The broken sound of Sambódromo: conflicts between VIP boxes and the parade avenue

Abstract

The sound leakage from the Rio de Janeiro’s Sambódromo’s VIP boxes onto the parade avenue during the 2022 carnival was widely commented on in the samba circuits and the press. This text discusses the multiple discourses generated by the sound tension during the event, understanding these conflicts as a musical dispute which dramatizes several of the recurrent social tensions in Rio’s carnival in their relations to class and race. Carnival is a popular celebration that has always negotiated physical spaces in the city, which also embodies disputes over symbolic spaces. The sound of the VIP boxes crossed with the drums of the samba schools can be thought of as another layer of disputes for sound spaces, in a complex gear that reverberates ways of thinking and negotiating social hierarchies.

Keywords
samba; samba schools; sound studies; social conflicts