stories; I savor the nuances found between crevices of language and the shades of implication when those languages are strung together. It is no surprise, then, that since the death of my friend and mentor María Lugones, I have turned to many books, particularly her book, Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition Against Multiple Oppression, to feel connected to her. I have struggled, though, to write about her, talk about her, even think about her for many years. It wasn’t until I found a passage about spirits and hauntings in Cuban-American writer and artist Ana Menéndez’s novel The Apartment that I found language to describe a way through the grief of the last five years. . .”
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(7). The Sounds of Equality: Reciting Resilience, Singing Revolutions
by Mukesh Kulriya
“When the pandemic hit the world in late 2019, the concept of lockdown ceased the social life of the people and their communities. In these unprecedented circumstances, a video from Italy took the internet. People in Italian towns such as Siena, Benevento, Turin, and Rome were singing from their windows and balconies, which raised morale. The song “Bella Ciao,” an old partisan Italian song, became an anthem of hope against adversity. This anti-fascist song was popularized during the mid-20th century across the globe as a part of progressive movements. Following this, people in many countries around the world created their renditions of “Bella Ciao” in Turkish, Arabic, Kurdish, Persian, French, Spanish, Armenian, German, Portuguese, Russian, and within India in languages such as Punjabi, Marathi, Bangla, and even in sign language renditions. It was such an apt moment that captured the idea of empathy, solidarity, and the human need for community. This moment was still resonating with me when I was approached by Goethe Institut, New Delhi, to work on music and protest, and create The Music Library. I knew what I needed to do. . . .”
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(6).SO! Reads: Zeynep Bulut’s Building a Voice: Sound, Surface, Skin
—by Enikő Deptuch Vághy
“Voice and sound theorist Zeynep Bulut’s Building a Voice: Sound, Surface, Skin (Goldsmiths Press, 2025) is a remarkable work that reconfigures the ways we define “voice.” The text is organized into three sections—Part 1: Plastic (Emergence of Voice as Skin), Part 2: Electric (Embodiment of Voice as Skin), and Part 3: Haptic (Mediation of Voice as Skin)—each articulating Bulut’s exploration of the simultaneously personal and collaborative ways voice evolves among various sonic entities and environments. Through analyses of several artistic works that experiment with sound, Bulut successfully highlights the social effects of these pieces and how they alter our expectations of what it means to communicate and be understood.”
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(5). Clapping Back: Responses from Sound Studies to Censorship & Silencing
by MLA Sound Studies Executive Forum
“The MS Sound Forum invites papers for a guaranteed session at the Modern Language Association’s annual conference in Toronto, Canada in January 2026. The session responds in part to the MLA Executive Council’s refusal to allow debate or a vote on Resolution 2025-1, which supported the international “Boycott, Divest, and Sanction” (BDS) Movement for Palestinian rights against the ongoing genocide in Gaza. In light of the Council’s suppression of debate, some of the Sound Forum Executive Committee members decided to resign in protest while others remained to hold the MLA accountable for its undemocratic procedures. To acknowledge and respect the decision of those who left, the remaining members chose not to immediately fill the vacancies to let the parting members’ silence speak.. . .”
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—(4). “Just for a Few Hours, We Was Free”: The Blues and Mapping Freedom in Sinners (2025)
by Juston Burton
“In the 2025 blockbuster Sinners, Ryan Coogler has a vampire story to tell. But before he can begin, he needs to tell another story—a blues one. Sinners opens with a voiceover thesis statement performed by Wunmi Mosaku (who plays Annie in the film—more on her below) about the work the blues can do, then rambles the narrative through and around 1932 Clarksdale, eventually settling into a juke joint outside of town. Here, the blues story builds to a frenzied climax, ultimately conjuring the vampires propelling the film’s second half. It’s those vampires that most immediately register as cinematic spectacle, but Coogler’s impetus to film in IMAX and leverage all of his professional relationships for the movie wasn’t the monsters—it was to showcase the blues at a scale the music deserves. In Sinners, the blues takes center stage as a generative sonic practice, sound that creates space to be and to know in the crevices of the material world, providing passage between oppression and freedom, life and death, past and future, and good and evil. . .”
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—(3). “Keep it Weird”: Listening with Jonathan Sterne (1970-2025)
by Benjamin Tausig
“Dr. Jonathan Sterne passed away earlier this year. He was, in many ways, a model scholar and colleague.
The intellectual ferment of the field now called “sound studies” is often traced to the sonic ecologists of the 1960s, but the theoretical energy of the early 2000s, generated by figures such as Ana Maria Ochoa, Alexander Weheliye, Emily Thompson, Trevor Pinch (1952-2021), and of course Jonathan Sterne, was necessary for the field to gain interdisciplinary traction in the twenty-first century. Sterne’s The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (Duke University Press: 2003) was perhaps the single-most important book in this regard.
Trained in communications, and working in departments of communication, first at Pitt and later McGill, Sterne oriented his work toward media studies, and indeed, The Audible Past is principally about mediation. It poses questions about the role of sound in the history of mediation that earlier generations of sound studies had tended to elide, especially regarding the contingent and often cultural role of the human ear in reception. These questions opened the door for anthropologists, historians, communications scholars and ethnomusicologists in particular to think and even identify with sound studies, and many of us who were trained in the 2000s did so enthusiastically, with Sterne’s writing a lodestar.. . .”
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(2). Faithful Listening: Notes Toward a Latinx Listening Methodology
by Wanda Alarcón, Dolores Inés Casillas, Esther Díaz Martín, Sara Veronica Hinojos, Cloe Gentile Reyes
“For weeks, we have been inundated with executive orders (220 at last count), alarming budget cuts (from science and the arts to our national parks), stupendous tariff hikes, the defunding of DEI-anything, the banning of transgender troops, a Congressional renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, terrifying ICE raids, and sadly, a refreshed MAGA constituency with a reinvigorated anti-immigrant public sentiment. Worse, the handlers for the White House’s social media publish sinister MAGA-directed memes, GIFs across their social channels. These reputed Public Service Announcements (PSAs), under President Trump’s second term, ruthlessly go after immigrants.
It’s difficult to refuse to listen despite our best attempts.. . .”
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(1). SO! Podcast #82: Living Sounds: Rhythms of Belonging
“CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: SO! Podcast #82: Living Sounds: Rhythms of Belonging
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It’s been a minute for the SO! podcast but we are glad to be back–however intermittently–with a podcast episode that shares a discussion between women sound studies artists and scholars. The panel “Living Sounds: Rhythms of Belonging,” was held on September 19 at 6-7pm EDT at The Soil Factory arts space in Ithaca, New York. Moderator Jennifer Lynn Stoever, sound studies scholar and our Ed. in Chief, talks with four women sound artists about their praxis: Marlo de Lara, Bonnie Han Jones, Sarah Nance and Paulina Velazquez Solis.. . .”
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Featured Image: “microphone on the bass drum of the drummer for No Age” by Flickr User Dan MacHold CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
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REWIND! . . .If you liked this post, you may also dig:
The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2024
The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2023!
The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2020-2022!
The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2019!
The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2018!
The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2017!
The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2016!
The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2015!
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Sonic Homes: The Sonic/Racial Intimacy of Black and Brown Banda Music in Southern California
This series listens to the political, gendered, queer(ed), racial engagements and class entanglements involved in proclaiming out loud: La-TIN-x. ChI-ca-NA. La-TI-ne. ChI-ca-n-@. Xi-can-x. Funded by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of the Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative, the Latinx Sound Cultures Studies Working Group critically considers the role of sound and listening in our formation as political subjects. Through both a comparative and cross-regional lens, we invite Latinx Sound Scholars to join us as we dialogue about our place within the larger fields of Chicanx/Latinx Studies and Sound Studies. We are delighted to publish our initial musings with Sounding Out!, a forum that has long prioritized sound from a queered, racial, working-class and “always-from-below” epistemological standpoint. —Ed. Dolores Inés Casillas
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No tengo nada de sangre de Mexico. Soy afro americano.
(I have no Mexican blood. I am African American.)
El Compa Negro (Ryhan Lowery)
The grain is the body in the singing voice, in the writing hand, in the performing limb.
Roland Barthes (The Grain of the Voice,1971)
***This post is co-authored by Sara Veronica Hinojos and Alex Mireles
Sarah La Morena (Sarah the Black woman), or Sarah Palafox, was adopted and raised by a Mexican family in Mexico. At the age of five, she moved to Riverside, California, a predominantly Mexican city an hour east of Compton. Palafox started singing as a way to express the racism she faced as a child in Southern California, feeling caught between her Black appearance and her Mexican sound. She found her voice in church, a nurturing environment where she could be herself, surrounded by her family’s love. She gained attention with a viral video of her rendition of Jenni Rivera’s “Que Me Vas a Dar.” Palafox delivers each note with profound emotion and precision, leaving even the accompanying mariachi violinist in awe.
Similarly, El Compa Negro (The Black Friend/Homie) or Rhyan Lowery heard the sounds of banda coming from his neighbor’s backyard in Compton; a historically Black-populated city with a current Mexican majority. Lowery couldn’t shake the song out of his head and learned the song’s Spanish-language lyrics. Like Palafox, videos of him singing in Spanish during high school made him a viral sensation. “They called me ‘el compa negro’ (…) All I heard was ‘blah blah blah negro or negro’ and I wasn’t having it until they explained to me what it meant. And I was like ‘ok, cool’.”
The sonic stylings of El Compa Negro and Sarah La Morena within the banda genre enable transcultural connections beyond the pan-Chicano-Mexican-Central American popularity of tecnobanda and la quebradita. The 1990s banda craze, writes George Lipsitz “challenged traditional categories of citizenship and culture on both sides of the US-Mexico border.” Banda music might sound like it was established south of the border, but multicultural listeners and dancers continue to influence its vibrations. Pop stars like Snoop Dogg, Shakira, Bad Bunny, and Karol G have released (tokenized) songs with Mexican-tinged, banda-recognizable beats. Yet, both El Compa and Sarah demonstrate a form of musical Black/Brown, working-class intimacy. Their respective musics are much less about a pop star (duet) kind of solidarity and much more about a deep knowing, a sensibility among working-class cultures and othered people that resonates through the aesthetics of sound. As Karen Tongson writes in Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries, about her experience of “queer, brown, immigrant musical discovery” in Riverside, the hometown she shares with Sarah La Morena: “It is the music that inspires us to ask questions” (26).
Certainly, US Mexican immigrant culture does not have the same (mainstream) cultural caché as African American culture, unless somehow softened or filtered. Jalapeños get “de-spicifed“; pre-made Día de Los Muertos altares are now at Wal-Mart, and huipiles are available as fast-fashioned “peasant blouse;” filtering out their Mexican-indigenous origins. Thus, classics like “La Yaquesita” and originals like “Yo Soy Compton” heard through the grain of Black voices affirm the possibilities of U.S. Mexican belonging or what D. Travers Scott characterizes as a form of “intimate intersubjectivities;” rooted in long-established Black/Brown co-existences across the borderlands and city barrios. Turning the volume up on these artists serves an important counterpoint to Latino anti-Black racism.
Their voices, blending with brass and tambora, embody a Black-Brown sonic and symbolic solidarity, or spatial entitlement. As theorized by Gaye Theresa Johnson in Spaces of Conflict, Sounds of Solidarity, innovative applications of technology, creativity, and space foster new collectives which, even when “unheard” by historians, assert social citizenship and pave the way for new working-class political futures. In the contested neighborhoods of greater Los Angeles, Black and Brown communities are often pitted against one another through processes of containment and confinement leading to competitions for jobs, housing, status, and political power. Yet, they share the experiences of labor exploitation, housing segregation, and cultural vilification. Filmed in the intimate settings of backyards, the viral videos underscore Black/Brown hood/barrio soundscapes as multi-generational, familial, and culturally hybrid. Home is where shared class, racial, and gender politics are negotiated and resolved.
Asserting Black identity and the choice to perform in Spanish creates a unique visual and auditory experience within the Mexican-dominant world of banda. In fact, in 2024, Lowery made history as the first Spanish-language artist signed by Death Row Records, a label known primarily for hip hop. The lively rhythms of banda – oompah-oompah-oompah – offers both banda and hip hop listeners a new orientation to discern the racial-cultural politics of broader Los Angeles.
Like the mid-century Haitian-Mexican bolero singer Antonia del Carmen Peregrino Álvarez, alias “Toña La Negra,” the added tags “Negro” and “la Morena” signals Black singers’ recognition of the meaning(s) of their racial difference within the transnational Mexican music scene. The auditory discomfort that their vocal grain might cause is named and thus recognized as the persistent colorism of listeners at large. Lowery describes his initial unease with the given “Compa Negro” nickname. “My Mexican friends always tell me ‘Hey, compa negro, you’re Mexican, man. God just left you in the oven a little too long.’” The harassment came from both Black peers and Mexicans alike, for liking banda, dating Latinas, or dressing “like a Mexican.” “They would say, ‘You hate being Black. Self-hate. Self-hate. I’m like man it ain’t that I self-hate, it’s just that I embrace something. I took the time to have an open mind and study something, you know?” His way of being made sense in the context of a Compton teenage experience. “Becoming Mexican” by way of musical/cultural engagement surpassed skin tone-deep and nationalist differences.
Or, as Mexican ranchera singer Chavela Vargas–born in Costa Rica–famously asserted, “Mexicans are born wherever the hell they want!” Try listening to Juan Gabriel’s “Amor Eterno” to find out. Black creatives like Evander, Vaquera Canela, and Terry Turner are just a few more examples of Black mexicanidad. Yessica Garcia Hernandez reminds us that Black and Brown sonic solidarities have been the driving pulse of US popular music. She argues, “Home and sound is acknowledging that both corridos, hip-hop, and G-funk relationally, has formed paisas.”
El Compa Negro’s “Verde es Vida,” a tribute to California’s weed culture, lowriders, and corridos, booms loudly. The song begins with an accordion playing reggae rhythms, soon interrupted by percussion, guitars, and El Compa’s fast-paced verses. About a minute in, the accordion slows the tempo with a few reggae notes before the vocals return, reintroducing the corrido rhythm: “Hoy andamos en LA bien tranquilitos. En el lowrider escuchando corridos.” The reggae-corrido fusion ends with the familiar “pom pom pom pom!” of the drums, typical of banda and corrido finales, as the accordion plays its last note. Through Lowery’s reggae corrido, we hear his “sonic home” rooted in Black and Brown Los Angeles.
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Featured Image: still from Sarah La Morena’s “La Llorona” (2020)
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Sara Veronica Hinojos is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies and on the advisory board for Latin American and Latino Studies at Queens College, CUNY. Her research focuses on representations of Chicanx and Latinx within popular film and television with an emphasis on gender, race, language politics, and humor studies. She is currently working on a book manuscript that investigates the racial function of linguistic “accents” within media, called: GWAT?!: Chicanx Mediated Race, Gender, and “Accents” in the US.
Alex Mireles is a PhD student in the Department of Feminist Studies at UC Santa Barbara. She writes on Latinx identity and queerness, labor, and global capitalism through aesthetic movements in fashion, beauty, media, and visual cultures. Her dissertation explores the queer potential and world-making capabilities of Chicanx popular culture through Mexican regional music, social media, queer nightlife, and film.
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REWIND!…If you liked this post, you may also dig:
Boom! Boom! Boom!: Banda, Dissident Vibrations, and Sonic Gentrification in Mazatlán—Kristie Valdez-Guillen
Listening to MAGA Politics within US/Mexico’s Lucha Libre –Esther Díaz Martín and Rebeca Rivas
Ronca Realness: Voices that Sound the Sucia Body—Cloe Gentile Reyes
Echoes in Transit: Loudly Waiting at the Paso del Norte Border Region—José Manuel Flores & Dolores Inés Casillas
Sounding Out! Podcast #28: Off the 60: A Mix-Tape Dedication to Los Angeles–Jennifer Stoever
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