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In an era where playlists refresh by the hour, a new audio series is asking listeners to slow down and listen — really listen — to the ideas that shaped how sound, music and meaning have been understood in South Asia.

Sounding Board, a newly launched audio series, delves into a nearly forgotten archive of Urdu and English writings on music and Islamic sound arts, drawing from essays penned by scholars, poets, critics, and musicologists of the 19th and 20th centuries. The result is less a conventional podcast and more an intellectual listening room.

The essays featured in the series span debates around identity, inheritance and imagination, offering reflections on Indo-Islamic aesthetics through the inshāʾiyah tradition — instead of delivering rigid arguments, these texts unfold as invitations to think, question, and critically engage with how sound has shaped cultural life in the region.

The project is narrated and produced by Ali Raj, an award-winning journalist and PhD candidate at Columbia University, whose research focuses on the intellectual history of sound and aesthetics in the Indo-Islamic tradition. For Raj, the series is as much about recovery as it is about reimagining.

“The goal is to bring to life ideas about music and sound that will help restore connection with our sonic and literary heritage,” he says.

The series is available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Sounding Board has already released its first season, with a second nearing completion. Episodes range widely in scope, from Pakistan’s first patriotic song in 1946 to the traditions of naat and tarannum recitation.

Each instalment features a complete reading of the original text, interwoven with archival recordings of songs, recitations and performances. Detailed accompanying write-ups provide context on the authors and the historical moments in which their essays were written.