Music: a tool for socio political paticipation among descendants of inmigrants in Buenos Aires and Bilbao

GAVAZZO NATALIA; PEREIRA SONIA; ANA ESTEVENS

Transglobal sounds: music, youth and migration

Bloomsbury Publishing Inc

Año: 2015; p. 133 - 153

Departing from this framework, we wish to discuss and explore howmusic-making, performance and consumption take shape within urbandynamics influenced by migration processes. We are particularly interestedin examining music-making and its (differentiated) performances in publicspaces as a form of political expression, which reflects power relations andcreates spaces for political claims, resistance and alternative ideologies, whichgives visibility to issues pertaining to young first-generation migrants as wellas descendents of migrants. We propose an understanding of contemporarypolitical concerns about real processes of integration through the analysisof musical acts in the context of urban immigration. For this discussion, wedraw on the case of young Bolivian immigrants/descendants of immigrants intwo distinct cities. One in the "Global North": Bilbao, located in the BasqueCountry, Spain, and one in the "Global South": Buenos Aires, Argentina, bothimportant destinations of Bolivian immigration. The interest of exploringmusical practices among groups with the same national origin but in differentplaces of settlement has already been highlighted by other authors (Baily1999). The form and the distance of migration matters beyond commonnational origins and we bring this to light in our analysis also.