Another illuminating study of sound and music that has recently been indexed by Southwest Humanities, Alejandro L. Madrid’s The Archive and the Aural City: Sound, Knowledge, and the Politics of Listening was recently published (in August 2025) by Duke University Press. Madrid’s far-ranging book traces a powerful new path in how we think about archives—not as silent repositories of visual or textual heritage, but as repositories of sound that were often never intended to be heard. Building on Ángel Rama’s concept of the Lettered City, Madrid introduces the idea of the Aural City, a Latin American urban intellectual formation in which listening and sonic practice are central to creating, circulating, and contesting forms of knowledge. From the national sound archives of Latin America to colonial audio collections abroad, sound exhibitions, instruments, and digital listening projects, Madrid shows how urban spaces themselves are shaped by sonic memory—and how these aural archives can subvert dominant narratives of nationhood or colonial legacy while fostering new spaces for inclusive intellectual exchange and collective political action. The Archive and the Aural City invites us to listen differently to history, urban life, and archives. It’s an essential read for anyone exploring sound’s role in cultural production, archival politics, and the sonic shaping of cities. For more information about this excellent new work, please visit the publisher’s website here.
SOUTHWEST HUMANITIES 