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Based on a study of Madrid (1850-1930),
Discordant Notes argues that sound, noise, street music and flamenco have played a key role in structuring the transition to modernity by helping to negotiate social attitudes and legal responses to fundamental problems such as poverty, insalubrity, and crime.
List of contents
- List of Figures iii
- Acknowledgements v
- Introduction 1
- Part I: Flamenquismo, Race and Social Disorder 16
- Chapter 1: The Rise of flamenquismo in Madrid, 1888-1898 22
- Chapter 2: Flamenquismo and Race 40
- Chapter 3: Flamenco, Flamenquismo and Social Control 63
- Chapter 4: Anti-Flamenquismo and Mass Entertainment: Eugenio Noel 90
- Chapter 5: Madrid, Cante Jondo, and Nostalgia 106
- Part II: Organ grinders, "Aural Hygiene" and Space 135
- Chapter 6: A Public Nuisance 144
- Chapter 7: Early Debates 165
- Chapter 8: The Persecution of Organilleros 180
- Chapter 9: A New Order? 192
- Chapter 10: The Demise and Enshrining of Organilleros 214
- Part III: Workhouse Bands, Confinement and Social Aid 227
- Chapter 11: Confinement, Mendicancy, and the Making of the Street Musician 232
- Chapter 12: Inside the Workhouse: A Soundtrack of Discipline 252
- Chapter 13: Conquering the Public Space 270
- Chapter 14: The Band and Social Disorder 286
- Conclusion 304
- Bibliography
About the author
Samuel Llano is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Spanish Cultural Studies at the University of Manchester. He specialises in the music of nineteenth and twentieth century Spain, urban studies and transnationalism. His first book,
Whose Spain?: Negotiating 'Spanish Music' in Paris, 1908-1929 (OUP, 2012) received the Robert M. Stevenson Award of the American Musicological Society for outstanding scholarship in Iberian and Latin American music.
Summary
Scholarship on urban culture and the senses has traditionally focused on the study of literature and the visual arts. Recent decades have seen a surge of interest on the effects of sound the urban space and its population. These studies analyse how sound generates identities that are often fragmentary and mutually conflicting. They also explore the ways in which sound triggers campaigns against the negative effects of noise on the nerves and health of the population. Little research has been carried out about the impact of sound and music in areas of broader social and political concern such as social aid, hygiene and social control. Based on a detailed study of Madrid from the 1850s to the 1930s, Discordant Notes argues that sound and music have played a key role in structuring the transition to modernity by helping to negotiate social attitudes and legal responses to problems such as poverty, insalubrity, and crime. Attempts to control the social groups that own unwanted musical practices such as organ grinding and flamenco performances in taverns raised awareness about public hygiene, alcoholism and crime, and triggered legal reform in these areas. In addition to scapegoating, marginalising and persecuting these musical practices, the authorities and the media used workhouse bands as instruments of social control to spread "aural hygiene" across the city.
Additional text
A fascinating discussion of how the labeling of certain forms of music as noise in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Madrid contributed to the discourses (and practice) of social control. A major contribution to the emerging field of Spanish sound studies.
