FOLLOW ME HERE
nell haynes
  • home
  • publications
  • projects
  • fieldnotes
  • teaching
  • contact
  • espaƱol

perhaps we should call it youradio?

13/11/2014

0 Comments

 
In Northern Chile, most families have the radio on in the home at least 12 hours a day. The radio plays on public transportation busses, private cars, taxis, restaurants, and in service businesses like copy shops and food stores. Older residents report that music has been ever-present this way as long as they can remember. When a song they dislike begins to play they may change the radio station, but they quickly find something more to their taste.

Younger people, however, are pickier. They like many genres and bands that are not played on the radio. They usually dislike Cumbia music (local to the Andes) and Reggaeton (a global form of club music that mixes dance and reggae rhythms), which are the primary songs featured on the radio. For that reason, many younger people prefer to play music with their mobile phone and computer. In fact, this is one of the only ways to select music as the only other place to get music is from vendors at the local market which sell illegally copied cds (called "piratas"-pirates). 

These radios are becoming less prevalent in homes in Alto Hospicio 
as computers and smartphones are more often the devices used to play music. 
Picture


Using these devices, they usually simply search for a song on Youtube. They turn up the speakers as high as possible and and enjoy this self selected music. They rarely pay attention to the video, because to them it is simply a byproduct of the important part--music. Though a few  young people report having Soundcloud accounts, on my survey of 100 residents in the city, only 1 mentioned any music-related social media activity other than using Youtube. Not only do these people use Youtube to listen to music, they also post the links on their Facebook page in order to share the songs with their friends, but also send audio files recorded on their phones through Whatsapp and even use Youtube to capture songs in order to set them as the background music to their Tumblr blogs. In essence, what the radio once was--an omnipresent passive form of listening to music has been transformed into an active, yet still omnipresent, form of music listening using Youtube in combination with different devices and social media forms.
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.


    themes

    All
    Aesthetics
    Authenticity
    Body
    Bolivia
    Chile
    Chola
    Class
    Disaster
    Drugs
    Food Studies
    Gender
    Globalization
    Indigeneity
    Inequality
    Lucha Libre
    Methods
    Migration
    Neoliberalism
    Performance
    Politics
    Protest
    Social Media
    Sport
    Tattoo
    Tourism
    United States
    Violence

    archives

    August 2022
    July 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    October 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    May 2016
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    March 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    August 2009
    July 2009

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.