IN-PERSON Barcelona. Section B

Abstract

While sound is slowly becoming part of the intangible heritage discussion, the study of street sonic cultures can offer different views to approach the subject – especially when these are grassroots, marginalized, and highly technologized cultures. Street dances with massive custom built sound systems are a consolidated form of working-class entertainment across the Global South, especially in the Caribbean and Latin America. In cities such as Kingston, Barranquilla or CDMX, sound systems, picos and sonideros (as they are called respectively in Jamaica, Colombia, and Mexico) have been the pillar of the local popular music and culture for several decades, with the sound of the street sessions becoming an organic part of the urban soundscape. This is currently under threat as these longstanding street music cultures face common issues such as institutional restrictions, tightening noise abatement regulation, and urban gentrification. Local communities and practitioners have increasingly started to advocate for different forms of heritage status to be granted locally or internationally in order to see their culture recognized and preserved, with succesfull outcomes such as the patrimonialization of sonidera culture in CDMX in 2023. Based on an ongoing ERC-funded research into global sound system cultures, this presentation adopts a cultural studies approach to discuss opportunities and challenges of the heritage declaration for sound system cultures.