For its third year, Cal State LA’s Sounds of the Underground is attempting to emerge from, well, the underground.
The University Library-sponsored event is looking to expand its reach beyond the campus to include participation from the greater Los Angeles community, including members of the underground music scene that it is celebrating during the three-day event from Tuesday, Oct. 21, to Thursday, Oct. 23.
“Our first two years were very small in terms of the outreach we did,” said Kelsey Brown, communications strategist and event coordinator with the University Library. “We would call our friends, or friends of friends, and say, ‘Hey, we’re having this little thing. Can you come and be a part of it?’”
Still very much DIY, “Sounds of the Underground 2025: Diasporic Kinships” will continue to promote the vibrant underground music scene of Los Angeles while continuing to establish the University Library as the archival collection center for Los Angeles’ underground scenes.
The first day will feature a screening of director Elizabeth Ai’s critically acclaimed documentary New Wave. Day Two will bring together researchers, artists, archivists, and community historians for a music research symposium, and the event will culminate on the third day with an expanded music festival featuring performances by Shit Chaotic and Lynda Trangh Đài, and a DJ set from Emily’s Sassy Lime.
The final day will double as a day for community archiving, when attendees are encouraged to bring flyers, posters, photos, zines, and other music memorabilia to help the University Library build its archive. Scanners will be available for on-the-spot archiving, but event organizers also welcome donations of T-shirts, cassettes, buttons, and other merchandise.
University Library staffers started Sounds of the Underground to establish the archive. In the past two years, the collection—at this point consisting mostly of scanned materials—has started to take shape, but now the library is ready to expand it with help from those who have lived and breathed the underground scene.
“It’s not just me going out collecting,” said Azalea Camacho, the University Library’s head of special collections and archives. “It’s building the archive through the community. We’re still in the collecting phase, and we’re still trying to figure out what the archive will look like. But it will come from within the community itself—what our students are building, the research they are conducting, their interests, the community’s interests. That’s how we develop our collections.”
Through everyday conversations, Camacho, Brown, and Ethnic Studies Librarian Lettycia Terrones realized that they had all been part of the underground scene. The idea of establishing the university’s Special Collections and Archives as the primary repository for LA’s diverse underground music history grew organically from there.
“The foundation for the Sounds of the Underground emerged from cross-collaboration and our dreaming up new projects that would directly engage our students,” said Terrones.
Some of Brown’s earliest memories were of her parents rehearsing with their band. She grew up around classic rock and later worked as a talent buyer for weekly shows during her undergraduate years at Cal State Fullerton.
Camacho’s older brother introduced her to goth, new wave, rockabilly, and mod music. She was part of the LA club scene and made lasting friendships as a regular on the dance floor.
Terrones’ siblings also played a role in shaping her musical tastes. She would listen to her brothers’ punk rock cassettes while walking to school in East LA, and she listened to disco with her sister, a member of a local party crew, in the 1980s.
The underground consists of a wide range of music, satisfying the listening needs of anyone searching for sounds beyond the mainstream. But all the scenes—from heavy metal to shoegaze, dark wave to raves—have one binding element.
“The music, bands, venues, and clubs create spaces where people feel a sense of belonging,” Camacho said. “It’s where everyday people can feel free to express themselves. That’s the essence of Sounds of the Underground.”
Filmmaker Ai will kick off this year’s event with a keynote speech at the University-Student Union Theatre at 1:30 p.m. on Oct. 21. It will be followed by a screening of New Wave, her coming-of-age documentary that explores identity, rebellion, and the power of music.
The following day, the “Music Research Symposium with Emerging Scholars” will discuss such topics as diasporic kinships and sonic resistance; queer and trans nightlife, safety, and belonging; and the geographies of LA’s underground scenes. The symposium will be held at the University Library from 9:25 a.m. to 3 p.m.
The three-day event closes with live performances and community archiving at the University-Student Union Plaza from 3 to 5:30 p.m. on Oct. 23. For the first time, this year’s show will feature multiple performers and will be held at a prominent outdoor location on campus.
“We just turned up the dial,” said Brown. “The heart of the project is still based around archiving, memory-making, and community-building, but we really wanted to welcome more people from the community onto our campus here in East LA.”
For additional information, including the full schedule of events, visit “Sounds of the Underground 2025: Diasporic Kinships.”
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California State University, Los Angeles is the premier comprehensive public university in the heart of Los Angeles. Cal State LA is ranked number one in the United States for the upward mobility of its students. Cal State LA is dedicated to engagement, service, and the public good, offering nationally recognized programs in science, the arts, business, criminal justice, engineering, nursing, education, and the humanities. Founded in 1947, the University serves more than 22,000 students and has more than 270,000 distinguished alumni.
