LibGuides: Sounds of the Underground 2025: Diasporic Kinships: Music Festival & Community Archiving

Music Festival & Community Archiving

Join us for a celebration of sound, memory, and community! Featuring live performances from Shit Chaotic and Lynda Trang Đài, alongside an Emily’s Sassy Lime DJ set, the festival brings together underground energy and intergenerational artistry. Bring flyers, zines, photos, cassettes, posters, and other music memorabilia: scanners will be available for on-the-spot archiving and donations to preserve LA’s music history at the University Library. Enjoy snacks from a local food truck and meet music, culture, and archival community partners.

Date: Thursday, October 23, 2025
Location: Cal State LA USU Plaza
Time: 3 PM – 5:30 PM

Lineup

Lynda Trang Đài

Shit Chaotic

Emily's Sassy Lime (DJ set)

Donate & Digitize Your Memorabilia

Be part of preserving Los Angeles' underground music history! At our community archiving station, you're invited to bring your own items to digitize or donate: flyers, zines, photos, posters, cassettes, set lists, or other music memorabilia.

Our team will have scanners available to digitize items on the spot, and you'll have the option to either donate originals to Cal State LA's Special Collections & Archives or contribute a digital copy. Every contribution helps expand the Sounds of the Underground Archive, ensuring that the voices, creativity, and cultural memory of LA's music scenes are preserved for future generations.

Whether it's something from your personal collection or a piece of history you've held onto for years, your items can become part of a growing archive that celebrates sound, memory, and solidarity across Los Angeles.

Date: Thursday, October 23, 2025
Location: Cal State LA USU Plaza
Time: 3 PM – 5:30 PM

You could have a gold mine in a shoebox in your closet! We will accept the items below, and more!:

Flyers and handbills
Zines and newsletters
Posters and set lists
Photographs (prints, negatives, or digital)
Cassette tapes, CDs, or vinyl
Ticket stubs and wristbands
Band merchandise (stickers, buttons, patches, T-shirts)
DIY press kits or liner notes
Correspondence (letters, emails, messages related to music scenes)
Venue or collective ephemera (membership cards, schedules, announcements)

Community Partners

We’re excited to host an amazing lineup of community partners who are doing vital work to preserve, celebrate, and sustain Los Angeles’ music and cultural history. These organizations will be tabling at Sounds of the Underground and sharing resources, connecting with attendees, and showcasing how their work contributes to the scenes and stories that make LA’s cultural landscape so unique.

Angel City Press
Scott McAuley and Paddy Calistro co-founded Angel City Press in 1992 as a publisher of high-quality nonfiction books. Since then, ACP has engaged more than 100 Southern California authors and published more than 135 books.When McAuley and Calistro decided to retire and find a new home for ACP, they approached the Los Angeles Public Library, and chose to donate the press to the library’s holdings to ensure that the essential stories of Los Angeles would continue to be told. The Library accepted the gift, creating Angel City Press at Los Angeles Public Library.
LA County High School for the Arts
LA County High School for the Arts is a specialized, tuition-free public school open to aspiring young artists throughout Los Angeles County. LACHSA was founded in 1985 under the direction of the LA County Office of Education, and is located on the campus of Cal State LA.
LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes
LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes is a community hub where people gather to celebrate Latinx culture through transformative exhibitions, music, dance, culinary arts, and multigenerational artmaking and storytelling experiences.
Los Angeles Public Library
The Los Angeles Public Library provides free and easy access to information, ideas, books and technology that enrich, educate and empower every individual in our city's diverse communities.
Southeast Asian Archive @ UC Irvine
The University of California, Irvine Libraries established the Southeast Asian Archive in 1987 in response to the community’s interest in having this history documented, preserved, and made accessible. The Archive's collection is broad and interdisciplinary in documenting the social, cultural, religious, political, and economic life of members of the Cambodian, Hmong, Laotian, and Vietnamese diaspora. Collection strengths include Southeast Asian American experiences of resettlement and community formations since the Vietnam War, Cambodian Genocide, and geopolitical turmoil in the former French-occupied "Indochina" in the latter half of the 20th century.