Publicação
Engaging colonial sound archives: a comprehensive and shared listening approach to an Angolan folk song
| Resumo: | Abstract This article draws on anthropology, ethnomusicology, history, sound studies, and postcolonial theory to engage with a Cokwe song recorded in the 1950’s in northeastern Angola. Muambuâmbua song addresses desertion from colonial contract or forced labor, a practice often depicted in historiography as a straightforward act of anticolonial resistance. However, by analyzing this song through a methodology that I term “comprehensive and shared listening”, I uncover meanings of flight from forced labor that move beyond this narrow framework. The study combines archival research with multi-sited, collaborative ethnographic fieldwork in Portugal and Angola (2014-1016). The song is examined in dialogue with diverse archival sources and narratives shared by interlocutors. This approach reveals how sensitive experiences shaped by unequal power relations cannot be fully understood through sound recordings or visual and written documents alone. By engaging with sound through alternative modes of listening - the archive itself and to people who inhabit its histories - this article exposes hidden layers of meaning about colonial domination, African resistance, and agency, and contributes to the decolonial reactivation of colonial sound archives. |
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| Autores principais: | Valentim,Cristina Sá |
| Assunto: | Cokwe music - Angola colonial sound archives power forced/contract labor research methodology |
| Ano: | 2025 |
| País: | Portugal |
| Tipo de documento: | artigo |
| Tipo de acesso: | acesso aberto |
| Instituição associada: | Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia |
| Idioma: | inglês |
| Origem: | SciELO Portugal |
| Resumo: | Abstract This article draws on anthropology, ethnomusicology, history, sound studies, and postcolonial theory to engage with a Cokwe song recorded in the 1950’s in northeastern Angola. Muambuâmbua song addresses desertion from colonial contract or forced labor, a practice often depicted in historiography as a straightforward act of anticolonial resistance. However, by analyzing this song through a methodology that I term “comprehensive and shared listening”, I uncover meanings of flight from forced labor that move beyond this narrow framework. The study combines archival research with multi-sited, collaborative ethnographic fieldwork in Portugal and Angola (2014-1016). The song is examined in dialogue with diverse archival sources and narratives shared by interlocutors. This approach reveals how sensitive experiences shaped by unequal power relations cannot be fully understood through sound recordings or visual and written documents alone. By engaging with sound through alternative modes of listening - the archive itself and to people who inhabit its histories - this article exposes hidden layers of meaning about colonial domination, African resistance, and agency, and contributes to the decolonial reactivation of colonial sound archives. |
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