Urban musicology

Some of the most acute moments of social unrest in urban areas in recent Colombian history took place during and around the recent nationwide strikes of November 21 (2019), September 9 (2020), and April 21 (2021). In record numbers, university students, indigenous and black communities, LGTB+ movements, environmental activists, and artistic collectives, alongside unionized laborers and teachers, participated together in sit-ins, non-violent protest marches, public and digital concerts, cacerolazos, and the toppling of statues of Spanish conquistadors. These diverse actors first came together because the Colombian government, headed by President Iván Duque, pushed for unpopular tax and health reforms during times of extreme economic precarity. We are interested in the conjunction between sound, listening, and digital technologies, and their articulation into different forms of protest has contributed to the constitution of new democratic practices. We also inquire into the political effects and limits of these forms of protest during the uprising. The text is structured around three case studies that trace distinct sonic practices and listening habits that became politically marked in the public sphere during the uprising. The first case examines symphonic concerts performed by young musicians in parks and public squares, known as “cacerolazos sinfónicos.” In doing so, we detail how art music performance and social activism came together in the streets, prompting the creation of new musical repertoires that sought to resignify sonic symbols of Colombianess as a means of protest. The second study traces the performance and compositional history of the “Himno de la Guardia Indígena,” an indigenous anthem that became the soundtrack of the 2019-2021 protests. In this section, we analyze how this anthem went from being an indigenous musical reference to a sonic index of the uprising, making indigenous grievances audible and central to the strike’s demands. In the third section, we study the sonic and political appropriation of a perceived slip of the tongue that Duque made during a public speech. We discuss how political speech is enacted in and through audio-visual digital media cultures such as Internet memes.  In the conclusion, we bring the case studies together to discuss the limits of these practices of protest and dissent. Before proceeding, we present an overview of the uprising, followed by a section on the relationship between sound and politics in the context of protest in participatory democracies.

Resumen:
Tomando como punto de partida el caso colombiano, en este texto se sugiere que las bandas fueron instituciones clave en los procesos de disciplina y transculturación que dieron forma a las prácticas de producción sonora y de escucha en los entornos urbanos cambiantes, especialmente durante un período de reorganización del estado y de modernización urbana. Por medio del estudio de fuentes documentales como la legislación, artículos publicados en periódicos y revistas, programas de retretas y correspondencia entre servidores públicos; se revelan los múltiples discursos y experiencias construidas en torno a las bandas. Dicho estudio sugiere que ellas mediaron en la creación y recreación de ontologías sonoras que representaban dos modelos diferentes de uso del espacio público urbano: uno enmarcado en el proyecto civilizador de las élites e instituciones; y otro en la que las clases populares hacían uso de él en sus propios términos. En última instancia, la oposición entre ambos modelos no solo revela la disparidad con la que se distribuyeron los beneficios de la modernización urbana en las ciudades, sino que también indica cómo los encuentros y desencuentros de las ontologías sonoras que representaban dieron forma al paisaje sonoro urbano en Colombia durante las últimas décadas del siglo xix y las primeras del xx.stituye el alma de las comunidades en las que desarrollan su actividad.

Abstract
Through the study of the Colombian case, in this text, I analyze the wind bands as institutions that simultaneously fostered processes of disciplining and sonic transculturation. These processes shaped sound production and listening practices in urban contexts during a period of intense reorganization of the state and urban modernization. Information—collected from documentary sources such as legislation, articles published in newspaper and magazines, correspondence between public officers, concert programs, and travelogues—reveals multiple discourses introduced by the bands that express diverse experiences of sound production, listening, and space. From this standpoint, I argue that through the processes of creation and recreation bands mediated two different ontologies of sound that represented two models of use of the new urban public spaces: one framed into the government’s project to control behaviors aspiring to cast citizens through a disciplinary logic introduced by local elites and institutions; and the other, the appropriation of new sonorities adapted to old practices by subaltern social classes that experienced the new urban spaces in their own terms. Ultimately, the opposition of both models indicates how the benefits of the urban modernization were unevenly distributed among their inhabitants and how the conflicts between contrasting sonorous ontologies shaped the urban soundscape in Colombia during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Libro de la edición 2012 del Festival de Música Antigua de Úbeda y Baeza. Contiene toda la programación, notas al programa, currículums de los intérpretes y actividades académicas realizadas.
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Tradicionalmente, la historia de la música se ha concebido como una sucesión de obras maestras salidas de la pluma de gloriosos compositores vinculados a grandes catedrales, capillas reales o teatros. Frente a esta visión del pasado, deudora de la anticuada Gran Historia que privilegia personajes héroes y eventos esplendorosos, una aproximación a la música desde la óptica urbana permite descentralizar esta perspectiva e integrar otras manifestaciones sonoras antes consideradas marginales. El concepto de “paisaje sonoro urbano” (o urban soundscape en su formulación anglosajona) alude justamente a esta realidad plural y abierta del sonido en las ciudades del pasado y también a su poder simbólico como elemento definidor de lo urbano. Aprovechando la celebración del XVI aniversario, el Festival propone una visión retrospectiva de la historia de la música antigua a través de una selección de ciudades europeas y americanas en un momento concreto de su historia, analizando en qué medida lo urbano —entendido como un conjunto de complejos procesos socio-culturales a varios niveles— condicionó la creación e interpretación musical.
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Traditionally, the history of music has been conceived as a succession of masterpieces by glorious composers linked to important cathedrals, royal chapels or theatres. Against this view of the past, which goes back to the old Great History which privileges heroes and splendorous events, an approach to music from the urban perspective allows decentralizing this perspective and integrating other sound manifestations which were hitherto considered marginal. The concept of "urban soundscape" just refers to this plural and open reality of the sound in the cities of the past and also to its symbolic power as an element that can be identified with the urban. Taking advantage of the celebration of its sixteenth anniversary, the Festival proposes a retrospective view of the history of early music through a selection of European and American cities at a specific moment in its history, analyzing to what extent the urban —understood as a set of complex socio-cultural processes in a variety of levels— conditioned the creation and performance of music.

International Conference
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, 24–27 May 2017

Organized by
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
(Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage)

in collaboration with
Basilica Cattedrale di San Marco, Venezia
Archivio Storico del Patriarcato di Venezia
Swiss National Science Foundation
Spazio Svizzero (Palazzo Trevisan degli Ulivi, Venice)
Fondazione Svizzera Pro Venezia


On the basis of new perspectives offered by urban history, humanistic geography and historical anthropology, the conference aims to bring together inter- and multidisciplinary approaches to the significance of soundscape in the context of the rich and complex urban system of early modern Venice. As a supreme example of “ceremonial city”, Venice is particularly suitable for investigating how soundscape interacts with urban space in the creation of an elaborate social and cultural identity.

The international conference forms part of The Sound of Eternity. A Digital Platform for the Polyphonic Choir-Books of the Ducal Chapel of St Mark’s, Venice, a research project funded by the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (in continuation of The Sound of Eternity. Investigating the Choir-Books of the Ducal Chapel of St Mark’s, Venice, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation).

The official languages of the conference are English and Italian.

Organizing Committee:
David Bryant, Augusto Celentano, Luigi Collarile, Renzo Orsini
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

The Soundscape of the Venetian Terraferma in the Early Modern Era is an international conference organized by the Accademia Filarmonica of Verona on the occasion of the 475th anniversary of its foundation (23 May 1543), in collaboration with the University of Verona, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, the University of St Andrews and the Conservatorio “E. F. Dall’Abaco” of Verona. Natural sequel to The Soundscape of Early Modern Venice (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, 24-27 May 2017 – Visit the Venice conference web section ), this further initiative has the aim of increasing debate on the varied soundscape of the Venetian Terraferma in the early modern period. This territory, which stretched from Bergamo in the west to the Friulian Alps in the north-east and the river Po at the Republic’s southern extremity, formed one of the three subdivisions of the Serenissima; the others were the Dogado (Venice and surrounding area) and the Stato da mar (Venetian possessions in the eastern Adriatic and Mediterranean areas). The articulate system that regulates musical and non-musical sound in the Venetian territories prior to the fall of the Serenissima in 1797 is highly conducive to an interdisciplinary approach which draws on the new perspectives offered by urban history, humanistic geography and historical anthropology. Emblematic, in this sense, are the activities of the Accademia Filarmonica, which have dominated almost five centuries of local musical history.

http://www.accademiafilarmonica.org/filarmonica/en/convegno-internazionale-2018