Joshua Leeds
Sonic Activist
Soundwork: positive music and sound
August 2023
Dear soundworkers and music lovers around the world...
In response to Covid, climate, and a multitude of difficult conditions challenging our planet’s inhabitants, I’m writing a new book, Soundwork on a Hot Rock: Music & Sound in Times of Change. It’s about intentional music and soundwork and exploring the role of music in the context of community sonic activism.
Globally, we are living in an unparalleled time of multiple and coincident challenges.
Forward! There is no going back because collectively we have all shifted, peri-Covid.
Isolation has become a psychological by-product of these times.
Politicization undermines the best of science.
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War is horribly back!
Music is historically known for rebuilding social cohesion.
The arts have an opportunity to play a major role in community healing.
A redefining of the healing role of musicians in disrupted culture is called for. Therapeutic/concert/street musicians and trained soundworkers evolve into sonic activists.
The new audience/listener/patient emerges: culture writ large.
Renaissance is at hand. Creative, enhanced skillsets produce 21st Century music and sound.
Soundwork colleagues, please help shape and enact an essential emergence of physical, emotional, and spiritual sonic activism. Kindly share with your colleagues in this time of need.
AUTHOR
Soundwork on a Hot Rock–
Music & Sound in Times of Change (2023)
The Power of Sound (2010, 2000)
Through a Dog's Ear (2008)
Sonic Alchemy (1997)
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Joshua Leeds has created psychoacoustically-based soundtracks since 1986. His studio techniques have advanced the field of soundwork into neurodevelop-mental clinics, classrooms, animal care facilities, offices, and homes.
EDUCATOR
Known for dynamic presentations, Joshua's research into music and sound for people and animals is singular. Core participants include musicians, educators, and therapeutic professionals.