ABSTRACT
This essay explores how sound figures in emplacement of festive space at Roman Catholic feasts in Portugal and in the United States. Bandas filarmónicas – amateur community wind bands – accompany the religious procession and provide entertainment during the feast, and through these performances, bands sound out the boundaries of community, both literally and figuratively. This project draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at feasts in northern Portugal and southeastern New England. Diaspora communities transpose musical practices from Portugal to transform and reimagine urban spaces as evocations of homeland.
