PANEL 1: Politics of Listening

CHAIR & DISCUSSANT
Isabel Frey

Senta Hirscheider
HUMBLE LISTENING TO THE FREQUENCIES OF EMPIRE

Cristina Sá Valentim
ENGAGING WITH SOUND THROUGH ALTERNATIVE MODES OF LISTENING: A DECOLONIAL APPROACH TO AN ANGOLAN FOLK SONG RECORDED IN THE 50S DURING PORTUGUESE COLONIAL RULE

Hippocrates Cheng
A CURATED LISTENING SESSION – ECHOES OF DISPLACEMENT: REVOICING CHINESE DIASPORIC SPEECH AND SONG IN THE UNITED STATES AND AMERICAN ARCHIVES

Isabel Frey is an ethnomusicologist, Yiddish singer and a post-doctoral researcher and Senior Artist at the Department of Folk Music Research and Ethnomusicology at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (mdw). Her research explores Jewish music and diaspora, music and minorities, memory culture, music and protest, gender and queer studies, voice and sound studies and arts-based methodologies. She is currently working on her first monograph Voicing Yidishkayt: Postvernacular Folksong, Archival Afterlives and Diasporic Belonging, which is based on her PhD dissertation on contemporary transmission of Yiddish folksong and the political dimensions of the Yiddish voice. In 2023, she spent a semester as a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University. In addition to her academic work, Frey is an active performer, having released several albums of Yiddish music, and curates the KlezMORE Festival Vienna for Jewish music. She is co-editor of Standing Together: Jewish and Palestinian Voices for a Just Peace in the Middle East (I. Frey, N. Sayegh, eds., Vienna: Mandelbaum, 2025).