Sonic Narratives

close reading, distant listening
and all that's fit to press.

Disc-jockeys playing tapes and records in Vietnam

Sonic Narratives are the stories that come to the fore from within crates of records and the pages of inventories. These articles explore the trajectory and circulation of music within the war highlighting underlying narratives within the collection.

Graph showing chart performance of singles mentioning the Vietnam war

Charting The Music of The War

08/08/19 - Ben Jackson

A 2018 headline from satirical music news website TheHardTimes.net reads: "Documentary About Fortunate Son to Feature Vietnam War." The linkage between a core canon of anti-war anthems...

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Developing the Project

11/15/18 - Ben Jackson

The Modern Songs of War And Conflict exhibit is an ongoing project aimed at using the affordances of the digital medium to explore the ways...

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Graph showing frequency of recorded songs mentioning Kent State

A Hard Drive that Brings History to Life

12/18/18 - Meghan Creek

When I was asked to inventory the Hugo Keesing hard drive, I knew it would be a big project and had no idea really what it would entail. Most people assume when they hear that you work in an archive that you only deal with old stuff and that history is somehow more authentic if it is something that you can touch. The more delicate and threatening to self-destruct at any minute due to its decades-worth of wear and tear, the better...

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