Sound x Neurodiversity = A Sonic Superpower?

As a neurodivergent sonic creative and nearly 30 years of working within the creative industries, a son who has HFA (High-Functioning Autism) and a non-binary art student child with ADHD, I have a keen interest in neurodivergence in established and aspiring organisers of sound and how this influences their creations.

My studies in ethnomusicology have led me to ask questions about how researchers, musicians (including the broader definition of sonic artists) and the wider public can understand the impact of neurodivergence on sonic creativity, which appears to be a difficult subject to engage in and disseminate.

Medical ethnomusicology is in its infancy. The Oxford Handbook of Medical Ethnomusicology first published in 2008 notes that it is “the first edited volume expressive of medical ethnomusicology and its potential” and “a new field of integrative research and applied practice that explores holistically the roles of music and sound phenomena and related praxes in and cultural and clinical context of health and healing.” (Koen et al: 2008/2011:3-4) The editors then invite us to “further encourage a new level of borderless discourse and collaboration among those interested in the subject.” (ibid) This handbook compiled by many scholars, addresses the health and healing benefits of music and includes neurodivergent people, but it does not discuss those who contribute to the sonic arts because they are neurodivergent. This appears to be the case within medical ethnomusicology generally. Michael Bakan is the exception in his work with autism in young people (Bakan:2014). However, there is a paucity of investigation in this area, specifically dealing with a gamut of ages, genders and diverse global backgrounds.

The purpose of this paper is to initiate insight and debate into sonic neurodivergence; musicians that could be defined as divergent, and those who identify as neurodivergent creators of music. It will look at what identity means within non-western indigenous sociocultural life and divergent sound creation within their communities. Can we augment existing ethnographic methods with a neuroscientific approach to fieldwork and ontological multi-sited ethnography?

There is a vivid interest in creative neurodivergent thinking, both scholarly and within the general public. For example, fiction writers such as Veronica Roth in her Divergent series of novels have created dystopian worlds based on previous studies and experiments in neurodiversity. Her critics have questioned the idea of identity, class, choice, power and values where the “truth” between those that are considered neurodivergent or neurotypical constantly changes. (Zisk:2019:54)

Divergence, as portrayed in this and other fictional works, are often considered an empowering narrative for those who do not fit in where neurotypicals are significantly privileged. How does this translate into the real world? Do those who identify as neurodivergent feel truly empowered when their divergent attributes are thought of as ‘superpowers’? (ibid) Is this where the power of a creative sonic identity comes in? Stokes wrote: “...[M]usic is socially meaningful not entirely but largely because it provides means by which people recognise identities...and the boundaries which separate them...[M]usical performance, as well as the acts of listening, dancing, arguing, discussing, thinking and writing about music, provide the means by which ethnicities and identities are constructed and mobilised.” (Stokes:1994:5) Should a neurodivergent group articulate sonically an empowering difference between themselves and their neurotypical others?

Understanding sonic neurodivergence

Despite a paucity of literature within medical ethnomusicology on the sonic creative abilities of those who are neurodiverse, there have been substantial studies in “divergent” thinking since the 1950s (Guilford:1959). What does divergent thinking actually mean? According to many scholars, divergent thinking is quite different from what could be thought of as its nemesis, convergent thinking, which is a narrow or linear form of thought and response to achieve a solution. Divergent thinking is a very flexible way of thought to produce many responses which are open-ended and many faceted dilemmas. According to Guilford, divergent thinking is the foundation for creativity because it craves to find concepts without linear boundaries which are shaped by fluidity, adaptability and uniqueness. Since Guilford’s pioneering study of creativity, divergent thinking has endured amongst scholars as a valid component of the creative process (Gibson et al:2009:162).

In 2008 a study on divergent thinking and creativity in musicians was conducted using behavioural and near-infrared spectroscopy to discover the difference in prefrontal cortical activity in the brain between musicians and non-musicians. During divergent thinking tests, greater prefrontal activity was discovered in musicians compared to non-musicians. “Enhanced divergent thinking may indicate a potential for efficient, flexible thinking and the ability to generate novel solutions, which may be supported by increased recruitment of the frontal cortex.” (Gibson et al:2009:168). This backs up evidence found in similar earlier studies in divergent thinking and frontal cortex activity (Howard-Jones et al:2005). Convergent thinking behavioural controlled tasks were also conducted between the musicians and non-musicians by Gibson, Folly and Park and they “observed greater bilateral frontal activation during a divergent thinking task than during a control task in the musicians.” (Gibson et al:2009:168). In addition to these tests, a Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ) was conducted for both musicians and non-musicians (Raine:1991):

A self-report measure, consisting of 74 true-false items was used to assess schizotypy, which is associated with psychosis-proneness in the general population. The reason for including SPQ was that in previous studies (e.g., Abraham, Windmann, Daum, & Güntürkün, 2005; Carson, Peterson, & Higgins, 2003; Folley & Park, 2005), schizotypal personality was associated with increased creativity. SPQ consists of three factors (Raine: 1991) that tap different aspects of psychosis–proneness: Cognitive–Perceptual, Interpersonal and Disorganized. Cognitive–Perceptual factor corresponds to subtle perceptual aberrations and magical thinking. The interpersonal factor is related to difficulties in forming social relationships and reduced social and emotional functioning. The disorganised factor is linked to odd behaviour and odd speech. (Gibson et al:2009:164)

From this test the musicians scored higher on the Schizotypal Personality Scale than the non-musicians but they scored “well within the normal, nonclinical range.” (Gibson et al:2009:165). This could indicate that the musicians were using their schizotypal personalities to their musical creative advantage, without it becoming a problem to their mental health, where they scored high in the Cognitive-Perceptual and Disorganised factors. Artists that show “perceptual aberrations, magical thinking, odd behaviour and speech” in their artistic process have long been associated with highly creative works (ibid).

So how do we bridge the gap between what are largely neuroscientific studies on those who define themselves as sonically minded individuals, and those who are sonically neurodiverse?

Neurodivergence centres on the natural diversity of neurological characteristics, accepting differences in brain structure and function. Part of the wonderful uniqueness of being human is our different neurological development and the creative results that encompasses.

Dr Virginia Carter Leno used music in her recent Divergent Sounds project to give the general public an emotive and immersive idea of the vast diversity within neurodivergent worlds. She explains that:

Neurodiversity is the idea that we all differ in our neurological make-up – namely the way our brains have developed and how they function. These differences mean that we all process information differently, therefore we will all experience the world around us in a different manner. (Leno:2023)

The neurodivergent processing of information differently, contributes to varied sensory experiences, that in turn means that sound is perceived differently across different neurotypes.

Neurodivergence is a concept that is founded on neuroscience and neurodiversity campaigners. This is where the purpose of this paper begins to unfold, and where neurodivergence, medical ethnomusicology and applied ethnomusicology can meet to celebrate the sonic neurodiversity of the world. I would define this as ‘ethneuromusicology.’

So where does this advocacy start? Maybe the best place to start is with identity. Stokes advocated that the creative use of sound is a vehicle where “...identities are constructed and mobilised.” (ibid). So how do those that identify as neurodivergent experience, engage and express themselves through sound? How do they make their cultural mark in the world?

Neurodivergent sonic identity

Robert D. Sheeler, M.D., said “How much gentleness, insight and wisdom would be lost from our cultural heritage if we were to screen out...‘defects’ and narrow the human genome.” (Armstrong 2010:137)

Gloria Lenhoff was diagnosed with Williams syndrome. She cannot calculate very simple maths problems, cannot cross the street by herself and is unable to write her name legibly. Despite having an IQ of 55, she has a perfectly pitched operatic voice, can sing thousands of songs in 25 different languages including Chinese and can play the accordion without being able to read music by just hearing a piece of music once or twice (ibid).

Gloria is a savant neurodivergent case, but historically, what do we know about the sensory perception in neurodivergent brains? There are many examples of musicians who we could perceive as divergent thinkers or have approached sonic creativity from an alternative perspective of making music. The influential jazz musician Miles Davis, also known for his abstract paintings, would use visual ideas for his recording artists before a session. Davis himself said of recording sessions “I didn't write out the music for Kind of Blue, but brought in sketches for what everybody was supposed to play because I wanted a lot of spontaneity in the playing.” (Khan 2000:99)

In a recent interview with Berklee professor of cognition, sound engineering, doctor of psychology and world renowned sound engineer Susan Rogers; I asked her about the years she spent as Prince’s personal recording engineer during the pinnacle of his career and while he was at the height of his creativity. Prince was a “hyper creative”. His brain had the ability to continuously create new music without stopping; regularly working in a studio for nearly 24 hours per day. She said that he had “this broken gate” in his brain that stayed open, and his creative ideas “kept coming rather than processing one idea at a time like most of us do.” She told me about Prince’s epileptic seizures when he was a child, and through her later neurological studies of the medial temporal lobe in the brain, where these seizures originate, and how that can impact the neurobiology of creativity. She said “...[with] folks who are hypercreative there's a couple of circuits there that are deficient and don't have the normal amount of inhibitory action most of us experience, so that kind of illuminated for me so much behaviour from Prince that was hard to understand at the time.” She admits that this is knowledge that would have been useful at the time in understanding how to work with him. Prince hated small talk and fortunately so did Susan, so they were able to work for many hours at a time without even speaking, which suited Prince and his endless flow of creativity (Rogers:2023).

Susan had a similar creative relationship with Talking Heads frontman David Byrne, who identifies as neurodivergent, and who said of himself “I kind of felt like, well, that's my superpower, I can use this in my way...there's things to take advantage of...being alone and focusing on something...and then not knowing anything else that's going on and just kind of zeroing in on that.” (Talkinglegs:2020:0’34”) Susan told me:

I really liked working with him, similar to working with Prince, you could tell that he had a methodology and it was very clear that he was most comfortable as Prince was when his structured environment was predictable. David wanted to know every night before leaving the studio “What time are we starting? And what are we going to do tomorrow?” And he would show up every morning with the three ring notebook with the gridded graph paper in it, and he wrote things down and he was very meticulous in his organisational skills. Boy, did I understand that and I like it. It made great sense to me. If you're a producer, you have to understand what makes the artist comfortable, what brings out the best performance in them...the way his brain works is that the world makes sense when there are rules and there's a method and there's a structure. (Rogers:2023)

After 40 years experience of working with sonically divergent musicians and with neuroscience, Susan concluded at the end of her interview with me that “being yourself is your superpower. That's your strength. That's an asset, not a liability. The fact that you might think differently than others or do something differently, that's what's good about you.” (ibid)

NikNak, the first black female turntablist to receive the Daphne Oram Award, like David Byrne, hyperfocuses. She told me that during a normal live performance she will “zone out”, she is completely unaware of her outside environment beyond her instruments and cannot acknowledge any other interaction. “I thought everybody goes through that, but apparently not.” She says:

And that was a really affirming thing of like, well, yeah, this is the thing that I'm really doing right now and everything else just disappears and I'm doing this. It's a strange sensation to kind of describe to somebody who's like neurotypical, where it's like, yeah, everything else just gets shut out. And I'm in this moment for however long I'm playing, and then like to return to the room as if you've been asleep, and like oh yeah, there were people here. That was a really big thing for me, as well kind of realising that's what that is. (NikNak:2023)

Having seen NikNak perform on several occasions, this is a positive attribute for both the artist and audience. Many neurotypical DJs are distracted during their performance, but seeing a focused turntablist perform, draws you into their artistry and a feeling of reciprocal personal engagement.

Many neurodivergent people have a different sonic experience which can create an artistic advantage, but it can also result in feeling overloaded. Aleah Fitzwater has hyperacusis which means sound is heard louder than for most people, and sometimes the sound can be distorted. Some experience synesthesia. This is when senses become combined. Synesthetes can have a unique symbiosis to sound and see certain colours in music (tone-colour synesthesia), or can taste sounds (Lexical-gustatory synesthesia) or have sonic experiences with different shapes and washes of colour (chromesthesia) (Fitzwater:2022).

I have APD (Auditory Processing Disorder), a form of dyslexia which is a difference in the way I process what I hear, particularly with vocalising, making it difficult to distinguish different sound frequencies within words, remembering what was said and keeping up with speech. In noisier backgrounds some words become jumbled. It also means as a sonic artist I process and create sound in a unique way as well as my ability to hyperfocus.

Many have written about the power of the “desirable difficulties” concept (Sungkhasettee et al:2011). There are plenty of neurodivergent people that have succeeded not despite neurodivergence, but because of it. Learning an easier task doesn’t mean you will advance yourself. Sometimes you will advance because the task is more difficult. That concept puts a line between difficulties which are desirable and those which are not. Difficulties then become bimodal. The choice is ours depending on our outlook for the future. Florence Welch of Florence & The Machine explains:

People would talk as if my songs, my achievements, my career etc. had been achieved despite things like my dyslexia. But I was thinking, might it not be because of those things? I remember and respond to colours and textures, to musical notes, not dates and names. My thoughts are disordered, not especially logical and not at all linear – but that’s okay, they take me to more interesting places. As an artist, I think it’s a self-evident truth that not thinking like everyone else is positive and beneficial. (Universal Music UK:2020:3)

More and more artists are becoming transparent about their neurodiversity and putting their mental health first, but the disparity of understanding between neurodiverse artists and those that take responsibility for the sonic distribution of their work is huge. The music industry has never been the best in dealing with mental health. The more that sonic creatives advocate their neurodiverse identities and desirable difficulties, the more it will have an impact on an industry that largely relies on unique creativity from divergent minds.

Universal Music UK has recently taken action by creating a handbook on neurodiversity in the music industry. “In a supportive environment, disclosure can be a positive and rewarding experience. But if neurodiversity is not talked about, you don’t know whether to expect a positive or negative response to your disclosure.” (Universal Music UK:2020:10)

They admit that freedom to express neurodivergent identity is still a problem. “Many people do not disclose a neurodiverse condition to their employer or indeed are undiagnosed.” Within the creative industries, 77% of employers said adapting to be more neurodiversity-friendly is not a priority for their organisation over the next 12 months. 75% do not have, or are unsure if they have, policies and procedures in place for neurodiversity. 82% do not have an approach to neurodiversity that is separate to their approach to disability. 17% knew how many neurodivergent individuals they have in their organisation (Universal Music UK:2020:12). Florence Welch sees a need for progressive change within the workplace:

It would be wonderful if people could walk into jobs and be honest about how they move through the world. And that the fact they see things differently could be an asset. Because ultimately, wherever you work, and in all aspects of life, the key to happiness and success is an environment where everyone is encouraged to be not only their best self but their true self. (ibid)

When the music industry and its artists recognise neurodivergent assets, it has a big domino effect on the fans and also encourages emerging neurodivergent artists. One neurodivergent fan commented:

I used to hate being autistic once. I used to think I was weird as I got older. I used to wish I could be like “normal” people around my age. I used to be incredibly socially introverted, and hated it. As time passed, David [Byrne] started to help me learn to appreciate those things about myself that I didn’t like. I learned to think that being weird is actually fun, and nothing to be ashamed and/or embarrassed about. I learned to appreciate all of the things about myself that made me unique. I learned to love being autistic.

When autistic people are able to find other autistics who have done many important things and achieved a lot, it makes us feel more proud of our identity, and gives us hope, because so many people make us feel like we can’t succeed in life, and they make us feel like we aren’t capable of accomplishing much. David Byrne is an important role model to the autistic community because of how he sees his autism as a superpower even, and he doesn’t let people bring him down and/or change his views about himself. He doesn’t seem to be afraid to be who he is, and as so many autistic people feel pressured to mask around others and appear neurotypical so we don’t endure ableism, that’s inspiring to us. Seeing that David is also a successful person in the music industry also helps us autistics have hope that we can succeed in life, despite people’s attempts to bring us down and make us feel like we can’t.

We need this kind of representation. We need these role models to look up to, so that way we don’t need to feel bad for being ourselves. (Elder:2021)

Learning from indigenous sociocultural identity

Western culture still has much to learn from indigenous cultures. Fast advancing technology often seems to create a paradox when it comes to the ‘advancement’ of western cultural societies. In the west we are used to self-centred comparisons with each other. This became more evident at the beginning of the twentieth century with the introduction of IQ scoring. However, in many non-western and particularly indigenous communities there is often a culture of group cohesion where the emphasis is on how an individual is seen in relation to his family, tribe or cultural group. The Nyole people in rural Uganda are a good example of not only group cohesion, but assessing the person as whole. Anthropologist Susan Reynolds Whyte observed:

Intellectual cleverness or financial success do not of their own accord become necessary prerequisites for acceptance and respect. The total character of a person is taken into consideration, as is the situation within which a person exists and responds to the world and those around them. In this sense, a Nyole person still has the potential to have a place, a role and social value whatever their individual levels of ‘competence.’(Armstrong:2010:152)

Competency, for the Shona people of Zimbabwe and southern Mozambique is determined by how individuals creatively deal with a situation. They have a proverb: “People with disabilities are clever, they have strategies, they dance whilst leaning against the wall.” (ibid) Likewise, for the Kenya Maasai ‘disability’ is not part of their ontology for classifying people or how they interact. It’s about being human or being a person (oltungani), which for them is to live socially in extended groups where equity, generosity and cooperation are the highest virtues (Talle:1995:56).

As discussed earlier, creative use of sonics can play an influential part in the self-expression of neurodivergent individuals, and can be significant in fulfilling their identity and act as power tools for connecting and negotiating with a predominantly neurotypical world. For centuries, indigenous communities have not only been egalitarian, but have been masters at communicating sonically with each other and their natural environment.

The Kaluli people of Papua New Guinea are excellent examples that highly value their creative use of sonics within their sociocultural life. The level of sound competence is not of interest to the Kaluli. The skills for interpreting and making sounds are naturally acquired by the instruction and encouragement of the adults. Children learn to compose and sing just by socialising. The sounds they hear while socialising and while working in the forests are encouraged by ‘lift-up-over sound’ and they respond to the sounds of their surroundings and environment (animals, birds, insects, trees, tools). The ‘lift-up-over sound’ could suggest a divergent way of interpreting the sounds they hear. Steven Feld tells us that the sounds of the rainforest are a multi-layered soundscape that make activities like harvesting possible. Human singing and sounds are also layers within the natural landscape, not separate from it. The forest sings to them, and they sing back to it. The Kaluli hear everything as a mixed interlocking soundscape, overlapping, dense and layered (Feld:1982,1984).

The musical creations of the Kaluli become a sonic map of the forest that's shared with other humans and non-humans. As the singers move throughout the forest, that sonic map unfolds. The words in the songs are the trunks and branches that mesh with the birds and insects, and map the forest space; they form a collective knowledge among the Kaluli people. This makes them feel deeply connected to these places and to each other. Sound and singing also become tools that traverse time, ecologies and memories of life, death, mourning and weeping (ibid).

This approach to sonic creation based on natural sonic environments closely relates to how many neurodivergent sonic artists, in my own experience, like to create their sonic work. Yet, neurodivergent artists can learn a lot from the Kaluli. Neurodivergent people can often detach socially; hyperfocusing or hypercreativity can become very insular. The Kaluli's divergent ways of using the sonics of their habitat, re-mapping and sharing with their family and community connects them to each other and their environments. For neurodivergent artists, this could be a useful method in helping neurotypicals gain a collective knowledge and an understanding of neurodivergent thinking and being; thus promoting egalitarian identities.

We have much to learn from non-westernised indigenous cultures on how to be ‘human’ in the Maasai sense. Further ethnographic research of global sociocultural and sonically dependent cultures from a neurodivergent sonic point of view are beyond the scope of this paper, but the goal is to extend this research and constructively build on the identity of neurodivergent artists. So what have previous ethnographic models and research taught us and what leverage does that give us?

Ethnographic methods and a neuroscientific approach to fieldwork

Timothy Rice quite rightly commented that ethnomusicology is “constantly being created and recreated through the research, writing and teaching of its practitioners.” Modelling it requires that we disengage from research and ask ourselves “what are we doing?” And, “what ought we to be doing?” (Rice:1987:469)

The seminal model of Alan Merriam in 1964 produced a circular constant of analytical study between cognitive concepts, resulting behaviour and the sonic product. It continues to define ethnomusicology as the study of “music in culture”, “music as culture” and “the relationship between music and culture”. Since then it has highly influenced and increased the amount of scholarly work on sonically sociocultural behaviours. Important to this paper, Rice highlights that one of its core fundamentals, quoting John Blacking, is to “search for ways to relate these behaviours to the ‘music sound itself’” and to find causation and “homologies”. He refers to the influential “social science paradigms” of the biological approaches of Blacking and the ethnoscience studies of Hugo Zemp amongst others (Rice:1987:470).

The groundbreaking fieldwork of Alan Lomax brought us an archive of thousands of songs from hundreds of cultures. Although not exhaustive in terms of defining sociocultural characteristics, it gave a huge insight into the major aspects of song to establish the symbols for the key institutions of society, highlighting why music and the arts are crucial in that they identify and “reinforce the core structures of society.” (Feld:1984:384) Lomax spent many years with his cantometric data, codified ethnography on structure sizes, food systems, male/female roles, child-rearing etc. to find correlations and to see how elements of song style relate to elements of social structure. He said "these stable structures represent patterns of interpersonal relationship[s] which are fundamental in the various forms of social organization.” (Lomax:1962:449) However, his collected data, although key to understanding sociocultural structure, did not take into account neuroscientific characteristics and its impact on song construction and performance.

Marina Roseman’s ‘Fourfold Framework’ took this further, drilling down to the core of how a society not only functions but also how it heals itself. Composed of sound structures, sociocultural meaning, performance and psychophysiological transformation, Roseman explains how music can “trace emotions in motion”, through “cognitively inherent or socially learned patterns of sensory excitation”, and through “imaginary journeys taken as we listen to performances.” (Roseman:2011:29)

The biomedical axis of the framework is explained through her study of the Temiar. Like the Kaluli, the natural sonics of their environment, the high/low pulses of the birds and cicadas are felt within the Temiar and move with their heartbeats. She asks if “sound waves interfacing with human biological rhythms such as heart rate or symbolically and empathetically through imagined metaphors and cultural meanings [are] weighting those sounds.” (Roseman:2011:30-32)

It is well known within neuroscience that dopamine is released into the brain surrounding anticipation of reward. Dopamine “regulates motivation and goal-directed behaviors, playing a critical role in prediction and learning related to future rewarding events.” (Chanda et al:2013:180) This could suggest that Temiar behaviour and reaction to their natural environment and subsequent engagement of the first three axes is also neurochemical. Thus the biomedical axis of the framework would do well to include neurobiological ontology in the understanding of sonic creation, performance and psychophysiological transformation during fieldwork. This inclusion would support further fieldwork in the study of sonic neurodiversity and identity. The Brain Charity’s CEO Nanette Mellor notes that sonically neurodivergent people “seek out dopamine-boosting activities”, are “attracted to the music industry” and “become more experimental within these areas.” (Benjamin:2022)

This takes us back to Rice’s point of what modelling requires of us: “what are we doing?” and “what ought we to be doing?” (ibid). The main reason for this paper is to try and define sonic neurodiversity and its identity. Stuart Hall encapsulates our goal:

...identification is constructed on the back of a recognition of some common origin or shared characteristics with another person or group, or with an ideal, and with the natural closure of solidarity and allegiance established on this foundation. (Hall et al:1996)

Throughout this paper it appears more advantageous to find a portable way of explaining all sonic creative neurotypes ontologically for all to understand rather than to separate neurotypes. What do we mean by that? “An ontology is an explicit specification of a conceptualization. The term is borrowed from philosophy, where an ontology is a systematic account of Existence.” Basically it is“definitions of classes, relations, functions, and other objects.” Making it portable “allows researchers to share and reuse ontologies” (Gruber:1993:1). So maybe to answer Rice’s question “what ought we to be doing”, we first need to collect the relevant data through fieldwork (ibid).

Many studies in neurodiversity have resulted in Venn diagrams showing overlapping attributes from different neurotypes to help understand the correlations of neurodiversity. Roseman used a Venn diagram to help us understand the Fourfold Framework. Using modern ontology editors and multivariate analysis tools such as Protégé (Musen:2015:4), Multinet and Origraph (Nobre et al:2020:1), it is possible to create a more in-depth understanding of collected fieldwork data and displayed in a way that is clearly understood by all neurotypes, whether in alphanumeric, graphical or audio form.

An example of an interactive Multinet multivariate analysis showing relationships between individuals and commonality that can be expanded in detail (Nobre et al:2020:4).

An analysis editor would be utilised to construct a multi-sited ethnographic tool for sonic creatives from a wide range of neurotypes, diverse backgrounds and global cultures. Artists are invited to input sound samples, text, colour and textures that defines them to produce a living, growing and interactive universe. It would aim to help artists understand and identify themselves, their contemporaries and become a valuable tool for researchers. It would seek to take the work of Merriam, Lomax, Roseman, Feld and others a step further into the realms of sonic neural make-up and behaviour.

Without priming, I explained this tool to NikNak during her interview and she quickly responded with “the crackle on a vinyl record, deep bass and changing warm colours in an open space.” (NikNak:2023). Her quick reply gave me the confidence to go forward in further fieldwork studies with neurodivergent musicians. Having a deeper knowledge of the person we want to artistically connect with or are inspired by, will help facilitate our creative processes, form a deeper respect for each other and give a greater meaning to our sociocultural relationships throughout the world.

In conclusion

The purpose of this paper was to initiate insight and debate into sonic neurodivergent identity. By scratching the surface of sonic neuroscience with a few examples of artists and cultures that think divergently, tells us that neurodivergent creators of sound need identity. Where would we be without the movers and shakers within sound and music that think differently? Without doubt and ever more so, we need to take notice of how non-western and indigenous communities operate socially and sonically. Learning from previous and new ethnographic ways of conducting fieldwork that also includes neuroscience is the key to understanding the very being of all neurotypes and creators of sound.

Avoiding or dismissing the neurobiological functioning of ourselves and the other in connection with sonic practice will be to the detriment of our own creative pursuits and enjoyment. Universally, music and sound is, and continues to be the international language of human expression. To understand what that means, we need to have plasticity in bringing together science and sonic creation through experiential experiments in creative cross-cultural fieldwork. Ethnomusicology and neurology can mutually benefit from each other. Indeed, it will strengthen the body of ethnomusicological works and increase interest in interdisciplinary projects with ethnomusicologists.

Despite my own knowledge being sparse in the field, I feel that my deep interest and desire to find answers as to why and how neurodivergent organisers of sound should connect and be represented, will reap a rich knowledge, and draw conclusions towards further study. Enabling discursive debate around this important topic will hopefully bring benefit to all creators of sound, their peers and those that research them. Understanding their craft, how they function within their own world, their very being, how that translates to the audiences they perform for and in turn how they recognise and respect them as artists. Ignorance is the destruction of society. Let us make for a culturally and sonically rich planet. We need divergent thinkers.

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