Listening to love

Authors
WOOLNER, CHRISTINA J  ORCID logo  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0252-7741

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Type
Article
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Abstract

Both music and love are conspicuously absent from Hargeysa’s public soundscapes, but behind closed doors lonely love-sufferers and love-hopefuls make sense of various love challenges by listening to love songs. Accounts of the solitary listening practices of a cross-section of Somalilanders reveal this listening to open into uniquely intimate and transformative opportunities for dareen-wadaag (feeling-sharing). These opportunities critically depend on both the attention and intention with which listeners listen and the culturally-elaborated affective affordances of the “voice” of love songs – voices conceived as “love incarnate,” and that model intimacy. In short, listeners do not just listen to love songs, they listen to love. These listening practices call for anthropological models that more fully account for the relationship between culturally situated ears and voices, and the complex interrelation of sound, affect and subjectivity.

Publication Date
2022-05
Online Publication Date
2022-04-27
Acceptance Date
2022-01-20
Keywords
4401 Anthropology, 44 Human Society
Journal Title
American Ethnologist
Journal ISSN
0094-0496
1548-1425
Volume Title
Publisher
Wiley
Sponsorship
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada), Cambridge International Trust, Leverhulme Trust, Isaac Newton Trust