Religious Soundscapes and Traumatic Listening:Auditory Memory, Ritual, and Spiritual Space in Chong Keat Aun's Snow in Midsummer (revised with track)

Xingyao Jiang^*Rosdeen bin Suboh^*

• Universiti Malaya, Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

This article examines the religious soundscapes and practices of traumatic listening in Snow in Midsummer (2023), directed by Malaysian Chinese director Chong Keat Aun. It investigates how sonic elements—such as the Muslim adhan, Buddhist temple bells, Taoist rituals, and natural sounds—mediate the processing of historical trauma.function as affective and epistemological vehicles for processing historical trauma. Through Ah Eng's auditory journey to find the graves of her father and brother, lost in the 1969 May 13 Incident, the film creates a cross-cultural acoustic space where personal grief, collective memory, and spectral presence converge. Arguing that religious sounds in the film transcend mere multicultural reflection, the study highlights their role as counter-hegemonic auditory archives that resist political amnesia. Drawing on trauma studies, sound anthropology, and religious aesthetics, the paper analyzes how the film stages sonic memory work that intertwines mourning with resistance and ritual with historical critique. Ultimately, Snow in Midsummer offers an ethics of listening grounded in spiritual hybridity and emotional resonance, allowing the voices of the dead to resonate within Malaysia's postcolonial soundscape.