Currently, studies of soundscape, listening and sound in the broadest sense have had particular relevance in academia; thanks, on the one hand, to the reflections of pioneers such as Schafer (1979) and Truax (2001), but also to more recent research conducted by leading sound researchers in different countries, including Augoyard (1995), Le Breton (1997 and 2006), Small (1999), Sterne, (2012), Simmel (2014), Chion (2018), Feld (2013) and Antebi et al(2005), just to mention a few. From disciplines such as anthropology, music, history, sociology, communication, physics, acoustics, design, architecture, urban planning or sound heritage, sound and listening studies have become popular in Mexico.1 and Latin America, as demonstrated by Seeger, (2015), Domínguez (2007 and 2019), Chamorro (2010), Larson (2017), Ochoa (2014), Bieletto (2021) and Brabec de Mori, Lewy and Garc (2015). Among other topics, human mobility and cultural sonority have occupied a particular space in sound studies. Such works include the sonorous, musical, affective and meaningful qualities of migrants who change residence and culture (Olmos, 2020).

The relevance of sound studies is due, among other reasons, to the fact that sound is a phenomenon immanent to matter. Every object in the universe is susceptible to acoustic qualities. Therefore, the way of expressing and experiencing the sonorous qualities of the landscape and objects evokes at the same time the qualities of the culture and of the individuals involved in the sonorous expression. Moreover, in the social sciences, sound studies have been a subtle but fundamental tool in ethnographic research, which is a methodological specialty that contributes to the analysis of society and culture through acoustic expressions and language (Feld, 2013; Augoyard and Torgue, 1995).

Sound is a paradoxically powerful and ephemeral component among the different societies of the planet. Its study and aesthetics decant both the beauty of artistic expressions and the contradictions and threats of contemporary societies (Chornik, 2014; Szendy, 2010). The sound phenomenon acquires its notoriety and complexity in culture from human production and the social meaning given to it. In this context, the aesthetics of sound refers us to the emotional content of auditory perception. It is therefore essential to analyze the meaning of the "meaning" of acoustic representation. That is to say, to confront the sensitive logic of sound production from its social and cultural meanings. Thus, the great orchestra of objects and subjects of culture are configured from their cultural landscape, which in turn shapes the soundscape.

All acoustic expression is located in a geographic space, both the emitter of the sound and the perceiver or listener are situated in precise spaces of the cultural environment, and consequently within the soundscape. Even when we fix our auditory attention on a precise point, we are resonators of the same phenomenon we hear. In such a way that the soundscape is composed of the musical expressions and sounds of all environments.

Now, from the human cultural conception, or from the sounds of non-human nature itself, sound productions are susceptible to be musically organized through the talent of the artist, inserted in a specific space in direct relation to the cultural experience of sound in which he has been formed. The soundscape has aesthetic components that support the polysensorial cognition of large cities, indigenous communities, ranches, human groups or migrant peoples moving from one place to another.

In aural culture, music and sound expressions act as structuring axes of aesthetic creativity. The soundscape is constituted by aural expressions of urban ecology and diverse music. Each context possesses a set of sounds that give it identity, and refer us to the ontology of the "other" and to the cultural transformations of a society. For this reason, the human being palpitates with the universe and resonates through the sounds produced by other acoustic objects and subjects, among them, the "other" who observes, listens and produces sounds. For this reason, as we pointed out before, we can say that within the sonorous expressions produced, thanks to the acoustics of the environments and human creation, we find music as one of the most elaborated acoustic creations of the human race whose subjects act as resonators of the universe.

Humans have been able to recreate sound to develop and cultivate their playful, festive and ceremonial capacities of their environments and landscapes. However, this great quality of acoustic elaboration and listening capacity would be nothing without the great aesthetic capacity developed by culture. Thanks to cultural listening, man is able to express his subjective world and establish communication with beings of the divine and earthly world beyond his humanity. An example of the above is demonstrated by Camacho (2023) in the article of this issue, in which musical instruments and men dialogue in a mythical world in which some of the symbolic referents of the cultural enjoyment and identity of the Yoreme people originate.

In another context we find the city where multiple sound signals converge: cars, screams, machines and a large amount of "noises" -understood as the emission of sound signals that interfere between communication messages, which provoke aversion to both their sound and the sound sources-. Therefore, the city is prone to "contaminate" the environment in terms of sound, thus evidencing the different forms of sociocultural organization of sound (Domínguez, 2014).2

According to Truax (2001), soundscapes refer to the auditory environment and the collection of sounds that surround us in a particular location or environment as they are considered significant to a "sounding" (or listening) community and also define its identity. Truax's definition of soundscape is in tune with that elaborated by Schafer (1979):

The soundscape is our sound environment, the variety always presents noises, pleasant and unpleasant, loud and soft, heard or ignored, with which we all live. In these times when the world suffers from an overpopulation of sounds, particularly technological sounds, the subject of sound is becoming fashionable for discussion and study. It is necessary for anyone whose interest has been stimulated to have a clear understanding of what sound is, how it works, and how it is measured (Truax, 2012: n.p.).3

For the father of soundscape studies, Murray Schafer (1979), composer, acoustical ecologist and founder of the World Soundscape Project In the late 1960s and early 1970s, soundscapes can be analyzed in different ways, identifying at least three components: the tonic sound, or sound key (keynote), sound signals and sound marks (milestones, or footprints).

Although the soundscape groups together a set of acoustic manifestations, there are sound environments that may include various sources of acoustic emission. As mentioned above, it is well known that sound is perceptible thanks to the sound waves emitted by vibrating matter. Consequently, every physical object possesses in principle sound qualities and the type of waves it reproduces, both in height and intensity, depends on its materials and its execution. The set of sound emissions of objects produced as a result of an intention linked to human expressions can be called cultural sonority. Having said this, we define cultural sonority, in collective terms, as

Aural expressions that allow us to distinguish different dimensions of culture.

In its program The World Soundscape ProjectSchafer included the sounds of the planet's ecosystems, which were closer to acoustic ecology; sounds that in other cultural contexts, such as the urban one, were part of the sonorous immensity. In this sense, the father of the soundscape referred us both to the untamed landscapes where the intervention of the human hand had been practically null, and to the urban sounds created intentionally by human culture. From the ecological perspective, each ecosystem included the living beings that inhabited it. According to Schafer (1979: 55), each ecosystem possessed a specific acoustics that was in harmony with the sounds produced by geography, geology and the set of living beings such as birds, insects or mammals.4

On the other hand, in the strictly cultural field there are sounds that were created with a sensitive intention and that were organized culturally and aesthetically to have a strong impact on our artistic feelings, I am referring to musical sounds, which have always been part of man in his historical evolution. Music, being a complex sonorous elaboration, is produced with a direct aesthetic intention and has been elaborated having as its main dimension the soundscape that, as a context, nourishes the creativity of sound artists.

In general, the analysis of sound beyond the sound waves and its materiality, the breaking down of its parts, its sources and its motifs, allows us to approach the sensitive dimension of culture. However, we must remember that aural phenomena do not appear isolated from the natural landscape, just as the soundscape is not detached from the cultural life of urban societies or traditional societies, where hearing is inexorably articulated with other senses such as smell, taste, touch or movement. Thus we find that acoustics and the anthropology of the senses are intimately linked to the analysis of sensory cognitive processes in which the culture of the individual plays a fundamental role (Le Breton, 2006; Candau and Le Gonidec, 2013).

The articles included in this thematic issue of the magazine are as follows Encartes were written by researchers who participated in the project Soundscape, music, noises and sounds of the bordersThe project will take place in Tijuana at the end of 2022. Some of the participating researchers were also part of previous projects carried out at the colef on music and the processes of modernity. However, on this occasion the theme was directed to sound, music and the processes of listening from culture. In such a way that the writings derived from this project not only focus on sound, but also on listening, which is an indispensable conceptual binomial to think about sound processes and constitute fundamental categories for cultural processes, analogous to the opposition between identity and otherness, in the understanding that it is not possible to analyze one without the presence of the other.

As we explained above, sound and music, although they are different constructions, in the case of music it is not possible to analyze its creative environment without the presence of the sonorous parts. In this order of ideas, the article by Olmos and Cohen, entitled "The sound creation of the jaranero community: reflections on the practice of son jarocho in the Tijuana-San Diego border", reflects on the creation of community through the musical sounds of son jarocho. In the transnational context of the Tijuana-San Diego border region, this article analyzes the musical sense of cross-border groups of jaranero fans of son jarocho, a musical genre that serves as a catalyst for community formation, which dialogues with migratory activism as an alternative for social cohesion.

On the other hand, the article "The sonic frontier of ceremonial experts wixaritari. Liminalidad para el control y protección de las lluvias", by Xilonen Luna Ruiz, constructs an interpretative device through which the wixaritari or Huicholes listen to their divinities through the native word 'enierika (listening-listening). Both the eavesdropping and the mythical and metaphysical sounds of the ceremonial universe of the people wixarika are only accessible through a particular listening that allows communication with the deities. The work of Xilonen Luna Ruiz, besides analyzing sound in its material perception, also constructs the meaning of the symbolic representations originating from listening in an extensive sense, which do not coincide, of course, with those of waves produced by sound bodies. These examples come from the listening and the sound timbre constructed in the culture and sound perception of the wixaritari or Huicholes. For them, the material dimension of sound is comparable to the sacred dimension. What anthropologists call the symbolic dimension of sound is actually the elaboration of messages decoded by intermediaries between gods and men, who mediate between the forces of nature and human actions through different types of listeners.

The mythical and musical symbolism of the Yoreme people is questioned through the organological analysis carried out by Fidel Camacho in the article "Retumba la Tierra. Ténabarim, koyolim and senaaso. Amerindian mythology of Pajko'ola musical instruments.”. In his analysis, Camacho highlights the importance of the mythical symbolism of the sonorous instruments of the Pajko'ola dance, as well as their organological classification based on a set of relationships that, according to the author, evoke extraordinary mythical beings. With several years of ethnographic work and with the support of regional references from other neighboring peoples and the necessary Nahua foundation, the author draws on references from both northern Mexican and Mesoamerican peoples, and analyzes the narratives related to the instrumental and ritual sonority of the Yoremes or Mayos.

In her article "Ruidos y silencios en la espera migrante: ambientes sonoros y racialización de la escucha en la comunidad haitiana en Tapachula" (Noises and silences in the migrant waiting: sound environments and racialization of listening in the Haitian community in Tapachula), Monica Bayuelo exposes the metaphor of silence as a repressive form of the transit of Haitian migrants in the city of Tapachula. The silences of
migration become political and affective referents for migrants who possess diverse acoustic expressions specific to their culture of origin, but which in the imaginary of local repressive forces signify noises that invade a space. The cultural acoustic dimension of mobility is directly linked to the forms of listening through which migrants reconfigure their subjective universe of musical and aural memories. Through the sounds and silences of migration, Bayuelo accounts for the representation of the migratory journey, the perception of their environments and, above all, the new cultural sounds of the new context (Bayuelo, 2021; Olmos, 2020; Ramos and Hirai, 2021).

José Juan Olvera, in the research entitled "Science popularization as science, technique and art. The case of 'musicaenelnoreste.mx', warns about the processes of science popularization through a website. This site specializes in the popular music of northeastern Mexico. This contribution would go unnoticed if it were not for the importance of science popularization in the parameters of scientific and academic evaluation currently established by the National Council of Humanities, Science and Technology (Conahcyt), through the National System of Researchers, where the new regulations state that one of the fundamental criteria of academic work is the scientific dissemination of research products. The dissemination and popularization of science associated with sound and musical expressions are given their due value by disseminating the urban musical sounds of Monterrey and its surroundings through a site for scientific and musical dissemination and research. Particularly noteworthy is the great commitment and complexity to carry out this type of projects that have usually been undervalued in academic peer evaluation.

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Miguel Olmos Aguilera D. in Ethnology and Social Anthropology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. He has been a researcher at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte since 1998. He has conducted fieldwork in different border cities and with various indigenous peoples in northwestern Mexico and the southern U.S. He directed the Department of Cultural Studies from 2009 to 2013. Since 1998 he belongs to the National System of Researchers level II. His books include: Cultural borders: otherness and violence, El Colef, 2013; Migrant Music, Bonilla Artigas BookstoreUANL, UAS, Mexico, 2012; Indigenous music and contemporaneityINAH-El Colef, 2016 and Ethnomusicology and globalizationEl Colef, 2020. He has taught at universities in Mexico and abroad.