A virtual recording of the Portland Public Library lecture from Dr. Andrew McGraw (University of Richmond) that situates the Richmond, Virginia city jail within the highly racialized context of contemporary American hyper incarceration and describes the ways in which the sounds of suffering were muted in the transition from the old city jail to a new, “cutting edge” facility in 2014. McGraw discusses the music that residents have produced in both facilities and concludes by arguing that the contemporary jail is only one component of several interlocking structures that sonically segregates Richmond’s majority African American population from its minority Anglo-American population. Studying carceral soundscapes represents a political intervention by bringing into the public auditorium the sounds of suffering that have been muted both within and without penal institutions. 

Andrew McGraw is an associate professor of music at the University of Richmond in Virginia. He is the author of Radical Traditions: Reimagining Culture in Balinese Experimental Music (Oxford 2013) and Music as Ethics (forthcoming on Oxford 2022). He has co-edited two volumes on Indonesian music: Performing Indonesia, with Sumarsam (Smithsonian 2014) and Sounding Out the State of Indonesian Music, with Chris Miller (forthcoming on Cornell 2022). He has published numerous articles music and ethics as well as analytical pieces on temporality in Balinese, Javanese, and Cuban musics. In Richmond he facilitates community gamelan and kroncong ensembles, and runs a music program in the Richmond City Jail.