Memories of Captured Song: Exploring Shifting Memories and the Legacies of Music-Making in Chilean Detention Centers through the "Cantos Cautivos" Testimonial Project

Abstract

This article examines the role and potential of the digital archive project Cantos Cautivos (Captive Songs) in the climate of post-dictatorship memory and reconciliation in contemporary Chile. I argue that the site’s flexible and dynamic architecture and its approach to collecting testimonies, which is centered specifically around musical memories, contribute to a dialogic exchange with and critique of state-sponsored memory projects. Through this process, new forms of memory emerge that I describe as “intramemories” and “intermemories,” which are products of exchange both within and beyond the project’s scope. I draw on case studies of two testimonial “corpora” from two of the archive’s most prolific contributors, both of whom composed many songs in detention. With song at its methodological core, I show how this project uniquely contributes to critical conversations in contemporary archival studies around issues of geography, identity, and memory.