Music, Sound, and Genocide Studies
How should the relationship between music and mass atrocity be studied?
Emerging around the cultural turn of the 1980s and 1990s, sound studies is another way to move historical research away from institutional actors and toward culturally encoded events. As such, the discipline contains strong links between history and a number of other fields, most prominently: anthropology and musicology. The first initial study of sound in the west, was R. Murray Schafer’s The Tuning of the World where he coined the term “soundscape” and reflected on the changing sounds of civilizations as indicative of sociological change.[1] Schafer considered sound part of technological advancement, and in analyzing sound put human technological advancement in dialogue with natural sounds. The idea of “scapes” was a pervasive link in early sound studies, often linking “soundscapes” to other “scapes” including those proposed by Arjun Appadurai. Soundscapes as an initial realm of sonic inquiry were therefore sociological, political, and phenomenological. Jaccques Attali, for example, critically links sound, music, and all sorts of noise to a political economy and assertion.[3]
However, these methods of inquiry were in many ways ahistorical, relying on sociological sampling and failing to consider sound as a form of testament or social history. Sound was still largely presented as an element of cultural anthropology. Like much of the initial cultural turn, sound studies in the West was largely white, Eurocentric, masculine, heteronormative, and able-bodied (ignorant of the deaf community, for instance).
To truly consider sound studies as a 21st-century discipline, we must synthesize non-Western perspectives and consider other living knowledge as part of the sonic framework. Like anthropology, sound studies are inherently entangled with colonialism, wherein sounds, like culture, are coproduced between Indigenous communities and their colonizers. Understanding this dialogue—and refocusing and reframing the assertion of communities—is a direct threat to existing colonial frames.[4]
As Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o writes, the politics of the performance space itself are inherently political. The structures of sound in performance—who the performers are, what they are enacting, the audience, and the hidden knowledges put on display—are all exercises of power that involve sound.[5] Rather than simply considering sound as an entanglement with political or sociological scapes as defined by Appadurai, we should consider the (re)articulation of cultural nationalism, as suggested by Desai, wherein states themselves are comprised of cultures or nations of people that are fundamentally cultural.[6]
A number of texts since the 1990s have engaged with other sound worlds, including the landmark book by Jonathan Sterne, The Audible Past, which clearly argues for the need for a literally heard narration of history and the inclusion of sound as an artifact in historical records.[7] Similarly, an edited volume by Novak and Sakakeeny presents several case studies from Asia, Africa, and South America, showing diversity in soundscapes and how we consider sound.[8]
There are four key areas to define sound studies and chart its path forward. First is definitional, setting sound studies within other historical considerations, most notably power. Second is to problematize the concepts of music vs. sound and the term “ethnomusicology.” Third is to consider music as testament and the Aesopian or structuralist meanings contained within. Finally is to consider the voice itself, a subfield of sound studies, and the meaning of sound when corporeally enacted.
In defining the field of sound studies, we are inherently “rehearing” the archive. Without recorded sound, the documentation of sound is highly perspective-driven by those creating documents and recorded in non-aural forms such as writing. This perspective holds even when recording sound, as microphones and other technologies do not fully capture the soundscape but rather record from the point where they are set, much like the point of view of an image.
The landmark book Aurality by Ochoa-Gautier addresses this extensively, considering sound and hearing as power structures. Her hierarchical analysis reveals a similar hierarchy in the archive, where certain voices are prioritized and sonic testaments, like other colonial literature, completely omit the subaltern.[9] Aurality is the first book of the “auditory turn,” where we consider spaces as complete scapes, rich with oral and aural histories that shape scenes. Sound and music are artifacts, and Ochoa-Gautier moves away from purely Eurocentric considerations to include diverse perspectives of Indigenous peoples and ethnographers alike.
Gautier explicitly builds on the work of Michel-Rolph Trouillot and the multiple perspectives of Sans Souci, expanding on his claim that we are both actors and narrators in history to the literal sense in which we vocally animate history.[10] Sound studies and their anthropological roots are also inherently linked to language. Therefore, part of the analysis is to read “against the grain” and consider the multifaceted meanings of music beyond what is heard.
We can hear different levels of meaning in music as in text, as both Lévi-Strauss and Barthes claim. We can also hear the race of the voice and ascribe societal meaning in musics that contain vocality.[11] Sound is another historical document revealing power structures and offering insight into communities as well as individual assertion. Sound is powerful, as the archive of sound taken from Indigenous people and commodified or fetishized in the West is dehistoricized, as we see in classical music.
One difficult area to parse, is the distinction between “music” and “sound”. One problem is with the discipline of “ethnomusicology”: an discipline entangled with the colonial project, intended not to reinforce those colonized, but to dismantle knowledge systems of the colonized.[12] This misrepresentation and epistemicidal project denies communities their agency, a process called “ethnographic refusal” by Ortner.[13] Music is encoded, just as other knowledges are encoded, language for example, for European consumption.[14] “Ethno” musicology defines an explicit other, wherein the primary “music” which is considered as such is Western Art music.[15] This is extremely evident in early ethnomusicological scholarship, where the adaptation of colonial instruments and techniques is considered almost comical and a complete disconnect from what is to be expected from “ethnic” music.[16] Colonialism is threatened by imitation, where those outside of hegemonic power in any way imitate their colonizers. Bhabha builds on Lacan examining imitation which threatens the normalization of the colonial state. The violence and repeated assertion of Colonial power undermines the very philosophical claims of the Enlightenment and liberty.[17] In the realm of classical music, aesthetic is clearly linked to ethic, an element of philosophy stretching from Aristotle to Kant and through the modern era. What can we make of appropriated elements of colonialism in music including Mozart’s “Turkish” themes, the fetishization of Carmen in Bizet’s eponymous opera, the Russian obsession with orientalism as in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, or the Twentieth Century examples of ethnic sampling to create a national sound as found in the CCP and the USSR? This “imagined Africa” is a hallmark of colonialism, a vision of the continent baked into the social sciences, and a mythic construction of the people and knowledges to be exported and commodified in the West.[18] Ethnic music is something to be “endured” in its origin country, and like colonial products, exported, transformed, and commodified into classical music, subjected to “Eurocentric, hierarchizing canons.”[19] By considering sound as well as music, we are able to more thoroughly rehear the archive. Much of the “ethnic” music, has been viewed pejoratively by the West, or not even recognized as music. The inclusion of sound encompasses all musics and sonic interactions. Like Trouillot’s diversity of narrative perspective, this provides a diversity of sonic perspective. This allows marginalized narratives to come forth.
Another reconsideration of sound is to consider music as testament. This pivotally allows for the transmission of non-western epistemologies which are transferred in the oral/aural tradition. Listening is an active and participatory action, and inclusion of sound involves the listener in shaping and interpreting the narrative through active interaction. As Gautier shows with her analysis of an individual boat convoy, sonic testament reveals a certain perspective. The perspective of the writer of the narrative differs from those on the ship, and even in regards the voice, one hears their own voice differently than an external listener. As she reveals, the subjectivities of those on the boats indicate if they hear the surroundings as human, animalian, songs, noise, and so on.[20] Some sounds are also created for communities by communities, and contain within layers of meaning or Aesopian meaning intended only for internal knowledge. The theft and display of instruments is an incarceration of living knowledge, analogous to the theft of other art and living artifacts. The ability to create these internal community dialogues with music and sound is somewhat dependent on having access to artifacts and musical instruments. Therefore, objects incarcerated in museological spaces is the epistemecidal parallel of corporeal violence enacted against communities.[21] The return of these living items is a powerful assertion of community and state.[22] This is true with any community that values music as living and an essential part of culture.[23] The Mbira for example, has been a powerful tool of reassertion of Zimbabwean culture, as an instrument specifically targeted for “cultural disarmament” and cast aside by evangelizing missionaries in favor of Western bands and quaint hymns. [24] In the case of song, poets like Kizito Mihigo were living reassertions, a literal living survivor of genocide, who reclaimed Tutsi space with song following the Rwandan genocide to go beyond commemorative events to a rearticulated identity.[25] In considering sound, living artifacts, and the classical or performed canon, performers and the west categorically overvalues the gnostic, the carefully cultivated knowledge systems of Western art music and cultural articulation. In doing so, we ignore the drastic, the physical creation of sound and music, perhaps best viewed in the voice.[26]
The voice and voice studies is the final major area of inquiry in sound studies. In dealing with the voice, we are by necessity dealing what it means to be human; wherein a human vocality differs and is distinguished by its difference from the anamalian and technological surroundings. However, this identification and humanization process is intertwined with cultural and colonial understandings of modernity, the ideal man, and indeed to whom we ascribe humanity. Barthes articulated that within the “grain” of the voice, we hear subtexts of meaning including race, phraseology, gender, and even class.[27] When we hear race in vocality, it affirms our expectations and confirms a racial essentialization.[28] What we perceive hearing in the voice itself is this essentialized view of race, and in the colonial model one which is weak, feminine, and other pejorative assignations.[29] Hearing the voice in such a way links back to the anthropological origins of the discipline and situates the voice in a power relationship – the voice which is corporeally produced is a parallel for other forms of corporeal violence including prisons, detention, genocide, and enslavement. Spectacles reinforce power dynamics. [30] The voice is both individual and collective. An individual can (powerfully) assert statements, song, and meaning, but can also join together in collective vocality – choralities.[31] Interestingly, when the individual joins in such choralities, the individual voice gains strength and power, magnified by numbers, but the individual also loses its distinct articulation in favor of a collective whole. The literal voice mirrors how the metaphorical individual voice of action and political action – voting or revolution for example – is articulated by individuals but gains power through collective action.
As a whole, the field of sound studies is one which provides diversity to the historical archive, and allows marginalized narratives to come to the forefront by literally hearing them and rearticulating documents. This includes musical challenges to hegemony, and a questioning of colonial practices in classical fields, like music, but is not limited to artistic expressions of the West. Rather, this diverse field includes non-Western epistemologies and living knowledge, and with the added layer of voice studies includes a study of corporeality in production and in associated violence against communities. This active practice of hearing, rehearing, and listening develops on the cultural turn for a hopefully more equitable look at the archive and an authentic study of communities without ethnographic extraction.
Alexandra Birch, November 2025
Sources
[1] R. Murray Schafer, The Tuning of the World (New York, NY: Knopf, 1977).
[2] Appadurai, Arjun. [1990] 2015. "Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy." Pp. 94–102 in The Globalization Reader (5th ed.), edited by F. Lechner and J. Boli. Malden: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
[3] Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1985).
[4] Andrew Apter, “Africa, Empire, and Anthropology: A Philological Exploration of Anthropology’s Heart of Darkness,” Annual Review of Anthropology, 28:577-98, 1999.
[5] Ngugi wa Thiong’o. “Enactments of Power: The Politics of Performance Space.” Drama Review 42(3): 11-0, 1997.
[6] R. Desai, “Introduction: Nationalisms and Their Understandings in Historical Perspective,” Third World Quarterly, 29(3): 397-428, 2008.
[7] Jonathan Sterne, The Audible Past (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003).
[8] David Novak and Matt Sakakeeny, eds. Keywords in Sound (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015).
[9] Ana Maria Ochoa Gautier, Aurality: Listening and knowledge in nineteenth-century Colombia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015).
[10] Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the past: Power and the production of history (Beacon Press, 2015).
[11] Claude Lévi-Strauss, Myth and meaning (Routledge, 2013). And Roland Barthes, Mythologies: The complete edition (NY: Hill and Wang 2013).
[12] Mhoze Chikowero, African Music, Power, and Being in Colonial Zimbabwe (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2015), 9.
[13] Sherry B. Ortner, “Resistance and the Problem of Ethnographic Refusal,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 37(1): 17393, 1995.
[14] Bernard Cohn, “The Command of Language and the Language of Command,” Subaltern Studies IV, Edited by R. Ruha, 45-88 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987).
[15] Alan P. Merriam, ”Ethnomusicology discussion and definition of the field,” Ethnomusicology 4, no. 3 (1960): 107-114.
[16] Percival Kirby, “The Use of European Musical Techniques by the Non-European Peoples of Southern Africa,” Journal of the International Folk Music Council, 11: 37-40, 1959.
[17] H. Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse.” Race Critical Theories: Text and Context, Edited by Philomena Essed and David Theo Goldberg, 113-22 (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2001).
[18] Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provencializing Europe: Postcolonial Thoght and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
[19] Chikowero, African Music, Power, and Being, 43.
[20] Ochoa Gautier, Aurality¸ Chapters 1, 3,5.
[21] Consider Malidoma Some, Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Imitation in the Life of an African Shaman (New York: GP Putnam’s Sons, 1994) and the similar suppression of living practices in the Shamanistic-Christian dialectic.
[22] Benedicte Savoy, Africa’s Struggle for its Art: History of a Postcolonial Defeat (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022).
[23] Consider the Roma, for example, and the targeted burning of their instruments before their children were burned at Auschwitz Birkenau. The culture was destroyed in front of the people before their genocide.
[24] Chikowero, African Music Power and Being, 23, 45, also Andrew Mark, “Mbirapocalypse: A Reapraisal,” Papers Collected in Commemoration of Mbira Month”
[25] David Mwambari, “Music and the politics of the past: Kizito Mihigo and the music in the commemoration of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda,” Memory Studies 13 no. 6 (2020): 1321-1336.
[26]Carolyn Abbate, “Music – drastic or gnostic?” critical inquiry 30 no. 3 (2004): 505-536.
[27] Roland Barthes, The grain of the voice: interviews 1962-1980 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press 2009).
[28] Nina Sun Eidsheim, The Race of Sound (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015).
[29] This model in sound follows other models of Orientalism and understanding the “other”: Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1979).
[30] Michel Foucault, Surveillier et Punir.
[31] Steven Connor, “Choralities,” Twentieth Century Music 13 no. 1 (2016): 3-23.