3.1. Iván Pequeño – Ahora (1974) ^{Footnote 1}

Composed in the vibrant city of Paris in the year 1974, the piece titled Ahora, composed by Iván Pequeño, stands out as one of the earliest and most significant electroacoustic responses to the tumultuous events surrounding the Pinochet coup in Chile in 1973. Crafted at the esteemed Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), this innovative work intricately layers various political samples, fragmented musical elements and an array of concrete sounds, resulting in a powerful and searing sonic montage that vividly articulates themes of both trauma and resistance against oppression. The title of the piece Ahora, which translates to ‘Now’ in English, draws its inspiration from a fervently shouted phrase that can be found within a passionate speech delivered by Fidel Castro at the Second Declaration of La Habana in 1962, emphasising the urgency of the moment.

The first section of the work presents overlapping layers of a male voice in French, electronic tones and atmospheric textures. The second section (from 04′09″) incorporates sound files of a more markedly political nature, opening with the introduction of a cueca, Chilean traditional dance, followed by the Castro sample with the word ‘ahora’ (04′17″), various machine noises and abrupt percussive attacks that collectively create an immediate sense of disorientation. Pequeño employs a variety of strategies in relation to the sound material that he used. The sampled voice of Castro recurs throughout the composition, serving as a lower-order surrogate as defined by Smalley (Reference Smalley1997), while simultaneously acting as a recurring emotional and political anchor that grounds the listener amidst the chaos. The technique employed in this montage evokes the principles of both musique concrète and agitprop radio; however, rather than merely narrating a sequence of events, Ahora immerses the listener deeply within a chaotic vortex that signifies collapse and despair. The cueca, a poignant symbol of Chilean national identity, is deconstructed as it is sliced, reversed and layered with a dense blanket of filtered white noise, effectively evoking the profound sense of a nation that has been torn apart at its very seams. Devito (Reference Devito2021) identifies this particular form of sonic fragmentation as a compelling method for generating an affective space, positing that sound transforms into the site where the historical rupture is felt viscerally rather than simply explained in a rational manner.

The initial section also includes the voice of Pequeño reciting, according to Albornoz (Reference Albornoz2023), a love poem from Pablo Neruda (from 04′36″), that sounds alienated within the atmosphere of synthetic noises. This at first unrecognisable voice, strongly filtered and reverbered, is a good example of the polyvalence of voice, as if it would be playing with this potentiality. Soon after the voice becomes more understandable, forcing us to wonder if the first voice that we hear is the same but oppressed, as a love in times of war and despair. The striking fact is that even in the over filtered voice that we can’t understand, we still can recognise a voice, and we even try to match both voices, provoking some anxiety in us, something that we need to resolve. From 07′40″ a crescendo develops, leading to a climax of intensity, which culminates (from 09′22″) in the declamation of a single word, first vague and then easily understandable, which is repeated constantly: ‘fusilado’ (shot). The fact that the word refers to the crimes of the military dictatorship is revealed to us at 10′07″, when the names of victims of executions in different parts of the country since 11 September 1973, begin to be read out. The name of the last victim, Elizabeth del Carmen Balarriz, is repeated twice and followed by the sound on an Andean charango (12′25″), an instrument connected in Chile with the political left and especially with the movement of Nueva Canción Chilena. In a last section (from 12′50′″), the Charango, Neruda’s melancholic verses, the French declamation and the name of Elizabeth del Carmen Balarriz, intertwine in a gesture of protest, ending with quotes from Fidel Castro’s speech and his imperative ‘ahora’ and a final cueca. In its structural composition, the work decidedly resists a linear form of progression. Instead, it unfolds through distinct blocks of sound that alternately present moments of semantic clarity and instances of abstract violence. This formal instability reflects the soundscapes of wartime: namely, the compression of time, a distortion of perception and the inevitable collapse of any semblance of a safe listening space (Daughtry Reference Daughtry2015). The result of this innovative approach is what Voegelin (Reference Voegelin2006) refers to as a ‘sonic trigger’ for collective grief, effectively activating the listener’s memory through the employment of intense acoustic gestures that resonate deeply.

Ahora, in its essence, does not strive to represent the complex history of Chile; rather, it fully embodies that history in an immersive manner. According to Smalley’s theoretical framework, the work traverses a pathway from source-bonded morphology into more abstracted morphologies that retain emotional resonance, even as the identity of the original sources begins to fade into the background (Albornoz Reference Albornoz2023). Fugellie (Reference Fugellie, Alvarado and Cárdenas2024) notes that such artistic strategies enable listeners to engage with the material in an affective manner, allowing them to draw upon their own internal reference points in order to complete the historical narrative that underpins the work. Ultimately, Pequeño’s work serves as an early and influential blueprint for what can be considered testimonial electroacoustic practice. It transcends the boundaries of a mere archive; instead, it acts as an aural reenactment that is messy, brutal and unresolved, where the threads of history bleed into the ear of the listener, creating an indelible impact that lingers long after the sounds have faded away.

3.2. Leni Alexander – La vida es más corta que un día de invierno (1989) ^{Footnote 2}

Composed in the year 1989 in the culturally rich environment of Germany as a significant part of Alexander’s dedicated and innovative exploration of the Hörspiel format, the intricate and multifaceted audio piece titled La vida es más corta que un día de invierno – oder Par Quoi? A Quoi? Pour Quoi? (Life is Shorter Than a Winter Day), emerges as a complex electroacoustic radio drama that intricately weaves together a diverse array of multilingual voice fragments, carefully curated field recordings and a variety of sonic transformations to ultimately construct a deeply immersive auditory space that evokes themes of remembrance and trauma. In this work, Alexander juxtaposes two personal traumas: her experience of Jewish persecution during her childhood and youth in Germany, which led to her family’s exile to Chile in 1939; and the events following the military coup in 1973 in Chile, which led to further experiences of human rights violations. The composer skillfully draws upon both her own autobiographical experiences and a broader collective memory in order to create a ‘testimonial polyphony’, reflecting the voices of many (Fugellie Reference Fugellie, Alvarado and Cárdenas2024; Fugellie Reference Fugellie and González2017).

The piece is structured as a sonic collage where personal narratives and historical voices overlap in a complex manner. The radio drama begins with the narration of Discha, a nickname of Alexander in real life. In this first section, Alexander remembers her youth as a Jew in Hamburg, where she suffered discrimination and was a witness of the so-called Night of the Broken Glass of November 1938. This first section is narrated in German and accompanied by a collage of recordings from Alexander’s own works, where instrumental sounds and the voice of a female singer, together with recorded voices of children stand out. From 13′15″ on, we hear sounds related to the bombing of the Chilean presidential house on September 11, and intimidating communications of the Armed Forces. A collage of plane sounds, protests pronouncing the word ‘asesino’ (murderer, 14′35″) and complaints in Spanish are intertwined with Chilean popular music recordings, among them, Mauricio Redolés’ ironic song ‘¿Qué será de mi torturador?’ (What happened with my torturer?) directly alludes to the torturers of the Chilean dictatorship and their impunity. Suddenly, the song leads to a group of voices (16′53″) asking what happened with the torturers. The third section (17′29″ to 24′35“″) returns to the remembrances of Nazi Germany. The narration is again accompanied with art music recordings, representing a more European soundscape. From 24′36″ on, different voices ask about the ones that disappeared as victims of the dictatorship. In a similar way as Pequeño, a recording of the song Para que no me olvides (so you won’t forget me) is intertwined with a list of the names of victims of the dictatorship. The last section (26′23′″) is again dedicated to German memories. This section includes Jewish chants and leads to reflections on memory that can be applied to both cultural spaces (32′18″). Recited in Spanish and German, several voices, among them Leni Alexander herself, point to the importance of memory: ‘We have to remember’, ‘Only memory remains’. The radio drama ends with a melancholic song in yiddish.

Alexander’s use of radio in the piece is both technical and symbolic, with static, tuning noises and silences metaphorically representing disappearance, communication failure or censorship. Voegelin (Reference Voegelin2006) notes these elements evoke lost presences and ungraspable memories. The fragmented language reinforces listening as a reconstructive act (Devito Reference Devito2021). Spectromorphologically, the work alternates between dense textures and silences, featuring granular drones, processed footsteps and harmonic fields from spoken vowels. Smalley’s (Reference Smalley1997) morphological growth concept applies, as materials evolve gradually, mirroring psychological recovery or trauma.

Daughtry (Reference Daughtry2015) highlights wartime listening as an attempt to ‘make sense in an environment where sense has been shattered’. Alexander’s piece captures this, with voices posing questions (‘A quoi? Pour quoi?’), or being cut off, creating intense emotional atmospheres. These narrative gaps emphasise loss and longing. Lisak-Gębala (Reference Lisak-Gębala2023) compares these artistic strategies to documentary poetics, using fragments, metaphor and space for powerful, indirect testimony. Thus, La vida es más corta… transcends dictatorship or exile; it’s a profound sonic portrayal of trauma and survival, exploring memory as a lived, often fractured experience that deeply resonates.

In the terms articulated by Delalande (Reference Delalande2013), the piece elicits a form of empathetic listening: the listener finds themselves emotionally engaged, tracing gestures and echoes that are not entirely comprehensible but are undeniably laden with deep affective resonance. The piece ultimately resists the conventional notion of closure, as it concludes not with a neatly tied resolution but rather with a poignant vanishing act – a fade into static, abruptly cutting off a voice that embodies the complexities of the narrative. In this sense, the work reflects the unresolved legacy of Chilean history, encapsulating the ethical complexity that accompanies the act of listening to the profound pain and suffering experienced by individuals and communities.

3.3. Federico Schumacher – La danza de la protesta (2011) ^{Footnote 3}

More than a decade after the return of democracy in Chile, and in the context of a neoliberal system established by Pinochet’s dictatorship, in 2011, Chile experienced a massive wave of student-led demonstrations demanding comprehensive reform to the country’s highly privatised and unequal education system. Sparked by deep dissatisfaction with structural inequalities inherited from the dictatorship-era constitution of 1980, the movement quickly expanded into a broader critique of neoliberal policy and social injustice, mobilising hundreds of thousands across the country in marches, school occupations and cultural interventions. Federico Schumacher’s La danza de la protesta, which translates to ‘The dance of the protest’ in English, emerges vividly from the intricate and dynamic soundscape that characterised the significant events of the 2011 Chilean student movement, which stands as one of the largest and most impactful grassroots mobilisations witnessed since the pivotal return to democracy in the nation. In fact, one of the leaders of these student movements, Gabriel Boric, is now the president of the country. This compelling composition is crafted using an array of field recordings captured during the fervent protests, and it skillfully blends acousmatic techniques with various documentary materials to construct a composition that resonates with both political immediacy and an immersive sonic experience that envelopes the listener in its layers. The piece initiates its auditory journey with unrefined recordings that encompass the spirited chants, piercing whistles and rhythmic drumming emanating from the bustling streets filled with passionate demonstrators. These raw sounds are subsequently processed, meticulously layered and spatially manipulated to create a richly textured and dense sonic fabric that envelops the listener in its complexity.

Engaging fully with Smalley’s (Reference Smalley1997) model of surrogacy, the composition begins with materials that are distinctly bonded to their sources, such as the vibrant shouts and pulsating percussion for about 30 seconds until a sudden silence and the fade in of a typical protest song of empowerment and defying saying ‘y ya lo ves y ya lo ves’ (literally ‘and now you see’ meaning ‘and thereyouhave’), Gradually, the piece transitions towards more abstract spectromorphologies that include smeared time-stretched rhythms, harmonic resonances and distorted sirens, all of which collectively evoke a profound sense of urgency and the spirit of mobilisation that permeated the protests. All the material used in the piece derives from a question, beginning at 10“53″, that Schumacher poses to the students who were protesting on the streets: ¿Qué te tiene chato? (in English: What has you bored?). The answers, varied as they could be, have in common a sense of detaching to the political classes and their privileges, as the main mark of the big manifestations of 2019 en Chile. All this long section until 12′04″ presents two sound layers, with the answers in the foreground and the noise protest in the background, which is actually activating the sound memory full of objects (drums, horns and shouts) that try to emerge to the fore, as if they were words, but that are immediately absorbed again in the mass. Maybe remembering us that the most cherished needs of the people, represented in the foreground voices, were finally subsumed in noise and void. After some seconds of background protest sounds, at 12′20″, the answering restarts with voices more and more offuscated with the government and the system. The voices begin to overlap one over another as a chaotic chorus of infinite demands with a climax around 14′12″ than after that slows down again giving more space to the voices and subsuming them to the background leading to the abrupt end of the piece with the voice of a lady saying ‘esto ya no tiene nombre, tiene que parar’ (there is no way to name this, it has to stop).

The structural form of the piece mirrors the dynamic nature of protest itself: it builds an intense momentum, reaches climactic crescendos of tension and, at times, recedes suddenly into moments of silence or fragmented noise that capture the unpredictable essence of protest actions. This overarching macro-structure is profoundly rooted in the physical realm, as noted by Cox (Reference Cox2016), who asserts that listeners engage with rhythm and gesture as forms of embodied cognition, and Schumacher’s deliberate pacing of sonic events effectively evokes the physical movements associated with protests, such as marching, shouting and the dispersing crowds.

In addition, Schumacher’s own insightful writings (Reference Schumacher2017) concerning acousmatic gesture and the nuances of listening behaviour offer essential context for understanding this work. He posits that listeners tend to interpret sonic shapes as representations of metaphoric motion – experiencing swells, impacts and accelerations – and within La danza de la protesta, these gestures intricately mirror the dynamics of crowd behaviour, as the voices transition from a state of unity into a chaotic dispersion. The spatial element of the composition is intricately rendered through multi-channel diffusion techniques: the chants emanate from one side, ricochet across the various channels and, ultimately, fade away into silence, creating a rich tapestry of sound that reflects the fluidity of the protest experience. The political charge imbued in the work is undeniably palpable, yet it remains non-didactic in its approach, as it refrains from narrating the story of the student movement; instead, it compels us to hear its presence and to feel its affective power in a visceral way.

The piece aligns seamlessly with the concept of sonic lieux de mémoire, as articulated by Velasco-Pufleau and Atlani-Duault (Reference Velasco-Pufleau and Atlani-Duault2020), which refers to acoustic spaces that serve to store and activate collective memory through sound. Through its intricate and thoughtful composition, La danza de la protesta transcends mere representation to embody both memory and momentum, ultimately asserting itself not as a simple portrayal of protest but rather as a powerful protest manifested in sonic form that invites listeners to engage with its profound significance. This approach allows listeners to experience the protest as a living entity, where sound becomes a conduit for collective memory and action. By immersing the audience in the sonic landscape of dissent, Schumacher’s work emphasises the ongoing struggle for social justice and the resilience of voices that demand to be heard.

3.4. Rodrigo Cádiz – Vox Populi (2023) ^{Footnote 4}

The October 2019 Estallido Social in Chile, initially a protest against a subway fare hike, quickly escalated into a widespread challenge to structural inequality and neoliberal policies. Millions demonstrated, demanding reforms in pensions, healthcare, education and a new constitution. This decentralised movement, marked by marches, art and clashes with police, was a pivotal moment in Chilean history, exposing deep public frustration and initiating constitutional change. This social uprising led, among other things, to the establishment of a Constitutional Convention in 2021, where Elisa Loncón gave the speech used in the next case study of José Miguel Candela.

Vox Populi, a composition by Rodrigo Cádiz, is crafted entirely from field recordings that were captured during this intense and transformative social uprising that took place in Chile in 2019, resulting in a piece that serves as both an acoustic documentation of a pivotal moment in history and an immersive spatial composition that envelops the listener in its audioscape. Notably, the work employs an unprocessed approach, meaning that the recordings themselves remain mostly untouched, only subtly transformed, and they are thoughtfully organised in both spatial and temporal dimensions, allowing for the creation of a surround-sound protest experience.

In this case, the paratext Vox Populi results central for the predicament of the work, giving us a listening key. In this sense, we will pay attention to the voices that move from back to foreground, but also to the morphological features that allow us to think in the complex sound mass of the Estallido Social, as an actual voice. The piece begins with a narrative strategy with something as the locking of a door and the walking of someone going out to the streets, so gradually the street noises become more and more present during the first minute. By 0′45″, a typical percussive protest pattern is recognised accompanied by car horns that come and go for some seconds, to give space in 01′00″ to a strong pattern of high frequency whirling noises that seems to be the adding several sources chaotically of spatialised, filtered by the urban space and potentiated by the electroacoustic chain. In 02′20″, the protest pattern returns to the fore together for the first time with recognisable voices singing hard words against former president Piñera linking him directly with the killings that happened during Pinochet’s dictatorship. In 07′30″, another singing begins of what seems to be a crowd of women marching, focussing attention to the massive relevance of the feminist movement in this particular process. This moment has its own climax and then goes down again, but the voices continue to be heard, as if the listener/recorder is also moving with them for a while, until the women’s voices dispel again in the chaotic wave of timbres, percussions, horns and shouts.

The strong pattern of high frequency whirling noises cyclically returns around 04′00″, 14′15″ and so on, always different but the same, as something that happens or remains in the urban space when all the ‘voices’ sound out loud and at the same time. Maybe that voice that is so disturbing to any political authority anywhere. The listener is fully immersed in the chaotic energy, overwhelming power and raw emotional intensity of the streets during this time of upheaval. The sounds of chants, rhythmic drumming, blaring sirens, the whirring of police and military cars and the vibrant street percussion all come together, each element presented with fidelity and clarity. In this context, Chion’s (Reference Chion1994) concept of causal listening is profoundly influential, as the sounds are immediately recognisable and imbued with significant political meaning and urgency. However, the intricate spatial composition, featuring voices swirling around and explosions traversing through various audio channels, introduces a nuanced layer of reduced and behavioural listening, which encourages listeners to pay close attention to the gestures, scale and proximity of the sonic events unfolding around them. From around 15′00″ to the end, something like a coda is presented, the street sellers, the horns and percussions, a passing crowd shouting undistinguishable demands that finally are subsumed in just this typical protest rhythm that says nothing specific but hopes to have it all. To the very end, the listener/recorder walks away from the protest and closes the door to sharply cut the piece, while some male voice speaks through a microphone in the margins of the chaos, a moderated (intelligible voice) that contrasts with the unspeakable demands of the people.

In numerous ways, Vox Populi resonates deeply with Daughtry’s (Reference Daughtry2015) framework concerning the auditory experiences associated with wartime, as the piece offers no sense of distance or safety for the listener, instead directly confronting them with the stark and visceral sonic conditions of confrontation that usually happens during protests. Additionally, it establishes a connection with Stewart’s (Reference Stewart2022) exploration of the relationship between trauma and sound, wherein sound not only serves to recall traumatic events from the past but also acts as a performative embodiment of those experiences, bringing them back to life once again. Cádiz’s minimal manipulation of raw recordings raises ethical questions. This music isn’t just about protest; it is protest, intentionally curated but un-aestheticised. This approach aligns closely with Lisak-Gębala’s (Reference Lisak-Gębala2023) concept of thanatosonics, which refers to sound that performs themes of death, trauma and survival without resorting to metaphorical representations.

The piece poses challenging and provocative questions: Can we truly listen to the suffering of others without transforming it into something that resembles art? What transpires when sound resists interpretation and instead demands that we bear witness to its reality? Vox Populi does not provide definitive answers to these inquiries; instead, it insists that we confront them head-on. It stands as a powerful sonic monument serving as a poignant reminder that history is not solely found within the confines of an archive filled with documents. At times, it resonates and continues to echo vibrantly within the very streets themselves, where it originated.

3.5. José Miguel Candela – Aquí (a Iván Pequeño) (2021) ^{Footnote 5}

Composed in 2021, Aquí (a Iván Pequeño) was conceived as a dialogic response to Iván Pequeño’s Ahora (1974). While Pequeño’s piece drew on the 1962 Second Declaration of La Habana, Candela structures Aquí around another moment of historical resonance: the speech in Mapudungún and Spanish delivered by Mapuche scholar, linguist and activist Elisa Loncón upon assuming the presidency of Chile’s Constitutional Convention on 4 July 2021. This speech, emblematic of a pluralistic and inclusive vision for the country, served as the sonic and ideological foundation for the piece. In referencing this event, Aquí becomes a meditation on the hopes and contradictions of the constitutional process that sought to replace the dictatorship – era constitution, a process ultimately thwarted by a plebiscite defeat following a campaign marked by disinformation and polarisation. Through its quiet intensity and its focus on voice as presence, Aquí channels the political potential of electroacoustic music not through confrontation but through intimate reflection, reaffirming a shared aspiration for a more just, democratic and intercultural Chile.

The piece begins with a Charango strumming that is a direct musical quotation of Pequeño’s Ahora. This is accompanied by Loncón’s declamation of the word ‘aquí’ (here), used in a similar way to Fidel Castro’s ‘ahora’ in Pequeño’s piece. We also hear a voice polyphony, built on the first phares of Loncón’s speech, that she pronounced in the language of the Mapuche, Mapugdungún: ‘Mari mari pu lamngen! Mari mari kom pu che! Mari mari Chile mapu!’ (Greetings, brothers and sisters! Greetings to everyone! Greetings to the country of Chile!). From 01′32″ a new sound is added that evokes the Trutruca, a Mapuche wind instrument. For several minutes, the soundscape is mysterious, and the different timbres combine without representing a linear progression. At 04′44″, the word ‘here’ reappears, spatially distributed and accompanied by incomprehensible whispers in polyphony. From 07′07“” onwards, a recap is suggested: once again, we hear the Charango and the word ‘aquí’ (here), which now leads into an extensive quote from Loncón’s speech, this time in Spanish. Although the quote sounds like a fluid speech, Candela has made a selection that somehow summarises the main ideas of the speech [our translation]:

We are establishing here a way of being pluralistic, a way of being democratic, a way of being participatory. That is why this Convention, which I have the honor of presiding over today, will transform Chile into a plurinational Chile, an intercultural Chile, a Chile that does not violate the rights of women or the rights of caregivers, a Chile that cares for Mother Earth. […] That is why, brothers and sisters who are listening, a special greeting to the Mapuche lamngen of Wallmapu, this dream is a dream of our ancestors, this dream is coming true. It is possible, sisters and brothers, comrades, to refound this Chile, to establish a new relationship between the Mapuche people, the indigenous nations and all the nations that make up this country. […] For the rights of Mother Earth, for the rights to water, for the rights of women, for the rights of children […] Mañum pu lamngen! [Thank you brothers and sisters] ¡Marichiweu! ¡Marichiweu! ¡Marichiweu! [Ten times we shall prevail].

Candela’s Aquí (‘Here’) presents a transformative departure from conventional norms of emotional expression and spatial dynamics. Instead of focusing on a collective form of dissent or protest, this innovative work delves deeply into the intricate politics of presence, the nuances of voice and the profound nature of intimacy. This composition utilises minimalistic materials, primarily featuring the Charango quote from Pequeño’s work and the sound of Trutrucas. The voice uses as its only source Loncón’s speech of 2021. Loncón’s voice is explored from the perspective of the phonetic possibilities of an indigenous language – Mapudungún, but is also highlighted in different ways as a dissident voice in Chile’s contemporary politics: for Chilean listeners, her voice is not only female and intercultural but also non elitist and embraces as such the ways of speaking of a social class that has been marginalised from Chilean political discussions and official speeches. The piece utilises a whispered, fragmented, looped and transformed voice, not as narration, but as a palpable, enveloping presence. Its fluctuating proximity encourages empathetic listening, shifting focus from literal content to emotional gestures, as described by Delalande (Reference Delalande2013).

According to Smalley’s perspective (Reference Smalley2007), the voice maintains a connection to its origin while simultaneously undergoing spectral transformations that elevate it into a rich metaphorical realm. This vocal material oscillates between the realms of personal address and abstract sound, thereby inviting the listener to fully inhabit a subjective experience shaped by sound. This approach aligns seamlessly with Devito’s (Reference Devito2021) characterisation of sonic sentimentality, wherein emotional resonance is cultivated not through traditional narrative structures but instead through the inherent material and spatial characteristics of sound itself. The conclusion, commencing with the introduction of the Spanish spoken phrase ‘Aquí’, constitutes a definitive culmination, meticulously developed throughout the composition and indeed anticipated through the recurrence of the charango, or a textural element evocative of the charango, which is also a structural element in Pequeño’s original piece.

Through intricate spectromorphological design, Aquí subtly yet precisely crafts emotional arcs. Daughtry (Reference Daughtry2015) highlights how post-conflict listening is shaped by silence and noise. Aquí navigates this tension, exploring what’s articulated versus withheld. The piece becomes a poetic act, bearing witness to a nuanced state of being, connecting with Voegelin’s (Reference Voegelin2006) concept of incomplete, private and affective sonic memory that illuminates absences. The work concludes with an abrupt ‘Aquí!’ embodying memory and identity complexities in a post-dictatorship context. Candela fosters reflection on personal and collective histories through voice and sound.