Memories of Captured Song

Exploring Shifting Memories and the Legacies of Music-Making in Chilean Detention Centers through the "Cantos Cautivos" Testimonial Project

Bibliographic Data

ID21836090
AuthorsJesse Freedman (0000-0002-5336-2035, University of California, Riverside, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume16
Issue1
Publication date2022-02-16
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMusic and Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1938-7687 • E-ISSN: 1938-7687
PublisherUniversity of Michigan Library (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.3998/mp.2339
OpenAlexW4213289204
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited15

This article examines the role and potential of the digital archive project Cantos Cautivos (Captive Songs) in the climate of post-dictatorship memory and reconciliation in contemporary Chile. I argue that the site’s flexible and dynamic architecture and its approach to collecting testimonies, which is centered specifically around musical memories, contribute to a dialogic exchange with and critique of state-sponsored memory projects. Through this process, new forms of memory emerge that I describe as “intramemories” and “intermemories,” which are products of exchange both within and beyond the project’s scope. I draw on case studies of two testimonial “corpora” from two of the archive’s most prolific contributors, both of whom composed many songs in detention. With song at its methodological core, I show how this project uniquely contributes to critical conversations in contemporary archival studies around issues of geography, identity, and memory

Aesthetics · Art · Dialogic · Dictatorship · Literature · Musical · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Testimonial · Visual arts · Computer Science · Digital and Traditional Archives Management · Diverse Musicological Studies · History · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access