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Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies
Reimagining how we understand and write about the Indigenous listening experience
Hungry Listening is the first book to consider listening from both Indigenous and settler colonial perspectives. A critical response to what has been called the “whiteness of sound studies,” Dylan Robinson evaluates how decolonial practices of listening emerge from increasing awareness of our listening positionality. This, he argues, involves identifying habits of settler colonial perception and contending with settler colonialism’s “tin ear” that renders silent the epistemic foundations of Indigenous song as history, law, and medicine.
With case studies on Indigenous participation in classical music, musicals, and popular music, Hungry Listening examines structures of inclusion that reinforce Western musical values. Alongside this inquiry on the unmarked terms of inclusion in performing arts organizations and compositional practice, Hungry Listening offers examples of “doing sovereignty” in Indigenous performance art, museum exhibition, and gatherings that support an Indigenous listening resurgence.
Throughout the book, Robinson shows how decolonial and resurgent forms of listening might be affirmed by writing otherwise about musical experience. Through event scores, dialogic improvisation, and forms of poetic response and refusal, he demands a reorientation toward the act of reading as a way of listening. Indigenous relationships to the life of song are here sustained in writing that finds resonance in the intersubjective experience between listener, sound, and space.
Hungry Listening is the first book to consider listening from both Indigenous and settler colonial perspectives. A critical response to what has been called the “whiteness of sound studies,” Dylan Robinson evaluates how decolonial practices of listening emerge from increasing awareness of our listening positionality. This, he argues, involves identifying habits of settler colonial perception and contending with settler colonialism’s “tin ear” that renders silent the epistemic foundations of Indigenous song as history, law, and medicine.
With case studies on Indigenous participation in classical music, musicals, and popular music, Hungry Listening examines structures of inclusion that reinforce Western musical values. Alongside this inquiry on the unmarked terms of inclusion in performing arts organizations and compositional practice, Hungry Listening offers examples of “doing sovereignty” in Indigenous performance art, museum exhibition, and gatherings that support an Indigenous listening resurgence.
Throughout the book, Robinson shows how decolonial and resurgent forms of listening might be affirmed by writing otherwise about musical experience. Through event scores, dialogic improvisation, and forms of poetic response and refusal, he demands a reorientation toward the act of reading as a way of listening. Indigenous relationships to the life of song are here sustained in writing that finds resonance in the intersubjective experience between listener, sound, and space.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published May 12, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
October 30, 2020
Everyone should read
Everyone should read this book. For settlers, it digs deep into describing the hungry listening that dominates settler ontologies and offers an initial route toward forms of decolonial listening we might practice as a form of accountability.
Everyone should read this book. For settlers, it digs deep into describing the hungry listening that dominates settler ontologies and offers an initial route toward forms of decolonial listening we might practice as a form of accountability.
July 21, 2025
such important and integral concepts to understanding colonialism, the depth of its impact on every aspect of our lives, and how we can work to actually align with postcolonial ideologies for the benefit of all, small and large scale
very dense, so it can be difficult to get through but worth it
very dense, so it can be difficult to get through but worth it
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August 10, 2020Sound studies. Indigenous sound studies, to be precise, by Stó:lō scholar Dylan Robinson. The centre of the work is consideration, through very close and careful attention to a range of works and performances, of the various ways in which settler art music and Indigenous music get put in relation and taken up. That might seem like a very specific project, and certainly some of its more narrowly musicological concerns were a bit beyond me, but it anchors a fascinating and useful weave of broader ideas. I can already anticipate a few elements of the book sticking with me. The title, for instance, points towards an understanding of settler orientations to the world derived from Stó:lō thought, which captures a certain relentless, extractivist consumption at the heart of settler ways of being, including consumption of the Other through particular modes listening. I very much appreciated the lesson that the Indigenous/settler divide when it comes to music goes far beyond differences in aesthetics to the basic question of what music is – its ontology – and that "Indigenous song ... serves strikingly different functions, including that of law and primary historical documentation" (41). Though there are a range of ways that this happens, most of the time when Indigenous music is brought into relation with Western art music, it is done in a way that imposes the Western ontology. There is an extraction, a sometimes violent repurposing, a smoothing over of difference and dissonance for the benefit hungry settler ears – often, in the Canadian context, in a way very much in line with the multicultural strand of settler colonial nationalism.
I also think the book's idea of "critical listening positionality" is important. It doesn't use the word "standpoint," but it seems to be a similar (though not identical) idea – a sort of engagement with our own listening practices based on a non-essentialist and dynamic understanding of the relationships which situate us in a given moment and more broadly. Another figure in the book that feels like it might be quite useful is the "metaphor of the palimpsest" (59), taken up from another writer as a way to think about practices of "layered listening" (ibid). This would involve a sort of deep yet mobile attention to both positionality and to that which is present only as trace or even that which inaudibly underlies the main focus of listening. Also, I appreciate its exploration of form and craft as integral to the work that both music and writing do: It's not just what you say, but the form that you use to say it, that will disrupt hungry listening, catalyze a more critical form of engagement, or do whatever else you are trying to accomplish with your work.
Anyway, I could go on listing specifics, but I think overall what I most appreciate about this book is the space it opens for thinking about how settler colonialism shapes our perceptions and what it might mean to collectively, and with due attention to our positionality, work towards new, decolonial ways of listening – particularly, that it does so with no pretense of easy answers or quick resolution.
I also think the book's idea of "critical listening positionality" is important. It doesn't use the word "standpoint," but it seems to be a similar (though not identical) idea – a sort of engagement with our own listening practices based on a non-essentialist and dynamic understanding of the relationships which situate us in a given moment and more broadly. Another figure in the book that feels like it might be quite useful is the "metaphor of the palimpsest" (59), taken up from another writer as a way to think about practices of "layered listening" (ibid). This would involve a sort of deep yet mobile attention to both positionality and to that which is present only as trace or even that which inaudibly underlies the main focus of listening. Also, I appreciate its exploration of form and craft as integral to the work that both music and writing do: It's not just what you say, but the form that you use to say it, that will disrupt hungry listening, catalyze a more critical form of engagement, or do whatever else you are trying to accomplish with your work.
Anyway, I could go on listing specifics, but I think overall what I most appreciate about this book is the space it opens for thinking about how settler colonialism shapes our perceptions and what it might mean to collectively, and with due attention to our positionality, work towards new, decolonial ways of listening – particularly, that it does so with no pretense of easy answers or quick resolution.
November 3, 2021
Good book. Interesting approach that is clearly influenced by the work of Nettl and Agawu. I didnt like the academic style of writing. I also think the insights could be told on much less pages.
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April 13, 2023WRTG-300-S091-2023: Writing Criticism
(Read intro for class forum post)
"As a form of perception, “hungry listening” is derived from two Halq’eméylem words: shxwelítemelh (the adjective for settler or white person’s methods/things) and xwélalà:m (the word for listening)"
What a life I will have after I graduate...
(Read intro for class forum post)
"As a form of perception, “hungry listening” is derived from two Halq’eméylem words: shxwelítemelh (the adjective for settler or white person’s methods/things) and xwélalà:m (the word for listening)"
What a life I will have after I graduate...
December 23, 2021
I adored the "hungry" part, about white/settler ravenous consumption of Indigenous culture. This resonated deeply with me and has me thinking about what I can do better as a white/settler sound artist. I HIGHLY recommend this aspect.
The "listening" part was a letdown. I expected an (auto)ethnography of Indigenous listening, but like most musicologists, Robinson gives virtually zero attention to how music sounds/feels/moves acoustically, and almost exclusive attention to what music does/means culturally. His quotation of Tahltan artist Peter Morin -- "the song that is a tahltan river rushing inside of me... the drum beats are bullets" (169) -- is one of VERY few descriptions of sound in the whole book. This bit reminded me of Pauline Oliveros' excellent 1968 essay "Some Sound Observations." ("A jet passes over. Some of its sound moves through my jawbone and out the back of my neck... MY EARS FEEL LIKE CAVES." [134]) Is it a settler impulse in me to insist that sound itself holds Robinson's "irreconcileable difference" differently than theory does, and to want more *sound* itself in the writing?? I have to sit with this.
The "listening" part was a letdown. I expected an (auto)ethnography of Indigenous listening, but like most musicologists, Robinson gives virtually zero attention to how music sounds/feels/moves acoustically, and almost exclusive attention to what music does/means culturally. His quotation of Tahltan artist Peter Morin -- "the song that is a tahltan river rushing inside of me... the drum beats are bullets" (169) -- is one of VERY few descriptions of sound in the whole book. This bit reminded me of Pauline Oliveros' excellent 1968 essay "Some Sound Observations." ("A jet passes over. Some of its sound moves through my jawbone and out the back of my neck... MY EARS FEEL LIKE CAVES." [134]) Is it a settler impulse in me to insist that sound itself holds Robinson's "irreconcileable difference" differently than theory does, and to want more *sound* itself in the writing?? I have to sit with this.
August 9, 2021
Truly an eye (ear) opening read, which I highly recommend.
As described by Robinson, one aspect of hungry listening is a desire for limitless access to knowledge. A strong example of how this desire can be subverted occurs in the introduction, where Robinson outlines the closing of the introduction as content not intended for consumption by non-Indigenous people, who are asked to not read that section of text.
I found this to be a powerful intervention (and I did indeed skip that section). I did however find myself challenged — and to be honest, frustrated — by the book’s often ‘scholarly’ language. I have to wonder, is this another form of intervention? A denial of ‘hungry reading’ to those outside of academia? Or is this more simply a result of me being outside the target audience? And if the latter — what would it mean for a work like this to exist in a form more accessible to those outside that audience?
Genuine questions, to be clear. I still wholeheartedly recommend this to all. A powerful, critical read.
As described by Robinson, one aspect of hungry listening is a desire for limitless access to knowledge. A strong example of how this desire can be subverted occurs in the introduction, where Robinson outlines the closing of the introduction as content not intended for consumption by non-Indigenous people, who are asked to not read that section of text.
I found this to be a powerful intervention (and I did indeed skip that section). I did however find myself challenged — and to be honest, frustrated — by the book’s often ‘scholarly’ language. I have to wonder, is this another form of intervention? A denial of ‘hungry reading’ to those outside of academia? Or is this more simply a result of me being outside the target audience? And if the latter — what would it mean for a work like this to exist in a form more accessible to those outside that audience?
Genuine questions, to be clear. I still wholeheartedly recommend this to all. A powerful, critical read.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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June 1, 2025I have some very mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, it is provocative and radical to "de-settle" the colonial listening viewpoint, but it maintains such a dour pessimism throughout that I found it hard to be on board when I kept feeling so defeated.
Much of my issue was that the book offers a lot of problems but very few solutions. I acknowledge that this desire for narrative and buttoned-up solutions is a "settled" perspective, but as someone coming from that background, I felt like this book was not geared towards making allies; perhaps that's my mistake for assuming it would be, as a scholarly work published through a major university.
My big, positive takeaways were that desettling listening is nuanced, and the best thing for people in my position to do is often let indigenous folks lead the discussions and collaborations they want to have, to better represent sovereignty.
Not particularly satisfying as a white reader, but I'm glad I read it, and some of the ideas about how to present modern art in chapter 4 really spoke to me.
Much of my issue was that the book offers a lot of problems but very few solutions. I acknowledge that this desire for narrative and buttoned-up solutions is a "settled" perspective, but as someone coming from that background, I felt like this book was not geared towards making allies; perhaps that's my mistake for assuming it would be, as a scholarly work published through a major university.
My big, positive takeaways were that desettling listening is nuanced, and the best thing for people in my position to do is often let indigenous folks lead the discussions and collaborations they want to have, to better represent sovereignty.
Not particularly satisfying as a white reader, but I'm glad I read it, and some of the ideas about how to present modern art in chapter 4 really spoke to me.
July 27, 2022
'Tis heavy going (for someone who left university 50 years ago), but a worthwhile mind-exercize in this time in which we settlers are looking for a way towards reconciliation.
A number of his (more accessible) case studies - where artists failed to listen (or listen well enough) - were taken from the Cultural Olympiad of the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver (where both of us were based), and I recall a few of the shows he references. One in particular was cringe-worthy, though likely for different reasons to each of us.
A must read for musicologists, "world music" performers and composers, and music programmers.
A number of his (more accessible) case studies - where artists failed to listen (or listen well enough) - were taken from the Cultural Olympiad of the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver (where both of us were based), and I recall a few of the shows he references. One in particular was cringe-worthy, though likely for different reasons to each of us.
A must read for musicologists, "world music" performers and composers, and music programmers.
December 4, 2023
while musicology seems to be taking up robinson's critique of hungry listening rather broadly, this book is actually rather specific in its focus a) on Canada, b) on western classical music, and c) in speaking pretty much directly (perhaps only?) to music studies. main goal is to expose settler ways of listening and positioning Indigenous music/sound practices inappropriately/inequitably, and also experiments with "writing otherwise" as part of the work of getting us to "listen otherwise." quite a demanding read, but lots to think about...
January 17, 2021
Finished this for the second time. Although the discussion centres mainly around music, I would highly recommend this book for anyone in the arts - whether you are a creator, performer, curator, administrator, patron, or audience member, it is a very important read.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews