Discordant Notes: Marginality and Social Control in Madrid, 1850–1930 by Samuel Llano

Abstract

Reviewed by: Discordant Notes: Marginality and Social Control in Madrid, 1850–1930 by Samuel Llano Carol A. Hess Discordant Notes: Marginality and Social Control in Madrid, 1850–1930. By Samuel Llano. (Currents in Latin American and Iberian Music.) New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. [xii, 258 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-939246-9 (hardcover), $41; also available as ebook, ISBN and price vary.] Illustrations, bibliography, index. In his most recent book, Samuel Llano explores music, noise, and class during a critical period in Madrid. From 1850 to 1930, the Spanish capital was overtaken by rapid but erratic modernization, coupled with demographic shifts. The attendant disruption of social structures was accompanied by the "discordant notes" of Llano's title. Yet, as the author argues, such discord "not only reflected … social conflicts but also helped to determine their fate" (p. 1). More than any previous scholar, Llano privileges sound in the history of Spain. He takes as case studies three musical practices: flamenco, the music of street organ grinders, and music performed by workhouse bands. All challenged existing notions of private and public space and all concerned the "marginality" and "social control" also highlighted in his title. With respect to the latter, each practice effectively became a site of contention, provoking a wide range of commentators to "establish, move, or blur the conventional limits between right and wrong, norm and deviance, beggars and buskers, or public and private spaces" (p. 6). That these critics were often motivated by ideological bias will surprise no one. But because similar ideologies prevail today, Llano's study is timely. Indeed, one can imagine many contemporary readers empathizing with marginalized musicians in turn-of-the-century Madrid, ostracized as Other, while also lamenting the sounds of the twenty-first century: some once-silent suburbs are now contaminated by obscure humming emitted from data centers, and well-heeled patrons of upscale restaurants fearful of their own hearing loss confront the irony of screaming at their fellow diners over Périgord truffles and a bottle of Marsanne. The very term "noise pollution," fraught with class confusion, is a relatively recent coinage. Among the plethora of sources Llano has painstakingly gathered are press reports, editorials, literature, and legislation, including records from Madrid's municipal archives. The author also engages with an impressive range of theoretical sources, including Jacques Attali, whose oft-cited Noise: The Political Economy of Music (trans. Brian Mussoni [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985]) elaborates on the ways in which noise or its absence is "not a mere byproduct of technological modernization but … used as an instrument to gain or retain power" (p. 7). Llano refers to venerable figures such as Émile Durkheim apropos marginality: groups become marginal only because of their relationship, ever contingent, to other groups; many essentialist labels, however, may be attached to them (pp. 2–3). Bourdieu, whose work on "distinction" has long informed musicological research, is an apt resource as well. In exploring the music–noise dichotomy, Llano also engages with the interdisciplinary field of sound studies, and his exploration of organilleros (blind organ grinders) enhances our understanding of music and blindness, a current topic in disability studies. Such a vast and new topic is filled with challenges. One is unevenness of source materials. Thanks to journalist– critics, scholars, or high-profile figures [End Page 297] in Spanish culture, such as Manuel de Falla and Federico García Lorca, flamenco boasts a copious literature, whereas workhouse bands are largely uninvestigated. Another daunting task is distilling the impressive range of materials into a gratifying narrative. The author must also consider whether the story told through these sources yields an overarching argument rather than a series of interesting observations on three separate phenomena. There are also the "discordant notes," ephemeral and elusive at the time of their creation and now lost. How much space—and speculation—should be devoted to the aural experience itself? The author meets these challenges in a variety of ways. With the workhouse bands, for example, he draws on primary contemporaneous sources to explain institutions of confinement in Spain, often veiled in secrecy. One such institution is the San Bernardino workhouse, part of the Hospicio de Madrid (p. 171). (In...