Introduction. Sound, Music and Violence

Abstract

When, in the third canto of the first part of The Divine Comedy, Virgil leads Dante through the gates of Hell, Dante is frightened not by what he sees, but by what he hears: "Sighs, weeping, loud wailing resounded through the starless air". 1 The horror is such that Dante sheds tears. The lamentations of the tortured in "strange languages" and "horrible tongues", the "words of pain" and "accents of anger", make a deafening tumult. Faced with the incomprehension of these sounds of fear and pain, Dante asks Virgil, "Master, what is this I hear?" 2 He feels the pain of the sounds but does not know who makes them or why; he has never heard such sounds before. To be able to attach a meaning to this new world of sound, he must now listen attentively, because listening will be essential in order to know the space, to understand situations and to give meaning to his advancement into the different circles of Hell. This until the last verses, when Dante and his guide find their way out of the lower world through listening: they recognise the hidden path by which they will come out "not by sight, but by the sound of a little stream" 3 which erodes the rock. By following this path, they return to the bright world and can finally "look again at the stars". 4

Field Recordings: A Manifesto

“…22 lence has also proven, according to Ana Maria Ochoa, that "[o]ne of the characteristics of violence is the redefinition of acoustic space." 26 In that regard, "sound [is] not examined as the cause of violent action but rather as symbolic resources that actors can mobilize in processes of violence." 27 In other words, it can and has been used as a so-called "non-lethal" weapon.…”

Sounds of survival, weaponization of sounds: Exploring sonic lieux de mémoire

“…These ruptures necessitate the reconfiguration and renegotiation “of taken-for-granted meanings and routine situations” (Kadianaki and Zittoun, 2014: 192). People’s experience of the world is mediated corporeally, symbolically, and materially through sound and musical practices with which they can construct narratives about themselves and their experiences (Born, 2011; Manabe, 2019; Velasco-Pufleau, 2020). In contexts of forced displacement or exile, for example, sound and musical practices are ways of giving meaning to “new experiences of place” (Agier, 2008: 85), whether in order to demarcate spaces and temporalities or to inhabit them.…”