ABSTRACT
During the first three decades of the twentieth century, Colombia introduced new technologies of mechanical reproduction of sound as consequence of increased participation in transnational commercial networks. Simultaneously, migration from rural areas, and processes of industrialization and urbanization transformed Colombian cities and quotidian life. Among these changes was the resignification of urban public spaces as “owned” by the state, which entailed the control of citizens’ behaviors. This chapter examines how the interaction between people and new technologies fostered a reconfiguration of the sonic sphere, established changing forms of aurality, and informed the experiences of space transforming sounding and listening into significant parts of modernizing processes. Analyzing the first anti-noise campaigns implemented in various Colombian cities in the late 1920s, this chapter reveals how the concept of sound hygiene served as a vehicle to advance notions of ethnicity and race informed by eugenic discourses that intertwined and created symbolic instruments of social classification and control. It also illuminates some of the strategies that local communities developed to resist them. Ultimately, this chapter is about how “noise” became an object of state intervention and political bargain.
