Sonic affects and the production of space: ‘Music by handle’ and the politics of street music in Victorian London

Abstract

This article examines the affective capacities of sound and its role in the on-going production of social spaces. More specifically, the article seeks to understand the situated nature of sound’s affectivity within particular social-political-material contexts or circumstances. This is developed through a discussion of an empirical case study related to the history of street music: the ‘street music debates’ of Victorian London. The interrelation here of the sounds street musicians made, the broader urban soundscape of the time, who played street music and who it was that found themselves listening to this music demonstrate clearly the situated affective capacities of street music. From this, the article advocates an understanding of the role of sound in the on-going production of social spaces based upon a reciprocal mediation between ‘macropolitical’ matters related to identity and other social formations and the ‘micropolitics’ of the affects that such sound and music bring to bear for those exposed to it.

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