The history of field recording in Mexico’s Huasteca region reflects shifting intellectual paradigms, technological advancements, and evolving motivations behind musical documentation. Over the past century, recording projects in the Huasteca have been driven by three primary impulses: an anthropological draw, which seeks to document and archive expressive culture for research; an aesthetic draw, which foregrounds artistic appreciation and sonic qualities; and an entrepreneurial draw, emerging in the digital era, in which recordists leverage online platforms for visibility, audience engagement, and revenue.

This paper traces the evolution of regional field recording practices through key case studies, from the institutional work of midcentury researcher-recordists such as Raúl Hellmer, Thomas Stanford, Arturo Warman, and Irene Vázquez Valle to the independent documentation efforts of Eduardo Llerenas, Baruj Lieberman, and Enrique Ramírez de Arellano in the 1970s and 80s. The 21st century has seen a new wave of DIY documentarians—including Gabino Vera Benito (GavBroadcast) and Hector Manuel Delgado Flores (QuerrequeFilms)—who use YouTube and social media to distribute field recordings in real time, engaging with audiences in ways that previous generations could not. Through the analysis of multiple renditions of the sones El Sacamandú and La Huasanga, this paper examines how shifting recording priorities result in distinct sonic representations of the same repertoire. Ultimately, I argue that tensions between institutional, independent, and platform-based approaches to documentation continue to shape the mediation, performance, and circulation of the Huasteca’s musical practices in the present.

In ethnomusicology, fieldwork often focuses on capturing the sounds of culturally critical or eventful moments. However, in studying the soundscapes of social movements, photographs—through colors, signs, banners, bodies in motion, and tears—also narrate sonic experiences. Protest images function as sensory archives, evoking the invisible presence of sound and reactivating sonic memories (Howes 2005; Voegelin 2014). The “silent” Iranian protest photos in the diaspora can be differentiated from those of Iran and amplify different political soundscapes regarding the same movements. Despite sonic exclusion in the ethnographic studies of these photos, they still unite our sensorium and cause affective responses based on our individual lived memories (Hofman 2015; Stirling 2018; Drott 2023). This paper draws on interviews with a professional protest photographer, fieldwork in the U.S., and digital ethnography of Iranian protest scenes following the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. I examine how images provoke the sensorium, allowing viewers to “hear” the past, narrate stories, and experience a transnational sense of solidarity. By interrogating the interplay between sound and image, I discuss that protest photography serves not only as documentation but as an active medium for sonic imagination and political resonance. How do these visual representations empower our sonic memories? To what extent do ethnomusicologists need photographs to expand their discussions of soundscapes in social movements? How are the visuality of protest photos and the aurality of their stories intertwined in the sound study of social movements?

The words that typify the quintessence of the experience of grief in the Qur’ān were uttered by the Prophet Jacob upon hearing of the death of his son, he proclaimed ‘Patience is Beautiful’ (al- sabroon jamil) (The Qur’ān, 12:18). The pairing of beauty and patience articulates a profound principle in Islamic ethics (takhalluq) and roots that conceptualization in aesthetics. Furthermore, one can deduce that by necessity experiences of grief in Islam submit to time, as being patient in grief can nearly be approximated as an experience of suffering, endurance, or forbearance through duration. This paper endeavors a demonstration that Qur’ānic recitation provides the grounding for an authentic experience of grief. Artistically, this is achieved in terms of the aesthetic profile of ideal recitation which places an emphasis on the pathos of grief (huzn) (Nelson, 1989). Additionally, that melody gives authentic intuitive knowledge that a coherent unity can be experienced sequentially through time (Husserl, 1905). Following Levinas (1993), I will argue that death is a trauma that strikes (daraba) against time to sudden-ness and there emerges patience as length of time, where time is deferred and transferred up to the Infinite (God). Furthermore, that deferred patience transforms into existential ethical responsibility to our neighbors (ibid). In this paper, I explore the social activity of Qur’anic recitation as a macrocosm of the prophetic debt reflected in a being-toward-others, re-collected (dhikr) in communal memory. Phenomenologically, the activity approximates the telos of recitation ‘as God’s ‘gathering’ us or re-collecting our distended souls.’ (Begbie, 2000).

As bone-rattling Dongba chants collided with jarring guitar distortions at Wacken Open Air 2023, Five Penalties' performance projected a public display of musical rebellion. The band infuses glottal vibrations and microtonal lamentations into distorted, aberrant riffs, openly subverting Eurocentric expectations of Chinese "folk" music and creating a powerful, eerily surreal clash of cultural contexts. Moreover, while dressed in bone-adorned Dongba attire, performing on an industrial stage surrounded by mosh pits, they strive to redefine cultural representation through a bohemian performance. This study explores how Five Penalties challenges and confronts both traditional approaches to cultural preservation, which emphasize "authenticity" in world music, and China’s state-driven "museumification" of ethnic cultures, which often reduces music to a static, archival form. By fusing metal’s transnational energy with Naxi heritage, the band disrupts dominant cultural narratives through an empirical, theoretical strategy of anti-essentialism—rejecting fixed, narrow definitions of "authenticity" to produce a more fluid, dynamic, and novel expression of culture. This study explores whether this hybridization promotes cultural agency or risks co-optation, using the genre’s perceived "foreignness" to defy cultural commodification. Through textual analysis of live recordings and ethnographic interviews, this paper illustrates how the band’s sonic practices confront the commodification of heritage, positioning their work as a decolonial act of cultural resistance. Five Penalties offers marginalized communities a dynamic model for preserving and reinterpreting heritage through music, actively resisting global homogenization. This case highlights music as a site of cultural reclamation, redefining heritage as an evolving, insurgent force rather than a static artifact.