Paper short abstract:

Hyde Park Asunder articulates three sonic fields in a gentrifying neighborhood in Chicago, USA: the staccato hammering of construction sites, the call-and-response of a political demonstration for rent control, and the ecstatic soundtrack of house, disco, and rap music broadcast through car windows.

Paper long abstract:

Hyde Park Asunder articulates three sonic fields in a gentrifying neighborhood in Chicago, USA: the staccato hammering of construction sites, the call-and-response of a political demonstration for rent control, and the ecstatic soundtrack of house, disco, and rap music broadcast through car windows.

I call these three fields “Profit,” “Politics,” and “Party” to suggest that the neighborhood soundscape is comprised of overlapping, and at times antagonistic, fantasies about the neighborhood as a form of community. Each fantasy of community entails a different form of participation in communal life: (1) the neighborhood as an entity to be exploited for profit, in which participation in the community entails economic intercourse (2) the neighborhood as a political community, in which participation takes the form of petitioning the local government for public services (in this case, lifting a municipal ban on rent control), and (3) the neighborhood as a party, in which a community is constituted by spontaneous social practices and aesthetic performances such as broadcasting music from car windows; participation in the party merely requires one’s presence at it.

Composed entirely of field recordings made in 2018-2019, Hyde Park Asunder takes its name from a classic House track, “Let No Man Put Asunder,” in which a longing for romance is heard as the desire for a home, or a neighborhood, still intact: "It's not over."