Music as a map to navigate local history

Laura McVeigh maps her travels through the sounds of traditional instruments, identifying shared modal melodies and string techniques across disparate communities (Laura McVeigh). She observed rubab and nay folk songs in the Pamirs, tanbur and Ud players in Turkey, and Bendir drums in Sufi music. In Tajikistan, she listened to the surnay and rubab at a wedding, while in the Balearics, she noted the xeremia bagpipes share a lineage with the Scottish Highlands.

This method of discovery links the mournful singing of the Amazigh in North Africa to the Sean-nós style of western Ireland. By focusing on instruments like the three-stringed Komiz in Kyrgyzstan or the vihuela and guitarrón in Mexico, travelers trace the evolution of cultural memory through performance rather than sightseeing. As McVeigh writes, "Music (and traditional music in particular) in Ireland is a form of storytelling (and memory) passed down through the generations."

These auditory markers provide a way to understand the rituals, celebrations, and losses of a region. Atlas Obscura similarly uses sound to anchor place, curating a playlist that connects songs to specific hidden wonders in the United States, such as the Institute of Illegal Images in San Francisco (Atlas Obscura).