Archive and the Aural City

Alejandro L. Madrid is Walter W. Naumburg Professor of Music at Harvard University and the author of several books, including Tania LeÓn’s Stride: A Polyrhythmic Life and In Search of JuliÁn Carrillo and Sonido 13.

• List of Illustrations xiList of Abbreviations xvAcknowledgments xviiIntroduction. Questions About the Circulation of Knowledge at the Sonic Turn 11. Performative Listening, Writing, Reading, and the Assemblage of Archival Constellations 292. Patrimony, Objectification, and Representation at Mexico’s Fonoteca Nactional 573. Critical Constellations of the Audio-Machine in Mexico and the Performativity of Archiving/Archival Labor 854. Things, Sound Objects, and Legacy at the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv’s Konrad T. Preuss Collection 1175. Mexican Rarities, Disco pirata, and the Promise of a Sound Archive of Postnational Memory 1616. Aurality, Materiality, and the Carrillo Pianos as Archives 1917. In Search of the Aural City: Collective Action and the Invisible Sound Archive 227Epilogue. The Relevance of Archives in Times of Post-Truth: An Essay Against Nihilism in the Neoliberal Age 270Notes 285Bibliography 315Index 341

“The Archive and the Aural City showcases Alejandro L. Madrid’s erudition, theoretical curiosities, and rigorous research. Madrid not only makes key arguments that will shape new directions of Mexican and Latinx sound studies, he provides an overdue and pointed intervention into a tradition of Latin American critique that has prioritized the lettered and the visual as the primary drivers of nation-building. This book is a crucial addition to how sound, music, and archives are studied.” - Josh Kun, editor of The Tide Was Always High: The Music of Latin America in Los Angeles “A significant and thorough study of sound archives and the institutionalization of sound in post-revolutionary Mexico, The Archive and the Aural City is an outstanding work that accounts for both the role of aural archives in the understanding of modern culture and the significance of sound in the development of cultural memory. Alejandro L. Madrid interweaves paradigmatic conceptual work on the archive and on sound with key Latin American interventions, and his bold theoretical and historiographic expansions make this book important for those thinking about sound and archives globally.” - Ignacio Sánchez Prado, author of Strategic Occidentalism: On Mexican Fiction, the Neoliberal Book Market, and the Question of World Literature