Decolonial movements and postcolonial theory have long debated the possibilities and hazards of using ideologies and strategies implicated in colonialism, acknowledging their affordances while warning of their pitfalls (Chatterjee 1986; Fanon 1961; Mignolo 2000; Quijano 2007). The Basque Country is a stateless nation on the Iberian Peninsula that has long resisted outside domination and music is one way in which Basques develop alternative visions for their future. In this project, I examine the repertoire, imagery, and performance techniques of the all-female Basque pop band Neomak, a group who began as back-up singers and percussionists in a project called “Kepa eta Sorginak” (Kepa and the Witches). In the Basque Country, the colonization of consciousness has occurred through restrictions and impositions upon the Basque language and through the portrayals of, and associations with, sorginak (“witches”) and other pre-Christian Basque figures. Through an in-depth examination of their eponymous 2022 album and a 2026 live concert, I explore how Neomak’s use of and promotion of the Basque language and Basque cultural autonomy through auto-exotification, sexualization, and the mannerisms, structures, and formulas of global pop music is not an anticolonial attempt to “dismantle the master’s house,” but rather an attempt to use “the master’s tools” to build their own home (Lorde 1984, 112). I seek to reveal how ethnomusicological research can offer insights into the difficulties of enacting meaningful change to oppressive systems and highlight the ways in which such actions can still be powerfully positive.

Ukrainian witches take many forms. One commonality that rises from their diverse practices is their ability to reach across the boundary between worlds. Like Baba Yaga’s one leg of bone and one of flesh, the Ukrainian witch straddles the boundaries between life and death, civilization and wilderness, the everyday and the supernatural, as well as the self and the other. Barbara Creed argues that such depictions of “monstrous” femininity can be wielded with the intent of challenging the patriarchal symbolic order and seeking alternative modes of being (2023). Others note that witchcraft serves as a last resort when one has no other recourse against oppression (Boudovskaia 2017; Kivelson 2013). This paper examines musical representations of witches in the works of Ukrainian singer and rapper Alina Pash during Russia’s war on Ukraine. My analysis demonstrates that, by using occult symbolism and folk belief to oppose Russia’s hegemonic claims, Pash’s music challenges colonial notions of ownership, belonging, and monolithic cultural and linguistic unity that have served as Vladimir Putin’s justification for the war. While Pash roots much of her work in Transcarpathian diversity, her sound is also internationally engaged, informed by collaborations with multiple international artists, genres, regional instruments, and languages. In this way, Pash’s witches contribute to a rich and diverse Ukrainian musical landscape whose lineages and solidarities can be traced both locally and globally. She displays the creative and political potential of crossing and dissolving sonic boundaries of identity and belonging that patriarchal aggressors seek to manipulate in their favor.

Building upon Akhil Gupta’s theories on urban decay, this paper positions urban soundscapes as a continuum of decay and ruination that shape acoustic experiences and reconfigure one’s orientation in place. Through soundwalks of abandoned environments in Dallas, Texas, I examine how the acoustic dimensions of derelict environments facilitate a mode of perception shaped by acoustic hauntings, uncanny atmospheres, and remnants of past human activity. Rather than treating abandoned and ruined soundscapes as static backdrops, I view urban soundscapes through Tim Edensor’s theory that ruined environments are dynamic, arguing that abandoned places function as ever-evolving acoustic fields marked by constantly shifting spatial and temporal horizons. Defined by the mnemonic traces of their former lives and the remnants of material environments that dwell within them, ruined places function as continuously evolving loci of collective memory, where temporality and spatiality collapse, creating a fragmented phenomenological experience of overlapping acoustic fields. By viewing urban soundscapes through the lens of ruination and decay, we can begin to understand how these auditory environments function as a process, rather than a location where sounds and silences are collected. This paper challenges the dominant human-centric assumptions of placemaking by demonstrating how soundscapes evolve beyond human habitation, resulting in an uncanny discord between their past lives and unrealized future horizons. By recentering acoustic experiences around displacement, absence, and loss, this phenomenological framework reconceptualizes the human relationship with sound, place, and temporality in contemporary urban soundscapes

Hantu (ghosts, spirits and/or demons in the Malay language) occupy an important place in Malaysian traditional belief and contemporary popular culture alike. From Malaysia’s significant production of pontianak (female vampire-ghost) films to infamous real-life instances of demon-induced mass hysteria in young women and girls, hantu have also come to represent Malaysia internationally, on and off the screen. This paper connects the changing role of spirit entities in postcolonial Malaysia with shifting local attitudes toward music and sound. I explore how music and sound are still today used to summon, negotiate and repel hantu as well as what these entities themselves “sound like” to modern Malaysians—following anthropologists such as Aihwa Ong and Emily Ng in taking ghosts seriously as an object of research. Indeed, while spirit possession, folklore, and belief in the supernatural are well documented in anthropological texts on Malaysia, and representations of such entities are an emerging topic in screen, media, and film studies, scholarship focused on music and sound in this area is relatively scarce. Working across texts in music and sound studies, hauntology, screen studies, postcolonial studies and folklore studies, I use ethnographic data collected in two fieldwork periods in 2025 to discuss the place of hantu in contemporary Malaysia. Through conversations with Malaysian musicians in both traditional (mak yong, wayang kulit) and popular music contexts, I argue that attitudes toward hantu are inextricably linked to music and sound’s subjugated and heavily-regulated place in Malaysian society.