Faculty Snapshot: Kevin Fellezs

Tell us about your work.
I am currently researching the impact of human activity as registered through sound in the Pacific Ocean on marine mammals (e.g., the effects from the use of dynamite and sonic blasts from meter-long air guns in the fishing industry). I am also wrapping up a book on smooth jazz, which is the first book of a trilogy, along with books on psychedelic soul and soft rock, so I’m not completely abandoning music!

Tell us about a book that you have read recently and would recommend.
An amazing book I’ve read recently is Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction by eminent biologist David George Haskell. Written in an accessible style, Haskell demonstrates through scientific research the ways in which sound and aesthetics are fundamental to biological life, from single-celled bacterium to plants and animals. In his attentiveness to sound (he listens to everything from pop to experimental music and also seems to be able to differentiate bird song), Haskell warns us that the decreasing variety of sounds and sound-makers is having a deleterious effect on the shared biosphere we call home.

What have you been listening to lately? Can you recommend a podcast, album, or artist?
I have been listening to the music of Japanese musician Haruomi Hosono lately. I think he’s a genius, which is a word I usually hesitate to use. Anglophone music fans may know him as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra, a band that included Ryuichi Sakamoto. Hosono’s music is incredibly varied, from his 1970s rock band, Happy End (one of their songs is featured in Sophia Coppola’s film, Lost In Translation), to the proto-techno music of YMO, ambient music, retro-lounge music, (U.S.) country music, exotica, pre-WWII jazz, and French chanson, among others. For those new to him, I would recommend starting off with his 1973 debut solo recording, Hosono House, but, really, anything by him is worth checking out.

To learn more about Dr. Fellezs's work, please visit his website.