Arun Sood - Music, Memory and Collage

In this talk, writer and musician Arun Sood will reflect on his critically acclaimed album and book project Searching Erskine, which responds to
the tidal island of Vallay in the Outer Hebrides through the layering of original compositions, oral histories and field recordings. Arun will also
play samples of new music and soundscapes from his most recent project Donn/Dubh, a collaboration with the folk singer Angeline Morrison which explores the colours black and brown in Gaelic songs and stories.

Sood is Lecturer in Global Pre-1800 Literatures at the University of Exeter, with academic interests spanning Sound Studies, Scottish, American, and Caribbean Literatures, Cultural Memory, the Global Eighteenth Century, Practice Research, and the intersections between Postcolonial and Ecocritical thought.  Arun's previous books include Robert Burns and the United States of America: Poetry, Song, Print, and Memory, c. 1786-1886 (a critical study of the song-collector and poet in Global contexts); New Skin For The Old Ceremony: A Kirtan (a 'road novel' exploring notions of home, heritage, and belonging among the South Asian diaspora in Scotland which won the 2024 Kavya Prize for Fiction)