Paper short abstract:

Drawing on data gathered in 3 years of group interviews and participative observation among several groups of young people in Bucharest, I explain how listening to music turns from a coping-practice in uneasy public spaces, into a source of symbolic borders between youngsters and of new “uneasiness”

Paper long abstract:

In the context of post-socialist Bucharest, different social sub-groups of young people perceive certain public spaces and urban paths as uneasy. In order to improve their everyday experience of passing through such spaces, they employ listening to music as a tactic.

According to the social sub-groups they belong to, the youngsters listen to different genres of music and employ different practices of listening to music while being in public spaces: at headphones attached to portable music players versus at loudspeakers incorporated in mobile phones.

Among the popular genres, "manele" is the one generally perceived as associated to the poor, uneducated, Roma, or ghetto dwellers; thus, it is a strongly stigmatized genre. In the last years, an informal "campaign against manele" spread in the public spaces of Bucharest, consisting of graffiti (stencils) on the walls and fences around the city. In this frame, when youngsters listen to "manele" at loudspeakers in public spaces, symbolic social borders come into being around them, separating them from other sub-groups of youngsters. Paradoxically, in such cases, listening to music actually generates new uneasiness around the youngsters, despite the initial use of this practice as a tactic to cope with uneasy spaces.

In order to approach this paradox, I propose a debate on young people's perceptions of themselves and others in relation to urban sounds, public spaces, and uneasy encounters. The debate would draw upon data gathered during three years of group interviews and participative observation among several groups of young people, in four Bucharest schools.