Special Issue Musicology on Screen: Editorial

It is with great pleasure that we share with you a special issue devoted to Musicology on Screen, co-edited by Dr Estrella Sendra, and guest editors Prof Barley Norton (Goldsmiths, University of London) and Dr Joseph Owen Jackson (SOAS, University of London). A key motivation for this issue was to provide a space to nurture the unique potential of artistic audiovisual research and to contribute to the production of knowledge in ways that expand the scope of the written text alone. We were especially interested in enhancing multidisciplinary approaches to sound, music and practice research by bringing together practice research on diverse screen media at the intersection between sound and image and in dialogue with the written word. This multidisciplinary emphasis is evident in the collaborative editorial approach, with editors bringing different research expertise across different disciplines: Estrella Sendra’s creative research on festivals and film with a regional focus in Senegal; Barley Norton’s musicological research and filmmaking experience in Vietnam; and Joseph Owen Jackson’s research on transatlantic digital media, with a particular focus on Afrodiasporic audiovisual art’s intercontinental movements back and forth Africa, America and Europe. Having just pioneered an Accessibility policy, at Screenworks we were also concerned with broadening and diversifying the scope of published work, with regard to the regions represented and the voices engaged, from researchers to reviewers and readers-viewers-listeners. While fully aware of the long road ahead in this respect, we are delighted to be publishing seven practice-research works concerned with diverse music cultures across the globe. We are equally grateful to all peer reviewers, also from across different continents, for their close engagement with the work, as the first viewers, listeners and readers for this Musicology on Screen special issue.