Aurality: Listening and Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Colombia

Sign, Storage, Transmission

by Ana María Ochoa Gautier

In this audacious book, Ana María Ochoa Gautier explores how listening has been central to the production of notions of language, music, voice, and sound that determine the politics of life. Drawing primarily from nineteenth-century Colombian sources, Ochoa Gautier locates sounds produced by different living entities at the juncture of the human and nonhuman. Her "acoustically tuned" analysis of a wide array of texts reveals multiple debates on the nature of the aural. These discussions were central to a politics of the voice harnessed in the service of the production of different notions of personhood and belonging. In Ochoa Gautier's groundbreaking work, Latin America and the Caribbean emerge as a historical site where the politics of life and the politics of expression inextricably entangle the musical and the linguistic, knowledge and the sensorial.

Genres: Music, Academic

280 pages, Hardcover

First published November 21, 2014

About the author

Ana María Ochoa Gautier is Associate Professor of Music and Director of the Center for Ethnomusicology at Columbia University. She is the author of several books in Spanish.

Reviews

[S. Alberto ⁻⁷ (semi-active, always yearning) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read Aurality for my sociology seminar on sound, and while I found its premise intriguing, my experience with the book was mixed. Ana María Ochoa Gautier presents a fascinating examination of how sound, listening, and oral traditions shaped knowledge production in 19th-century Colombia. The book offers a compelling argument that challenges Eurocentric understandings of literacy and textual authority by centering aurality—the ways in which sound, voice, and listening functioned as epistemological tools in a rapidly modernizing society. Ochoa Gautier navigates themes of colonialism, race, and nationalism, showing how sound was not only a medium of communication but also a contested space where power dynamics played out.

While I appreciate the depth of research and the theoretical ambition of the book, I rated it 3 stars because the writing often felt dense and overly academic, making some sections a challenge to engage with. The theoretical framework is intricate but at times overwhelms the historical analysis, making it difficult to fully appreciate the nuanced case studies Ochoa Gautier presents.

That said, I still appreciate how the book pushes against conventional ideas of knowledge and highlights the importance of listening as an alternative form of meaning-making. While it may not be the most accessible read, Aurality is a thought-provoking contribution to interdisciplinary scholarship and will resonate with those interested in the intersections of sound, colonialism, and knowledge production.

[Un Perogrullo]

Este libro es una joya que le pone nombres, origen y problematización a gran parte del aparato de exclusion colombiano basado en el "hablar bien", esa obsesión y orgullo nacional de tener "el mejor" español, ser un país de gramáticos y contar con una estilizada pronunciación. Un modelo educativo --una construcción nacional-- que tanto ha servido para el envanecimiento de tantos de nosotros y que, desde esta distinción, hemos asistido con inercia a la delimitación interna de fronteras de clase, raza y nivel de educación. Es un tema fascinante; es un velo que se descorre y relativiza nuestro mayores valores y revoluciona esas pequeñas certezas.
Lástima, eso sí, que el libro sea tan innecesariamente complejo y academicista en su exposición, que el exceso de palabros altisonantes y una sintaxis que encadena subordinaciones hasta el infinito se presenten como obstáculos para aprender de esta maravilla de libro.

[FL · Rating 5 out of 5]

When one travels abroad, one carries a perspective they grew up with. So in reading travelogues, one could read not for the place described, but instead for that perspective. Ochoa does such a reading to illuminate how illiterate people in 19th-century Columbia thought about people who couldn't write.

Ochoa is looking, then, at what sorts of values people maintained when listening to sounds as they traveled. A political division arises not too much unlike the current US left-right split, but it's manifested differently.

It's interesting, then, to think about how political divisions relate to seemingly sterile problems like "does music have to have notes?"

[user_fjifods998877]

Focuses on listening practices, aural perception, and knowledge and description of sound in the context of colonization in 19th century Columbia. The different perception among the lettered elites, non-literate ppl, colonizer, non-human. The listening practice is central to the production of knowledge and has mutual influence on the politics of every day life