ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the nexus between listening and cultural production assumes theoretical significance, for it suggests that the commonality is not metaphorical but structural. If this is true, then these apparently heterogeneous situations may be different manifestations of an acoustic ecology whose existence, maintenance, and renewal listening secures. The historical, cultural, and social role listening plays emerges in the phenomenon of echoic mimicry. The locus classicus of cross-cultural collision resulting from European imperialism, Columbus’s encounter with Taino people in October 1492, largely revolved discursively around an ambiguously signifying word-sound, ca. In this way mishearing can be creative: in situations of cross-cultural encounter, where power is distributed unevenly, echoic mimicry can be means by which relatively weak resist silencing, preserving instead degree of historical agency. Even communication that is clear, straightforward, and mutually intelligible may retain traces of this “background radiation” of ambiguity. Auditory space is durational, but it lacks music’s commitment to linear development.
