Exposition

(Back)ground Noise. A multimodal Ethnography of Loudspeakers in a Roma Neighbourhood (2025)

Jonathan LARCHER
open exposition

About this exposition

By combining text and three video essays, this contribution presents a multimodal ethnography of loudspeakers in the Roma neighborhood of a Romanian village. It is based on video recordings, which were left out of the analysis and editing of my documentary films because of sound distortion. Revisiting my fieldnotes and the “ethnographic rubbish,” here I establish a critical study of my initial position – for 15 years I wasn’t paying attention to loudspeakers as an object of study in their own right – and I argue how these sounds have become auditory markers of the neighborhood since, at least, the beginning of the 2000s. The article thereby contributes to the fields of both anthropology and sound studies. It shows how the use of loudspeakers is made up of rivalry, interference, fame, fraternity, and familism. Moreover, the analysis shows how the lines between public and private spaces, and between oblique listening and noise cancellation are continually reconfigured in a community obsessed with mutual acquaintance.
typeresearch exposition
date14/07/2022
published09/10/2025
last modified09/10/2025
statuspublished
copyrightLARCHER
licenseCC BY-NC-ND
urlhttps://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1706387/2661257
doihttps://doi.org/10.22501/JSS.1706387
published inJournal of Sonic Studies
portal issue25. Issue 25


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