Listening Hymns | ILYICH

Listening Hymns is a performative spoken word archive.

Tracing ways of listening through the words of artists, musicians, poets, writers, meditators, and activists, the ever-growing selection of voices speaks volumes of the practice of listening through the performative and the sonic.

This choir of voices is performed at Refuge Worldwide as part of ILYICH's artist residency, interwoven with live DJ sets, samplers, and percussion.

In this episode, we listen with Andrew Gouché, the godfather of gospel bass whose devotional groove bridges sacred and popular music; Jacob Collier, the multi-instrumentalist and arranger expanding the possibilities of harmony and collective singing; Oscar Trimboli, author and practitioner of deep listening who emphasizes silence, presence, and ethical attention; and Robin D. G. Kelley, historian and activist whose work on Black radical imagination shows how music, culture, and imagination become forces of liberation and revolutionary dreaming.

This show reminds us that listening can be devotional, inventive, attentive, and revolutionary at once, calling us to hold groove, harmony, presence, and imagination as companions in the struggle for liberation.