The Memory of Sound

This book explores the connections between sound and memory across all electronic media, with a particular focus on radio. Street explores our capacity to remember through sound and how we can help ourselves preserve a sense of self through the continuity of memory. In so doing, he analyzes how the brain is triggered by the memory of programs, songs, and individual sounds. He then examines the growing importance of sound archives, community radio and current research using GPS technology for the history of place, as well as the potential for developing strategies to aid Alzheimer's and dementia patients through audio memory.

Seán Street is Emeritus Professor of Radio at Bournemouth University. He is author of The Poetry of Radio: The Colour of Sound (Routledge, 2012). He is also a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4 and a poet, with nine published collections. He lives in Liverpool, UK.

1. Introduction: Echoes and Shadows 2. Tell Me a Story 3. Radio: Feeding the Imagination 4. 'Father of the Man': Radio, Audio and Youth 5. Music Memory: Music in the Moment 6. Ourselves as History: An Encyclopaedia of Sounds 7. Walls Have Voices 8. Saving the Sound, Spreading the Word 9. Holding on to Sounds 10. The Future Sound of Memory Appendix: Radio in the Context of Memory