This article appeared in issue 25 of the “Journal of Sonic Studies” (2024), an open-access journal that explores the impact and importance of sound at the individual and cultural level. Founded on the legacy of the pioneering work of R. Murray Schafer (The Tuning of the World, 1977), JSS provides a platform for scholars and artists interested in the sonic environment and its effects on human behavior. At this link you will find the original article and all the materials that accompany it.
Summer 2007. I begin a long-term ethnographic investigation in the village of Dițești, 80 kilometers north of Bucharest (Romania). My host's friends ask me to film their wedding and the baptism of their children. From that moment on, my doctoral research on the ecology of images and sounds of this Roma neighborhood in Romania – my interlocutors more readily speak of “țigănie” (the term for gypsy quarter) – has been conducted essentially with a camera in hand. With these celebrations filmed on request, the errors, failures and limitations of the recording device become components of my research (Larcher 2019). This article focuses on the artifacts produced by the \combine muzicale\ (loudspeakers, amplifier, CD player or smartphone) in Roma streets. Structured around three videos, it makes audible the ways in which amplified sound configures different listening practices within the community. The distortion, clipping and digital noise of the three videos that structure the article are not only linked to the limits of the recording device. These videos indicate how the use of these loudspeakers is tied to rivalry, interference, fame, fraternity and familism. The article reconstructs the history of these practices in order to present how these loudspeakers have become auditory markers of the neighborhood.
By exhuming these visual and sonic discards from my personal archives or from those entrusted to me by my interlocutors, this multimodal research undertakes a "politics of the background" (Bonamy 2013: 151; Citton 2013). In three phases, it brings to the foreground the background of my videographic data, which had been excluded from the analysis and editing of my documentary films, in particular because of sound distortion. In doing so, I deliberately invert the relationship between figure and background, placing at the center of my analysis the phenomena of interference and the diffuse elements that constitute a musical and sonic atmosphere. Thus, for this study, the politics of the background led me to shift attention from music and lyrics to considering loudspeakers as an object of study in their own right (Oosterbaan 2009; Sewald 2011; Larkin 2014). This review and analysis of the discards of my doctoral research is, however, a continuation of my earlier work, in which I took an interest in ordinary sound practices and vernacular video practice. These experiences welcome various forms of interference, in comparison with the musical and sound practices of the many \lăutari\ – the term used in Romania to refer to traditional musicians, mostly Roma and men – who reside in the streets of Dițești. By bringing this background noise to the foreground, I seek to elaborate a politics of amplification, revealing the ordinary listening practices of this acoustic community.
More specifically, the ethnography and history of the amplified sound of these Roma streets reveal two kinds of background noise. One kind is heard in the atmosphere of the streets of the țigănie, often overwhelmed by the sound of the loudspeakers, while the second consists in the compression of video sound "both in terms of dynamic range and frequency range" (Birtwistle 2010: 100). The recovery of these audiovisual archives also shows the different uses and imaginaries of loudspeakers prevailing in the village's social space. While varying considerably over the course of the 2000s and 2010s, they are, above all, the object of different material and emotional investments on the part of the musicians who belong to the community and of the young men who have invested large sums of money in buying these loudspeakers. The exhumation of these different discards makes manifest the contrasting sonic atmospheres, sometimes even opposed or contradictory, that constitute the territory of Dițești. Three types of spatial configurations through the use of loudspeakers are studied here: public announcements that punctuate family celebrations; ordinary music listening at home and in the courtyard; and new sonic provocations that somehow reconfigure the boundaries between public and private space. Each of these relationships to the background noise of loudspeakers is presented by a video. To convey the depth of this background noise, none of the soundtracks of these videos has been repaired (de-clipping, de-clicking or equalization, as is possible with software such as Izotope RX, which I use for other projects). Subtitles have been added when the dialogue is not sufficiently intelligible. The sounds are sometimes very harsh and should be listened to with caution (at moderate volume). The aim of this article and of the videos is not to make these discarded sounds presentable, but to show their heuristic character for an ethnographic investigation.
Arriving for the first time in Dițești, at the home of Lucian, my host for the first four years of my fieldwork, my perception of the soundscape was based on his listening. An accordionist and pianist, he quickly introduced me to his musician friends and to the small world of the lăutari. My perception of the acoustic environment of Dițești was indeed attuned to the rhythm of this small world of musicians (lăutărie), made up of respectable families (familie bune) who consider themselves part of the social elite. These musicians strive to set themselves apart from the pauperization and the ethnicization of poverty typical of the țigănie, without neglecting the moral obligations of solidarity shared within the community. In this first video, Tina, my client and the father of the young boy whose birthday is being celebrated, has hired famous (Roma) musicians from Bucharest.
Tina and his wife decided to bring the lăutari into the courtyard of the young boy's maternal grandmother, rather than into their own home, because of its position on the most populated street of the neighborhood. In this way they were sure of more easily attracting the spectators who came to observe the host family and the musicians. They set up the massive sound system in the narrow space between the street and the landing. A crowd quickly gathered, standing at the entrance of the courtyard and along the side of the street, eventually occupying a considerable part of the roadway. As with the village bells, the volume of the loudspeakers serves the function of an announcement. To my great surprise, the crowd that had gathered spontaneously at the side of the road remained relatively impassive. Apart from the children and a few well-known drunks, no one in the audience began spontaneously to dance, shout or sing. The locals came to listen to the musicians (especially if they were famous or were coming to Dițești for the first time), to pass the time and to observe the various members of the celebrating family. This attention, which only appears impassive, is in fact a real evaluation. As I learned later from the numerous discussions with my interlocutors, this motionless observation and listening conceal a real appraisal: How are the bride, the godparents and the in-laws dressed? Who is present and who is not? Who are the musicians and how do they play? Who gives the tips (bacşiş), how much are they and to whom are they dedicated?
Unaware of the fame of the troupe and of the lead singer (Costel Biju), and just beginning to make my first video recordings in the field, the entire sequence is a relative failure in the eyes and ears of both the musicians and Tina. Struck by the contrast between the mute, compact and motionless crowd and the energy deployed by Tina's family – while the volume of the loudspeakers is pushed to the edge of distortion – I begin to pan slowly. A person appears behind me and the musicians signal to me to move the camera immediately and film Tina, who is giving a substantial "tip" to the singer. The latter lists the numerous banknotes while shouting into the microphone Tina's dedications to his relatives and guests. I quickly understand from the bewildered and reproachful looks of the lăutari that what matters and must be filmed is the interaction between Tina's family and them rather than the social situation as a whole. The audience is a background that does not need to be highlighted. Like the lăutari, I am paid to follow my client's instructions.
The failure of the recording of this sequence is both technical and methodological: Tina, the lăutari and I were paying attention to different aspects of the soundscape and of the atmosphere. Equipped with an omnidirectional microphone without activating the low-frequency cut and the 10dB reduction, I wanted to describe the filmed situation from the periphery, like a filmmaker making an observational film in which people recognize "the power to bear witness to the totality of the event" (MacDougall \[1975\] 1998: 129). Because of the imperative communicated by the musicians to stay as close as possible to the interactions around the microphone, when my recording tools and equalizer settings are not appropriate, the sound of my first attempts is completely distorted. My client and above all his musician friends in the village express their disappointment at the poor sound quality, accusing me of not being of the trade (din meserie) and of paying too much attention to the audience. I will correct this later by opting for other microphone settings and a portable recorder, and by cutting the scenes and frames that present the wider context of the situation: the audience, the architecture of the neighborhood or the precise position of the house in the village. Nevertheless, I keep these recorded elements both for my research and for the documentary film I was trying to make at the time.
For my clients, as well as for the musicians, a loud and clear sound is well regarded in the situation – and therefore in the recording. The volume at the party is associated with the fame of both the lăutari and the family, which often leads the person in charge of the sound system to push the volume to the edge of feedback. However, the audio recording is valued differently. For the musicians, not hearing the noise (gălăgie) from the hall or the street is crucial for their promotion or even for copying and studying the style of a renowned musician. Since my second stay in Dițești, in the spring of 2008, I changed my research and creative interests to fit this sound aesthetic, without however giving in to the demands of the lăutari who wanted me to record the cleanest possible sound (cel mai curat sunet), by plugging my portable recorder directly into the mixer, as some musicians from Bucharest did during my fieldwork. This listening would have been too distant from the experience and the needs of my clients and interlocutors, who literally need to hear themselves when they respond to jokes and shouts and speak at crucial moments of the evening, particularly those involving money. This is especially true for the announcement of the gifts offered by the guests (darul), which is sometimes made without a microphone. These announcements are particularly important for the guests because they make visible and audible not only the sums of money offered but also the obligations (obligații) settled or the debt (datorii) accumulated by those present. At this particular moment, the cameraman is even invited to position himself as close as possible to the guests and to the person making the announcements. If the cameraman fails to do so, he is immediately called to order. This attention to the auditory experience and even to the “listening point” (Chion \[1990\] 1994) of the organizers of the party was therefore in contradiction with that of the musicians, for whom these moments were not worthy of being recorded because they were not beautiful (frumoși).
In the course of my ethnographic research, I gradually came to understand the balance that had to be maintained among these different points of listening. In 2007, all of this escaped me, and the inadequacy of my position during these first images shot for Tina made them unusable both for him and for his musician friends. Even though the distortion and feedback recorded by the filming device made particularly evident both the fame claimed by the volume of the loudspeakers and the measured attention of the crowd, the audio signal was too distorted and noisy to be used in my documentary films, and I never reused or seriously analyzed this footage. Fifteen years after producing a DVD for Tina, in accordance with our agreement, I listen to this material again in a different way. Indeed, of the roughly thirty family celebrations filmed at the request of my interlocutors between 2007 and 2010, very few contain images that linger so long on the audience. This type of attention, focused on the choreography of social relations around the musicians and relatively indifferent to the volume or the melodies heard, led to intense conversations and spontaneous descriptions that I gathered in my notes as my ethnographic study proceeded. In a sense, this oblique listening seems to relegate the music to the background, focusing instead on the affects experienced (sometimes simulated) by the members of the celebrating families.
December 2008. Babo, one of my friends and interlocutors in Dițești, asks me to produce a digital copy of the videos he recorded during the year with his cell phone. At very low resolutions (Mpeg-1, 352 x 288 pixels), these videos show a variety of domestic situations: games with his grandchildren, children's naps, family meals, parties with friends and godparents, etc. Relatively short, around a minute – except one exceptionally long one of five minutes – these little fragments are visual haikus that revolve around filial love, simulated flirting and the celebration of brotherhood. Surprisingly, almost all of these images have a musical background coming from loudspeakers playing at different volumes.
Babo's videos document the genesis of personal video-recording practices in the Roma neighborhood. Between 2007 and 2010, few people filmed or owned a camera. The few MiniDV cameras circulating in the Roma streets of Dițești were mostly exchanged or poorly refurbished. They worked badly or were rarely used because of all the equipment needed (cassettes, cables, computer, DVD player), and the first smartphones were just beginning to appear. Without adequate storage media, these images often disappeared after a few months. Today, Babo's videos are probably the only ones that have survived the changes of equipment and the various computer failures that have hit the homes of the neighborhood. These images are also valuable because they indicate the existence of different kinds of background noise produced by loudspeakers. Although I had access to some of the situations filmed by Babo since 2007 (I am present in several videos), more often I was invited to the weddings, baptisms and funerals that were the object of “commissioned home movies” (Aasman 1995: 105) and for which I was paid according to custom, exactly like the musicians (see Larcher 2019). More rarely, I was asked to film the more informal celebrations around a barbecue, a family meal or a dance party improvised by teenagers in the street. Images depicting the domestic use of loudspeakers are therefore rare in my archive.
In Babo's videos, the background is constantly occupied by music played through loudspeakers. Even if their presence is not so pronounced in the soundscape of the țigănie, my notes and the images shot daily attest to the strong presence of these loudspeakers. This ambient music is often mentioned in my ethnographic notes as problematic. Because of its capacity to transform the (sonic) atmosphere, it often accompanied the situation of daily work (cutting wood, household chores, construction), which was then my main research interest. At the beginning of my fieldwork, this sometimes contributed to conflicts of priorities with some of my interlocutors. This happened with Ciucă, Babo's son, who was determined to turn up the volume of the hi-fi system during the barbecue at his sister's house, while my hypercardioid microphone was too sensitive to the volume of the loudspeakers pushed to the maximum, and the music made the conversations incomprehensible.
In these domestic situations, the loudspeakers and the recording device are essentially used in the filmed situations to create and document an atmosphere of hugs, kisses, toasts and all the forms of affection shared within extended families. A saxophonist and renowned lăutar, Babo is both a “creator of emotions” (Stoichiță 2008) and an expert in the production of atmospheres. In these various situations, he uses his cell phone almost as a musical instrument or as a loudspeaker. Many of these situations are filmed in the domestic space, with background music coming from the television or a small hi-fi system. The family members, and occasionally family friends such as the godparents, enjoy watching the children dance in front of the loudspeakers; the scenes are mostly filmed in the courtyard or in the house. One could say that in Dițești, listening to music played through loudspeakers in front of the camera sometimes “encourages the family to show its familism” (Aasman 1995: 108). However, looking at the roughly thirty videos recorded by Babo, one sees that the filmed situations are not limited to these family atmospheres. Two videos were recorded in contexts similar to the one presented in the first part of this article: Babo filming the interactions of close relatives as they dance while the lăutari play “live” in the background.
A third sound practice also appears in his videos. On several occasions, Babo films (or has himself filmed) in the company of his children and grandchildren while, in the background, music, whose source is never visible, echoes through the street or the private space of his courtyard. Babo and the people filmed seem to pay no attention to this background music, which accompanies no public event in the social life of the village (such as a wedding or a baptism). This practice of broadcasting music through loudspeakers deliberately placed outside the house – and directed toward the street without anyone appearing to listen to them – becomes more widespread in the 2010s (see the third section of this text).
In the summer of 2019, expressing to Babo my desire to work on his videos – together, if possible – his reaction was stern (as usual): “I don't know, it's your business, do what you want with it.” There were probably two reasons for his reaction. Babo had been thinking for years of writing his memoirs, and he was more interested in the help I could give him in that regard than in a return to his images. This refusal to collaborate on a potential four-handed composition of the film reinforces the discarded status of these videos, at least from an ethnographic perspective. Anthropological research practices are scornful of investigations motivated chiefly by the safeguarding of endangered artifacts or archives (a “salvage ethnography,” see Berliner 2019); at the same time, they are very attentive to the forms of collaboration that can exist between the ethnographer and his interlocutors (Lassiter 2005). Although we must be cautious about the imperatives of considering the ethnographic relationship exclusively in terms of collaboration, it is indisputable that it “requires \[...\] something like a common good that holds both parties together” (Cefaï 2010: 467). In this case, this common good seemed to have vanished before my eyes. Just when I thought I owned his archive, Babo made me understand that I was dealing with discards. At the same time, Babo's reaction confirmed the shift of perspective between the intensity of the experience of the filmed situation and the memorial practice created around these home movies. In Dițești, affects are far more strongly involved in the production of these images – in that they take part in the “scenography” and the “elaboration of an atmosphere” (Böhme 2008) – than in the viewing of these images. The gap is such that home movies are often recorded because of what the mere act of recording does in a situation rather than because their content is considered valuable for later viewing or as an act of documentation. As the film theorist Roger Odin states, “what happens during the shooting is often more important than the film itself” (Odin 2008: 258).
The close reading and re-editing of these ethnographic refuse is not simply a matter of rediscovering a soundscape that has in part disappeared. Revisiting Babo's short videos opens a window onto the various musical presences in the village's soundscape and onto the “arrangements of objects, words and music.”
New Year's Eve 2019, eleven years after Babo recorded his first videos with his cell phone. Loudspeakers are no longer an exclusive prerogative of musicians and are no longer limited to social events such as weddings, baptisms or birthdays. As I walk through the streets of the village, my interlocutors make me aware of what constitutes the specificity of the soundscape of the Roma streets compared with the sonic atmosphere of the streets inhabited by the Gadje (non-Roma), a neighborhood closer to the center of the commune, Filipeștii de Pădure. While the houses of the Gadje/Romanians are characterized by high fences, closed gates and barking guard dogs, the țigănie (Roma quarter) is marked by the presence of families with small children at the edges of the street, accompanied, at various points, by powerful loudspeakers. And although several Roma families have now settled in the Gadje streets, they maintain at least one of these two distinctive features. This sonic atmosphere helps to nourish the imaginary of the țigănie as a separate territory, an imaginary that my interlocutors know how to instrumentalize to intimidate, manipulate or challenge their Gadje counterparts – even if, like every inverted stigma, discriminatory practices are still prevalent in administrative or authoritarian structures. In the same way as the bell towers of French villages, whose history has been studied by the historian Alain Corbin (\[1994\] 1998), these loudspeakers are territorial and social markers.
New Year's Eve is naturally an exceptional moment, and both the volume and the layered nature of the sonic content in the dead of night here reached a level that caught my attention, prompting me to record these few images from my mother-in-law's plot (I joined the community in 2012; see Larcher 2020). New Year's Eve 2023 shifted these loudspeakers from the background to the main object of my attention.
While since the mid-2010s several young men have acquired sound systems similar to those of the musicians, my perspective mirrored that of the families I lived with: to consider these loudspeaker competitions as sonic provocations. Indeed, for part of the neighborhood, hearing and perceiving the power of the music is experienced as a problem. Worse still, the loudspeakers, installed on the porch, facing the street, and set at high volumes without anyone in the family dancing or seeming to listen – and therefore outside occasions such as family celebrations where onlookers gather to appraise the event or listen to the musicians (as in the first video) – seem to be a matter of challenge, provocation and intimate enmity (dușmănie). Although the increase in the acoustic power of these loudspeakers in the 2010s affects a growing number of people and fuels numerous conversations, in reality this practice of playing music at high volume as a challenge is part of a continuous history of amplified music in Dițești. Similar uses in the 1990s were reported to me by my interlocutors, and I have been able to observe them since 2007.
In December 2023, during the various celebrations marking the end of the year, several groups of young men (between 20 and 40 years old) set up their combină muzicală in the courtyard or right in front of the gate, enjoying a drink and sometimes a barbecue, singing, shouting or dancing in front of the imposing loudspeakers. The opposing loudspeakers face the street, which means that passersby can hear two completely different pieces of music in stereo. The “serendipitous sonic mixes” (Feld 2002: 317) and the density of these “tuned spaces” correspond both to new aspects of the neighborhood's soundscape and to the mutation of long-established practices. In the 2000s, it was common to see the men of the țigănie carrying hi-fi systems, DVD players and small loudspeakers out of the interiors, setting them up in the courtyard or in front of the gate for the celebrations of Easter, Christmas or New Year's. Now, as then, these gatherings around a small table with bottles of alcohol bring together brothers or cousins, without the presence of wives and children. However, with the gradual acquisition of loudspeakers by several young men of the neighborhood, loudspeakers sometimes as powerful as those used by professional lăutari, the density of sounds has increased. Moreover, the staging of these loudspeakers and the listening to amplified music are constantly the object of challenge. In a community obsessed with the ideal of fraternity and equality among peers, these forms of competition are never verbalized. Loudspeakers have gradually become ceremonial objects for the men of the țigănie (comparable to cars).
In everyday conversations among women, or in the domestic sphere, these convivial and exuberant uses of loudspeakers are the subject of lively debate. Part of this background noise is tolerated as long as it is part of the celebration of the bond of parity and fraternity. However, aggressive and unnecessary use is also suspect – condemned and mocked when it is perceived as a sonic provocation. The interpretation of these sonic signals fluctuates – the absence of someone from the family dancing or appearing to listen is an important factor. Because of this uncertainty in the attribution of intent, the use of loudspeakers can be the subject of particularly heated conversations that discuss and explain what is being heard and how to respond. Three forms of sound diffusion are particularly regarded as sonic provocations.
On several occasions, Lucian used a set of loudspeakers, which he also uses as a musician, to hide his conversation with his cousin Cristi from the neighbors. The need to use music to cover the content of the conversation is explained in part by the morphology of the land and of the houses. Divided among the various heirs over the generations, the plots have become narrower and narrower to the point that the walls of neighboring houses are separated by only a few meters.
Permeated by noise – associated with recording strategies or the limitations of recording devices, and appreciated for their capacity to interfere or to provoke sonically – these loudspeaker sounds have almost all the characteristics to remain a source of discard within an ethnographic investigation, however multimodal it may be. The "politics of the background" addressed in this research led me initially to adopt a media-archaeological approach, attentive to the media-technical conditions of production of the audiovisual archive presented here, and then to return to an ethnographic approach sensitive to the experiences lived by listeners (whether or not they chose to listen). It was not so much a matter of choosing between one approach or the other as of combining them in order to transform this loudspeaker noise into the main object of analysis and composition (of the short videos). Drawing on my field notes, the sound of the loudspeakers could finally be developed as a key element for understanding the porous line between public and private spaces in the "gypsy quarter" of Dițești.
Accompanying the video materials combined with what might be considered sonic discard, and addressing the blind spots of my research and the various methodological and technical obstacles, the text conveys a broader history of the loudspeaker soundscape in Dițești. The descriptions of the sonic presences of loudspeakers followed the chronological order of my faulty recordings. However, as I have also reported, these forms of sonic presence have coexisted for at least more than a decade, even if the competitions between loudspeakers now tend to overshadow the other practices. A detailed history of these uses has yet to be written, and such a history cannot be created through the study of my recordings alone. For the inhabitants of Dițești, the various possible uses of loudspeakers (as a symptom of notoriety, a sonic sign of an intimate experience, a sonic provocation or a sonic interference) make the interpretation of the intentions behind these uses all the more delicate and important. A multimodal ethnography of the background noise produced by loudspeakers in Dițești should combine a critical study of the ethnographer's position with a history of auditory experience, "listening to histories of listening" (Feld 2023).
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