A multi-year research project with a team spanning five continents, Sounding Good probes the deep and sometimes surprising interplays between music, cultural sustainability, and matters of social justice.
In Cambodia, a “magic music bus” chugs through rural provinces, joyfully returning traditional music to people and places from which it has nearly disappeared.
On stages across Australia, a First Nations musician revives a post-colonial song practice that tells difficult truths about Australia's past, opens conversations about its present, and contributes to cultural strength and healing.
In a university class in Brazil, students learn songs, dances, and stories from a senior Indigenous culture-bearer—the first time these precious cultural practices have been welcomed into formal education.
Across the riverine delta lands of West Bengal, India, artists and communities work together to sustain not only their time-honoured cultural practices, but also their lives, livelihoods, and economic futures.
In a refugee camp in the harsh Algerian desert, people come together to sing old and new songs about everyday life in the camps, their nostalgia for their Western Saharan homeland, and their hopes for self-determination and justice.
In a small seaside village in Vanuatu, girls and women draw on the unique musical heritage of their island forebears to draw international attention to the escalating climate crisis, and to advocate for climate justice.
Through these musical case studies, Sounding Good traverses pressing contemporary social concerns—from poverty, forced migration, and educational equity, to matters of racial, cultural, and climate justice. The project explores how strong, sustainable cultural practices can advance the cause of social justice, and vice versa.
Music can help us better understand how cultural sustainability and social justice are entangled.
Understanding that link has never been more urgent. In these uncertain times, it could help practitioners, communities, scholars, and cultural agencies protect and promote a continued rich global diversity of cultural expressions.
Perhaps even more vitally, it could enhance our prospects of an equitable, thriving world, now and in the future.
