{"id":16507,"date":"2021-04-12T10:02:12","date_gmt":"2021-04-12T08:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.auxsons.com\/?post_type=focus&p=16507"},"modified":"2022-03-30T18:24:26","modified_gmt":"2022-03-30T16:24:26","slug":"portraying-the-city-through-music","status":"publish","type":"focus","link":"https:\/\/www.auxsons.com\/en\/focus\/portraying-the-city-through-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Portraying the city through music"},"content":{"rendered":"

What can music tell us about cities? Can musical city portraits be a starting point to reflect on ways in which music represents cities and contributes to the creation of shared memories associating places and music? This article is an invitation to explore different examples of musical city portraits.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Unlike literary and visual representations of the city, music portrayals might appear more indirect, fragmentary, open-ended, especially with regards to non-vocal music or music with lyrics in foreign languages. Nevertheless, they still offer a unique perspective to dive into the musical psychogeography of different cities and explore the rich tradition that merges music with other cultural spheres. Music allows us to have a glimpse at the soul of cities and discover facets that often remain invisible and unknown to foreigners due to language barriers or lack of sufficient knowledge about the local cultural context. <\/span><\/p>\n

Music has often connections to cities and specific locations, but to perceive and appreciate references that, for example, songs of Okudzhava make to Arbat street in Moscow or Chava Flores, the unofficial urban folklorist of Mexico City, makes to La Merced neighbourhood, or the poetry of Roberto Murolos\u2019 Neapolitan songs in local dialect, one would need to be familiar both with Russian, Spanish and Neapolitan languages and the city places they chronicled in their songs. Fortunately, music doesn\u2019t require us to know this in order to enjoy it. But when we do make the connections, it stimulates our curiosity and offers a privileged access to the sense of place embedded in urban history, language and culture. Namely, to how locals have construed and still share living memories that associate songs, times and places. As Proust observed, the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes, or in this case in widening the perspective of our \u201chearing vision\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u0411\u0443\u043b\u0430\u0442 \u041e\u043a\u0443\u0434\u0436\u0430\u0432\u0430 - \u041f\u0435\u0441\u0435\u043d\u043a\u0430 \u043e\u0431 \u0410\u0440\u0431\u0430\u0442\u0435<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Bulat Okudzhava - Song of the Arbat street <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n