In The Archive and the Aural City, Alejandro L. Madrid examines the possibilities for retrieving from the archive sounds that were not meant to be heard. Drawing on Ángel Rama’s notion of the Lettered City, Madrid proposes a notion of the Aural City—a Latin American urban intellectual elite for whom sound and listening are central to the creation, re-creation, and circulation of new types of knowledge. While many of these elites carry forward a nationalistic agenda, Madrid contends that the Aural City’s archives and the ways they are listened to and conceived through sound and music can also help dismantle dominant frameworks of national or colonial culture and build more inclusive spaces for intellectual exchange and political mobilization. From national archives in Latin America and colonial institutions abroad to sound exhibits, instruments, and internet-based archival projects, Madrid demonstrates how the development of urban spaces is understood through sound. In this way, he expands understandings of the archive’s social and sonic power.

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  xi
List of Abbreviations  xv
Acknowledgments  xvii
Introduction. Questions About the Circulation of Knowledge at the Sonic Turn  1
1. Performative Listening, Writing, Reading, and the Assemblage of Archival Constellations  29
2. Patrimony, Objectification, and Representation at Mexico’s Fonoteca Nactional  57
3. Critical Constellations of the Audio-Machine in Mexico and the Performativity of Archiving/Archival Labor  85
4. Things, Sound Objects, and Legacy at the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv’s Konrad T. Preuss Collection  117
5. Mexican Rarities, Disco pirata, and the Promise of a Sound Archive of Postnational Memory  161
6. Aurality, Materiality, and the Carrillo Pianos as Archives  191
7. In Search of the Aural City: Collective Action and the Invisible Sound Archive  227
Epilogue. The Relevance of Archives in Times of Post-Truth: An Essay Against Nihilism in the Neoliberal Age  270
Notes  285
Bibliography  315
Index  341