This article explores the way sybyzghy cassettes are used by Kazakhs in northern Xinjiang to affirm identities shaped around nationhood, regionality, and clans. It discusses sybyzghy imagery alongside the remediating power of these cassettes, a power that informs, confirms, and diversifies the meanings of the sybyzghy repertoire, thus functioning in a "performative" way that signifies a symbolic and semiotic vision of collective memories. It contributes to the existing literature on biphonic flutes in Central and Inner Asia as well to the understanding of sound collections that feature ignored but performative notions of selfhood around sonic materiality, iconicity, and metaphor.
