O Brian sounding and silencing ethnicity

Stokes proposes two ways of remodelling approaches to ethnicity and, more broadly, social identity
in relation to music that might enhance the impact of our studies. First, he suggests one path beyond
the binary structural-functionalist models of Self/Other… His second proposal is that a greater
appreciation of how emotion shapes personhood and identification could invigorate the ethical
dimensions of research on music, identity and place. 8

Rice found that the most common types of social identity examined were ethnic and national

Other forms of social identity such as gender and sexuality .. or in relation to topical issues such as
the commodification of culture in touristic settings 9

This ghettoization of the minorities into separate research categories and distinct styles and genres
of music is ostensibly intended to celebrate and preserve their cultural heritage. But when these
sonic artefacts are dissected and translated on paper using ethnocentric methodologies only
fragments of their distinctiveness are made legible; other incompatible parts are silenced 10

How large scale social formations such as ethnicity and nationality are experienced through the
presence and absence of musical sound. The authors take ethnicity as a fluid form of social identity
that is used discursively by musicians and listeners as a means of hearing the “world of personal
identity collectively ratified and publically expressed”

Reframe our approaches to social identity by inscribing and theorizing forms of localized ethical
listening

Understanding the politics of identity by examining the auditory experience of ethnicized musical
sounds

Sylvia Nannuonga Tamusuza The audible future

Repatriation generally refers to the return of peaole to thei country of citizenship culturally affiliated
human remains, sacred objects, and artifacts to their communities of origin.

Sound repatriation involves very different sets of issues from object repatriation, but they share
important similarities.

What is being presented to these communities of origin is not the music per se, but the medium or
vehicle to reproduce those sounds that occurred in a particular time and place.

A living museum by employing musicians as museum attendants who could also play the instruments
(Uganda) ((bangalore Indian music experience))

The three “conflicting directions” comprised (1) [music that expressed] “pride in local identity,” or
music specific to a particular ethnic group (tribe); (2) [music] “belonging to community of man,” or
music that could be compared to other music (in terms of, for example, tunings, scales, and formal
organization); and (3) “doing justice to each tribe” in order to represent the vast musical diversity of
Uganda.

People recognized the value of preserving their old songs on recordings that would be stored in
museums because, unlike other forms of cultural property, a recording has the added benefit of
being heard by many people in different places simultaneously. In contrast to items that had been
taken away or stolen from communities of origin, people offered their songs and stories freely

Who decides where the original discs should be stored? This raises another question that lies at the
heart of colonialism and anti-colonialism: can Africans self-govern?

Repatriating to an archive in the country of origin, as described in the previous section, is clearly
different from bringing the music back to the communities of origin.

After listening to the recordings, the majority of musicisans were eager to be recorded. They were
impressed by the fact that the voices of their ancestors could be heard, and the musicians were
encouraged by the fact that, even after sixty years, their voices might still be heard in the audible
future. All musicians signed consent forms, which clearly stipulated the educational and non-
commercial use of the recordings.

Indigenous fieldworker noted that the act of doing fieldwork has changed their relationship with
people in their home villages.

Sound repatriation foreground the needs of indigenous researchers and educators, musicians, and
descendants of those recorded. Sound repatriation projects provide a space for evaluation,
commentary, and critique of archives and field recordings in ethnomusicology.

Repatriation will contribute to the documentation of Uganda’s rich musical culture and will help to
establish ongoing relationships among culture workers and communities.

The recordings represent not only a way for people to reconnect with the past, but also a way to
imagine a more sustainable audible future.

I have a question or a sort of concern, about the forced preservation and defence of the musical
items against the changes the naturally occurs. Giving that culture and art are a living thing, and that
they are dynamically changing over time, is there a risk of museumization of culture, overvaluing
what was the past over the present? And maybe altering the natural course of events from the
musical perspective, somehow fetishizing those items?

Lipman Cumbia sonidera

Sonideros make audible the names of people who may in their everyday lives be invisible

How can one listen to immigration?

A sonideros’ performance becomes a means for sending someone messages, for letting her know
that she is remembered, that her name was voiced. Cumbia sonidera is a memory device.

Steven Feld coined the term “acoustemology” – which combines “acoustics” and “epistemology” –
to theorize a sonic way of knowing and being in the world. Feld notes that the type of knowledge
which “acoustemology tracks in an through sound and sounding is always experiential, contextual,
fallible, changeable, contingent, emergent, opportyne, subjective, constructed, selective
Producing a music compilation elicited stories about how people remake sound reproduction
technology to communicate, remember, and make present across borders through practices of
listening and voicing.

Hawaian Hula

Performers maintain older repertoire alongside contemporary creations, for older repertoire
preserves expressions from past times. Performance constitutes not only instances of
communication but also, over time, recollection and commemoration.

Who a people are as a corporately social entity is shaped by what they remember of the past, how
they explain themselves into being, and how they generate historical narratives in order to
memorialize who they and their forbears are.

By providing a basis for revisiting historical understandings, these materials offer a way to begin
decolonizing knowledge.

Recovering the poetic repertoire makes possible the re-membering of what poets of the past wanted
or needed to express.