Samuel K. Byrd
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479859405
- eISBN:
- 9781479876426
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479859405.003.0006
- Subject:
- Anthropology, American and Canadian Cultural Anthropology
This chapter examines how Latino immigrant musicians and audience members, through their music making, debate political questions relevant to their everyday lives as working musicians and residents ...
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This chapter examines how Latino immigrant musicians and audience members, through their music making, debate political questions relevant to their everyday lives as working musicians and residents of a globalizing city. Musicians and their audiences negotiate their political stances through a physical and intellectual process called the circular colectivo (collective circle). The collective circle describes the circle of dancers that often form at Eastside rock concerts in Charlotte, in which dancers slam into each other in dances where jumping and shoving serve to unite band and audience in a collective music-making strategy. But the term has an additional meaning—the collective circulation of ideas through music as bands, audience members, and journalists engage in debates about the political and social importance of what they are performing, how they perform it, and its meaning in the context of a politicized immigrant presence in the U.S. South.Less
This chapter examines how Latino immigrant musicians and audience members, through their music making, debate political questions relevant to their everyday lives as working musicians and residents of a globalizing city. Musicians and their audiences negotiate their political stances through a physical and intellectual process called the circular colectivo (collective circle). The collective circle describes the circle of dancers that often form at Eastside rock concerts in Charlotte, in which dancers slam into each other in dances where jumping and shoving serve to unite band and audience in a collective music-making strategy. But the term has an additional meaning—the collective circulation of ideas through music as bands, audience members, and journalists engage in debates about the political and social importance of what they are performing, how they perform it, and its meaning in the context of a politicized immigrant presence in the U.S. South.
Samuel K. Byrd
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479859405
- eISBN:
- 9781479876426
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479859405.003.0011
- Subject:
- Anthropology, American and Canadian Cultural Anthropology
This concluding chapter reexamines national and regional struggles over immigration policy. It reiterates how making music constitutes a form of political action and builds community through ...
More
This concluding chapter reexamines national and regional struggles over immigration policy. It reiterates how making music constitutes a form of political action and builds community through dialectical collaboration between musicians and audience members; in addition, it analyzes what this research means for a conceptualization of the city as a cultural center and for the future of Latino music in the U.S. South. After all, in the Latin music scene in Charlotte, musicians are making popular music in the midst of immense political, economic, and social change and despite the indifference of the Latin music industry. In practices such as the “collective circle,” they are demanding a right to the city and are making spaces where music lives and thrives as a uniquely southern and Latino cultural expression.Less
This concluding chapter reexamines national and regional struggles over immigration policy. It reiterates how making music constitutes a form of political action and builds community through dialectical collaboration between musicians and audience members; in addition, it analyzes what this research means for a conceptualization of the city as a cultural center and for the future of Latino music in the U.S. South. After all, in the Latin music scene in Charlotte, musicians are making popular music in the midst of immense political, economic, and social change and despite the indifference of the Latin music industry. In practices such as the “collective circle,” they are demanding a right to the city and are making spaces where music lives and thrives as a uniquely southern and Latino cultural expression.
