Weaving Sounds

Words and sounds are interconnected forms of knowledge transmission that, while still in the process of being legitimized in the academic field, have allowed to safeguard indigenous, Afro, and rural knowledge. They currently play an important role in the consolidation of rural communities’ identities. Weaving can be compared to active listening, a term that refers to the possibility of participating in a sound environment or a story, recreated through hearing, as if one were part of it. Here we develop the question around the influence of ancestral traditions in rural life through soundscapes and oral storytelling. We provide, too, an instructions handbook for the public to create their own installations responding to the sound piece.

Truth Commission Listening Exercises

For this occasion, we begin with the active listening exercises proposed by the Truth Commission. These are documents that resulted from years of research and dialogue with communities throughout Colombia to consolidate multiple voices that have been victimized under the manifold forms of violence rooted in this country for the past 60 years. These testimonies recount the atrocities committed by paramilitaries, guerrillas, local gangs, drug cartels, monocultures, mining extraction, among others.

In Colombia, a fundamental part of the memory lies in the rural and selvatic areas of the country, which is why the Truth Commission not only collected testimonies of violence, but also proposed a participatory approach to the exercise of collective memory. These memory records are close to the geography and cultural life of each region, so their archives and cartographies are also a form of reconstruction of places that have been destroyed or are under threat of disappearing due to political, economic or environmental phenomena. Truth as a form of memory also requires exploring aesthetic strategies, such as narration and listening to make memory a fabric of knowledge and practices, rather than mere information. Sounds of the Book of the Future

Sonidos del Libro del Porvenir

Below, you will find a selection of soundscapes from some regions of Colombia where daily practices associated with agricultural and cosmogonic traditions are manifested. These sounds are edited in double channel, and designed to be listened with headphones. Each piece makes a brief journey through spaces and practices that have social and cultural devices to imagine projects for the future. They are stories from the book Cuando los pájaros no cantaban: El libro del porvenir, from the Testimonial Volume of the Final Report of the Truth Commission and through these soundscapes show how people build identity and community after the war. As defined in the Report, it is precisely "a reflection on the present, in a country where violence is combined with everyday life". These sounds are inspired by narrating how violence coexists in some of the traditional practices such as mambe, herding or reforestation. Each one narrates the struggle of life to survive death.

These sounds are linked to the process of creating the Final Report of the Truth Commission. A report that collects the work that began in November 2018 and involved some 15,000 interviews, several of which were collective, and in which close to 30,000 people were listened to. As mentioned in the Report, weaving those stories through sounds, is also a tool to give shape to voices that have remained silent.

" Not in vain in many societies the origin of the cosmos or the order of the world is given through a "sound event": a breath, a great explosion, a divine sigh. Learning to listen requires a willingness to understand the "density" of words, the myriad of relationships implicit in them, both in terms of what is said and what is not. For José, violence had something to do with emptiness, with the transformation of landscapes, that is, with the absence of their noises, with the strangeness of their smells. The stories in this book are full of that kind of absences." [2]

[1] Informe Final de la Comisión de la Verdad (2022). Cuando los pájaros no cantaban, del Tomo Testimonial, Bogotá: Comisión de laVerdad, p. 30 [2] Ibid. 24

Guidelines for active listening

Preparation and the journey

Preparing a ritual reading starts with choosing and rehearsing aloud a story that allows a journey to other territories and stories. This connects with the daily life of people during the war and how they survived it.

Willingness to listen

Ritual reading allows the word to return to a central place in a community setting. Willingness to listen to other people's stories connects with what they experienced in the war and helps to understand what they went through.

Listening and reflection

Listening to stories triggers multiple feelings. A moment of reflection is then created in which the participants discuss the story and what it evokes in them. Reflecting on the war and their experiences is the final part of a ritual reading.

Time to mambear

From the series Relatos del porvenir 2’28

Mambe is a powdered compound of coca leaves mixed with lime. The containers are vessels for the ingredients, and are books that store the ideas that are shared during a conversation. It is called mambear, because when mambe is consumed people also meditate on decisions concerning the community; they tell stories that transmit cosmogonic knowledge; it is also used to give them energy for the days of cultivation and harvest, and its tradition extends throughout the Andes up to the Caribbean coast. The sound sequence presented here was made in the Arhuaco village, in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. The community gathers to talk about the coca ritual. The poporos with lime are played to activate the sacred leaves. The elements of war pass by, and are confused with the voices of the children.

This piece is part of the Testimonial Volume of the Final Report of the Truth Commission, section Relatos del porvenir, the digital archive Sonido y Memoria / Courtesy: Truth Commission.

Around the fire

From the series Relatos del porvenir 1’38

Kitchens are places for family or community gatherings. People talk and laugh around the fire. The firewood and the crackling of the stove mingle with the smells of Arhuaca cooking. The kitchen as a symbol of sharing and storytelling, in this case it is also a symbol of educating on the techniques of food transformation and its value for the community.

This piece is part of the Testimonial Volume of the Final Report of the Truth Commission, section Stories of the future of the digital archive Sound and Memory / Courtesy: Truth Commission.

The sound of shepherding

From the series Relatos del porvenir 2’56

Early in the morning, boys and girls of a Wayúu community count their goats and take them out to graze.

This piece is part of the Testimonial Volume of the Final Report of the Truth Commission, section Relatos del porvenir of the digital archive Sonido y Memoria / Courtesy: Truth Commission.

The planting of the mangrove

From the series Relatos del porvenir 2’46

A community of Afro-descendants goes to the swamp to plant mangroves. To recover the mangrove is to recover their ancestral practices.

This piece is part of the Testimonial Volume of the Final Report of the Truth Commission, section Relatos del porvenir of the digital archive Sonido y Memoria / Courtesy: Truth Commission.

Sounds of solidarity Maaya: between the body, nature and instruments

In Mali, Maaya is an integral concept of humanity based on the relationship between the individual and the community. Its principles are applicable to all aspects of life: work, leadership, politics, education, festivities, daily life, art, science, etc.

The Fondation Festival sur le Niger, which relies on a similar sense of situational intelligence and through a generous presentation of symbolic acts and objects (puppets, traditional clothing, shows, etc.), introduces the values of Maaya and the principles that underpin the Kôrêdugaw Communities, initiatory societies in Mali that maintain the country's wisdom rites and ensure the transmission of knowledge to the next generations.

For several years, FSN has been working to structure the cultural sector through its contribution to the creation of partners. That is the case of entities such as the Centre Culturel Kôrè de Ségou, a regional reference center working for the promotion and development of art and cultural professions in Ségou, Mali and Africa, and the Institut Kôrè des Arts & Métiers (IKAM), which is the laboratory of the Foundation for the Festival on Niger, based on the experience of the entrepreneurial model of the FSN, called Maaya Cultural Entrepreneurship.

Meetings on Maaya cosmology

2’04 Yaya Coulibaly and the company Sogolon Edited by Capuseen Festival Sur Le Niger

FSN's proposal is to incorporate stories of the Maaya in its structure as an organization and in the stories it tells. For this occasion, puppeteer and playwright Yaya Coulibaly combines elements of oral tradition and theater to compose, together with musicians from Segou, sounds that are inspired by the stories told by nature. This piece highlights the common work that Coulibaly does with their company Sogolon, who through drums imitate the movements of the earth and the jungle, while the wind instruments adjust to the rhythms of the birds and the air. In this sound piece, we can appreciate how these elements of orality and music are combined to form a sound environment that transmits the knowledge of solidarity, peace and tolerance characteristic of the Maaya.