On 19 November 1969, two members of Milan’s neofolk music collective the Nuovo Canzoniere Italiano (NCI) armed themselves with portable sound recorders and wandered amongst a crowd of demonstrators near Milan’s Duomo. The resulting LP, I fatti di Milano (The events of Milan), is a puzzling hybrid of artistic and political intent. As the sleeve note explains, the demonstration degenerated into a riot and resulted in the violent—and to this day legally unresolved—death of a police officer. The NCI members presented the recording as sonic evidence of the day’s events, hoping to help the case of the demonstrators accused of murdering the policeman. The record thus constitutes not only a swerve from “music” to “sound” in the collective’s output but also a move from aesthetic artifact to sound document, indeed, to putative forensic evidence. And yet, the evidence grows inexorably murkier with every listening. This essay homes in on the contradiction between I fatti di Milano’s declared purpose and the sound recording it mobilizes toward that end. Drawing on both sound studies and Italian political philosophy, the essay argues that the record embodies and actively stages idiosyncratic but highly contemporary relationships between music and soundscape, between sound event and its technological reproduction, and ultimately between political event and the act of writing history.

中文翻译：

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声音证据，1969年：录制一次米兰暴动

1969年11月19日，米兰新民乐音乐团体的两名新成员，意大利诺沃·坎佐涅埃雷（Nuovo Canzoniere Italiano）携有便携式录音机，在米兰大教堂附近的示威者中四处游荡。最终的唱片《 I Fatti di Milano》（《米兰的事件》）是艺术和政治意图的令人困惑的混合体。正如袖子上的注释所解释的那样，示威游行演变成骚乱，并导致一名警察丧生，至今仍未得到合法解决。NCI成员将录音作为当天事件的声音证据，希望能帮助被指控谋杀警察的示威者案。因此，唱片不仅构成了集体作品中从“音乐”到“声音”的转折，而且还构成了从美学文物到声音文件的转变，甚至是公认的法证证据。但是，每次聆听，证据变得越来越模糊。本文归因于I Fatti di Milano宣称的宗旨与为此目的而动员的录音之间的矛盾。文章借鉴了声音研究和意大利政治哲学，认为唱片体现并积极地发展了音乐和音景之间，声音事件及其技术再现之间，最终在政治事件和写作历史行为之间的独特但高度现代的关系。