![]() However, under stay-at-home orders imposed as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, what once was a supplemental mode of communication, performance, and pedagogy, became the only option. At the same time, the teaching of the repertoire via fully digital platforms has become increasingly prevalent among the genre's practitioners. Indeed, various local fiddle associations and independently organized jam sessions rely on social media for organizing and disseminating information. In addition to establishing intersections of trauma and soundscapes of lockdown delivery and maternity wards, this paper proposes new ways for understanding how women's birth experiences have been silenced – not only through a silencing imposed by COVID restrictions, but also through the ways that women, even in shared spaces, can silence each other.Įven though old-time music is practiced mainly as a face-to-face form of social music-making, the genre has adapted to digital pedagogy, virtual performance, and social media. Patients' use of sound technologies will then be further discussed in relation to Steven Goodman's theory of sonic assault, and Marie Thompson's concept of "reproductive sound technologies." The use of sound technologies in these shared wards, I contend, corresponds to Gilles Deleuze's observation of a shift from a form-imposing to a self-regulating mode of power, which he terms as shift from "molding" to "modulation." I frame such testimonies using pain theory by Elaine Scarry and Joanna Bourke, and trauma theory by Judith Herman. ![]() In addition to drawing upon my observations of fellow patients, I consider accounts of lockdown maternity and birth shared on social media (from Instagram to #butnotmaternity on Twitter), and the healing communities formed online. I draw upon my own experience of giving birth in a London hospital in June 2020, and after developing preeclampsia, subsequent week of feeling imprisoned within a maternity ward's soundscape. Music streaming, messaging, and video calls have helped to ameliorate the traumas of delivery and the experience of forced separation from family and friends, as well as to silence pervasive medical technologies and sounds of distress of other patients in situations of shared wards. This paper explores how new mothers during the time of COVID have harnessed technology to mitigate and re-exert control over soundscapes of lockdown delivery and The barrier of face masks stifles personal exchange, and the joyful conversations with visitors have been absent as mothers and babies spent their first days together alone. While beeps and blips of medical equipment – and certainly, the cries of babies – remain, patients and staff have largely been silenced. Modern delivery and maternity wards present numerous human and technological sounds, but the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown of hospitals has variegated these soundscapes.
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