Paper short abstract:

This paper is a reflection on the role of walking while listening to the different musical souls of a city in order to unveil the presence of its migrant communities and their struggles. It is based on an inter-disciplinary workshop held in the city of Tel Aviv with music and architecture students.

Paper long abstract:

The city of Tel Aviv is an uneven space inhabited by several local and migrant communities that are often made invisible and pushed at the margins for a variety of social, cultural and economic reasons. This paper aims at reflecting on a six-month inter-disciplinary workshop that took place in the periphery of the city with a mixed group of music, ethnomusicology and architecture students from Tel Aviv University. By walking across the margins of the city and listening to the music performed by its migrant communities both in private and public spaces - and in particular through the encounters enabled by these auditory walks - personal and collective stories come to light, enabling a new understanding of the urban space and its social and political frictions. In some cases, music and art reveal themselves as resistance practices able to give voice to the daily struggles and dreams of these invisibilized communities. In other cases, on the contrary, they become a catalyst for urban renewal and development processes that end up excluding them from their right to inhabit the city.