Making the vast landscape of our planet closer and more intimate

About

Sounds of Belonging invites individuals from Indigenous communities to record a soundscape and share their story about a beloved place that gives them a sense of belonging. The project is intended to open up the world of sound and insight from disparate locations. We believe that if each of us can listen to our world—and to each other—we can increase empathy and understanding. Our hope is that “Sounds of Belonging” can help make the vast landscape of our planet closer and more intimate.

Listen

We hope you’ll enjoy these soundscapes and stories of belonging. Our collection is constantly growing as we pursue and receive new contributions. If you are interested in sharing your story, please email us at Narratives@asu.edu.

Melissa K. Nelson

Melissa Nelson’s sound of belonging is the chorus of great horned owls in Northern California. (3:04)

  • Melissa K. Nelson is an award-winning scholar-activist and media-maker and is a professor of Indigenous Sustainability at ASU. She is a grassroots leader with several Indigenous organizations dedicated to land stewardship, food justice, and the revitalization of biocultural heritage. Melissa is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians.

  • In the liminal space between winter and spring and day and night, the great Horned Owls hoot in the deep woods of Mount Tamalpais. Their syncopated timing is impeccable and sometimes punctuated by a crow, a sparrow, another owl, even the sharp bark of a spotted Owl. A rare sound from an endangered species. For some reason, the spotted owl persists in this fragmented second and third growth Redwood Grove on the ancestral and contemporary lands of the Coast Miwok peoples on Mount Tamalpais. It's ironic they are protected somehow on the edge of the sprawling San Francisco Bay area, sandwiched between commuter freeways and condos and the wild shores of the Pacific Ocean. I think it's the contrast of the owls’ persistent, urgent, and vibrant calls. And then the deep silence between their hoots that gives me this feeling of home and belonging. The owls sound so deliberate, so certain of their own voice. In the gaps there is this pregnant anticipation. It feels so alive and comforting to me. Their rhythmic calls remind me of now. The mystery of this present moment. Being fully alive. I think these hoots have probably reverberated on this mountain, and in these forested canyons, for centuries. They are truly at home here and remind me that I am too.

Taina Diaz-Reyes

Taina Diaz-Reyes’ sound of belonging is the thunderous symphony of a monsoon in the Sonoran Desert. (7:55)

  • Taina is an activist scholar working as a Senior Global Futures Scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory and PhD student in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University.

  • I spent a long time debating whether to record the monsoon sounds, coyote howls on South Mountain, sirens, or the sounds of a Latino supermarket or Mercado Latino as my sound of belonging. I realized, however, that the coyote howls were a welcoming sound to the land and community, not necessarily a sound of belonging for me. The sounds of sirens are also not sounds of belonging, but instead, the sound of rejection. The constant presence of sirens in an urban setting displays the need of one group to control another, to exclude another, to display the wrongness of another, the need to discipline and correct the behaviors of another. It is the exact opposite of belonging. So, despite the familiarity of the sound, having grown up in cities most of my life, and admittedly, the odd comfort that the sound of sirens brings me, I decided that was not a sound of belonging. The sounds of a mercado, on the other hand, while important for my background and experience, I recognize are not as important to me as the smells of a mercado. The smell of Fabuloso after someone cleans an aisle, the smell of the fish and seafood section, the smell of the packaging of Mexican candies, the smell of decaying fruit in the produce section. It is the sense memory of smell that makes a mercado a significant place for me. So, I was going to record the simple sounds of me taking a desert hike somewhere here in the Phoenix Valley, and hope for a monsoon because it is monsoon season. I was fortunately blessed with a prolonged storm to record.

    There are few things that bring me as much joy as rain in the desert. And this joy is amplified significantly by the presence of thunder and lightning. I was standing at the trailhead of the Gateway Trail at McDowell Sonoran Desert Preserve when the skies just opened up. I was soaked within seconds and could not be convinced to wipe the smile from my face. It would not have mattered what threat came at me. I was just so elated and excited. The skies had become a darker and darker grey as I drove to the preserve from Tempe where I live. I parked my car to have a quick meal before getting out to record the sounds. I was so pleased when the rain began to fall as I walked to the trail. There were squeals of delight from the hikers making their way back to their cars and a handful of people waiting at the trailhead for anyone who had fallen behind making their way out of the park.

    I have loved monsoons since I was very young, standing in the driveway of my grandmother's Casita in Tucson. Which is the place where I first learned the smell of rain in the desert—where I first learned the sounds of the monsoon. The smell of creosote in the air, the smell of wet dirt, and the sight of wet pebbles in her yard. Watching the trees become a dark tear-streaked shade of brown as the water fell and ran down the bark. The booming of the thunder overhead as it came closer and closer from the distance. The phenomenal lightning shows—just the flashes of lightning—to accompany the symphony overhead. I loved the sound because of how loud it was and how disruptive it was. But more importantly for me, it signaled that something very exciting was about to happen. The downpour was coming, and I needed to be outside to experience it.

    I think one of the other reasons why I love the monsoons is because people don't expect something so intense and wet in the arid, Sonoran Desert. Whenever I tell people that Arizona has a monsoon season in the last month or two of summer, they just look at me surprised and ask really. The fact that the monsoon is seemingly antithetical to the realities of living in the desert is part of why the sound of the crackle of thunder and the sudden sheets of rain, the sound of rushing flood waters through the streets, excites me so much and makes me feel so at home.

    I feel as though the monsoon is an excellent representation of who I am as a person. It's just a jumble—a cacophony—of contradictions. But also, a tremendous display of power—no matter how dry the world seems, a life-giving and or deadly flood can overtake the land in seconds. But it's even more important to me as a sound of belonging, because that is how I know I'm home. I would typically visit my family that lived here in Arizona during the summers, so the monsoon is essentially a welcome home. I was born under the storm day Kawak in the Mayan daily calendar. That discovery was so meaningful to me that I got the glyph for Kawak storm or rain on my ankle a few months ago.

    The monsoon is not just an annual event, but a beckoning and a reminder of where I belong and who my people are. The land, the skies, the elements, the weather and my family here in this dry place—well, dry until the monsoon.

Carmen Lucich

Carmen Lucich’s sound of belonging is the familiar bustle of cooking and conversation in the community kitchen at Heron Shadow Farm in Graton, California. (2:06)

  • Carmen Lucich is a poet who writes from her home in Guerneville California. She is also an intern at The Cultural Conservancy’s land project, Heron Shadow, and comes from strong Choctaw women and Croatian people.

  • Somebody’s always home, and that's exactly what this place is. I can recognize them by their footsteps before I hear the sound of joy in their voices enter the room.

    In the mornings, this is where we meet. Red Bird has yet to put his shoes on and sits perched at the top of the stairs. Luke’s eating something weird, but weird in his good way.

    Jonny’s braiding Dell’s hair while he sits quietly, but that doesn't last too long before somebody makes him laugh.

    Ben taught me how to roast and peel peppers here. A lesson on corn nixtamalization came through Maya.

    And me, I don't like the smell of eggs. But I don't notice that anymore.

Eddie Madril

Eddie's sound of belonging is the chirp of cicadas during the summer in Arizona. (6:49)

  • Eddie Madril is a member of the Pascua Yaqui tribe of Southern Arizona and Northern Sonora Mexico. He is an active member of the Native American community and a representative of his culture through various aspects: as a dancer, singer, teacher, playwright and filmmaker. Eddie is currently a professor for American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University and Mills College/Northeastern and is a monthly host for KPFA Radio's Bay Native Circle program.

  • You know, when I close my eyes and I think of sounds that come to my ears and into my mind and into my heart—which really just feed the body, essentially—it comes from my childhood. Not growing up in Arizona but visiting Arizona. And visiting Arizona from the Central Valley of California, you go into a desert and as a little boy you think, well, this could be amazing, but it's just desert. There's nothing here. You have all these different ideas of leaving this lush area of food and abundance and mountains and things and you go to Arizona, and it’s just desert. But through time, you grow to appreciate these places, these spaces, and these sounds.

    As a little boy I heard this buzzing sound. This buzzing sound that I thought was electrical high wires and high-tension electrical wires, but it wasn't. It was this little thing like a bug, a beetle. This little thing that just buzzed and buzzed really loudly, all by itself. And when there were many of them hiding in a tree, you didn't know what they were, you didn’t know what they looked like. You just heard them. It was eerie, so eerie because your parents would be inside talking to all the other aunties and uncles and grandparents. The kids were outside, but sometimes there was only you, and you were afraid of the tarantulas and the rattlesnakes, but you never saw those things. What you heard was the sound, and it was the sound of a cicada. And if it wasn't just one, and there were many, you wondered if you could hide and if you could run. But really, it was just a sound. And even though it was eerie, and maybe even a little bit scary in a curious way, you couldn't help but just sit there and look and listen, wondering where that sound come from. Wondering if that sound came from a distant past that made this little animal, this little creature, this little beetle thing make that sound. Why? So as a little boy, you just wondered and wondered and wondered. Then all of a sudden, it was interrupted in the summer by that big thundering, thundering crash from the sky, from those monsoon rains that happen in the summer in Arizona. But as a little boy, just hearing those sounds created all kinds of imagination and visuals. All these imagined wonders of stories of where you would go and where they came from and what you could do with that sound. And if you would ever hear that sound again, because you would miss it when you left and came back home—what you now called home in California.

    As a little boy, I didn't really think much of Arizona. As an adult now, every time I think of Arizona, I can't help but think of the thundering sounds of the monsoon rains. But more so hoping—without even telling anybody—just hoping that I might hear a cicada sound. And I don't very often, but I guess I'm not outside playing as a little boy waiting for those sounds to come or not listening and then just hearing them. Now I'm that adult, just as my parents were, sitting inside hearing the stories from the elders and the cousins and their aunts and uncles that are still around. And when I do get to hear that cicada, I almost want everybody to be quiet. I almost want to be alone again and just hear that Cicada sound. And no longer hear it as an adult, listening to it as a scientific mystery, but more of a nostalgic memory of how I used to be—which was curious, and creative. And the imagination allowing that sound to just take me on a journey no longer as an adult just looking at it going: I wonder what makes that sound? I need to know scientifically I need to know you know what makes this beetle what it is? It's more so just the story escape that allows me to go into what we were taught a long time ago, which is to allow the imagination, and the dreams and the wonder become the magic. Let it all become the magic so that we can share that magic around us.

    I now listen to the cicada no longer as just this beetle that makes a sound that sounds like electricity. I now think of it as a long, long-ago memory that existed so that I could hear it as a boy and create wonders. And so that I could become an adult and remember that as children, we have curiosities and as elders, we have all the experience to give us wisdom. That cicada encompasses all of it in my experience growing up as a boy, hearing that sound. That sound of the cicada accompanied by the thunder, the thunderclap of that monsoon rain takes me to a place that I did not grow up in, but I did grow up in—as a boy, as a Yaqui, in Arizona. A home place made-up of the Earth and the beetles and the sky sounds of our ancestors and the ones that my daughter and great, great, great, great grandchildren perhaps will hear as well. It connects us all in our relationship not just to each other, but to the land and to the sky. So I would say, when I close my eyes, it's a cicada sound that brings me back to a place and takes me forward to a space. It’s a cicada.