Listening to HIV/AIDS: The CD as a medium for sonic activism in Anglophone music

Abstract

This work focuses on the CD as an object of study to examine the role of sound and music as tools of resistance and activism during the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the United States. Through a selection of artistic practices linked to sound, the text explores their potential to make visible silenced experiences through social stigma and a lack of institutional response to the crisis. The text describes how such sonorities worked as tools of visibility, mourning, and political action. The methodology is grounded in critical sonic approach and by mapping a body of musical work released on CD, encompassing albums, singles, and soundtracks across diverse genres. Additionally, this study includes an analysis of the content within their liner notes and inserts. The compiled works include John Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1 (1991), Pauline Oliveros’s Epigraphs in the Time of AIDS, Alexandra Pajak’s Sounds of HIV, and the collective Ultra-red’s An Archive of Silence, alongside works by Michael Callen, Diamanda Galás, Stefan Tischler, and David Wojnarowicz, key figures in New York’s sonic activism. These artistic strategies not only documented the biomedical and social crisis of HIV/AIDS, but also made HIV a catalyst of social change, compelling the public sphere to hear what political power or some religious institutions sought to silence. The cases studied here indicate that music, beyond its affective dimension, is an essential means of collective memory, affective circulation, and activism.