Sounds of Justice, the fourth series in the Global Campus “To the Righthouse” podcast programme, explores the deep and often surprising connections between music and human rights. Taking inspiration from The Routledge Companion to Music and Human Rights, it travels across genres, geographies and histories to look at the role of music in advancing empathy, solidarity, identity and resistance to injustice.

Aimed at music-makers, change-makers and anyone with an interest in music, social justice and the connections between them, Sounds of Justice is an invitation to listen afresh, to imagine anew and to be moved to action.

The series is hosted by Ignacio Saiz who designed it in collaboration with advisors Angela Impey and Julian Fifer. It brings together leading voices from across the music, social justice and human rights fields, including Manfred Nowak, George Ulrich, Shana Redmond, Rasika Ajotikar, Christina Hazboun, Rachel Harris, Mansoor Adayfi, César Rodríguez-Garavito and Rebecca Dirksen.

This episode explores how listening to the sounds of the more-than-human world – from forests to fungi, from whales to waterways – can help us reimagine our relationship to the earth we inhabit. It looks at the role of music in Indigenous and Afro-descendant understandings of ecology and struggles for environmental justice, including in Latin America and Haiti.

* Rebecca Dirksen

is Laura Boulton Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at Indiana University and co-founder and current director of the Diverse Environmentalisms Research Team (DERT). Working in and around Haiti, Dirksen’s research priorities encompass sacred ecologies, environmental justice, and politically engaged music. She is the author of After the Dance, the Drums Are Heavy: Carnival, Politics, and Musical Engagement in Haiti (2020) and co-editor of Performing Environmentalisms: Expressive Culture and Ecological Change (2021).

* César Rodríguez-Garavito

is Professor of Law and Chair of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law. He is the founding director of the Earth Rights Research & Action (TERRA) Clinic, the More-Than-Human Rights (MOTH) Program and the Climate Law Accelerator. An Earth rights and human rights scholar and a field lawyer, he focuses on climate change, international environmental law, Indigenous peoples’ rights and more-than-human rights.

Sounds of Justice, the fourth series in the Global Campus “To the Righthouse” podcast programme, explores the deep and often surprising connections between music and human rights. Taking inspiration from The Routledge Companion to Music and Human Rights, it travels across genres, geographies and histories to look at the role of music in advancing empathy, solidarity, identity and resistance to injustice.

Aimed at music-makers, change-makers and anyone with an interest in music, social justice and the connections between them, Sounds of Justice is an invitation to listen afresh, to imagine anew and to be moved to action.

The series is hosted by Ignacio Saiz who designed it in collaboration with advisors Angela Impey and Julian Fifer. It brings together leading voices from across the music, social justice and human rights fields, including Manfred Nowak, George Ulrich, Shana Redmond, Rasika Ajotikar, Christina Hazboun, Rachel Harris, Mansoor Adayfi, César Rodríguez-Garavito and Rebecca Dirksen.

The first episode teases out the different dimensions of the relationship between music and human rights. The four guests, all co-editors of the Routledge Companion, explore what the language of music and the values of human rights have in common; and how music’s capacity to connect us to our common humanity while attuning us to difference can power ongoing struggles for justice.

This episode explores how music has been used as an instrument of human rights abuse in different contexts, from torture and ill-treatment in US detention centers in Guantánamo to forced assimilation of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Region in China. It also reveals how music can restore humanity and identity in the face of brutality and erasure.

* Mansoor Adayfi-441

is a Yemeni writer, activist, and former Guantánamo Bay detainee, imprisoned for nearly 15 years without charge. Since his release, he has become a committed advocate for human rights, highlighting the experiences of former detainees and the global consequences of the War on Terror. He is the author of Don’t Forget Us Here and the recently released Letter from Guantánamo. As the Guantánamo Project Coordinator at CAGE International, Mansoor co founded the Guantánamo Survivors Fund (GSF).

* Rachel Harris

is Professor of Ethnomusicology at SOAS, University of London. She has published extensively on music and religious practice in Central Asia, and the politics of ethnicity and heritage in China. Her latest book is Soundscapes of Uyghur Islam (Indiana University Press). Her current project, “Maqām Beyond Nation” (2023-2028) explores maqām-based music-making across Asia, connecting histories of mobility and exchange with contemporary flows of people and culture.

* Manfred Nowak

is Professor of International Human Rights Law at the University of Vienna and Secretary General of the Global Campus of Human Rights. Among many expert functions, he was UN Special Rapporteur on Torture (2004-2010).