Sacrotechnotimbre and the Sound of the Future: Contemporary Praise and Worship Music and the Colonial Ear in Brazil

In this paper, I argue that Contemporary Praise and Worship Music (CPWM) sounds in Brazil function as a form of sonic occupation. Leaning on ethnographic data collected in three megachurches in São Paulo, Brazil, I demonstrate how CPWM sounds participate in constructing a colonial ear in six ways: (1) the disciplining of vocal expressiveness, (2) the (dis)embodied formation of timbre, (3) sacrotechnotimbre as an aspiration to modernity, (4) masculinizing worship sounds, (5) the deterritorialization of the sonic realm, and (6) the commodification of tones in worship. Interpreting these practices through decolonial frameworks of musicoloniality, cosmophobia, and hungry listening, I argue that CPWM soundscapes produce an aesthetic of hyperculture—the detachment of culture from place, history, and land, as described (Han 2021)— that deterritorializes listening environments and detaches listeners from localized cosmologies and land.