Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of MSMI

Twenty years ago, Music, Sound, and the Moving Image was launched to provide a space where scholarly conversations could emerge from ‘the metaphorical corridors of others’ buildings’. In their inaugural editorial, MSMI’s founding editors Anahid Kassabian and Ian Gardiner welcomed ‘all kinds of scholarly works on all topics – from foley sound semiotics to videogame soundtrack sales, from silent film theatre-organ practices to theorizations of sounding bodies in installation art, from anime sound editing to Nollywood music styles’. They invited media and film scholars, musicologists and music theorists/analysts, sound studies scholars, ‘and anyone else who wants to enter this compelling conversation’ to contribute to MSMI. Upholding that twofold commitment to diversity of topic and intensity of intervention, the journal’s conversation has since developed into one of the most valued locations of critical thinking about audiovisual media in contemporary academia.

To celebrate this milestone, MSMI’s present editors are delighted to welcome you to this free-to-access 20th-anniversary virtual issue of the journal – a greatest-hits package bringing together its most streamed, viewed, and cited articles and video essays. Topics and issues range from a symphony orchestra’s encounter with South Indian film music to the granular craft of sound in horror trailers, via a fresh look at Godard, poetic video essays, and articles interrogating persuasion, representation, affect, and much, much more. Some of these you could already know; others may be new to you. Juxtaposing the most viewed with the most cited revealed some surprises to the editors, while offering a welcome opportunity to survey and celebrate the hundreds of articles and reviews we have been proud to publish, continuing “this compelling conversation”.

**Sound on Screen V and Re/sounding Visions: Music, Sound, and the Moving Image at 20**

As for the next twenty years, we invite you to join us this summer at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester (15-17 July 2026). Together with the Royal Musical Association’s Sound on Screen Study Group, and more than 90 scholars, we present the joint conference and symposium Re/sounding Visions: MSMI at 20 and Sound on Screen V. Visit the event website for more information and registration details >

The international conference and symposium will take place
at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, from 15–17 July 2026

After two decades in which new media forms (and novel forms of older media) have reshaped our notions of the audiovisual, Re/sounding Visions brings together MSMI editors, members of our editorial board, MSMI contributors, and many other emerging and leading scholars in the field to ask:

· To which important destinations has our conversation taken us in the past twenty years?

· What have we missed along the way that we should reconsider?

· And where should our conversation be compelled to go next?

Following the conference, a selection of position statements, short articles, and video essays will be chosen for publication in Music, Sound, and the Moving Image.

For now, we hope you enjoy this special issue – and continuing the MSMI conversation.

Neepa Majumdar, Leo Murray, and Nicholas Reylan