Tunement: Listening to Listening

Abstract

Sound space is never neutral, if such a thing exists at all. Each layer of every sound carries cultural, historical, personal, and aesthetic meanings (parasounds), which invite a wide array of occasionally conflicting evaluations, associations, and responses. Auscultators, the characters listening within a work of fiction, and auditeurs, the implied audience of a fictional work, may find themselves on the same wavelength of a certain space or in complete dissonance. These ‘colourings’ of sound through listening are what this study terms ‘tunements’. Tunement makes audible acts of listening; it allows to listen to listening. These acts are influenced, regulated, and produced by a number of parameters, from historical and cultural contexts to personal preferences and prejudices, to artistic conventions and aesthetic choices, so that listening is understood to be inherently biased, subjective, tuned. To listen critically means always listening for sound’s different layers and tunements. This chapter focuses on listening to layers of agency and parasound within cultural artefacts such as Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress (1990), the film The Informer (1935), and the Raymond Chandler inspired radio drama series The Adventures of Philip Marlowe to expose stereotyping, discrimination, and clichés through sound.