Paper short abstract:

This paper listens into the sonopolitics that evolve around funk proibidão, a popular music genre in the favelas in Rio de Janeiro. Sounds are heard differently depending on context and power structures. I argue that tuning into sound is central to understand the experience of violence.

Paper long abstract:

When scrutinizing violence in terms of the senses, sounds are omnipresent and often more pervasive than the visual. Sounds perpetrate the walls of houses and enter the body through the ears. Furthermore, the sound waves have an almost tactile impact on the body itself. Visually, violent acts are seen by direct victims, perpetrators and passers-by, but aurally gunshots and screams are heard by the whole neighborhood, and often by people beyond that neighborhood through the reproduction of sound through WhatsApp, Facebook or in music. Also, the profound impact sound has on how we experience a space shows us that zooming into (or rather tuning into) aural understandings of violence is needed to understand the daily life realities of urban centers in Latin America.

In the case of the favelas in Rio de Janeiro, inhabitants experience sounds of violence almost daily. What influence do these sounds have on their experience of their neighborhoods? Moreover, the ideas about violent sounds, for example gunshots coming from the police or drug traffickers, tell us about the legitimacy and authority of these different actors. As an example in this paper I will draw on funk proibidão, a music type that incorporates the soundscape of the favela into its sounds. From this case study, we can understand that sounds gain their meaning in context. Furthermore it advocates for the inclusion of sensorial research by ethnographers of violence.