Chilean electroacoustic music as living memory: Reinterpreting history through sound

Abstract This article explores the role of Chilean electroacoustic music as a medium for articulating cultural memory, particularly in response to significant historical events and unresolved traumas of the past 50 years. It examines five relevant works by Iván Pequeño (*1945), Leni Alexander (1924–2005), Federico Schumacher (*1963), José Miguel Candela (*1968) and Rodrigo Cádiz (*1972), analysing their engagement with voice, historical memory, trauma and political testimony through the lenses of acousmatic theory, sonic phenomenology and trauma studies. The article argues that Chilean electroacoustic music serves not only as a record of historical violence but also as a performative space where memory can be inhabited, archived, transformed and made audible again. It highlights the use of human voice recordings as vehicles of memory, the integration of radio art and testimonial narratives and the concept of ‘acousmatic storytelling’ to engage listeners in a multi-valent listening experience that blurs the lines between abstract sound and historical index. Ultimately, the article demonstrates how Chilean electroacoustic music functions as ‘embodied historiography’, using sound to write history and engaging listeners’ imagination, cognition and empathy to embrace through sound experiences of memory, political statements and justice.