Tracing a Sound from Kabul

Markus Schlaffke (CDA)

2022, 46ʹ

Under what conditions does the past inscribe itself in our consciousness – and become part of a collective memory? Markus Schlaffke follows the trail of a 100-year-old gramophone recording by the Kabul rubab player Qurban Ali from its creation in a studio in Lahore in 1926 to its re-enactment using a phonograph in Weimar in 2021. This film intersects the history of the invention of the Edison phonograph with early media theories on the meaning of sound recording, the practice of oral tradition in Kabul’s traditional musicians’ district, Kucheh Kharabat, and the filmmaker’s own experience as a musician. What distinguishes the mechanical memory of a machine from the living memories of a human? How does the machine engrave a track into the material of the recording medium and thus involve us in a global network of shared musical memories?