Patel, Amit Dinesh ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6328-240X (2025) Jaggered. [Composition]

Audio (MP3) (Composition that was also performed live as part of https://www.rmg.co.uk/whats-on/cutty-sark/loudspeaker-orchestra-concert-series-voyages-inaugural-lecture) 51742 PATEL_Jaggered_(Audio)_2025.mp3 - Published Version Restricted to Repository staff only Download (149MB) | Request a copy

Abstract

Dushume – Jaggered

This research-led composition project explores how immersive sound can reframe maritime heritage by animating archival materials through site-specific and studio-based sonic practices. Centred on the voyage records of the Cutty Sark - one of the fastest and most storied ships of the 19th century - the work draws on primary sources from Royal Museums Greenwich, including detailed logs of ports, cargoes (jaggery, myrobolanes, redwood, deer horns), and transactional records. These fragments, rooted in the global circuits of maritime trade and colonial extraction, become the foundation for a multisensory interrogation of sound, history, and embodiment.

The project’s objective is to investigate how experimental sonic practices—encompassing live electronics, spatial audio, and sound composition—can transform archival documents from static records into generative sites for embodied historical reflection. Methodologically, the work adopts a practice-research framework, integrating archival analysis with improvisation and experimental music techniques. Sound motifs are developed through the symbolic sonification of historic cargo data, atmospheric conditions, and oceanic passages—particularly in and around the Bay of Bengal, where the Cutty Sark lingered in Indian waters and stopped at various ports along India’s south-eastern Coromandel Coast between 1880 and 1883.

Informed by critical heritage studies, sound studies, and decolonial methodologies, the project interrogates how global trade routes and imperial circuits are entangled with sonic memory and bodily experience. A deep investment in vibration, low-end frequency sound, and bass culture underpins the work, foregrounding the physical embodiment of music as a mode of felt knowledge. Traditions of experimental sound and noise are harnessed as radical tools for interpretation and reimagining.
Presented at the Loudspeaker Orchestra Concert Series - Voyages, as part of the 2025 AMPS Conference Heritages - Critical Questions, Contemporary Practices, and in partnership with Royal Museums Greenwich, Jaggered models how creative sound practice can offer innovative frameworks for public engagement with contested and complex histories - transforming heritage interpretation through the radical potential of immersive sound and experimental bass and noise cultures. The title Jaggered invokes both the granular stickiness of jaggery and the serrated edges of sonic rupture, anchoring the project in the material legacies of sugar, sound, and colonial extraction.

Bass Below Deck, Sonic Tonnage, Logs & Low End
Bass Cartographies: Navigating the Colonial Archive through Sound
Cutty Bass
Noises of the Nautical Dead

Item Type:	Composition
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Bass Below Deck, Sonic Tonnage, Logs & Low End Bass Cartographies: Navigating the Colonial Archive through Sound, Cutty Bass, Noises of the Nautical Dead
Subjects:	M Music and Books on Music > M Music
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > Centre for Sound and Image Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Design and Creative Industries
Related URLs:	Organisation
Last Modified:	25 Nov 2025 13:23
URI:	https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/51742

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