Paper short abstract:

In music and similar experiences listeners often locate agentive beings in sound. Around the Mediterranean, Makam is an example of sonic structure endowed with agency. Is it possible to envision a Makam's point of view? What does it lack to be fully a person?

Paper long abstract:

Music and a range of other auditory experiences imply peculiar links between audition and imagination. In the "enchanted listening posture" (Stoichita and Brabec de Mori 2017), people report sensing with their ears things that violate basic ontological premises: for instance colors that can be heard, or sounds that have weight. They often report as well feeling that such beings have qualities normally attached to persons, like emotions or autonomous will.

Describing sonic beings with words is notoriously difficult, as is describing musical experience in general. This is due in part to the scarcity of human vocabularies for sound. As speakers are led to use figurative talk and metaphors to circumvent their language’s limitations, many descriptions of enchanted listening end up dwelling on the fringes between sensory reality, fiction and subjective introspection. But although animistic descriptions of sound abound, I am unaware of any attempt to envision the world from the point of view of a sonic being. Is there anything like "being a sonic being", to paraphrase Nagel? Can the point of view of such a being (or its impossibility), inform us about the structure of our imagination of sound, and acoustic agency? I will propose a thought experiment based on my fieldwork with Frech musicians who try to grasp the concept of Makam, an agentive concept relevant to many musical styles in the Mediterranean.