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).

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.

Music has been central to how people of African descent – in the United States and across the diaspora – have imagined and demanded justice . From Paul Robeson and Nina Simone to the present, this episode listens in on iconic anthems that have carried, shaped and mobilized movements for Black lives.

* Shana L. Redmond

is a multimodal writer-creator and scholar. She is the author of Anthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora (NYU Press, 2014) and the award-winning Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson (Duke UP, 2020). A Guggenheim Fellow and Grammy nominee, she is professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity & Race at Columbia University in the City of New York.

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 roleof 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.

About the host

Ignacio Saiz is a human rights advocate and independent advisor to international organizations. He previously led the Center for Economic and Social Rights and held senior positions at Amnesty International. A lifelong passion for music has led him to explore how its power can be harnessed to advance human rights, including as creator and host of Sounds of Justice.

* Julian Fifer

is former Executive Director of Musicians for Human Rights. As cellist and founder of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, he conceived a method of orchestral music-making using democratic principles and collective leadership. The artistic outcomes have been documented by Deutsche Grammophon on 55 Orpheus recordings.

* Angela Impey

is Emerita Professor of Ethnomusicology at SOAS, University of London and co-editor of the Routledge SOAS Studies in Music series. She has published widely on music and social justice in Africa, including the award-winning Song Walking: Women, Music, and Environmental Justice in an African Borderland.

* Manfred Nowak

is Professor of International Human Rights Law at the University of Vienna and Secretary General of the Global Campus of Human Rights, a network of some 100 universities in all world regions, based in Venice.

* George Ulrich

is Academic Director of the Global Campus of Human Rights (Venice, Italy). His research interests relate to the philosophy of human rights, global justice, and human rights and development cooperation.

Politics and human rights or politics through human rights?

We conclude this series with a conversation with Anja Mihr* focusing on the difference between ‘politics and human rights’ on the one hand and ‘politics through human rights’ on the other. Join us as she discusses with Graham Finlay the following questions: How can we safeguard democracy, freedom and human rights from threats? What role can re-imagined politics play in young democracies? What leverage, if any, can new ideas of politics have in authoritarian states?

*Anja Mihr is a political scientist, academic supervisor of the Master of Arts and Human Rights and Sustainability in Central Asia, and founder and Programme Director of the Centre on Governance through human rights at the Berlin Governance Platform.

On the relevance of meaningful participation of stakeholders in politics

One way to reimagine politics is to go through re-imagining the actual involvement of different actors. We talked about this with Gauri Van Gulik* who shared her insights with George Ulrich. Here are some of the questions you can expect to hear in the episode: How can we create spaces and resources in our communities for meaningful participation in politics? How can change makers define the political agenda and reshape the political space in a more humane, inclusive way? How to overcome polarisation in politics? How to re-engage youth in politics?

* Gauri Van Gulik is the co-Founder and Chair of Multitudes Foundation and has been human rights researcher and advocate in organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Gauri is also an alumna of the European Master's Degree in Human Rights and Democratisation, from which she graduated in 2006.

About the interplay between geopolitics and human rights

Current geopolitical tensions play a very relevant role in politics, but what is the role of human rights there? To answer some of the questions surrounding this highly debated issue, we invited Karim Bitar* and covered some additional points: What role do or should human rights play in current geopolitical tensions? How can political change movements in the Global South address the inefficacy of international organizations and global governance mechanisms? Is there any space for inclusivity, cultural sensitivity, and awareness of power dynamics into conflict resolution strategies?

*Karim Emile Bitar is Associate Professor of International Relations at Lebanon's Université Saint-Joseph (USJ) and Associate Fellow at the Geneva Center for Security Policy (GCSP). He was Director of the GC Arab Master in Democracy and Human Rights from 2018 to 2023.