Editor's note

Abstract

In the fall of 2025, I put out a call for Soundworks submissions on the theme of "Listening to the Land." The call invited sound pieces and accompanying essays that explore listening and sound making in relation to the lands of so-called British Columbia. Submissions were welcome from various areas of study and cultural perspectives and could take the form of narrative or non-narrative voice, music, soundscape, storytelling, collected or created sound or noise works. The call was broad, but held at its core the potential to grow discourse around ecological and decolonial subject matter through sound as a way of knowing. I am grateful to the practitioners who submitted works which demonstrate how active listening in specific times and places are critical to building relations with land and communities of human and more-than-human kin.

This Winter 2025/26 issue of BC Studies includes two Soundworks. The first is a field recording by Noe Rodriguez made during the early Covid-19 pandemic and featuring the acoustics of intertidal life at Okeover Inlet, a moment and place of sonic richness audibly relieved of anthrophony. The second is a soundscape recording by George Rahi inside the Bloedel Conservatory of a dawn chorus from the tropical bird inhabitants accompanied by the sounds of the building's infrastructure, reminding listeners of systems of extraction, containment and control of more-than-human life for entertainment and profit.  

I am excited to publish this new series of Soundworks that invites readers to consider their own listening practice, to seek out times and places that offer possibilities to attend to what the land is saying.

—Julie Andreyev, Associate Editor - Soundworks