Sonic border raids: The racial acousmatic and contemporary Latinx opera

This essay analyzes two contemporary Latinx operas, Cruzar la Cara de la Luna (2010) and Pancho Villa from a Safe Distance (2016), to develop the “acousmatic” as a racialized form of listening. Acousmatic refers to a sound whose source is undetermined, a form of hearing without access to the source of the sound’s production. Contemporary Latinx opera stages a politicized form of acousmatic listening that forces an encounter with what is otherwise unheard, unseen, or refused. I develop this idea to unpack the relationships among race, sound, and performance in this sphere.