Archiving Sounds of Memory

By Katia Chronik

Cantos Cautivos (Captive Songs) is a digital archive that compiles memories of individual and collective musical experiences in centres for political detention and torture in Chile under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). Conceptualised, edited and directed by me, at its inception it was developed in collaboration with the Chilean Museum of Memory and Human Rights and as part of my broader Levehulme research project ‘Sounds of Memory: Music and Political Captivity in Pinochet’s Chile’, hosted by the University of Manchester in 2013-16.

Cantos Cautivos is the first online resource on music and dictatorship in Latin America. First launched in 2015 in Spanish, since 2016 the complete archive has been available in English too. The project uses crowdsourcing as the main method to compile content, and was created with the purpose of speeding up the process of collecting oral sources, which until then I had conducted via face-to-face interviews. Factors that make crowdsourcing challenging include ex-prisoners’ technological gaps and limited IT access, and the range of psychological barriers imposed by the archive’s format. The above highlights the need to continue engaging with contributors on an off-line basis.

At present Cantos Cautivos contains circa 130 testimonies relating to thirty political detention and torture centres, of which approximately 30% refer to songs that were partially or fully written under detention. Most entries narrate activities initiated by the inmates; a small number recount uses of music by the agents of the State. Whilst the majority of accounts are testimonies from ex-prisoners, some are voiced by their descendants, exemplifying inter-generational memory.

Chacabuco concentration camp.

The repertoire referred to in the testimonies originated in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, the former Yugoslavia, Ecuador, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Spain, the Ukraine, the UK, Uruguay, the US and Venezuela, covering a range of popular genres including tango, bolero, cueca, cumbia, ranchera, ballad, easy listening, rock, pop, blues, chanson and cabaret, film music, anthems, marches, religious music and conservatory-tradition pieces. Among the archive’s most unique materials are recordings from Chacabuco concentration camp in the Atacama Desert, made while the musicians were detained, and accounts from Dawson Island concentration camp at the southern tip of Patagonia.

Each Cantos Cautivos entry is linked to the Museum of Memory’s website Recintos, which provides details of the 1,132 political detention and torture centres that operated under Pinochet; entries referring to the disappeared and executed are also linked to the Museum’s website Víctimas. Cantos Cautivos users are thus able to access information about the precarious conditions and repression under which musical experiences took place.

Hailed as “extraordinary” by The New Yorker critic Alex Ross, Cantos Cautivos has received wide print, radio, online and TV press coverage in the UK, USA, Spain, Chile, Argentina and Guatemala. The project is endorsed by various associations of former political prisoners, the Víctor Jara Foundation, the University of Chile’s Pro-Vice-Chancellorship for Engagement and Communications, and the Historical Memory Project (CUNY). A growing number of volunteers and Advisory Board members have contributed to the project, advising on strategies, conducting interviews, translating entries, providing copy-editing and IT support, among other tasks. Future plans include conducting ethnographic research in the regions that are still unrepresented in the archive, strengthening our media strategy, and developing school-level lesson plans around selected entries.

Visit the archive at www.cantoscautivos.org. Follow the project’s news on Twitter (@cantoscautivos) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/cantoscautivos/).